Why Apple is more expensive than Amazon: “Buy what you like, where you like. But remember why things are the way they are. Apple is more expensive than Amazon because the labels want you listening to music on a Zune.”
Excellent analysis of the current state of the music industry.
My 5th generation iPod (30 GB) has given up the ghost. Sad iPod icon and everything. ‘Josiah’ at Apple tech support says it’s probably the hard drive, and that it’s not likely worth fixing; since it’s out of warranty, the repair cost is nearly as much as the replacement cost. Ah, disposable technology… Is there any other kind? 
iTunes Store Top Music Retailer in the US: “iTunes Store Top Music Retailer”
Of course, this might be partly due to the fact that nobody buys CDs any more… But still…
(Via ArsTechnica.)
Kill to Get Crimson by Mark Knopfler is available today on iTunes. I know this because Apple sends me email messages letting me know what’s new on iTunes. But they’re just taunting me. It’s not in iTunes’ Canadian store.
Apple knows I’m Canadian. They have my shipping address, my billing address, my ip address and, in all probability, fairly recent DNA samples.
They’re even able to send me “artist alerts”, notifying me that one of my favourite performers has released something new. Which I love.
The iTunes Store is aware of what it can sell to Americans, what it can sell to Canadians, and what it can sell to Britons (including, as of yesterday, iPhones, but I digress). But tailoring the store’s weekly announcements to the subscribers’ countries of origin is just too hard.
So they taunt us. As with the iPhone and the availability of TV shows and movies in iTunes. I wonder if Edward Burns’ new feature (link via DaringFireball.net) will be available in Canada? I’m guessing ‘no’.
iTunes 7.3 has been, for me, the worst version ever.Yes, there was a version that wiped out some people’s hard drives, but I wasn’t one of them, so that release doesn’t count.7.3, though, can’t update my iTunes Library file. That means I can’t revise any playlists, or add any music to my library (including the 1 song I bought from iTunes Music Store before discovering this bug). Or revise anything about my Library, actually; playcounts, ratings, the works.The silence from Apple, as usual with these sorts of things, is deafening.Maxfixit.com, the venerable mac, um, fix-it site, along with folks on Apple’s discussion boards, has been recommending reverting to iTunes 7.2 (a sensible enough suggestion).They even provide a link — to a site called OldApps.com! Now, I don’t know thing one about this web site or its reputation — I haven’t even visited it — but installing Apple software that’s been downloaded from SomeRandomWebSite?
See the search results for “iPhone” on Apple Canada’s Store:
Not only does the Canadian store still have the ca. 2002 web design (quite unlike Apple.com’s nice, new look), it has a conspicuous lack of iPhone. How quaint. How reminiscent of the Canadian iTunes Store’s lack of TV shows and movies…
Hey, Steve? We have electricity up here, and everything!
Steve Jobs announced at today’s world-wide developer’s conference that Mac OS X 10.5 (”Leopard”) will replace the Finder (which is?Ǭ
Steve Jobs’ announcement at All Things D that YouTube would be supported on AppleTV has lead to comments by Apple’s David Moody at iLounge.com:
Moody said that YouTube will soon be encoding videos in the H.264 streaming-efficient compression format preferred by Apple TV, and that all new videos submitted to YouTube as of the mid-June launch of the AppleTV update will be playable by the device. From then until fall, YouTube will be encoding its entire back-catalog in H.264 format, adding videos in chunks until everything is accessible to Apple TV users.
I think this may be the first Tuesday since Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in Canada that there are no new releases… The day isn’t over yet, but they’re typically updated by mid-morning at the latest.
Could this be related to the release of DRM-free tunes?
May 30 update: Apple has released iTunes 7.2:
With iTunes 7.2, preview and purchase iTunes Plus music?
May 2008
