Via Arstechnica, Yahoo has closed down its music service and now the keys to the music as part of that product are lost. People cannot play the music they leased - rather than purchased I guess - from Yahoo. It is a good argument against DRM and subscribing to any DRM service or product.

I do use iTunes and occasionally buy songs from it. They are covered by DRM or digital rights management known as Fairplay. The only real way I have control over the songs is to burn them to a music CD and then re-import. A hopelessly manual and laborious process - and consequently a sufficient deterrent against me doing it.

The iTunes DRM has some really weird restrictions on it too; from the wiki article:

The track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players.

The track may be played on up to five authorized computers simultaneously. (Apple stores this information on their servers)

A particular playlist within iTunes containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.

The track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.

For the most part I have few enough songs that I have bought from iTunes that it isn't a big deal if I lose them all. The music that I really like is still purchased on CD or integrated from other people's music collections.

One issue that it did raise was when I got divorced recently. Normally physical music collections are easily and quickly divided up. But with DRM music who gets to keep the authorized computers and accounts? As it turned out I got a new iTunes account because it was not my email that we used. But the songs we had purchased stayed authorized on my ex-wifes Macbook. Not mine.

Fortunately the music collection was small enough that it did not become a property issue, but I suspect if DRM hangs around and someone has a non-trivial iTunes music collection in the thousands of dollars a judge somewhere will be making a judgement on how the DRM'd files are split. It may not be to Apple's liking either. (more)
Macbook touch rumor.

Supposedly with the same scratch resistant glass that the iPhone has. I hooked up my iTunes library to the big stereo system via Airport Express and am now using the iPhone as the remote control for it. Very cool. I expect that a Macbook Touch, or some variant, would find its way as a permanent artifact of the kitchen and main living area. (reply)
I bought my iPhone only recently, I was a slow adopter and despite the rumors of the next-gen iPhone I didn't think the hardware changes would be significant enough. I was right, what it is now is enough for me.

I was wrong about the price drop though, I did not see that coming. I payed $500 USD for mine and the next generation ones start at $200 USD. Quite a significant change in price and one which will probably put Apple into direct competition with RIM's Blackberry range. However, the devil is in the details, and the US telecoms are almost 'Telstra rapine' in their appetities. As Johnathon LaClour writes:

Over the course of the two year contract, an iPhone 3G will cost you a full $360 more than a first-generation iPhone would. This means that with the same ATT service plans, the $199 8GB iPhone 3G will actually end up costing you $559, where an 8 GB iPhone 1.0 will cost you only $399, representing a savings of $160! The iPhone 3G isn't cheaper at all, it is in fact far more expensive.

I feel the same. I am content with my current purchase and can do without the extra charges. Ironically I bought the iPhone for the hardware. I will pay good dollars for it, but I consider the cellphone and data service a commodity, which should be cheap considering the number of service providers. ATT obviously disagrees with me though and sees their service as a luxury that people will pay through the nose for. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market. (more)
Writing to the desktop and taskbar without asking is so 2001. (more)
I used to have a Blackberry and found it extremely useful. Last year and the early part of this year I made do with a normal phone as I wasn't ever too far from an internet connection. Amongst other things my circumstances have changed recently. Discovering that Verizon was ripping me blind and that the iPhone plan gave me more for less, I bit.

Image from Information Architects

Probably a bad time to purchase as the iphone 2.0 is due out soon, but whatever; either way I have found it useful already. (more)
When you buy something from Apple the packaging has emblazoned on it conspiciously, "Designed in California." Obviously the hardware is made in China. Holden is making the same transition: providing high value and highly profitable engineering services to its global parent company. Design is another high value area where Holden is making a mark with designs like the Torana, Efijay and now the VE Monaro Coupe.

Holden does very little manufacturing in comparison to the engineering it does such as the VE platform, the Chevrolet Camaro, and the global variants of its Commodore/Statesman vehicles. I expect a day will come when it no longer does the capital intensive and low profit manufacturing, replacing it instead with engineering and design services - much like Apple does. (more)
Not politics but organisational technology and its ramifications get discussed heavily on this site. James Gosling wrote:

As several people have noticed at my talks over the past few months, I no longer carry a Mac laptop. As much as I love the Mac's eye candy, it really hasn't been keeping up as a developer's machine - their attention has clearly been elsewhere.

I agree. I have an iBook G4 which is several years old now and has done good service. It has travelled across three continents with me. Its frame is bent, it has no paint on many of the keys and has cracks in the plastic. It is a useful machine - except for development. I am stuck in Java 1.4 and I had all sorts of issues getting Python 2.5 on it. This means I cannot run Eclipse 3.2 either. Windows and Linux are far more reliable as development machines and environments because tools will be built for them no matter how old the operating system. Apple obsoletes what it supports very quickly in computing technology terms. (more)
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.