Steve Jobs surprised the computer and entertainment industries last week by posting his thoughts on digital rights management (DRM), stating that Apple would abandon DRM “in a heartbeat” if it could. Adam examines Jobs’s notions and the reasoning behind them. He also comments on Bill Gates’s puzzling remarks about Mac security and notes the 10th anniversary of Microsoft’s MacBU group. Also in this issue, Matt Neuburg reviews Martin Hairer’s Amadeus II and Amadeus Pro music-manipulation programs, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) gets a June date, and Take Control’s second Month of Apple Sales bundle begins.
Apple has announced that the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held 11-Jun-07 through 15-Jun-07 in San Francisco, two months earlier than in 2006
Newsweek recently brought us Bill Gates's ignorant ranting about security on the Mac, a topic on which he was apparently informed solely by the existence of the Month of Apple Bugs project
Congratulations to Hans van Helvert of exsistere.net, Nina Contini Melis of mac.com, and Michael Scriven of aol.com, whose entries were chosen randomly in last week's DealBITS drawing and who received a copy of the SmileOnMyMac Productivity Suite, worth $129
All too often we see products released with relatively basic feature sets, after which they evolve into powerful applications used by professionals. That leaves few choices for those who want a simple, focused program
In an unprecedented move, Apple last week posted on the company Web site an open letter from Steve Jobs entitled "Thoughts on Music." That Apple chose the open letter approach is interesting, but sensible, since there isn't really a conventional format for a company to express an opinion or take a position other than a press release, and the letter was aimed, as we'll see, at many audiences other than the press
If the Book of Ecclesiastes were written today, it might include some jaded commentary on the plethora and ephemerality of computer programs - something along these lines: "Software cometh and software passeth away, and countless as the sands are the reviews thereof." Nevertheless, those sands do conceal an occasional treasure; and one such is Martin Hairer's Amadeus.
Amadeus is a sound file editor
Month of Apple Sales #2: Love the One You're With -- Valentine's Day is this week, reminding us to think of our nearest and dearest. In the Mac world, you needn't pine for new versions of iPhoto, iTunes, iWeb, and GarageBand when you can focus on the iLife '06 versions you have now
Apple and the enterprise -- This popular thread continues to draw discussion of Mac usage in large organizations, though sometimes in ways that aren't visible to the outside world