iTunes (Music) (Games) (Movies) Store hence the name! iTunes already left it’s origin a long time ago. Apple should work out some­thing (iMedia Store or what­ever). iTunes is a strong brand, but it doesn’t cover it’s orig­i­nal propo­si­tion any­more! Apple lost the Com­puter in it’s name to state: more then just com­put­ers. The iTunes brand has to be updated! It’s an online store where the con­sumer can buy music, games, movies, audio­books etc. not just music! If I’ve under­stood cor­rectly Apple’s is going to offer soft­ware in it’s line-​up. The iPhone/iPod Touch are the first to receive it’s apps through iTunes.

Online ser­vices are the next big evo­lu­tion­ary thing after Web 2.0. You already see some com­pa­nies making the shift, like Adobe with it’s Adobe Pho­to­shop Online (PSX), Adobe even branded the Pho­to­shop line with a new very much dis­cussed (Web 2.0 Aquaish) logo. Google is also exper­i­ment­ing with online apps (Cal­en­dar, Docs, Talk etc.) and Apple already has it’s .Mac ser­vices for years (thanks to WebOb­jects). I think and pre­dict that a lot of com­pa­nies will offer these kind of ser­vices in the future and see a tighter inte­gra­tion between web-​based appli­ca­tions and desktop-​based appli­ca­tions, maybe even elim­i­nat­ing their desk­top cousins and trans­form into a sub­scrip­tion based model.

The Inter­na­tional Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show 2008 just launched today in Las Vegas! It will take place Jan­u­ary 7-10. A lot of gad­gets & good­ies will be released during these days. One I would like to show you is this enter­tain­ment system called the Lady­bug from Vestal­ife.

There’s simply noth­ing quite like the Vestal­ife Lady­bug. Flip out the speaker “wings” on this sleek, high-​tech device and you have an iPod-based enter­tain­ment system fea­tur­ing a built-​in sub-​woofer for lots of bass, a dig­i­tal ampli­fier and one of the coolest soft-​touch fin­ishes you’ve ever expe­ri­enced. Sit it on a counter. Take it with you. The Vestal­ife Lady­bug is designed to be part of your life.

Apple and The Beatles’ parent com­pany Apple Corps said Monday they have entered into a new agree­ment con­cern­ing the use of the name “Apple” and Apple logos, ending a testy trade­mark dis­pute dating back nearly three decades. Under the new agree­ment, which replaces a pact from 1991, Apple will own all of the trade­marks related to “Apple” and will license cer­tain of those trade­marks back to Apple Corps for their con­tin­ued use. In addi­tion, the ongo­ing trade­mark law­suit between the com­pa­nies will end, with each party bear­ing its own legal costs, and Apple con­tin­u­ing to use its name and logos on iTunes.

…We love the Bea­t­les, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trade­marks. It feels great to resolve this in a pos­i­tive manner, and in a way that should remove the poten­tial of fur­ther dis­agree­ments in the future…

said Apple chief exec­u­tive Steve Jobs. The terms of set­tle­ment were not dis­closed. Now we only have to wait until their songs will come avail­able on the iTunes Store.

France, Ger­many, Fin­land, Sweden, Norway and the Nether­lands are all team­ing up to pres­sure Apple into open­ing its iTunes music format (AAC with DRM) for the sake of com­pat­i­bil­ity. Yeah right! You can’t play PlaySta­tion games on a XBox or Nin­tendo either! My point is I can stick a PlaySta­tion game in a XBox but it won’t work either because they are totally dif­fer­ent machines! My second point is I (con­sumer) have chosen to use that type of device/media. I can never ever play a PlaySta­tion game on a XBox. Same goes for iTunes music format, but I can re-​encode it to MP3 (with qual­ity loss) if I want to. It’s either AAC or Win­dows Media Audio (also DRM) but I don’t hear any of the coun­tries com­plain­ing about Microsoft’s DRM scheme. Is that maybe because we have more Win­dows users or are these coun­tries Microsoft horny? I say: if you don’t like the iPod+iTunes way, then Zune your ass to an other music store. Don’t like DRM? Then kill it and start bitchin’ the music com­pa­nies or shut-​up and start buying CD’s again. Make up your freakin’ mind! None of these coun­tries is pres­sur­ing HD-​DVD or Blu-​Ray to be com­pat­i­ble, they let the con­sumer decide! Anyone remem­ber­ing VHS, Video2000 and Beta­max! Pardon my french by the way!

Coca-​Cola and Apple Com­puter on Wednes­day announced a music part­ner­ship in Europe that includes major pro­mo­tions in the UK and Ger­many and the launch of a new Coke branded music web­site (09.08.06) across Europe, includ­ing the UK, Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land. Coke and Apple will be giving away 70 mil­lion free songs from the iTunes Music Store in the UK and thou­sands of iPods in Ger­many. Coke cus­tomers will be able to exchange their Coke Fridge loy­alty coins into free songs from iTunes. How­ever, Irish fans will have to wait until Sep­tem­ber to gain access to the new web­site. Pro­mo­tions in addi­tional coun­tries across Europe will be rolling out in the coming months, the two com­pa­nies said.

DRM (Dig­i­tal Rights Man­age­ment) should be invis­i­ble, unno­tice­able to the end-​user, it should be stored on a server (and synced) which my device (phone, media-​player, TV etc.) con­nects to. Now the whole dis­cus­sion goes: I also should be able to use it with any device for all time, WRONG!!! It’s not any­more about car­ri­ers (tapes, LP’s, CD’s, DVD’s etc.) it’s about for­mats (AAC, H.264, WMV, WMA) are these files inter­change­able, inter­op­er­a­ble? NO, they are not! We have two camps AAC/H.264 (Apple) and WMA/WMV (Microsoft) and some other who-​cares-​non-​important CODECS (FLV, ON2, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, MP3 Pro or what­ever). Tapes en LP’s are almost extinct and these car­ri­ers weren’t inter­change­able (can’t put a tape in a CD-​player can you?). So why the hell should a AAC file play on a Doesn’tPlayForSure device? For the con­sumer!!! If I buy a Audio CD I can play it on my SONY, Harman/Kardon or Sam­sung and even on my Mac, some not though, because of DRM (tadaaaaaa). My point is DRM isn’t there for the artists nor for the con­sumer, it’s there for the big record/movie BOBO’s, so they can con­trol your media (con­trol equals power). I am not even gonna start about the whole HD-​DVD, Blu-​ray, HDMI (High Def­i­n­i­tion Mul­ti­me­dia Inter­face), HDCP (High-​bandwidth Dig­i­tal Con­tent Pro­tec­tion) war. So there you have it! My point of view of DRM and locked for­mats.
I’m on a roll here! There’s some­thing else I want off my chest. Nor­mally I don’t flame com­pa­nies or people, I don’t like it, it’s dis­re­spect­ful! But it’s start­ing to annoy me to get insulted by people who don’t know SH*T about what con­sumers want or need and are extremely jeal­ous about Apple’s iPod/ITMS suc­cess. Either make a better prod­uct (Google way), force them out of busi­ness (Microsoft way), die trying (iRiver/Creative/Real way) or shut-​up! SONY made a MP3 player called Walk­man Bean, although I don’t like it, it’s totally dif­fer­ent then the iPod. I think SONY is the only com­pany which can com­pete head-​to-​head with Apple (style wise, soft­ware wise and hard­ware wise).

Okay, on to the con­test of stu­pid­ity:
Steve Ballmer won’t pass up an oppor­tu­nity to take sev­eral digs at his company’s arch rival Apple. Ballmer said:

…We’ve had DRM in Win­dows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is ’stolen’. Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to con­tinue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use…

Sorry Steve! music and movies are way to expen­sive, Apple has proven this with it’s iTunes Media Store.
In an inter­view with The Guardian, Glaser said that while users pur­chase some music from iTunes, most of their col­lec­tions are ille­gally obtained.

…If you want inter­op­er­a­ble music today, there is a very easy solu­tion: it’s called stealing…

No stupid, it’s called MP3 which doesn’t con­tain any Dig­i­tal ‘Restriction’ Man­age­ment.
And now on to the winner of this stu­pid­ity con­test (drum-​roll please) San­Disk who likes to insult their poten­tial clients by their own pro­pa­ganda iDon’t.com. Hey you’ve bought an iPod stupid donkey fol­lower buy this Sansa e200! Thank god these kind of cam­paigns only work for the weak-​minded people!
I like Apple par­o­dies if they are cre­ative and not insult­ing:
iBra­tor
1984
Switch Campaign.

Today I bought the JBL Crea­ture II audio speaker system, my Apple Pro speak­ers (also harman/kardon) got a little bit out dated. JBL’s Crea­ture II three piece speaker system pro­duces high-​quality stereo sound for movies, MP3’s, movies and gaming expe­ri­ences. Fea­tur­ing cutting-​edge sci-​fi design and supe­rior sound per­for­mance, JBL Crea­ture II is a unique “plug and play” solu­tion, com­pat­i­ble with all Macs and PCs - both desk­tops and porta­bles - as well as MP3 play­ers and Walk­mans. JBL Crea­ture II offers con­sumers cool design and excep­tional sound, prov­ing that excel­lence does not have to come in an expen­sive package.