Sat

Dec 29
2007

Marc Hedlund

Marc Hedlund

Fast Forward for December 29th, 2007

  • I would buy more music if my iPhone held more music. I wonder how much demand is suppressed only by device capacity.

  • I can't believe Leno and company aren't turning to the Internet for jokes. A little Digg-style interface for submitted jokes and an on-air namecheck and away you go. Submit ten jokes that get used on the air and we'll fly you to Hollywood for a job interview. Done.

  • Katie Hafner is wrong; it's not personal attention that makes the Apple Stores work. It's making computer users feel smart. There are few enough choices that anyone can reasonably understand them. The people are approachable enough that anyone can talk to them. The aesthetic is open and clean and, above all, simple. None of those words are usually associated with computers. The Apple Stores teach people that even they can use computers, and that expands the market.

  • Virgin America is great and all, but there's something downright unpleasant about flying an airline with "Beta" software on it. I mean come on. I got Red to crash -- reboot! -- very reliably by switching rapidly between the maps and the media player. The DirecTV thing said "your receiver has not yet been authorized" and then asked if I wanted "immediate upgrade without a call" for a premium channel (certainly!). One of the games (Rocks 'n' Diamonds) told me that my username was root. Really?

  • My wife got all rank with the iTunes Music Store for not letting her move music from one of her computers to another. "Try Amazon," I told her, and that was that, no more iTMS for her. The true idiocy of the RIAA is that they've made DRM simple enough for everybody to understand why they don't want it.

  • My friends keep joining GoodReads, but my heart still lies with LibraryThing. Come on, peoples!

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Comments: 11

  Ryan [12.29.07 01:57 PM]

The reason Apple Stores work so well is that they are filled with superior products that people lust after. You can walk into Fry's and touch any old HP or Compaq and but you don't drool over it in quite the same way do you?

  Jim Lindley [12.29.07 02:00 PM]

The shows can't just replace their writers with scabs, even if they're anonymous scabs from the internet. And anyone who got a job this way would need to eventually become a member of the writer's union, so to have to have crossed the picket line and wrote jokes this way would not be the way to start your career as a writer in Hollywood.

  Pat [12.29.07 02:33 PM]

Does you device really have to carry every tune you have in your collection? Embrace constraints with a 4GB Nano!

  anjan bacchu [12.29.07 04:36 PM]

"The true idiocy of the RIAA is that they've made DRM simple enough for everybody to understand why they don't want it."

WELL SAID!

  Simon [12.30.07 04:15 AM]

To be running out of space you must have at least 1,000 odd songs. I don't think most people actually have spent $1000 on itunes.


Actually total ipod sales are around 120 million and itunes store has sold 4 billion odd songs (wikipedia numbers) so that is just 35 songs per ipod sold.


Are you really telling us you'd spend $10,000 on music to fill a 100GB model?

  Red Jello [12.30.07 08:35 AM]

I bought an iphone a month ago. I am now converted. Plus, I was having battery problems and had to track down an Apple store. The place was mobbed. The staff spent an hour and a half with me. They wanted to ensure my phone was all set before I walked out. One staffer spent 45 minutes with me walking me through specific features. Where do you think I'm going for my next computer?

  Tim O'Reilly [12.30.07 08:51 AM]

Re LibraryThing vs. Goodreads: what all these sites need to do is get together, so that you can share books (and friends) across all three services.

I sure don't want to put books in multiple places.

  Nat Torkington [12.30.07 10:38 AM]

@Simon: not quite. Marc probably reached his 1000 song limit by ripping his CDs. I know I did. Now I only buy new music as MP3 files, but it's the music I already had (20 years of bluegrass purchases) that forms the bulk of my iTunes library.

  Marc Hedlund [12.30.07 11:59 AM]

Wow, people commented on every bullet of that post *except* the Virgin one. And here I thought root access on a plane network would be the attention-grabber. I was wrong! Maybe I should have added, "The TSA is looking at the wrong level of abstraction."

  iStudioWeb [12.30.07 03:17 PM]

"The true idiocy of the RIAA is that they've made DRM simple enough for everybody to understand why they don't want it."

This one is a gem. I'd love to read expanding articles on your blog in a future.

  iStudioWeb [12.30.07 03:23 PM]

To Marc Hedlund:

actually I don't think anyone in their right mind would let passengers access anything beyond smart terminal capabilities. If I am wrong - just wait for next lawsuit to hit the company and we'll be done with it ;)

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