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bye bye emusic.com
iTunes younger, cheaper, cooler cousin is no longer very young, very cheap nor very cool.
What with the creeping prices the leaking of indies and embracing of mainstream, eTunes… i mean emusic has just become a smaller, cheaper, crapper version of iTunes.
I’ve bailed after finding less and less of your catalogue appealing each month I was struggling to actually fill my (much diminished for the money) download quota.
What started out as a really cheap, risk free way of finding new bands became a much less cheap way of wading through mounds of crap, old music to discover the occasional gem.
Neither am I a diamond miner, nor am I a long-tail cool-aid drinker so I’m afraid I’ve had to say good bye after a fun (at first) five years…. I kept holding out on the hope that one day you would come to your senses. But you never did, so I guess it’s…
…Good Bye Emusic…
emusic download manager blues and repurchasing
emusic is really starting to take the piss. Price hikes and monthly song quota cuts has already dented its once proud image as “iTunes’s younger, cooler brother.”
Now we have a site with buggy, sub standard download software and a policy which aims to make you repurchase tracks that have failed to download fully.
OK, so what happened?
I clicked on the download button, and the album started to download. (Much slower than it used to, I might add.) I then paused the download momentarily by accident (clicking the pause button).
When I clicked resume, it resumed from the next song! I now had two 30 second snippets. Nonplussed, I cancelled the download in the hope that I could restart it… Nope
Going back to the website, I found that there was no longer an option to complete your album… I’d have to pay the whole $6 to download the whole album again!
It’s a download site, for fuck’s sake and they’re charging me PER DOWNLOAD, when it’s THEIR SOFTWARE THAT’S BROKEN.
I really think that this time, I’m done with emusic.
For reference, here’s the mail I sent to their customer support… Not my most eloquent prose, I must admit.
"To whom it may concern" I paused the download.... when I resumed, it tried to download the next track... I now have four half downloaded tracks.... I thought if I cancelled the downloads, and reselected them manually I'd be ok... but IT SAYS I ALREADY DOWNLOADED THE TRACKS. With the OPTION OF REPURCHASING (WHAT THE F***?!) ARE YOU KIDDING! This is not good enough... You are not iTunes, the only thing you have going for you is that your prices are cheap... If you can't make a system as painless as iTunes you will go out of business. Please let me redownload the songs which I paid for but now don't have. The album is http://www.emusic.com/album/modwheelmood-Pearls-to-Pigs-MP3-Download/11475231.html It says I have 7 tracks but I don't. I'm getting sick of music's draconian "REPURCHASE" policies requiring me to justify my existence every time you have a bug in your software. Yours, Disgruntled, Craig Lloyd.
The End of the Mouse? (aka The Apple Magic Trackpad)
In the last week, I have come to feel that an end to an era is approaching: The Era of the mouse as the primary interface navigation tool for computing.
At least, it certainly is in my case.
I have used the Apple Magic Trackpad for less than a week and I am already in love with it. Far more so than the hybrid Apple Magic Mouse, which I found somewhat gimmicky and a little disappointing, so until this absolute gem came along, I was a devout fan of Wacom’s mouse and pen pad, the mighty Intuos 4: And I still am, to an extent. Insomuch as I use it now solely as a pen input device for my Photoshop/Illustrator work.
It just comes naturally
In terms of learning curve, if you own a MacBook or Power Book or indeed any form of capacitative touch screen device with multi-finger input (such as an iPhone, iPad or an Android) then you’ll be right at home the moment you use place your finger on its silky smooth surface.
For me, it came naturally within seconds, even though I rarely use a trackpad on a laptop. And I would not be lying to say that in terms of learning curve, nothing could be shallower!
In terms of being a trackpad, it is the finest example I have ever used. Every complaint I have had with other trackpads… (too small, too smooth, too rough, insensitive to dry fingers, sensitive to nearby gadgets, finicky, inaccurate, noticeable input lag, random response towards the edge)… And I mean every single one I can think of right now, has been addressed and overcome.
Here are some of the things I think make it stand out:
- Wireless – No more cables on your already cluttered desk.
- Quality – It’s not just a crappy, overstocked, last-year’s-model notebook trackpad shoehorned into a cheap plastic holder and resold. No, it is crafted as well as any Apple device I have used.
- Size – BIG! As I said above, it’s not a repackaged notebook device.
- Perfect frictional texture – You find your fingers don’t slide without tactile feedback and yet it’s not so rough that your finger is worn to a nubbin after 8 hours of constant use.
- Accuracy, stability and response speed – Seemingly instantaneous response with razor sharp accuracy. The mouse pointer may as well be tied to your finger!
- Attention to detail – For example, on other pads, if you overrun the edge of the pad, the cursor abruptly stops. However, on the Apple Magic Trackpad, the response gracefully degrades in such a way that you naturally return your finger to the centre of the pad. Very subtle, very Apple.
- System integration – The driver software and its integration with Apple’s Mac OS X is as close to perfect as one could ever wish for.
One word: Goodbye!
Indispensable Mac OS X Software : Window Management Utilities
I find myself setting up my home and office’s Macs perhaps a little more often than I would like and when I do, I find, more often than not that I install the following software.
In the first installment of this short series, I will mention a trio of window management utilities.
Note that this is not a list, just software that I am intimately familiar with and have used practically every day for over a year.
I’m running a 27″ iMac with the Awesome IBM T221 3840 x 2400 (yes, that’s right) monitor for photo editing. As such, I really need a bevy of good screen and window management software to keep the huge real estate in order.
Sizeup
$13 / OS X 10.5+
by Irradiated Software
http://irradiatedsoftware.com/
Used on my smaller iMacs, this allows for a window to be sized automatically by user defined shortcuts into full-screen, top / bottom / left / right halves and quadrants. Has some fine tuning functions, too. For example, to adjust the balance between left and right and top and bottom, such as a 60:40 split or 70:30 split or to enable the screens to avoid edges and the dock, etc.
Simple to set up and effortless to use.
Useful rating: ☀☀☀☀☀
Cinch
$7 / OS X 10.5+
by Irradiated Software
http://irradiatedsoftware.com/
Made by the same company that made Sizeup. Best new UI feature stolen from Vista, drag a window to the top of the screen and watch it maximise. Drag it to the left or right edge and have it neatly resized to half the screen width! The only reason it doesn’t get a rating of five is that cinch doesn’t integrate with the custom left/right settings of Sizeup, and as such screens cinched to the sides tend to interfere with screens manipulated using Sizeup.
Takes 10 seconds to install and get working. Simplicity itself.
Useful rating: ☀☀☀☀
Divvy
$14 / Mac OS X 10.5+
by Mizage
I consider this the king of window management software. You can divide your screen into a user defined grid and assign shortcut keys to resize windows to an arbitrary shape and size for the ultimate flexibility. Alternatively, if you need a custom size window, you can press a hotkey and rapidly assign a window to anywhere on the grid using the mouse!
As with most powerful utilities, the trade off is time required to set up the software in a personal and meaningful way. Still, if you’re willing to invest a little time in it, the payoff is increased productivity and more efficient screen use.
Useful rating: ☀☀☀☀☀
Isolator
Free / Mac OS X 10.5+
by Willmore
A little different to the others here, Isolator allows you to focus on just one task or window and thus reducing distractions on the average, cluttered desktop by darkening or blurring the other windows out with a simple definable keystroke or a click of the mouse on the menubar.
Elegant and simple.
Useful rating: ☀☀☀
iCal and Power PC / 10.5 leopard, 5 days to the end to push notifications!
So long and thanks for all the fish! In Apple’s eternal quest for your money, they are continuing their disrespect for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard users less than two years after 10.6 came on to the market. forcing you to upgrade your OS at an increasing pressure rate that would make Microsoft blush.
In seven days, Mobile Me will no longer support iCal push to Leopard clients. F*** the What?
I run a shed load of Power PC macs which refuse to die…. And their OS was only superseded only in June 2009, less than two years ago… At which point all updates ceased abruptly, with only security patches from that point on.
I always remembered the adage…. “You don’t need a new PC because the old one will always continue to do what it always has done…”
Bah humbug. Not any more… With the cloud centred life that we are all starting to live, they can rescind anything they want at any time…. And with MobileMe, they’re doing just that… already…
iMac 27″ screen repair complete
The new iMac 27" with LCD backlit screen.
My iMac 27″ came back from Apple after it developed dark patches on the screen and has had its screen repaired. It is now as good as new (well, technically better because I only actually bought a 24″ iMac, and this one was a replacement).
In any case, the machine is back and has been restored to its former glory.
My real worry is that, since it took 8 months for the patches manifest and suddenly, over the course of a month, spread to cover the whole screen, will I be in for another replacement in nine month’s time? I hope not because my guarantee runs out in March of 2011…. I think I’m going to have to get Apple Care, Again!
Fingers crossed.
Elbow: One Day Like This Featured in Apple’s new Macbook Air Commercial
I just watched the recent Apple Stevenote (keynote speech by Steve Jobs) and as usual, Apple chose some uplifting music for the Macbook Air advert at the end of the show, to which I found myself humming along.
Then it hit me who the song was by!
ELBOW!
A rather stoned looking Elbow winning the Mercury Music Prize.
It would seem that Elbow, the band named after what the Singing Detective described as the “loveliest word in the English language,” have finally “arrived!”.
Was it the Murcury Prize they won a few years back that would ear mark them for success? Nope.
Was it the fantastic performance of said song at Glastonbury in the same year? Nope…
No, Apple’s choice of backing track for their new Macbook Air 13″ and 11″ might just prove the break this epically talented band needs to get them and their remarkable back catalogue spanning 20 years or so, some much needed air time.
Here’s hoping that a day like this is just what elbow need to nudge them into the spotlight.
Firewire vs. USB
The battle between Firewire (A.K.A. IEEE 1394, iLink) and USB rages on.
It’s well known that although USB 2.0 shows a higher speed on paper (480Mbps vs. 400Mbps) than Firewire, due to inefficiencies in USB protocol and the fact that USB requires the host to manage the transfer of data, Firewire is in actual fact faster on the whole.
The reason is cited as being not just the efficient, real-time, streaming oriented protocol but the Firewire controller itself, which manages much of the dirty work when it comes to data transfer, offloading the stress of controlling real-time, high speed data from the motherboard/CPU onto the device.
This offers two main benefits:
- The host CPU or controller has less work to do and can focus on other, more important stuff, meaning the attached host will feel more responsive and less stressed under heavy load.
- Because major data flow control is performed on the device itself, wasteful, detailed control data does not have to flow back and forth between the device and the host, leading to less wastage and latency.
…and two main drawbacks:
- The controller is relatively complex and thus expensive.
- The controller’s complexity can lead to difficult to diagnose compatibility issues.
Which leads to my main issue.
My Logitec MA-16FU2/WM external firewire and USB dvd burner regularly fails to mount disks on my Mac, while connected by Firewire but performs flawlessly with USB.
Basically, no disks inserted will mount at all under Snow Leopard.
Indeed “about this mac/more info…” shows no sign of any volume in this drive, whether it’s directly connected to the mini or via the firewire hub of the Princeton PHD-MM160IUH.
Moreover a second firewire / USB device will often fail to remount over firewire if I shut it down or disconnect it. Again, it works flawlessly over USB. Moreover, it even works with Firewire when connected to my Windows PC!
Go figure!
I’ve tried:
sudo kextunload
/System/Library/Extensions/IOFireWireFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleFWOHCI.kext/
and:
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IOFireWireFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleFWOHCI.kext/
but the external drives just shut down and restart, still without mounting the volumes.
No joy.
It’s really ironic that the Mac has worse support for firewire than Windows, especially since Apple were one of the founders of the specification.
basically, despite the ‘so-called’ superiority Firewire, I can only get my job done reliably with USB… sigh.
Mac vs. PC ad nauseam
Even I have my limits when it comes to arguments.
So I would like to say:
“Will everyone just pipe down!”
I don’t care which machine is more or less secure, that isn’t an issue. Security is not the issue at all; it’s relative safety.
I have used windows since 3.1 and have never contracted a virus.
I have used Macs since os 9 and have never contracted a virus.
I have owned about equal numbers of both machines.
While nothing can protect users from themselves, we often forget that
safety and security are not the same thing.
This is why this whole thread is tosh; You trying to reconcile two
different arguments without distinguishing between them.
Take a gun for example, whether used in either Japan or the US, it is
equally deadly. But statistics say that Japan is safer. Is there
something about Japan that makes guns intrinsically less deadly? No
Are US citizens better trained at handguns on average than the
Japanese? Perhaps.
Are those from the US more likely to die when hit in the head by a
bullet? Who knows.
The PC has long since left the cliques of the University Labs and “IBM
Rooms” but the Mac still has an air of the quaint, little, local hippy
community where it was fathered, a place where everyone knows each
others’ first name.
There are still vestiges of this “Mac spirit” remaining, although they
are becoming harder and harder to find.
Still, just like I leave my house door open here in Japan more often
than I would in the US or the UK, I prefer to let my kids browse on
the Mac, just to be safe.
Sure there is a risk, but then, we all know that, don’t we… because
we’re not stupid.
This is of course changing and I will miss the Mac when it goes
mainstream, when it will be just another PC, only one running OSX
instead of W7 or Linux.
We are all on the same side here we want a safe place for ourselves
and our families and businesses.
Let’s not spend this time divided and bickering like kids in the
playground saying their father is toughest. Instead, we should use the
nous we have to hunt down the ba * ds who make the malware and
educate those around us.
Windows 7 not much faster than Windows Vista – My first impressions of Windows 7
I wrote this in response to an article I saw regarding the relative speeds of Windows 7 and Vista.
I have a venerable 2.8GHz P4 with Intel RAID on 2x160GB HDD and a gig of RAM which I bought in 2003 or something… I only upgraded it once to a 256MB NVIDIA 7600 as I was running it as a Tiger Hackintosh for a couple of years. It really flew on Tiger, but I had a real Mac (albeit a G4) which was slower but much less flakey and so went back to the trouble free XP.
I then made the mistake of BUYING A BOX COPY (sheesh) of Vista Ultimate. My first ever Box OS purchase. My poor machine really felt its age since it would no longer play back HD videos smoothly, so the box went back to XP again and served as my main Playback device for my Projector for a couple of years.
On hearing all the Windows 7 brouhaha I decided to retry Vista with SP1 and about 75 incremental upgrades and put office 2003 and Zend Studio back on.
To be frank, It wasn’t as slow as I remembered it. It was as if the patches were just enough to allow my old faithful to climb back on to its feet.
And Aero’s 3D surfaces for each application actually meant the interface was MORE responsive and Mac Like since each app didn’t have to redraw when brought to the front. With the RAID disks, even 1Gb of RAM was usable (although multitasking slowed it much sooner than in XP).
I found myself honestly enjoyin using Vista for the last month or two and not missing XP, even when I had to really struggle to find any of the randomly shuffled functions.
Last month, I forced myself to make what I promised is the last upgrade to this machine and got 2GB RAM. My old faithful suddenly sprang to life… After a couple of days of heavy use, the memory was full, but it appeared to be about 1.5GB of cache! Office opened instantly (once I turned off min/maxing animations) ! I mean that literally. It was definitely faster than XP in general use and although 1080P HD Vid playback still stutters, my Leopard C2D Intel iMac w/ 4GB of DDR2 can’t match it for general interface response speed!!
So, to cut a long story medium, I installed the Windows 7 RC on the 2nd of May(!!!) expecting wonderful things… Firstly, the interface and colours remind me of a certain open source OS. Light, simple, breathy. Everything is simpler. I haven’t scratched my head as much as I got accustomed to with Vista, for sure.
However, I NOTICED NO SPEED INCREASE for my particular workload of Zend, Office and a Trial install of Illustrator CS4, indeed Office felt marginally slower which corroborates what was mentioned in the article. Instantaneous was replaced with a slightly annoying Almost Instantaneous, but not quite sort of feeling.
Still, benchmarks aside W7 is definitely less offensive to use than Vista.
In conclusion, then, I think it’s all about expectations. I was expecting molasses for Vista and got syrup – It felt good. i was expecting water for W7 and got slightly warmed syrup – I felt cheated and actually missed Vista’s moody dark interface.
Windows 7 is not much faster than Windows Vista but of course, YMMV.
—
Disclosure: I’m a “slider” rather than switcher, finding my Windows use fading out since 2005 on the release of the Mac Mini. My SOHO now consists of 6 Macs and only 3 PCs (one of which is a netbook). I now basically use Windows for Office 2003 compatibility and a label printer that refuses to talk Mac.
BTW, Vista Boot Camp on an Aluminium Mac 24″ w/ 4GB of RAM is THE FASTEST Office 2003 machine I have ever used. It’s shockingly instantaneous! If I had time, I’d install W7 on it, but I can’t be bothered.
The Nanchatte Technojunkie 
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