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ExtraBITS for 27 July 2015

This week’s ExtraBITS roundup features Josh Centers and the Tech Night Owl discussing Apple financials, Flickr bringing back Pro accounts, Jim Dalrymple losing and then recovering much of his music because of Apple Music confusions, and United Airlines’ push to install DRM on your computer.

Josh Centers Tackles Apple Finances with The Tech Night Owl — Managing Editor Josh Centers once again joined The Tech Night Owl podcast to discuss Apple’s latest quarterly results, the upcoming Windows 10, Jim Dalrymple’s Apple Music problems, and how Josh replaced his wife’s iPhone 5c screen.

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Flickr Brings Back Pro Accounts — After two years, Flickr is bringing back paid Pro accounts for $49.99 per year. The new Flickr Pro includes better analytics, no ads, a “pro” badge on profiles, and discounts on photo products, such as Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan. Those who had grandfathered Pro accounts will keep the same benefits they had plus gain the new ones.

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Jim Dalrymple Quits Apple Music, Calling It a “Nightmare” — When longtime Apple journalist and fan Jim Dalrymple is angry with Apple, you know something’s wrong. Dalrymple has announced on his blog, The Loop, that he’s “done” with Apple Music after it wrecked his extensive iTunes library. The first problem arose when he tried to add songs from different albums that iTunes saw as duplicates and ignored. Later, it jumbled up his albums, refused to sync between devices, and when he disabled Apple Music, it took 4,700 of his songs with it. “I trusted my data to
Apple and they failed. I also failed by not backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not make either of those mistakes again,” Dalrymple said.

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Jim Dalrymple Recovers Most of His Music — We previously reported that Jim Dalrymple of The Loop publicly quit Apple Music after it ate a good chunk of his collection. The good news is that, with Apple’s help, he was able to recover much of his music. The problem turned out to be an interaction with iTunes Match. According to Apple, iTunes Match now shows only your purchased content if you turn off Apple Music and iCloud Music Library. Unfortunately, Dalrymple thinks he accidentally deleted about two hundred songs that he won’t be able to recover.

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Flying the Unfriendly Skies: United Pushes DRM — Mike Masnick of Techdirt reports on tech entrepreneur Brian Fitzpatrick’s close encounter with an unwanted DRM plug-in, courtesy of United Airlines. It seems the airline is beta-testing what it calls its “Personal Device Entertainment” option, by which passengers can use the in-flight Wi-Fi to view movies on their own devices. However, Fitzpatrick learned that the option requires the installation of both a DRM plug-in and Flash on personal computers, and the
required plug-in is considered dangerous enough that Google Chrome does not support it for security reasons. Maybe Fitzpatrick should have just rented headphones and purchased an alcoholic beverage.

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