Highlight:
After watching the monopolistic practices of Apple and its iPod product which is factory-rigged to inconvenience customers, I can't imagine why people still purchase iPod portable music players. Apple used to be a fun company. They used to actually care about customers. Now, they're just out to control the market, reduce the compatibility of the iPod, and limit customer choice.
With all the images of "freedom" found in iPod ads, it's sobering to realize that Apple actually wants customers to be chained to the monopoly music distribution channel it controls.
Original source:
http://olympics.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=7249174
Summary:
* An unhappy iTunes online music store customer is suing Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), alleging the company broke antitrust laws by only allowing iTunes to work with its own music player, the iPod, freezing out competitors, court filings showed.
* Apple, which opened its online music store in April 2003 after introducing the iPod in October 2001, uses technology to ensure each digital song bought from its store only plays on the iPod.
* The suit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose.
* The key to such a lawsuit would be convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market, according to Ernest Gellhorn, an antitrust law professor at George Mason University.
* Since rolling out the iPod, which has sold nearly 6 million units and was a top Christmas gift this past holiday season, Apple has garnered 87 percent of the market for portable digital music players, market research firm NPD Group has reported.
* "Apple has unlawfully bundled, tied, and/or leveraged its monopoly in the market for the sale of legal online digital music recordings to thwart competition in the separate market for portable hard drive digital music players, and vice-versa," the suit charged.
* Apple's online music store uses a different format for songs than Napster, Musicmatch, RealPlayer and others.
* The rivals use the MP3 format or Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) WMA format while Apple uses AAC, which it says helps thwart piracy.
* While songs saved in the AAC format can be saved in the MP3 format and played on virtually any digital music player, songs bought from the iTunes music store have an added software tag, which Apple calls FairPlay DRM, or digital rights management, added to the file that contains the song.
http://www.newstarget.com/000963.html
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Griffen Technology releases cassette deck converter for iPod
Highlight:
The Smart deck allows those with now seemingly archaic cassette players in their cars to put them to good use. It allows you to control your iPod through the forward and rewind buttons to skip songs.
Original source:
http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/100105griffin/
Summary:
* If you're one of the three people in the world - and that includes me - who don't yet have an iPod, here's yet another reason to go out and get one.
* Griffen Technology, Inc., a company that makes all sorts of very cool computer-related accessories, has announced that they're now shipping the SmartDeck Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod.
* Sure, the SmartDeck lets you hook up your iPod to your cassette deck.
* What sets the SmartDeck apart from all the other cassette adapters is that it allows you to use your cassette deck's forward and rewind buttons to skip songs forward or backward on your iPod.
* Likewise, the pause and stop buttons on the cassette deck do the same for the iPod - and, if you eject the SmartDeck or switch your car stereo from the cassette to the radio, the SmartDeck will automatically pause the iPod.
* Griffin says the SmartDeck includes an intelligent level control that sets optimum input levels as well as optimal volume on the iPod for the best audio quality.
* The SmartDeck works with the iPod mini, iPod Photo, 4th Generation iPod with Click Wheel, and 3rd Generation iPod with touch wheel and buttons - although the play/pause feature is not supported with the 3rd Generation iPods.
* Apple Macintosh owners can also thank Griffin for the soon-to-be-released FireWave, an external device that will bring Dolby Digital surround sound to Macs "for gaming, DVD players and iTunes."
* It's small enough to use with a laptop, gets power through its FireWire connection (no extra cables or power adapters!), and includes an extra FireWire port for daisy chaining other peripheral devices through the FireWave.
* The device's built-in Dolby virtual surround sound processing can be used to create computerized multichannel nirvana from any two-channel signal.
http://www.newstarget.com/007367.html
The Smart deck allows those with now seemingly archaic cassette players in their cars to put them to good use. It allows you to control your iPod through the forward and rewind buttons to skip songs.
Original source:
http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/100105griffin/
Summary:
* If you're one of the three people in the world - and that includes me - who don't yet have an iPod, here's yet another reason to go out and get one.
* Griffen Technology, Inc., a company that makes all sorts of very cool computer-related accessories, has announced that they're now shipping the SmartDeck Intelligent Cassette Adapter for iPod.
* Sure, the SmartDeck lets you hook up your iPod to your cassette deck.
* What sets the SmartDeck apart from all the other cassette adapters is that it allows you to use your cassette deck's forward and rewind buttons to skip songs forward or backward on your iPod.
* Likewise, the pause and stop buttons on the cassette deck do the same for the iPod - and, if you eject the SmartDeck or switch your car stereo from the cassette to the radio, the SmartDeck will automatically pause the iPod.
* Griffin says the SmartDeck includes an intelligent level control that sets optimum input levels as well as optimal volume on the iPod for the best audio quality.
* The SmartDeck works with the iPod mini, iPod Photo, 4th Generation iPod with Click Wheel, and 3rd Generation iPod with touch wheel and buttons - although the play/pause feature is not supported with the 3rd Generation iPods.
* Apple Macintosh owners can also thank Griffin for the soon-to-be-released FireWave, an external device that will bring Dolby Digital surround sound to Macs "for gaming, DVD players and iTunes."
* It's small enough to use with a laptop, gets power through its FireWire connection (no extra cables or power adapters!), and includes an extra FireWire port for daisy chaining other peripheral devices through the FireWave.
* The device's built-in Dolby virtual surround sound processing can be used to create computerized multichannel nirvana from any two-channel signal.
http://www.newstarget.com/007367.html
The iPod: A Love Story Between Man, Machine
Whenever Jason Berkowitz listens to "You're the Best" on his iPod, he recalls that 1984 summer vacation in Fort Lauderdale and seeing "The Karate Kid" for the first time. ("I thought it was the best song ever . I still kinda do and I don't care what people say," says the 29-year-old.) Whenever he listens to Zero 7's song "Destiny," which he first heard at London's Heathrow Airport four years ago, he thinks about meeting his wife, Bethany.
The thing about the iPod is, it's what you bring to it.
"It becomes an extension of you. It's like a window to your soul," says Jason Berkowitz of his iPod. When he hears "Destiny," he thinks of meeting his wife. (By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
* Thinkings . . .
* skimble
* Espella Humanzee
"If a song represents a memory in your head, then you listen to your life's memories -- faster than a mixed CD, definitely faster than a mixed tape -- as you listen to your iPod," says the affable, fast-talking Berkowitz, a project manager for a software company, as he sits in his downtown Washington office.
"It becomes an extension of you," he says. "It's like a window to your soul."
Everywhere, at all times, it's with you, this personal narrative of who you are and what you've been. While shopping for Cocoa Puffs at Harris Teeter. While dozing off on the MARC train. While doing leg extensions at Gold's Gym. It takes you back to that first dance ("When Will I Be Loved" by Linda Ronstadt) and last dance ("I'm in You" by Peter Frampton) at your senior prom; that birthday party where you sang like Rick James so loudly ("Superfreak! Superfreak!") that the neighbors almost called the cops; that Whitney Houston breakup anthem that reminds you of you-know-who over and over again. It's an obsession, an addiction, a love affair, really, between a man and a machine.
To the iPodders around the world, the irresistible, indispensable, irreplaceable iPod is a personal memory bank.
"The iPod is a very powerful identity technology," says Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and the Self at MIT, where she teaches the psychology of the relationship between people and machines. The iPod, to be sure, isn't the only digital music player around, but it's without a doubt the most popular. With nearly 22 million sold, three-quarters of the U.S. market, "the iPod is just one more technology that uses the computer as the second self -- a reflection of who we are as people, a way of seeing ourselves in the mirror of the machine," she says.
Fatima Ayub, wearing a white chiffon hijab that matches her iPod's white earphones, is walking briskly on R Street in Northwest Washington on her way to work. You'd hardly ever see her, she says, without her 15-gigabyte iPod, which has more than 1,300 songs on it.
"Your taste in music is something very personal, very emotional. So when you have an iPod and you've got all your music on it, you're trying to say something about yourself," says Ayub, 22, an associate for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. She's listening to "A Perfect Sonnet" by the indie rock group Bright Eyes as she sits on a curb near 18th and R streets. Her boyfriend, Imran, learned to play that song on his guitar for her, she says, cracking a shy smile. "You're making a little collection of emotions and memories for yourself and you stick them all in this little machine and you carry it around with you wherever."
In the upcoming book "iPod, Therefore I Am," part memoir, part valentine, the English journalist Dylan Jones writes: "The big thing about the iPod, I thought, was the way in which it forces you to listen to your life in a different way."
"When I started just monotonously, relentlessly downloading and uploading my record collection onto this machine, it was only after awhile that I began to realize why it was taking me so long. It wasn't supposed to take you that long. But I started going off on these weird tangents, going backwards, to my youth, when I was 15 or 20 or 30," Jones, a 45-year-old father of two girls, says in a phone interview from his London home.
His iPod has more than 6,000 songs. "That's when I began thinking there was something bigger to this whole iPod thing. Every time I download a song to it, and every time I listened to that song, it forced me to go back somewhere where I haven't been to for a while."
Everyone who loves music -- and who doesn't? -- has hundreds, if not thousands, of records, Jones says. When was the last time you played everything in your music collection? he asks. Then Jones, in a pitch-perfect tenor, sings a few lines from "Wichita Lineman" ( "I know I need a small vacation, but it don't look like rain. . . . I am a lineman for the county, and I drive the main road, searching . . . ). It's a song he first heard when he was 12, "one of those songs that remains a secret," he says, "because it was never trendy enough."
In the middle of her typical 7:30 p.m. workout at Washington Sports Club in Clarendon, with her iPod clipped to her hot pink shorts, Kate Danser is listening to "Times Like These" by Jack Johnson, a surfer-cum-songwriter with a distinctive folksy, reggae-rock sound. Not exactly the upbeat, fast-paced, high adrenaline rush that is "Bootylicious," by the R&B group Destiny's Child. That song, in very high volume, can be heard from the iPod of a woman dressed in a matching gray halter-top and very short shorts who's doing sit-ups a few feet away. But "Times Like These," the 24-year-old Danser says, reminds her of her friend Casey, her student-teacher partner whom she met at the College of New Jersey. Casey introduced her to Jack Johnson a few years back.
"It kinda soothes me, relaxes me, calms me down," says Danser, putting her iPod back on, sitting on the leg extension station, about to do her third rep, with the Jack Johnson song and the memory of her friend Casey in the background.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601887.html
The thing about the iPod is, it's what you bring to it.
"It becomes an extension of you. It's like a window to your soul," says Jason Berkowitz of his iPod. When he hears "Destiny," he thinks of meeting his wife. (By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
* Thinkings . . .
* skimble
* Espella Humanzee
"If a song represents a memory in your head, then you listen to your life's memories -- faster than a mixed CD, definitely faster than a mixed tape -- as you listen to your iPod," says the affable, fast-talking Berkowitz, a project manager for a software company, as he sits in his downtown Washington office.
"It becomes an extension of you," he says. "It's like a window to your soul."
Everywhere, at all times, it's with you, this personal narrative of who you are and what you've been. While shopping for Cocoa Puffs at Harris Teeter. While dozing off on the MARC train. While doing leg extensions at Gold's Gym. It takes you back to that first dance ("When Will I Be Loved" by Linda Ronstadt) and last dance ("I'm in You" by Peter Frampton) at your senior prom; that birthday party where you sang like Rick James so loudly ("Superfreak! Superfreak!") that the neighbors almost called the cops; that Whitney Houston breakup anthem that reminds you of you-know-who over and over again. It's an obsession, an addiction, a love affair, really, between a man and a machine.
To the iPodders around the world, the irresistible, indispensable, irreplaceable iPod is a personal memory bank.
"The iPod is a very powerful identity technology," says Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and the Self at MIT, where she teaches the psychology of the relationship between people and machines. The iPod, to be sure, isn't the only digital music player around, but it's without a doubt the most popular. With nearly 22 million sold, three-quarters of the U.S. market, "the iPod is just one more technology that uses the computer as the second self -- a reflection of who we are as people, a way of seeing ourselves in the mirror of the machine," she says.
Fatima Ayub, wearing a white chiffon hijab that matches her iPod's white earphones, is walking briskly on R Street in Northwest Washington on her way to work. You'd hardly ever see her, she says, without her 15-gigabyte iPod, which has more than 1,300 songs on it.
"Your taste in music is something very personal, very emotional. So when you have an iPod and you've got all your music on it, you're trying to say something about yourself," says Ayub, 22, an associate for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. She's listening to "A Perfect Sonnet" by the indie rock group Bright Eyes as she sits on a curb near 18th and R streets. Her boyfriend, Imran, learned to play that song on his guitar for her, she says, cracking a shy smile. "You're making a little collection of emotions and memories for yourself and you stick them all in this little machine and you carry it around with you wherever."
In the upcoming book "iPod, Therefore I Am," part memoir, part valentine, the English journalist Dylan Jones writes: "The big thing about the iPod, I thought, was the way in which it forces you to listen to your life in a different way."
"When I started just monotonously, relentlessly downloading and uploading my record collection onto this machine, it was only after awhile that I began to realize why it was taking me so long. It wasn't supposed to take you that long. But I started going off on these weird tangents, going backwards, to my youth, when I was 15 or 20 or 30," Jones, a 45-year-old father of two girls, says in a phone interview from his London home.
His iPod has more than 6,000 songs. "That's when I began thinking there was something bigger to this whole iPod thing. Every time I download a song to it, and every time I listened to that song, it forced me to go back somewhere where I haven't been to for a while."
Everyone who loves music -- and who doesn't? -- has hundreds, if not thousands, of records, Jones says. When was the last time you played everything in your music collection? he asks. Then Jones, in a pitch-perfect tenor, sings a few lines from "Wichita Lineman" ( "I know I need a small vacation, but it don't look like rain. . . . I am a lineman for the county, and I drive the main road, searching . . . ). It's a song he first heard when he was 12, "one of those songs that remains a secret," he says, "because it was never trendy enough."
In the middle of her typical 7:30 p.m. workout at Washington Sports Club in Clarendon, with her iPod clipped to her hot pink shorts, Kate Danser is listening to "Times Like These" by Jack Johnson, a surfer-cum-songwriter with a distinctive folksy, reggae-rock sound. Not exactly the upbeat, fast-paced, high adrenaline rush that is "Bootylicious," by the R&B group Destiny's Child. That song, in very high volume, can be heard from the iPod of a woman dressed in a matching gray halter-top and very short shorts who's doing sit-ups a few feet away. But "Times Like These," the 24-year-old Danser says, reminds her of her friend Casey, her student-teacher partner whom she met at the College of New Jersey. Casey introduced her to Jack Johnson a few years back.
"It kinda soothes me, relaxes me, calms me down," says Danser, putting her iPod back on, sitting on the leg extension station, about to do her third rep, with the Jack Johnson song and the memory of her friend Casey in the background.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601887.html
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