Vinko’s Thoughts On…

As rumored Apple has released the iPhone firmware 2.2 today.

This is a warning to all users who had either jailbroken or unlocked their iPhone or iPhone 3G, this warning even goes for anyone using the iPhone 3G who had not done either, but may want to unlock in the future.

I strongly advice these users not to upgrade their iPhone firmware to 2.2 until the iPhone Dev Team had released an updated version of their PwnageTool.

This applies to the new version of iTunes 8.0.2 also, as we currently do not know if the latest version of iTunes will be compatible with jailbroken or unlocked iPhone and iPhone 3G.

I will update here when it is safe to upgrade your iPhone or iPhone 3G, please stay tuned.

Today I read the article “My Songs, My Format” by New York Times’ Sean Captain (Late Edition - Final, Section C, Page 9, Column 1) and it erupted me to write the following letter to the Editor at New York Times (NYT).

Dear Editor,I was appalled to read such an article from New York Times.

Mr. Captain’s article is truly bias and had not explained clearly the facts about the topics he touched on. It would be very misleading to a layman reader of the article.

For example, Mr. Captain never explain the “AAC” codec (Encoder/Decoder), but instead referring it to “Apple’s format”. Implying that it is a proprietary format created by Apple. That is not the case.

The “AAC” format is part of the industry standard for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, the version that Apple promotes is AAC MPEG-4, which commonly agreed by industry expert as having a better compression and sound quality than the MP3 format.

Aside from that Mr. Captain also fail to explain the concept of “bps” (Bits per Seconds), which is also very important when talking about compression formats and particularly important when comparing different codecs. One can not compare bit rates of different codecs directly. That like comparing apples and oranges.

Mr. Captain also fail to point out that there are many other MP3 players our there which also supports the AAC format.

As Mr. Captain correctly points out that Apple is a trend setter. Like when Apple removed the floppy disk player from their computers, “Macintosh” 5 years ago, everyone was up in arms calling it a stupid move that will destroy Apple’s market share. Now we see that other major manufactures are also following Apple’s directions and removed the floppy drive as standard equipment from the computers they manufacture.

Going back even further about 13 years ago, when Apple send out all their developers resources in CD-ROM format, the critics were all calling this a bad move, which is designed to force Apple’s developers to purchase the more expensive (at the time) CD ROM player option in their Macintosh. This took another 5 years for the rest of the world to realize that CD-ROM is a much better and preferred medium by the consumers.

Apple in the past had always try their best to stick with industry accepted Standards. Some times these Standards are well established in other times they may be recently approved as Standards, and lastly Apple’s own technology is adapted as Standards (ie. QuickTime, IEEE-1394 aka Firewire aka i-Link).

For a publication like New York Times, I believe it has much better integrity that to publish something that is so misleading to the average reader that cause them to draw an incorrect conclusion about the subject. As for Mr. Captain, he should be much more responsible to verify and clarify his facts and terminologies in his article, rather than to allow the readers to do the verifications themselves before coming to a conclusion about his article.

I am sure that Mr. Captain does not intentionally want to mislead the New York Times readers. I urge you to insist on a retractile or a following clarification article to this one by Mr. Captain.

Unfortunately, due to the commercialization of New York Times online I am not able to provide the link (URL) to the actual article on NYT’s web site.

Again the news of a possible Apple’s, industry leading, iTunes Music Store for the Japanese market is in the news.

This rumor had been around for over a year now, each came with possible launch dates. The difference this time, is that the news is from the Asian recording company Avex (Chinese only site), which announced an agreement with Apple to distribute its holdings through Apple’s iTunes Music Store starting August of this year. Of course, true to Apple’s tradition, they have no comments on any unannounced product.

Given that Avex has one of the largest collection of works from Asian artists. The possibility of iTunes Music Stores exploding in the major Avex countries (Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan) is inevitable. I truly hope I am correct, since I have been waiting for iTMS to arrive in Hong Kong ever since iTMS was launched by Apple.

This is good news for all those music lovers (like myself) in Asia who want to and willing to purchase our music via the online medium.

It is not that there are not already legal downloads in Asia (for example EOLAsia), but the entry of the market leader into the area is definitely a significant indicator for all those record labels that are still on the fence.

While Asia is one of the most challenging market for companies like Apple to push legal downloads of content. I am sure all of Apple’s competitors are watching to see how well Apple can pull this off. Since everyone knows that IP pirating is a major problem for most Asian countries.

When I used to work for SPSS, the Sales & Marketing team used to joke about the fact that they “sell a million copies of SPSS worldwide, but one to Asia”.

Let’s hope that the theory of “most people are honest and good” prevail and Apple can make these new Asian versions of the iTMS as successful as they did in the US and Europe.

By now most of my Macintosh friends and the even the few friends who still use Windows (yes… I still consider them friends) should have tried the new iTunes 4.9 with Podcast compatibility by now.

I have been listening to all kinds of Podcasts for the past 8 months. The podcast “Fly With Me” produced by Joe d’Eon, a First Officer from an US Airline - well as of July 4th he has been promoted to Captain - is very funny.

Below is a quote from his web site to give you some idea

Hear from flight attendants and pilots as they tell you what goes on behind the galley curtain (and behind the cockpit door). The author is an airline pilot who takes his recorder on trips with him — funny stories, insider info, and interesting insights.

There are content like this on various airline specific discussion forums, but because this one is in audio format therefore it is much funnier.

Even if you are not in the Airline industry you will find this an entertaining Podcast to listen to, and for those friends who are in the airline industry, they will definitely be able to relate.

Enjoy!

Podcasting is the publishing of files (ie. audio, video, photo, PDF, text, etc. or combination of) to the Internet. They are normally published in RSS format and are normally subscribable.

Since the invention of Podcasting in late 2004; the exact date is arguable, there have been thousands of new Podcasts published to the Internet. Many of these have been from non-profit individuals broadcasting from their bedrooms or den. Recently large corporates and commercial organizations have jumped onto the bandwagon (ie. Disney, BBC, CBS, ESPN and various local radio stations around the world). You can find many of these Podcasts in Podcast Directories, like PodcastAlley.

At the moment most content in Podcasts are free with some Podcasts introducing advertisements to cover their cost. In most cases these Podcasts contain royalty free and original content. Opening up a new medium for the independent musicians to introduce their music to the public. Many of these musicians create original soundtracks for Podcasters to use in their shows.

Although Podcasting came about partially from the popularity of the iPod; or more like the popularity of MP3 players created by Apple’s iPod, accessing a Podcast does not require an Apple iPod. A matter of fact, majority of them are in standard MP3 formats, therefore, any devices that can play MP3 are capable of being a Podcast client. Since it is published in the XML technology RSS, it is not limited to the audio format of MP3. Especially with Apple’s latest extension to the format, introducing the concept of “chapters” and associate files cued to these chapters. For example, imagine walking along a self paced museums tour with an iPod Photo that is synced to the work of art in front of you.

For the past 8 months or so there had been different Podcast clients for the Macintosh, Windows and PocketPC platforms (ie. iPodder and iPodderX). Now with the release of Apple’s new version of iTunes 4.9, Apple has again done its part in bringing something lesser known to the main stream with this new version of iTunes.

One may ask what is the big deal about Podcasting? Most of the time it is a MP3 file recording that someone made about a topic that s/he thinks that others would like to listen to. Well, one reason most radio stations are getting into Podcasting is because Podcasting is seen as the TiVo for commercial radio. Small local radio stations love it, because Podcasting opens up a brand new group of audiences to their contents, which they cannot achieve with their traditional terrestrial medium. Some sees Podcasting as a threat to commercial radio, but many understand it as something they need to embrace or they will be left out.

Check out this new technology. May be you can become one of thousands of Podcasters out there. If and when you do, please drop me a line and let me know.

This week Duke University (Durham, NC, U.S.A) welcome their frosh with more than just the 2004 Frosh Week activities and the class schedule. Every first year student received a brand new Apple iPod (4G) 20GB, plus a Belkin’s Universal Microphone Adapter. Details of the project can be found on Duke University’s web site.

It is said, the Duke U project expensed an amount of USD500,000.00 from the discretion fund, which the university allocated for innovative technology. This money paid for the iPods, staff administrator and support of the faculties participating in the project. Of course, Duke did not pay retail (USD299.00) for the iPods.

According to the project, these iPods are not for the musical entertainment of the freshmen. They are to be used for recording lectures, language studies and course work from the participating faculties.

Apple also gave each student a USD10.00 gift certificate to purchase music from the customized Duke University iTunes Music Store.

I must say, Apple made a much bigger bang with this Duke Project than what RealRhapsody did with their 80% discount of their pay-per-listen service for students of University of California, Berkeley.

Time will only tell what these competitors will come up with next in this heavily competitive online music industry.