iTMS arrives down under. Finally!

1. Well we only waited two and a half years. iTMS has arrived, and after getting over the sticker shock ($1.69 a song, $16.99 for most albums and $3.39 for video) I was pleasantly surprised — I’m gonna lose a bit of money here. I get access to some relatively obscure American bands that was otherwise a pain to import CDs for, and there are some good Oz rock exclusives, like Spiderbait doing an exclusive live recording for iTMS. I can’t complain about half priced albums, but it doesn’t feel as though they priced it to compete with pirates. I’d love to see what Apple’s margins are here, and I have a feeling the major labels are doing very well.

More on Privacy

1. I have written about this before, but a conversation with a friend over the weekend yielded just one more thing….

2. It was about her sister, who recently gave birth to a baby girl. She’s about 6 months old, and started swimming lessons at a local pool the week before. As often happens when the subject of babies is brought up, photos are asked for — except this time Mum said that she didn’t take the camera to snap photos of her own daughter at the pool because she didn’t know what other people would think.

3. WHAT SORT OF DELUDED EXISTENCE DO WE INHABIT WHERE A MOTHER CAN’T TAKE PHOTOS OF HER DAUGHTER BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE MIGHT THINK SHE WAS INTO KIDDIE PORN?

4. How uptight has society become? In the rush to “protect” kids we’re depriving them of seeing themselves when they were younger. We deprive parents from documenting their children, and we are depriving grandparents from seeing their legacy.

5. If it were my child I wouldn’t stop taking photos of them, whereever we were, and anyone who objects can go fuck themselves.

Get me a bit of that pie!

1. With the excitement bubbling over the Apple Media Event on October 12th the rumour mill has been crankin’ its little mill off, with rumors of almost everything being introduced — iPod video (well who knows, they switched to Intel didn’t they?), Dual Core PowerMacs (about time), updated PowerBooks (ABOUT TIME!), Airport Extreme with video out (again, ABOUT TIME!). My prediction for October 12th is that it will be one of or a combination of these things: iTunes Movie Store, possibly in conjunction with an iPod video and/or Airport Extreme Video, Dual Core PowerMac to be introduced and lastly, the first of the Intel PowerBooks. Yeah baby, black ultra thin Intel powered PowerBook so I can play games and work on the one machine. Wooo-ha!

2. (Disclaimer: I’m totally full of shit. Those were total guesses and bear no relation to anything remotely close to being evidence. But, this is supposed to be the Year of HD, and what better way to start the run to the holiday season than with an iTunes Movie Store and an iPod video?)

3. (Hot damn I’d laugh if I got any of that right. You read it here first.)

UPDATE: Well I wasn’t that far off. iPod that does video, iTMS that sells TV episodes (for a very reasonable $1.99 per episode). But, two things bother me — it’s very particular about the video spec, it has to be under 786kb/s and 320×240, it has to be H.264 or quicktime compatible, which practically rules out the TV I record on my PVR unless I re-encode it. This may include all the videos I’ve taken with my digital camera, that would suck if I had to re-encode to see it on the iPod. Secondly, the 30GB iPod has only 2 hours battery life when playing video, with the 60GB marginally better at 3 hours. That is teh suck.