New iPhone release closer?

A number of recent news reports and press releases are pointing to a new iPhone (and most likely a 3G one) release in the very near future. Additionally these confirm the post on MacTalk just over a month ago. Another post was added today summarising this.
- both Vodaphone and Optus have announced they will be selling the iPhone in Australia (as well as several other countries). Interestingly Telstra has not said anything...
- 3G on/off settings have been found in the latest iPhone SDK. This is apparently to help with battery life
- iPhones (as of Saturday) are unavailable on the US or UK Apple stores. See this AppleInsider report.

I think this points to an iPhone release sooner rather than later (possibly even this week). Whether this means you will be able to get the new iPhone straight away is another matter as Apple sometimes announces products that will ship "in a couple of weeks". However, in the case of us here in Australia I think we will definitely be waiting until Sydney Apple Store is opened in mid June (mainly as this is a great marketing opportunity).

iPhone in Australia in June?

According to this post on the MacTalk Australia forums the iPhone will be released in Australia in late June (yes 2008!). Normally I would be somewhat skeptical of this, however, this has come from the Aussie Apple resellers.

Important points:
- late June release
- multiple carriers
- no contract lock in
- current resellers to sell iPhone

Interestingly the last 3 points are a change for Apple as these are not done anywhere else. I wonder if this will be extended to other regions or what other regions will be released at the same time.

The multiple carriers hints at a 3G iPhone as the current 2.5G iPhone needs EDGE which is only used by 1 carrier in Australia: Telstra. Also, this is around the time the 3G iPhone is rumored to be released. Additionally there is this AppleInsider report today on the 3G iPhone. Coincidence?

Using xmltv feeds with EyeTV

In October last year I bought a Mac Mini to use as a media center. The software I am using is Elgato's EyeTV which does a great job of managing and recording TV shows. Initially I had setup schedules for each of the TV programs I was interested in, but this only works when shows are on at the same time every week (which the commercial networks are notorious at sticking to).

With the release of v3.0 in January one of the new features I was most interested in was "Smart Guides". This allows you to set your recordings based on search criteria (e.g find Top Gear or Doctor Who). This works well when you have a complete EPG. Now while 7, 9 and 10 transmit a 7 day guide, ABC1 & 2 only have one for the next 2 days and there nothing for SBS.

With the latest release of EyeTV (version 3.0.1) it allows xmltv files to be used as an EPG. First drag the downloaded xmltv file onto the EyeTV application. Now Go the the Channels in EyeTV and for each of the channels you want to use the xmltv file for the EPG set its EPG to xmltv.


In some cases if EyeTV cannot find the channel in the xmltv file it will ask you to select from a list of channels it has found in the file (this always seems to happen for SBS).


This works well, however, EyeTV needs to be restarted or the xmltv file dragged onto it for the EPG to be refreshed for a newly downloaded xmltv file.

I get my xmltv EPG from Free*EPG and to make my life simpler I have written the following Applescript which downloads the zipped file, unzips it and opens the xmltv file in EyeTV. The only user settings required is to enter your ClientID and Postcode into the two variables (they currently contain ????) and save the script.

To activate the script you can either set it to run via iCal or cron. For example I set iCal to run the script daily at 6:50.


The same script can be used to grab files from other services. I included a separate variable for the download link so this can be changed easily for other xmltv providers.

Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini

Last Friday we were at Macquarie Centre for 2 reasons. One was to get our new Mac Mini (10% off at JB HiFi!) which will become our new media centre (more on that in a later post). The 2nd reason was to go to Borders to meet Matthew Reilly and get a signed copy of his new book Six Sacred Stones :)

Also last Friday at 6pm Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, though it is probably better known by its code name, Leopard, which Apple is also using in its marketing. I didn't get a copy on Friday (despite NextByte and JB HiFi being open after 6pm) as I qualify for a $13 upgrade with the Mac Mini purchase.

It has been interesting reading the reports on Leopard (mainly since I am seeing what people's overall experiences are). I generally try to ignore the more sensationalist stuff and instead read sites whose authors know their stuff and give praise or criticism when its due (such as John Gruberor the always excellent Mac OS X reports by John Siracusa's reports).

However, I am really disappointed in the Sydney Morning Herald's incredibly poor and badly researched report "Spotty Leopard makes Mac users catty". The report implies that Apple's latest operating system is flawed and Apple have been deluged with support requests. This is simply not the case and the fault of this error lies equally with a 3rd party hack by Unsanity and Logitech. Unsanity provide "extra" functionality to the Mac by installing stuff in into the parts of the OS that Apple say not to. Generally users who install this stuff keep the hacks up to date, but what is worse, Logitech have installed this as a part of a mouse "driver".

The lesson here is when installing a new OS (whether Mac, Windows or Linux) it is best to start from scratch. Leopard (and Tiger before it) provide an option to "Archive and Install". This copies your old system files (including all the 3rd party stuff into a separate folder) and installs a fresh copy of Leopard, it also can (set by default) copies across all your user and network settings.

Back to the SMH. I have noticed of late there has been an anti-Apple bias in the reporting there (or at the very least they just copy their news from blogs). With a small amount of research (like I did above) the article could have been balanced and less sensationalist and instead provide a bit of guidance to users. At the very least once new information became available the article could have been updated to indicate it was a problem with the Unsanity hack and that users were at risk if they had installed Logitech stuff. Newspapers have a responsibility to report critically and fairly, many people read this stuff and just believe it (I had a few discussions on this at work today trying to dispel the fallacies in this article. So Asher Dunn you are now on notice.

And, yes, I will be doing an Archive and Install on our iMac

UPDATE: Apple have sold over 2 million copies of Leopard. It took Tiger (10.4) a month to sell that many!

Leopard release date announced and price drop for iTunes DRM free tracks

Apple has announced that MacOS X 10.5 (or Leopard) will be available on October 26th and is now available for presale ($158 or $145 for Education). If you bought a new Mac this month then you can get it for $12.95. They have also added a webpage with a categorized list of new 316 new features. However, if you don't want to go through the whole list then Appleinsider has a good summary.

Also Apple (most likely in response to Amazon's MP3 store) have reduced prices of their iTunes Store DRM free tracks to $1.69. However, there is no indication currently if there is a price change for upgrading existing tracks to DRM free. Also, they have also added a number of independent labels. Good stuff :)

DRM, AAC and iTunes Store lock-in

Onto my first opinion post. Originally when the EMI/DRM news came out I was going to do a post (albeit shorter than this one) all about that. Well in the end I never finished and it ended up as only a couple of lines in my weekly stuff. Since then I have heard and read quite a few media reports on this and most seem to be treating Apple as though they are the Microsoft of music. I think that is completely wrong, so I wrote this new article :)

Now before going into the article it is worth noting that I have owned 4 Macs (2 still in use), Ruby and I each have an iPod and I have purchased tracks from the iTunes Store. So, yeah, I do like my Apple stuff. Hopefully this will come across as a balanced article and not too much of an Apple fanatic...

Digital Rights Management

I think the announcement by EMI and Apple that all their tracks will be available in May DRM free is really big news. To me this is the beginning of the end of DRM. I really don't like DRM as it restricts what you can do with your music and treats you as if you are a thief. This does not really encourage me to buy new music!! I can buy a CD, play it in my car at home or rip it and put it on my iPod, Phone or mp3 player. With Apple's DRM (called Fairplay) I am restricted to playing only in iTunes or on an iPod. However, it is worth noting there are a couple of simple ways to get around this (not that I have bothered).

Now some of the media reports on this announcement have been interesting as well as a bit misleading. They have focussed on the fact that price of individual songs has increase by 30% (this is for the US store, the Australian price has not yet been announced). Some have mentioned that the quality of the songs has doubled. However, very few have noticed that the prices of complete albums has NOT increased.

AAC files and iTunes Store lock-in

Another thing many of the media reports have been focussing on is that Apple's iTunes store locks you into using an iPod and the change in DRM makes no difference to this. Apple does not use the MP3 format for the iTunes Store (though the iPod can happily play MP3s), instead it uses AAC. Now many in the media seem to think this is an Apple only format (Apple Audio perhaps!). It is not an Apple format, AAC is an international standard just like MP3 and can even be thought of as a successor to MP3 (have a look at John Gruber's excellent post on AAC for a good explanation). Other devices apart from the iPod can also play AAC like the Sony PSP and PS3, Sony Ericsson phones , some Nokia phones and the Xbox 360.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple do not want to control music. What a lot of people forget is Apple makes most of their money of hardware sales (Mac or iPod) as these have a generous margin. Apple instead uses innovative software solutions (such as the iTunes Store, Mac OS X, iMovie or Final Cut Pro) to help drive software sales. It is also worth noting that the iTunes Store makes very little profit.

It is also worth reading Steve Job's Thoughts on Music essay. Also, this announcement from EMI is not just restricted to Apple's iTunes Store (see this Q&A transcript). EMI has made the DRM free tracks are available to any of the other digital music stores.

So its really great that we can now buy some digital music with DRM removed! However, this is only the first step, its time for the other large music companies to follow suit. Oh and hopefully EMI will soon make the Beatles catalog available too :)