Domain of the Bored

I believe Apple added this alert box in version 8:

Let's enumerate the fail, shall we?

• Applications cannot be purchased with Shopping Cart.

  Yes, they can. You just won't let me.

• Your preferences are currently set to buy using Shopping Cart.

  Because that's what I want to do.

• Application purchases cannot be placed in Shopping Cart; they must be purchased by 1-Click.

  Passive voice is great, isn't it? It allows the subject to not take responsibility for their own actions.

  This is not some law of nature, like gravity meaning that you cannot fly. Apple prevents you from buying applications using a Shopping Cart. The message should just say that.

• Select Buy if you'd like to purchase application by using 1-Click …

  I wouldn't, but since iTunes won't let me do what I really want, I have to either buy it the way iTunes wants me to, or not buy it at all.

• … and your credit card will be charged immediately.

  No, it won't, because I don't have a credit card on my iTunes account. If it did charge my credit card, I would be alarmed.

Now, let's rewrite the alert's message to be more accurate.

I have filed two bugs:

• iTunes disobeys prefs, insists on buying iPhone app with 1-Click
• iTunes claims “your credit card will be charged” even if no CC is on file

• A sudoku generator. The game should not cap me at x-hundred or x-thousand puzzles. Give me all the sudoku the iPhone OS' PRNG can create for me.

• Proper sudoku puzzles, not Number Place puzzles. The difference is that a sudoku puzzle is rotationally symmetric: if you turn the puzzle 180°, it still looks the same.

  → 180° →

  Many sudoku generators actually generate Number Place puzzles, which don't have this constraint. (In particular, all the Will Shortz puzzles are like this.)

• Obvious input method. A row of numbers at the bottom doesn't work because I can't tell whether the game is prefix (tap number first, then cell) or postfix (tap cell first, then number). I could get used to either way, but a good interface doesn't make me guess.

  • Ambrosia's Mr. Sudoku uses handwriting recognition.

  • Platinum Sudoku is clearly postfix, because its input method is a ring of numbers around whatever cell you tap on.

• The ability to set pencilmarks, to keep track of what numbers are viable for a cell (helping to avoid wrong numbers, especially at higher difficulty levels).

• Simple, usable interface. This means two things:

  • No excessive artwork like Big Bang Sudoku has. I only have 16 GB of flash memory—don't waste it!

  • No garish colors. If your sudoku game is in CGA, then I don't want to look at it, which means I don't want to play it, which means I don't want to buy it.

From the podcast directory, some free cable TV talk shows. All of these carry (what appear to be) full episodes:

• Bill Moyers Journal (PBS)
• Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC)
• Fox News Sunday (Fox News)
• Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (CNN)
• The McLaughlin Group (PBS)
• Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
• Washington Week with Gwen Ifill (PBS)

Note: I don't endorse any of these shows, and purposefully listed them in alphabetical order.

Quoth the Kbase:

When you enter a participating Starbucks with an iPod touch, an iPhone, or a computer running the latest version of iTunes, you can access the iTunes Store and the Starbucks Now Playing content.

Emphasis added.

I don't remember that being part of the announcement in the keynote.

If you should have an urgent need for a flashlight, but have only an iPhone or an iPod touch with you, fear not. Now you have an iPhone flashlight.

From QA1420:

(In case you don't get it, here's the reference.)

They finally started selling something that I want to buy.

Almost since the iTunes Music Store first opened, I've been a customer of the iTunes Store. 99¢ a song is fine by me, and I love paying by the song. There are few albums so consistently good that I'll buy the whole thing.

Then iTunes Plus started, and I immediately switched over. Sure, it's 30¢ extra, but I pay that 30¢ as a statement against DRM.

Then came the Amazon MP3 Store.

Amazon sells plain old MP3s, at roughly 256 kbps VBR (in order that nobody can complain about the encoding quality). Since they're plain old MP3s, there's no DRM.

Even better, Amazon beats iTunes' prices: 89–99¢ per song. iTunes charges $1.29 (remember, no DRM, so the proper comparison is to iTunes Plus rather than to non-Plus).

So, in short:

• The encoding is almost as good as or better than iTunes.
• The price is the same as or less than iTunes.
• Amazon's MP3s are never DRMed, whereas iTunes' MPEG-4s are usually DRMed.

Like Simone, I shall buy from Amazon first from now on. (I haven't switched away from iTunes; they'll continue to get my business for songs that Amazon doesn't carry. But, unfortunately for Apple, I expect that set to diminish.) Take notice of this, Apple—get the record labels to let you lower your prices, or you will lose serious market share to Amazon.

Just in case you're wondering…

The Amazon MP3 Store works by downloading a file in a special format: .amz. This is a document for the Amazon MP3 Downloader application. (In case you're wondering, the contents are some binary data, which may just be ciphertext of some sort, encoded in base64.)

The reason they do this is so that it can download the MP3s into a subfolder of your Music folder, rather than your usual Downloads folder (normally your Desktop). That's good, but it has two downsides:

1. You need a Windows or Mac OS X PC to download MP3s from Amazon, even though the MP3s themselves will play anywhere.
2. If your browser is set not to auto-open files, or doesn't trust the Amazon MP3 Downloader, then you may be sitting there for a moment wondering why the Downloader is not doing anything.

My suggestion to Amazon would be to switch to a custom URL scheme, rather than a custom file format. I don't know about Windows, but this would certainly make it much easier on the Mac, since the custom URL scheme will always work. (It won't help the non-Mac non-Windows users, though, since you still need the Amazon MP3 Downloader to handle the custom URL.)

Now on iTunes: An endcap with various songs from commercials. They've done this before, but this time, the first four tracks are from recent Apple commercials, including the one from the iPhone commercials.

This bug is iTunes viewport pinned to top of selection when selection is at top of viewport. It was filed on 2007-08-02 at 10:31 PDT.

They're calling it “iTunes Plus”, and the current Single-of-the-Week is available in it. Took them long enough—yesterday was the last Tuesday in May, and they didn't even get done with it until today.

Ah, well. At least it's finally here. Woo-hoo!

By the way, you need to update to iTunes 7.2 and agree to the iTS terms and conditions again to turn on iTunes Plus. The actual T&C haven't changed, but the Terms of Sale have.

This bug is iTunes does not FNNotify after moving items to the Trash. It was filed on 2007-04-13 at 19:56 PDT.

This bug is iTunes should use real combo boxes in its Info dialogs. It was filed on 2007-04-06 at 23:48 PDT.

First, the article.

The DRM-opponents' response

Holy shit.

The response from the RIAA and its member organizations

Oh shit.

The response from Microsoft, Creative, et al

Shit.

5G iPod users, listen up: Apple is offering a demo of its Vortex game.

In MacBreak episode 56, Merlin Mann talks to (among other people) Dan Moren of MacUser, who I think inadvertently states the reason why Apple has not released an SDK for the iPhone. From 1m25s:

Merlin Mann: And what I wanna know from you is, if you had a software development kit today, and you could walk home and, I don't know, go learn Xcode, and make the application of your choice, what would you put on an iPhone?

Dan Moren: I think that the most compelling thing is to take on Cisco with their iPhone, with the VoIP capabilities? I mean, I'd like to see some Skype on the iPhone. If you got the WiFi in there, you got some, you know, 3G or something, but for those of us who don't wanna switch to Cingular, you know, and you still want some voice capabilities, why not be able to develop a Skype, put in some voice communication application in there, … it'd be great to have some kind of AIM functionality too.

I think that's it. The iPhone is closed because if it wasn't, you'd be able to use the iPhone without continually paying for Cingular phone calls or SMS (by using Skype and $IM_SERVICE instead).

That means that if they do make an SDK, it won't be available until at least two years from June.

This is a response to Daniel Jalkut's iTunes Script: Recent Podcasts.

It is possible to do what he does with scripts with smart playlists. The result requires no user action to update, since the playlists will update automatically. You can even use them to sync recent podcasts to your iPod.

We start with a playlist for all podcasts:

This smart playlist provides the same function as the script with its kIgnoreAlreadyPlayedPodcasts property set to its default value of false. If you like kIgnoreAlreadyPlayedPodcasts set to true:

This playlist derives from the first one, and you can replace the Playlist rule with the three rules of the other playlist if you don't want a played-or-not playlist hanging around.

UPDATE 2007-01-08: Daniel Jalkut pointed out that there's a Podcast criterion that I could have used. I completely missed it. This makes the solution much simpler:

PBS is looking at three science-show pilots, and can't decide which one to order as a full series. So they've made all three pilots available, for free, and ask your opinions on them (perhaps by iTunes commenting — I haven't watched the videos; there may be instructions within them or something). Each show is a full hour. They are:

• “Wired Science”, from KCET (channel 28 in Los Angeles — have I mentioned that I'm in the LA TV market?) and Wired Magazine.
• “Science Investigators”, from WGBH. Possibly related to History Detectives?
• “22nd Century”, from Towers Productions and Twin Cities Public Television.

The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman (aka a PC, aka The Daily Show's resident expert), read by the author. All six hours, 58 minutes of it. Free.

While flipping through Michael McCracken's blog, I found his blog post about his instant replay in QuickTime Player script, and decided that that would be a good thing to have in iTunes (especially when I want to quote some George Carlin to somebody).

So here it is. It's in source-code-only format; you should probably compile it using Script Editor before using it. It uses iTunes' own rewind function, which will jump back four seconds; play with the “delay 0.1” line if you want to jump back farther. I bound it to ctrl-⌘-⇠ using Quicksilver's Triggers feature.