Category Archives: Apple

Apple In Serious Talks To Stream Music

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Apple is in serious talks about a music subscription service and once again the major label heads appear ready to do whatever Cupertino asks them to do. iTunes head Eddy Cue has recently been in touch with label execs to “figure out how the partners can move forward,” according to the NY Post.  The new music service would reportedly be priced in the $10 – $15 range depending access and portability.  Subscriptions could be tied to an iTunes in the cloud service, but at least one report suggests that Apple’s desire to add subscription music has more to do with stopping a Spotify entry into the U.S.

Major Labels Fall Under Apple’s Spell Again:

Music subscriptions are not new. Rhapsody, Napster and others have been offering them for years with only moderate success. But an iTune’s music subscription service appears to sound new and sexy to the struggling labels.

So when Apple also recently told label heads that they were having serious doubts about whether Spotify could ever deliver serious revenue; the profits Apple was really worried about were their own. According to CNet, Apple reminded the labels that it’s hard to to sell something that someone else – like ad supported Spotify – is giving away. An industry insider told CNet’s Greg Sandoval that it’s “only logical that if Spotify were allowed to launch a free-music service here, at a time when Nielsen recently reported that the growth of digital sales has flattened out, it could eat into the businesses of proven revenue-producers like Apple and Amazon.”

There are at least two major problems with Apple’s hypothesis that the labels are choosing to ignore. While single tracks sales are flat, Nielson and many others project continued album download growth. As for Spotify hurting music sales – the old “why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?” argument – most surveys show that Spotify increases download sales while also fighting piracy.

Apple has always been a very aggressive competitor and with Google, Spotify and others preparing to chip away at it’s supremacy in the music space, Jobs & Co. appears anxious to crush or at least stall any competition that in can.

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Installing Quick Time To Mac OS X

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This is weird. I have Mac OS X Snow Leopard (specifically 10.6.2) running on my MacBook and want to install Quicktime Pro for some video work. I bought a license key off the Apple site but it says to go to the System Preferences and enter the data into the Quicktime preference pane. But, um, there isn’t one. What the heck??

Dave’s Answer:

Without much fanfare, Apple has continued to tweak and fiddle with its Quicktime software, moving it from one place to another, changing how it’s installed and updated, and even making it easy to have it vanish from your computer if you don’t install every single piece of Snow Leopard.

Poke around a bit in your favorite search engine and you’ll find that the Quicktime app you need to enter that license number is Quicktime Player 7, and it’s in the Applications -> Utilities folder.

Or is it?

For a lot of users, it’s nowhere to be found. Sure there’s Quicktime Player in your Applications folder, but that’s not the same app and it doesn’t have the ability to be upgraded via license key into Quicktime Pro.

So where do you get this mysterious Quicktime Player 7 utility? It’s on the Snow Leopard install DVD. Yes, that means you need to find your original OS install disk (or borrow one from a friend or colleague) and slip it into your computer. You don’t have to reboot, just open up the disk. You’ll see:

mac snow leopard optional installs

You probably never noticed, but see that folder “Optional Installs”? Open it. Now you’ll see:

mac snow leopard optional installs 2

Double click on “Optional Installs.mpkg” and after clicking through a bunch of default and informational screens — and entering your admin password once — you’ll finally get to a list of the optional installs included with Snow Leopard:

mac snow leopard optional installs 3

As I have done, choose “QuickTime 7″ and proceed. Won’t take long for you to be looking at this:

mac snow leopard optional installs 4

Now in your Utilities folder is “QuickTime Player 7″. Launch it, and choose File –> Registration. You’ll see this:

mac quicktime pro registration

Enter your registration information as delivered from Apple and you’ll see this:

mac quicktime pro registration done

Score! Now you’ve figured out how to add QUickTime Player 7 to your Mac OS X system and upgraded it to be QuickTime Pro. Now, have fun!!

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Customizing Microsoft Word On A Mac

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I don’t know what’s changed, but in the past, when I wanted to see revisions and changes to a document in Microsoft Word on my Mac it showed me what was inserted and deleted. Now, however, it has zillions of little balloons on the side of the document. What the heck? How do I change Microsoft Word so revision tracking shows up the way I prefer? Continue reading →

Creating A Smart Album In iPhoto

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I’ve finally imported a few years worth of photographs into iPhoto and it’s very cool – I’m having fun organizing things – but in addition to how it has organized everything, I’d also like to have convenient access to photos by when they were taken. I don’t know whether that’d be a new Event or an Album or even a “smart album” (whatever that is), but what’s the easiest way to have a subset of my iPhoto photographs show up based on date?

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