For a good thirty years or so, starting in the 1950s, musicians released singles on vinyl discs called “records”. You could also buy a full album of music by one artist, and some were worth it, but you also had the option of buying just that one song that you liked, that you kept hearing on the radio.
(You’d also get a second song on the “B-side” of the record. Mostly people just considered that a bonus.)
Vinyl made way for cassettes, and the cassingle was born. Then cassettes made way for CDs, and while I remember seeing some CD singles, they were never as prevalent as those on vinyl or cassette. I believe that’s because the vinyl and cassette singles were cheaper to make than the full album version, since they used less raw material, but a CD single cost as much to make as a full CD.
Consumers, en masse, didn’t complain about the death of the single. I did, because I won’t pay $18 for two or three songs. And let’s face it: the majority of your average pop/rock album is filler material. But for some reason, I was mostly alone in my anger.
Then everything went digital, and all Heck broke loose, people were making lossless copies, yadda yadda, you know this part. Now we’re finally at a place where you can once again pay for just the music you like, for a completely reasonable 99 cents, and there’s nothing stopping you from sending a copy to, say, your wife. (See also this controversial article: “Is it Ever Okay to Steal Entertainment?“.) In the music scene, DRM is dead, and yet somehow, the recording industry still lives. Who’d've thunk it? (Me. You. Everyone without a vested interest in obscene profits from album sales.)
Photo by stevecadman
But record companies, bless their pathetic little hearts, are still trying to find a way to sell full albums. There are at least two options in the works, something called “CMX” and Apple’s version codenamed “Cocktail”, which we’ll almost certainly learn more about at their upcoming press event on September 7th. These new digital album covers are meant to be interactive, and include videos and lyrics, and other mysterious “stuff” that has yet to be identified.
It won’t work. If I had an extra $1,000 (or even $1,000 that wasn’t extra), I would bet it all that this won’t work. These efforts will all die. Technical compatibility issues aside, people are simply done buying things that they don’t like. I’m not in the habit of feeling schadenfreude, but in this case, I am happy to sit back, point and laugh.
That all being said, when a music group proves itself to make consistently good albums of mostly-non-filler (in my opinion, people like Ben Folds, They Might Be Giants and “Weird Al” fit this description), I’ll buy a whole album. They deserve it. Also, good movie soundtracks. Music tastes are incredibly subjective, of course, but until music goes non-digital again, you’ll have very few reasons to buy a whole album.
New digital album format doesn’t have a prayer, Matt Rosof, CNET News, August 11, 2009
Cocktail part of Apple’s September event, Greg Sandoval, CNET News, August 14, 2009
For the increasing number of Mac users in the audience, today’s the day to start deciding whether you want to upgrade your operating system: “Snow Leopard” is on the scene.
Number-wise, this is a move to OS 10.6. It will only work on Apple computers with an Intel processor and at least 1 GB of RAM. For anybody whose Mac came with 10.5 (Leopard), this should include you. And for you, it’s a $29 upgrade. (Users of 10.4 “Tiger” will need to spend more if they want to upgrade, but it’s still possible.)
The $29 fee is kind of a double-edged sword for me: it’s the cheapest operating system upgrade of, I think, my entire life. And yet, because it’s so inexpensive, that must mean it’s not necessarily worthwhile. Apple’s been pretty upfront about that, though… most of the changes are pretty boring.
Here’s what I recommend for right now:
Personally, I’ll be watching to see what new gee-whiz features Apple will soon introduce that won’t work on anything earlier than 10.6.
I’m a previous customer of the Mac Bundle Box, and I’m always curious to see what’s on the offering block when it reappears.
If you’re unfamiliar with the program, it’s one of the best ways you can save money on Mac software. Not only can you get $460 worth of software for $50, but 10% of each sale goes toward charity. This time it’s charity: water, which provides clean drinking water to developing nations.
Of particular note to our readers are two apps in the group dedicated to personal finance:
iCash
iCash is a software intended to control your personal finances, keeping track of incomes, expenses, credits, debts and Banks transactions for you. As simple as creating the accounts you need and move money between them! You don’t even need to know about accounting or even care about it! Your finances depend largely on good organization that lets you know where your money comes from and to where it goes.
Chronicle
Keeping track of your bills has never been so easy! Intuitive and remarkably simple to use, Chronicle will help you pay your bills on time, every time. It takes only a few seconds to add a new bill for Chronicle to remember. Once you enter your bills, Chronicle’s overview shows you all your upcoming bills at a glance, and alerts you when one is due soon (Leopard only). Plus, payment history and statistics by year and month help you determine when, where, and how much you spend. Chronicle also automatically averages your payments for bills that fluctuate, like credit cards and utilities, helping you budget for the future more accurately. You can also use Chronicle’s goals to work toward reducing a balance or paying off a loan. Late payment fees often cost $25 or more. Why risk it? Let Chronicle keep track of all your bills simply and easily!
There are twelve programs in the bundle, including the very-well-reviewed DEVONthink.
If you’ve used any of the apps in the bundle, I’d love to hear your comments, so our other readers can decide better whether it’s worth the $49 to them.
For the purposes of this article, the term “iPhone” includes “iPod Touch”, and I’m assuming that your operating systems are up to date.
Along with new firmware for existing iPhone owners, and the new iPhone 3G itself, Apple is releasing this week a new service called “MobileMe”, succinctly described as “Exchange for the rest of us.” In short, it automatically syncs your contacts, calendar, e-mail and photos between your home computer and/or work computer and/or iPhone. It stores these items in a 20 GB cloud of data and is smart enough to push updates to you from any of these categories, wherever you are, as long as you have an Internet connection or cell phone signal.
It sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, it costs $99 (US) a year for one person or $149 for a Family Pack. Calendars and contacts don’t take up much hard drive space, but between e-mail attachments and photos, it wouldn’t be that hard to bump up against the 20 GB ceiling, and it’s $49 for another 20 GB (or $99 for another 40 GB). As of this writing, a 500 GB hard drive goes for around $100. I will admit that managed data storage should be more expensive than buying yourself a hard drive, but twelve times as expensive?
I think we should hold off on signing up for MobileMe for a little while, because if the goal is automatic syncing of your contacts, calendar, e-mail and photos, I predict Google and Yahoo! are going to make this possible for free (and probably with “unlimited” data storage) in the near future. Taking each one in turn:
E-mail
If you use GMail (and I believe everybody should, even if your e-mail address is at a different domain), your e-mail is already syncing with GMail on your iPhone. Having it automatically pushed to your phone isn’t happening, yet, but it will be possible for all applications to take advantage of the “cloud computing” scenario that Apple designed for the iPhone. Do you suspect that Google won’t make a GMail app for the iPhone with push e-mail?
Contacts
With the update to OS X 10.5.3, you can already sync your contacts between your iCal (and by extension, the iPhone) and Google. See previous comment about future push scenarios, but for the time being, it would be a weird kind of emergency needed to make a lack of push technology a serious problem in this arena.
Calendar
I actually originate my calendar with Google Calendar, and subscribe to it in iCal, and by extension, my iPhone. See previous comment about future push scenarios, but Google already has a nicely iPhone-formatted version of the Calendar that loads in the Web browser.
Photos
This is probably the first thing that made me second-guess my temptation to subscribe to MobileMe, mainly because I love my Flickr account. It’s got a long history, and all my friends are there, etc. I can already e-mail photos from my iPhone to Flickr using a customized e-mail address, so that could hardly be simpler. Even so, it appears that Flickr has every intention of making their site as friendly as possible for the iPhone.
Now, I’m merely speculating that Google will come out with native iPhone apps that mimic most of the functionality of MobileMe, but look at Google’s track record. They try everything, and succeed at most of them. My plan as described may not be as elegant as a MobileMe account, but I think it’ll be just as easy, and it’ll cost 100% less.
This is only a prediction. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong. But unless you know something I don’t about Google’s plans, it’d still be smart to wait a month or so and see what they have to offer.
For techies, particularly those who like Apple products, the new iPhone 3G is starting to look nice. The current iPhone already has a mess of cool features, but Apple’s adding speed, GPS, support for Exchange, and many other features to attract new consumers, particularly business consumers.
Most importantly, the price for the entry level iPhone will be lower than less sophisticated devices, only $199.
This price is highly subsidized by AT&T, the only carrier that will officially support the iPhone. For every customer purchase, AT&T provides $300 to $400 to Apple to receive the device. This subsidy comes at a great cost to AT&T, but they’re confident that it will take only two years to recover these costs. Why? iPhone users spend more.
The average phone bill of an iPhone user is $95, almost twice the average of all other customers. If you’re an average iPhone user, you are spending $540 more per year, or $1,080 over the life of the two-year contract, for the privilege of buying an iPhone for only $199. I think AT&T is recovering quite nicely.
Would you buy the iPhone at $199? It sounds like an attractive price at first glance. But what if you had to pay your total $1,279 up front? You’d get to keep your $50 monthly plan with this option.
The good news is this lower price might mean more competitive phone prices across all cellular carriers. The bad news is the higher subsidies may be covered by higher monthly rates.
Information on iPhone subsidy from AT&T Starts Subsidy War, Scott Moritz, Fortune, June 10, 2008.
What if you invested in Apple (AAPL) the day before each of Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses at Macworld and sold the day after? Matt Haughey researched historic stock prices and designed the Keynote Index Fund. A fund of this style would return an average of 2.2% immediate (not annual) growth over two days. According to my calculations, which I figured by starting with an initial amount, adding the returns of each of the two-day periods, I came up with a total increase of about 20% over the 9 year period. That’s not impressive — but if you assume that while not invested in AAPL, you’re in a high-yield savings account, the returns increase dramatically.
If you had purchased AAPL in 1997 and held until now, your investment would have increased over 50 times. As Matt admits, buy and hold wins when compared to this timing strategy.
Keynote Index Fund [A Whole Lotta Nothing]
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