Apple Reporter

Apple today announced 3 billion songs have been sold on the popular music portal since it launched in 2003. Here’s a quick look back on the history of the numbers:

• 4/28/03 - iTunes Store launched.
• 2/23/06 - 1 billion songs downloaded (34 months to sell one billion songs)
• 1/9/07 - 2 billion songs downloaded (10 months to sell one billion songs)
• 7/31/07 - 3 billion songs downloaded (7 months to sell one billion songs)

This is pretty impressive. So let’s hear it…what was your first iTunes purchase? What was your first contribution to the 3 billion Apple has now sold.

Alright, here’s mine, taken from the “View My Account” area of iTunes:

May 2, 2003

• Eminem - Sing for the Moment
• Eminem - Without Me
• U2 - Stuck in a Moment (Acoustic)
• U2 - I Will Follow (Acoustic)
• U2 - Beautiful Day (Live from Boston)

Total Purchase: $4.95

Looking forward to seeing some of the playlists…

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Yes. We hate to admit it, especially to Windows people - and I live in Seattle - there are a lot of them. But crashes do happen. Sometimes they have nothing to do with the Mac OS itself. Ever seen the guy at the airport who is rushing to a flight, gets out of his chair too quickly, and realizes he didn’t zip the part of his briefcase carrying his laptop? I have. Once. And it was like slow motion as the corner of the laptop screen hit the floor, bearing the brunt of the fall. Yea - I had to turn away. It was like watching a predatory chase on the Discovery Channel, where you know how the whole thing is going to end, and you close your eyes to avoid watching.

So enough of the scare tactics. Back up regularly. Here’s three ways you can be the person that says, “don’t worry - everything is okay” as all of the passers-by gaze at you in sympathy.

• Use a shared drive on your corporate network. Most IT managers in big companies (or the hosting company at smaller ones) can help you set up a partition to park your docs, prefs, tunes, photos and everything else on that big Mac hard drive.
• Use an online backup service like Mozy. I’ve been trying this service lately, and it’s really solid. Plus, since you’re likely connected all night, Automator actions can be configured to perform the backup in the middle of the night.
• Use your iPod. Truthfully, it’s pretty hard to fill an 80Gig iPod with tunes - even movies. To use the iPod as a backup drive, click on “Enable Disk Use” from your iPod’s configuration screen in iTunes. Now the iPod can accept any files from your hard drive. Applications such as Backup, included on every Mac, can provide a periodic reminder.

Do your duty. Back it up.

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Apple Inc reported yesterday that sales of Macintosh desktop and laptop computers were up 33 percent over the same period last year, delivering over 1.7 million units in the company’s third quarter. This is in addition to the 9.8 million iPods the company sold during the same period, an increase of 21 percent from a year ago, according to a press release on the Apple web site.

The positive news comes on the heels of a disappointing first weekend of iPhone activations, which send the company’s stock into a downfall, losing almost 6 percent in a single trading session. Some estimates had pegged activations as high as 500,000 in the first weekend of availability, starting June 29th. However, AT&T announced last week that number was actually closer to 150,000.

In the same press release, Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO stated, “iPhone is off to a great start—we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales—and our new product pipeline is very strong.”

Posted by Leigh Fatzinger OnMessage Blog

From Ideum in Corrales, NM, a clever new app called RSS Mixer that enables users to combine up to 10 RSS feeds into a single feed, viewable as a web site, web widget, Apple dashboard widget, or iPhone optimized page. Below is an example of the dashboard widget version which combines a few RSS feeds (including Apple Reporter) into a nice clean view of recent posts. Click here to see the web view of the feed. The iPhone optimized version has a very similar view, and loads and scrolls through feeds quickly.

RSS Mixer is still in prototype mode, so expect a few bugs. That said, the few Mixes I attempted performed well, on all supported formats.

Picli, the UK-based art-photo posting and rating site, recently launched iPicli, enabling users to view the site in an iPhone optimized format. Yesterday, the company announced users can now submit images directly from their iPhone to the iPicli site, using a special coded email address to avoid spam and other unauthorized postings.

Images are temporarily held in an “unpublished” area where users can add tags and descriptions of their images before posting to the live Picli site.

It will be interesting to see the quality of images coming directly from user’s iPhones compared to more professional images posted on the site. But since iPhone is based on Mac OS X, maybe an iPhone optimized version of Adobe Photoshop Elements is not too far off in the future…

Posted by Leigh Fatzinger OnMessage Blog

One of the little digs that Mac lovers like to tell Windows tolerators is that there is far less maintenance and housekeeping necessary on OS X than on Windows. System utilities, like cache cleaning, drive defragmentation, etc. happen in the middle of the night within the Unix-based core of OS X, and generally keep the system running smoothly. But this depends on the user keeping their machine on through the night to allow these tasks to run. You DO keep your Mac on all night, don’t you?

But sometimes, OS X gets messy, and performance begins to slow. Temporary files, trash, deleted apps with leftover scraps, and other annoyances begin to build up. At that point, it’s time to clean house.

For the last several months, I’ve been using a great free app called IceClean from MacDentro. It is one of the best general system utilities I have found, and it significantly improves the performance of my 17″ Macbook Pro. If you don’t have it yet - get it.

There are quite a few robust utility packages on the market, at a variety of price ranges. But the most attractive thing about IceClean (aside from the price) is its simplicity. It is basically an aggregator of system utilities you could find and perform on your own within OS X, but packages them into a nice front end that makes them all accessible from one app.

I use my MacBook for a lot of different apps and tasks, from the standard Office apps to the full Creative Suite 3. After a couple of weeks of intense work, I notice a reduction in performance, even with 3Gig of RAM on the latest Intel Dual Core Duo processor. 10 minutes after running a few of the cache cleaning and other system utilities, my machine performs just as when I removed it from the box. The software works both on PowerPC and Universal.

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I came across a good post on the Apple Blog today about saving time in Safari, and it got me wondering about browsers. Although I am a big fan of Safari 3 and believe it is much improved over the previous versions, there are still some compatibility issues with Java and application intensive sites that prevent me from using it all the time. Salesforce.com, StumbleUpon are not friendly, and other great toolbar add-ons, such as del.icio.us, do not work in Safari. Firefox is then my de facto backup. However, I’ve been trying out Camino lately and love the fact that it is basically a combination of Safari and Firefox - speedy, great bookmark management, and elegant looking. So, what are you using and why? What sites and or apps does Safari not work with that keep you from using Apple’s browser?

Posted by Leigh Fatzinger OnMessage Blog

A fellow 451press writer over at Environmental Talk asked me last week why he should buy a Mac, and outlined some of his motivations, reservations about making the switch.  It’s sometimes difficult to go in to all the details for each user’s unique needs, so I have decided to take a once a week look at what’s behind the “Get a Mac” statement that always comes out of my mouth whenever I listen to anyone discuss anything about computers.

In the meantime, check out My First Mac, which is a community of volunteer writers giving “Switchers” advice about the one jump most will never look back on.

From a great creative and design inspiration site, Airbag Industries, a collection of free iPhone wallpapers in case you’ve had enough of Nemo.

Posted by Leigh Fatzinger OnMessage Blog

My buddy Keith has got some bizarre taste in music. He himself is an artist, so he’s always finding new music that I’d never heard of before, further fragmenting my already fragmented taste in music. Most of the stuff is nice to listen to, but not necessarily buy.

Today I get an email from him about a new, really slick piece of software called Simplify Media, which allows me to listen to his iTunes library, and those of 30 others, streaming through my own iTunes application. Free. Legal. And amazing. It takes the concept of iTunes sharing among the “home” network and blows it out over the entire internet. So now I’m listening to the Dove’s Lost Souls album from Keith’s iTunes library (which is really killer). And for all I know, Keith’s in China right now.

The software only works for iTunes, on both Mac and Windows (please, Simplify Media, keep it that way - this software is far to classy for Windows Media Player). When it’s installed, a screen name is created that can be shared among up to 30 other users. Once a few names are entered, open iTunes, and your friends shared libraries automatically show up. The only downside is that too listen, the other user must be connected to the internet and have iTunes open. So as I am half-way through the Dove’s album, Keith decides he has to go to a meeting or something unimportant like that - and wrecks my listening experience.

The software is supported by a small ad window that matches the currently playing song with the equivalent album for sale on Amazon.com.

Apple has begun the iPhone print campaign, which has been seen in recent issues of the Economist, Newsweek, as well as on the back cover of the August 2007 Details magazine. Ads feature the tag line “Touching is Believing”.  That’s true, by the way.

Of course, Apple is silent, but Digitimes is reporting today that Taiwan-based Wintek is soon to ship touch-screen displays for the next generation iPod video. In addition, other Taiwanese suppliers are beginning to ship components for the new iPod that share some of the same functionality as the iPhone.

Some sites are claiming that this prediction might be inaccurate, and that Apple will wait to launch in January at MacWorld Expo. However, Apple Reporter believes the company will launch the next generation iPod in late summer or early fall, giving the company time to release an updated iPhone (likely with more storage) before the holiday shopping season.

More sites are up and running that are optimized for the iPhone.

Today, Picli, a UK-based photo sharing and voting site announced iPicli, which is optimized exclusively for viewing Picli images on the iPhone. Two things about this launch are impressive: it takes advantage of the completely smooth scrolling in the iPhone browser to view images on the featured gallery in Picli. Secondly, it shows the enthusiasm for developing iPhone optimized websites - even when the iPhone is not available outside of the United States.

In addition, Digg, the news voting and posting site, has launched their iPhone optimized site, which can be seen here.

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Answering to one of the only substantial criticisms of the Apple iPhone in enterprise environments - the lack of synchronization to Microsoft Exchange email platforms - IceWeb, out of Herndon, Virginia announced today an iPhone email and synchronization solution for their hosted Exchange customers. It is a relatively clever fix working with both the limitations of the AT&T data network and the Exchange platform. This is a promising step to the end of the “walled garden” approach Apple has taken with 3rd party “push” email services.

And now the downside:

You need to be an IceWeb subscriber. Most people aren’t, but those who use both the iPhone and IceWeb are likely elated by this announcement.

It is only a step in the right direction to obtaining Blackberry-like functionality on the iPhone. Calendar, Address Book and To Do’s are still cradle-synched.

It is not “push” email. Rather, it allows an iPhone user to run a script to “pull” email from their Exchange servers.

According to the company’s press release:

“Apple is expected to release a software update in late Summer or Fall of 2007 that will expand upon the existing/base email and synchronization capabilities. This update is expected to allow full “over the air” wireless synchronization of Calendar, Contacts, and Email pulled from a Microsoft Exchange service such as IceMAIL. Until this update is released, the Apple IPhone utilizes a combination of desktop/cabled synchronization (for Calendar and Contacts) and IMAP wireless email send/receive.”

In other words…it’s a start.  And for customers of IceWeb, it may just be enough to limit the number of devices that need to be carried around in addition to the iPhone.

Apple announced today it has added nearly 40 albums to the iTunes library at $5.99 and $6.99 per album, including several DRM-free titles, including Seattle’s Brandy Carlile, Ceu, and LCD Soundsystem.

Earlier in the week Universal announced their intention not to renew a three-year old distribution contract with Apple, placing the iTunes availability of artists such as U2 and Black Eyed Peas in jeopardy.  Universal claims it does not have enough control of pricing for certain artists and songs, based on their popularity.  Apple has been rigid on its 99 cent, $9.99 album (generally) pricing philosophy.

Could the discount “Next Big Thing” category be another shot by Apple across the bow of the big record labels? The progress of the Universal negotiations will be telling over the next several months.