Sloppy Ihnatko

Apple, blogs, iTunes No Responses »
Dec 182008

So, Gruber links to Ihnatko’s overly long, overly styled Sun-Times piece on the death of Macworld Expo. Shortly thereafter, Gruber links to Faruk Ateş’s excellent piece which calls Andy out on his assertion that every “game-changing” Apple announcement has been made at Macworld on a Tuesday morning, while noting that contrary to Ihnatko’s original claim the original iMac was not introduced at Macworld.

So, then Ihnatko comments on Ateş’s post: “Good catch on the iPod. The rest I think are a matter of opinion.” I agree with Faruk – calling the iTunes Store a “matter of opinion” sounds like the cream in someone’s Boston Creme Pie went sour.

Posted by at 7:15 am Tagged with:

Paul Thurrott on the State of Windows Mobile

iPhone No Responses »
Dec 152008

It’s no secret that Thurrott is a critic of Windows Mobile, he frequently talks about it on his podcast with Leo LaPorte.

I find this post on Daring Fireball interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, what do we think Microsoft meant by the iPhone “validating” their approach? The first thing that comes to mind is that in their worldview, opening the App Store is analogous to Microsoft having Windows Mobile development partners. This is despite the fact that they don’t seem to have a unified store, and from what I hear many phone vendors try to hide or protect the user from the Windows Mobile interface by a kind of “skinning” of the interface. Anyway, you would need a lot of explanation on Microsoft’s part to understand what is meant by that statement, and I think that most realistically they didn’t mean anything, that it is more of a public relations statement than a statement of belief.

Second, Gruber states:

But if that’s truly the mindset of those leading Microsoft’s Windows Mobile team, that’s delusion, and they’re pretty much dead. Microsoft’s response to the original Macintosh, Windows 1.0, appeared by the end of 1985. Their response to the iPhone is nowhere to be seen.

But Gruber knows that Microsoft doesn’t, and I don’t think can, move with the kind of speed it could in 1984/1985. Microsoft passed the point of too many lines of code, too many employees – or more importantly, too much management and too many M.B.A.’s making decisions- a long time ago.

Posted by at 9:56 pm

Everyone Chimes in on the iTunes Store

blogs, iTunes 1 Response »
Dec 112008

To refresh your memory, Kirk McElhearn, on his blog Kirkville, wrote a post about movies disappearing from the iTunes Store On December 5th (2008). This was picked up by Macworld later that day. Still later in the day, I made a blog post (link) which summarized the conclusions made by the commenters on the Macworld site and noted that there was nothing strange about this.

The thing that made me write that post in the first place was that I expected Macworld to be somewhat professional, and write an email or call somebody or spend some time on a decent web search; that is, to perform a little research.

Well, the prize goes to CNET for actually doing some journalism and research, I have to call out practically everyone else for merely participating in a blogging echo chamber. My biggest problem with all of this is that all of the attributions go to Macworld, and not Kirkville. I guess the fact that McElhearn writes occasionally for Macworld somehow means that makes sense, but then again, he didn’t submit it to Macworld as a post for their site.

Anyway, the CNET piece by Greg Sandoval is really the best of the bunch:

And the culprit here is a system that for decades has pumped billions of dollars into the coffers of Hollywood studios and the television industry. What has happened is Apple and Netflix have crashed into windows. “Release windows” is the term used to describe periods of time a certain type of media is allowed to show a movie. Typically, a feature film is first released in theaters, then on DVD, followed by pay-per-view channels and finally on broadcast TV.

To reiterate the lessons learned, licensing is fluid, particularly movie licensing, and there is nothing to be alarmed about, such as the NBC/Universal debacle of 2007-8. Rather, they like to keep themselves busy by allowing licensing and taking it away. This creates the illusion of work and justifies the salaries of the executives at these companies.

As far as quality of comments go, I will give a tie to CNET and the second Ars Technica piece for quality. Meanwhile, a tardy bell for Cult of Mac for bringing up the rear, as it were, coming in last with nothing new to say.

Timeline of Posts

December 5
Kirkville : Where Have All the iTunes Store Movies Gone?. References: Original story.

Macworld: Movies disappearing from iTunes Store without a trace. References: Kirkville.

pooter.net/blog : iTunes Store Movie Disappearances – examined. References: Kirkville, Macworld.

December 8
Ars Technica – Infinite Loop (Justin Berka) : Certain movies disappearing from iTunes Store, cause unknown. References: Macworld.

December 9
CNET : TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix. References: Macworld, Original reporting!

December 10
AppleInsider : TV deals causing movies to disappear from iTunes Store. References: Macworld, CNET.

AllThings D : Now Not Showing at iTunes and Netflix: Some of Your Favorite Movies. References: CNET.

ZDNET – Apple Core (Jason O’Grady) : Studios throw the kill switch on Apple and Netflix. References: Macworld, CNET

Ars Technica – Infinite Loop (Jeff Smykil) : Disappearing iTunes Store movies: case closed?

Daring Fireball : “This is the sort of stupidity that drives even those who want to be honest customers toward bootlegging.” References: CNET.

December 11
Cult of Mac : Solved: Hollywood Behind Vanishing iTunes Movies. References: CNET

Posted by at 6:52 pm Tagged with:

Gamera

Uncategorized No Responses »
Dec 072008


Gamera, originally uploaded by tabba76.

Excellent Gamera photo!

Posted by at 3:50 pm

iTunes Store Movie Disappearances - examined

blogs, iTunes 1 Response »
Dec 052008

Kirk McElhearn, on his blog Kirkville, made a blog post this morning, Where Have All the iTunes Store Movies Gone?. He has a list of 9 movies that he was saving – I wasn’t aware of the dragging to Finder creating a .webloc link – which when he went back to investigate were no longer available in the iTunes Store.

No comments on the original post, but Macworld picked it up – here, without adding anything. My first reaction was, ‘oh, that’s sloppy journalism.’ Particularly when you see the commenters doing the research, which I’ll summarize in a moment below. However, it made me realize two things: 1) they gave the issue a lot more eyeballs, and 2) Even ‘professional’ blogging is, well, just sloppy, compared to older school journalism. By this I mean no research, no checking sources, nothing much more than what’s off the top of your head. This is hardly the nightmare of ‘What I had for lunch today’ which was regularly lampooned back when blogging was first making it into the major media 5 years ago, but I wish the Macworld poster would have done just a little research before pushing the ‘Publish’ button. Oh well.

Anyway, if we want to look at things positively, we can see the Macworld post as a postive example of crowdsourcing, something which overall I have problems with, but I will save that for another post. In short: the commenters did the work here. Commenter DougAdams pulls out a relevant quote from AppleTVJunkie.com:

Why do movies seem to disappear from Apple TV?
No one knows for certain but we believe that it is a combination of the studios pulling titles at their discretion and the newer movie release title rights reverting over to premium cable channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz. So once it’s time for the movies to premiere on those channels they become purchase only titles or disappear altogether.

Subsequently, commenter fletc3her notes that Netflix streaming lists the dates when some content will no longer be available. This is an important piece of information, and belies the complexity of the licensing issues surrounding Kirk’s original question, and also points out that Netflix is a little bit more forthcoming than Apple when it comes to explanatory dialog boxes.

Finally, commenter encampbe did the logical thing and looked up Kirk’s list on Amazon.com streaming, finding that

While the movies are all found, they are all listed as “currently not available.” Clicking on them brings up the regular video screen, but in the middle, instead of the preview, the following message appears: “Due to our licensing agreements, this video is currently not available for purchase or rental.

So, in sum, it appears to be a question of fluid content licensing, rather than the possibility of some negative video content migration off of the iTunes Store. Props to the nice job done by Macworld’s commenters!

Posted by at 8:10 pm

Araminta with Tomcat through screen

photo No Responses »
Dec 042008

I’m fond of this photo

Posted by at 9:08 pm

David Pogue calls out the Blackberry Nuts

iPhone No Responses »
Dec 042008

A user base even more vitriolic than Apple fans who feel they are being treated unfairly.

Link – I disagree with calling the Apple fans “the Cult of Mac” since it might get confused with the blog, which seems pretty popular.

Posted by at 4:50 pm

Adobe admits to crap installers

Uncategorized No Responses »
Dec 032008

See Pierre Igot’s post on his blog Betalogue. I couldn’t agree more about the difference between Barry Hill’s comments (hopeful) and Eric Wilde’s comments (terminal middle management excuses for poor decisions and inaction – my conclusions btw, not Igot’s). Original Betalogue post here; John Nack post here.

Also, see John Welch’s post on his encounter with Adobe here.

Posted by at 5:35 pm Tagged with:
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