Category: music

WWDC Bloggage

I have no idea what the alien pastries available for breakfast were. Deep fried bread rolls? Fried Excorated donuts? Slices of cookie pizza?

As always the problem with WWDC is that it leaves your brain overfull, and your brain usually doesn’t empty by the time of the next day’s sessions. Also, you realise how cool the stuff is that everybody else is working on.

Micro SD cards are *really* small. I imagine they will put the ‘lost’ back in data loss.

WWDC10 playlist is being kept over at Mashable, could come in handy for answering Stump The Experts questions.

Free sound ripping on your Mac

If you want to record sound that’s coming out your Mac’s speakers (audio channel), but are too cheap to shell out for a copy of Ambrosia’s Audio Hijack Pro or WireTap Studio, you can try installing the free SoundFlower, setting it as the audio destination in your Sound System Preferences pane, then recording from it using the free Audacity.

Apple censoring iTunes music store metadata

It seems that Apple have gone through and placed asterisks in some ‘offensive’ words (like w*g, a*s, but not apparently nigger) .The ABC’s “Spicks and Specks” is now apparently “Sp***s and Specks”. Including, in the case of Futurama, the name of the robot “Bender” (because it encourages irresponsible drinking?). Report on News.com.au

Bender censored to B****r in the iTunes store
Bender censored to B****r in the iTunes store

Maybe they’re worried that under Australia’s censored internet nobody will be able to buy iTunes?

Note of course that Apple are still happy for you to pay them money to purchase items that are too dangerous for you to see the name of.

MacWorld 2009

So, to kick off 2009 most interestingly to me we have

  • 17 inch unibody MacBook Pros with optional glossy screens (for an extra US$50), with a built-in (ie non-removable) 8-hour battery that apparently lasts 1000 cycles before dropping to 80% capacity (as opposed to some 300 or so for existing laptop batteries
  • iPhoto ’09 with face detection and recognition (used for both creating albums of people and ensuring the slideshow doesn’t crop out faces), geotagging, Google Maps and support for uploading to MobileMe, flickr and FaceBook (including tagging people with their FaceBook info). Also themed slideshows and maps in printed books. I hope FaceBook are ready for the onslaught 🙂
  • Dropping of iTunes DRM, with your existing songs ‘upgradable’ to DRM free for US$0.30 each as they become available
  • iwork.com
  • “Learn to play” music instruction for guitar and piano in GarageBand

BTW, has anyone else noticed the spoonerism that gives you Schil Philler?

iTunes to close?

In a news story that threatens to eclipse panicky Wall Street speculation, rumours are spreading that the iTunes store might have to close if a ruling tomorrow by the Copyright Royalty Board increases royalties too much. Or maybe the CRB will get panicky if Steve threatens to throw the big iTunes Store switch…

Of course, Apple really makes its money from selling iPods and iPhones to play content from iTunes, so it might not be as big a problem as people expect 🙂