Mac Rumors' live coverage of Phil Schiller's Macworld Expo keynote worked well for the first 23 minutes...

If this year's MacWorld Expo, going on through the week, is a reliable indicator, 2009 could be a banner year...

Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, Multimedia, Interviews, TUAW Interview

If you were one of the many people who were expecting Apple to announce some sort of Mac mini-based home media server yesterday, you weren't alone. We talked about another media server solution, HP's MediaSmart Server, a small Mac-compatible device that can be used for Time Machine backups, iTunes and iPhoto library storage, and more.

I visited with Rick Spillers, HP's Mac-connect Worldwide Product Manager, at the HP booth yesterday to talk about HP iPrint, printer and scanner solutions, and other products from their Mac group. Also on the video is Glen Roberts, who discusses the MediaSmart and how it works well in homes with both Macs and PCs.

The video is after the break.

Continue reading TUAW Macworld Video: HP Products for Mac

TUAWTUAW Macworld Video: HP Products for Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Apple announced Tuesday that it was finally lifting the so-called digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that iTunes music customers found so onerous, it left one thing out: the cost of doing so — in money and, as we learned overnight, time.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio,” said Steve Jobs in a press release.

“It’s really easy,” said senior vice president Phil Schiller in his Macworld keynote address, “to go in and convert your entire music library” with one click.

He didn’t mention that it would cost you 30 cents per song, 60 cents per music video, and 30% of the cost of an album to do it.

Leave it to Apple (AAPL) to turn the lifting of restrictions into a profit center. If users convert every one of the 9 billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store over the past six years, a rich new revenue stream will flow toward Cupertino. Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld calls it Apple’s “$1.8 billion music tax.”

Of course, not all of those 9 billion songs will be converted. Apple’s DRM protection scheme made it difficult to move music from one computer to another, share it with friends or play it on a non-Apple music player, such as SanDisk’s (SNDK) Sansa Fuze or Microsoft’s (MSFT) Zune — restrictions that don’t affect every iTunes customer.

Besides, as AppScout helpfully points out, you can still make your songs DRM-free by burning them on a disk and ripping them back into iTunes.

But the burn-and-rip process is cumbersome and wastes a lot of plastic, so we decided to try the Schiller one-click method.

The first thing we learned was that it’s not quite as easy as he made it sound.

When I went to the iTunes store, the little “Upgrade My Library” button, which usually appears at the bottom of the Quick Links box in the upper right hand corner of the front page, was mysteriously missing.

It took some time to figure out why. If you have several iTunes accounts — as I do — you have to log in on the account you used to purchase your songs before you can convert them. (Note to Steve: Removing a button is not the best way to send this message to a user.)

When I finally situated myself in the proper account, the button appeared. I clicked it and held my breath. I have a lot of stuff in my music library — 4,579 songs, to be precise. Converting all that music could be prohibitively expensive.

As it turned out, the bulk of my songs had nothing to do with Apple. Most of them were copied legally from my — and my friends’ — CD collections.

But 231 songs — consisting of 100 individual titles and 6 albums, according to iTunes — had been purchased from the Apple store and were eligible for conversion at a cost of $50.60.

OK. At 12:25 a.m. PST, I clicked and waited.

Seven hours later, I’m still waiting.

“Your iTunes Plus upgrade is now processing,” my computer tells me. “When your iTunes Plus music is ready to begin downloading, you will receive an email with download instructions and other information about your upgrade.”

Either a lot of people decided to convert their music Tuesday night, overburdening Apple’s iTunes servers, or this is a more cumbersome process than I — or Phil Schiller — imagined.

      

Fart Studio: “Your all-in-one flatulence solution!” Oh, I see: you get to COMPOSE your fart sounds. Some people might call that feature creep.

Meow: it … meeows.

And finally, True Flirt. The developers say: “This might actually get you a date!”. Hmm. Might.

Google has released a public beta version of Picasa for Mac at Macworld Expo this week. Previously, Mac users were limited to the Picasa Web Albums uploader and an iPhoto plugin, but now they have access to the full version of the photo editing and organizing software.

 

Copyright © 2009 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2009 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Filed under: TUAW Business

Today near the close of the day at the Expo, we're going to have a quick special event: a live giveaway. We're planning to give away a big bag of goodies collected on the floor in the South Hall at Moscone, but keep your Twitter clients tuned to our Macworld Twitter feed to see what we're giving away and what time we'll be handing them out.

Also, tomorrow night we're having a brief meetup at Thirsty Bear starting at 6pm (PT of course), and lasting until other commitments inevitably drag us to the four corners of San Francisco. Of course, there's a lot going on in the evenings at Macworld, but if you want to meet the TUAW crew (or a portion of us, anyway) this is your chance. We'll have a couple of prizes for the first people to arrive as well.

Of course, stay tuned to our Macworld 2009 page for featured stories and ongoing coverage.

TUAWSpecial event with TUAW today, meetup tomorrow at Macworld originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Among the more interesting things I’ve come across so far at Macworld is an innovative calling application from Bigfish Communications, called Newber. Somewhat similar, but with a couple of key differences to Grand Central, Newber lets you route every phone call made to you though a single number and, using GPS location awareness, lets you take the call on any phone that happens to be nearby.

If you’re in the office at your desk, Newber will send calls to your work phone. At home it can ring the house phone. On the road Newber will ring your iPhone, the phone extension in your hotel room, even the payphone at the gas station in the middle of nowhere where you’re getting a flat fixed - if that’s where you want it to ring. Your callers have one number for you and you can receive their calls anywhere.

I saw the app in a demo at a press event on Monday night and spoke further yesterday with David Gerzof, president of Bigfish Communications, about the difficulty his company has had getting the Newber app approved for distribution in the AppStore. “We submitted it in October and Apple authorized our product manager to contact them by phone, which he does every day,” Gerzof told me. “They haven’t said it will be approved or that it won’t be approved, in fact we can’t see from our activity logs where they have even begun testing it. It’s very frustrating.”

As a result, despite having already put several hundred thousand dollars into developing the platform for iPhone, Gerzof and Newber aren’t putting all their eggs in Apple’s basket. A Demo application for Blackberry is already operating and the company is also working on one for Android. “We love Apple and began work first with the iPhone SDK because we wanted it to be the launch platform, but if they aren’t interested, we have to move forward with the others,” Gerzof says.

At last night's MacWorld keynote, Apple's last, one product in particular shone in absense...

Usually when asked about an alternative to Photoshop I recommend Photoshop Elements from Adobe, but...

Hackers Tuesday forced MacRumors to halt its live-blogging coverage of Apple marketing exec Phil Schiller’s keynote speech at Macworld Expo. The hack hit MacRumorsLive.com, a domain created for commenting on the annual San Francisco, Calif. Mac-focused tradeshow.

Interspersed with live updates about news of iPhoto upgrades were offensive messages, including one declaring Apple CEO “Steve Jobs just died.”

In a statement posted about an hour after Macworld Expo opening, the site’s founder Arnold Kim apologized to readers for the attack.

The source of the attack is unclear, although some evidence appeared to point to a group known as 4Chan. The phrase “4CHAN FTW” (”for the win”) was often part of the hacked blogging messages, according to CNET’s Caroline McCarthy.

McCarthy cited a Twitter user, writing “4Chan members had been circulating MacRumors passwords” Monday night prior to the keynote.

Another group called Myg0t, may also have been involved, according to the report.

The cost of the hack may go beyond embarrassment to lost advertising revenue.

Intel says it will take a much higher loss on other equity investments than expected

Intel expects fourth-quarter revenue for fiscal 2008 to fall 23 per cent compared to a year prior due to weaker demand for computer processors, the company said on Wednesday.

New Apple iPod and iPhone offerings from Kensington at Expo and CES

Kensington announced a number of new accessories for desktops, laptops, iPods, and iPhones on Tuesday to coincide with Macworld Expo as well as the Consumer Electronics Show.

animusCollards writes "Slate ponders a post-Steve Jobs Apple, including possible successors, and the future is... boring. '..it's certainly true that Jobs' style is central to the company's brand and the fierce connection it forges with its customers. His product announcements prompt hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free press coverage and whip up greater and more loyal fans, generating ever-greater interest in the company. ... At some point, all that will end. Jobs will eventually leave the company. There are no obvious plans for succession; in addition to Schiller, observers finger Tim Cook, Apple's COO, and Scott Forstall, who helped develop Mac OS X and the iPhone's software, as contenders for the job. But Tuesday's keynote illustrated how difficult it will be for any of those guys to replace Jobs.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are two ways to view Philip Schiller’s keynote at Macworld Tuesday...

Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, iPod Family, Peripherals, Odds and ends, iPhone

Although I'm the veteran of about a dozen Macworld Expos, this is the first time I've attended as a member of the media instead of as "just" a showgoer. Let's face it; the level of attention that you get from companies is a lot greater when you're writing or shooting video about a company's products than when you're one of tens of thousands of people cruising past a booth.

Still, I was unprepared for the gracious reception that I received at Griffin Technology when I visited to see what new products were released from the Apple peripheral manufacturer. Griffin has been making innovative products for the Apple community since 1992, and 2009 is no exception. The company has entered the Bluetooth headset market with the SmartTalk Bluetooth (featuring human voice prompting), pointed the way towards total control of FM radio with the Navigate with iFM, and shown that you don't need power to get sound amplification with the AirCurve acoustic amplifier.

Join me on a tour of Griffin's new and recent products with Jackie Ballinger from Griffin. This video report is part of our continuing and exhaustive coverage of Macworld Expo 2009.

TUAWTUAW Macworld Video: Griffin Technology originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although Apple marketing head Phil Schiller announced a 17-inch MacBook Pro and more DRM-free music from iTunes, one analyst believes what wasn’t said is what counts most.

Gene Munster, the Piper Jaffray analyst and Mac-watcher, wrote Tuesday that the lack of many fireworks during Schiller’s talk signaled “Steve Jobs remains primary spokesman and active leader” for Apple.

The question of how active Jobs will be as CEO while he undergoes therapy for a “hormone imbalance” was raised Tuesday when brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co. wondered if Jobs could fully perform as head of Apple.

In what amounted to a split decision, the Wall Street financial analyst upgraded the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to “outperfrom” from “perform” but lowered its target stock price by $10 to $135.

For his part, Munster told clients while Jobs bypassed his traditional Macworld speaking gig, “we expect him to continue to appear at special events for all major announcements.”

Munster called Tuesday’s Macworld keynote “underwhelming,” confirming lowered expectations analysts voice prior to the tradeshow’s opening. The consensus is that while 2009 is the last Macworld for Apple, the technology player has its retail stores, along with other conferences for major announcements.

Before the December announcement that Jobs would hand over keynote duties to Schiller and Macworld Expo 2009 would be Apple’s last appearance at the tradeshow, analysts expected the CEO would announce a low-cost iPhone. In the aftermath of the withdrawal, expectations were lowered, with any major product introduction happening later this year.

Rob Griffiths takes a look at Welcome to Macintosh, a feature-length film that examines the history of the Apple and the Mac by talking to those who were there.

Mac fans in our office (and there are more than a few) were getting excited yesterday...

The peripherals maker has around a dozen new items that it’s released in time for Macworld Expo as well as the Consumer Electronics Show.