In a press conference today in London, Apple and EMI Music announced that starting in May 2007, EMI Music's entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase in DRM-free versions from the iTunes Store worldwide. Removing Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system from the tracks comes with a price, though. DRM-free tracks will cost $1.29 rather than $0.99, although they will also feature higher quality 256 Kbps AAC encoding, which Apple claims makes them indistinguishable fro...

Whew! We want to thank everyone who came together yesterday for what was truly our most inspired April Fools issue ever. Joe Kissell's remote-controlled, animatronic monkey was definitely the highlight, and we hope that his landlord will be understanding about all the damage - who would have suspected that the folks at MacUser.com were so adept at remote AppleScript programming? What? Oh. Right. So, we didn't actually create an April Fools issue this year. With April 1st landing on a...

Like most other Mac users, when I'm travelling, I often need to connect to a Wi-Fi network to access the Internet for email and Web browsing. But what if there are multiple available networks and I don't know which would be best to use? In the past, I would usually bring up iStumbler (MacStumbler hasn't been updated in years), but Take Control author Sharon Zardetto Aker alerted me to a simpler method. If you hold down the Option key when dropping the AirPort status menu, it lists available netw...

One of the great things about the iTunes Store has been the capability to buy single songs without having to purchase an entire album. I have too many CDs at home where I liked one or two songs, but the rest of the selections don't hold up in quality. I'm especially bad about this if I go into a store (such as the excellent local Sonic Boom Records), listen to a couple of tracks or parts of tracks, buy the album thinking I've stumbled on some cutting edge band, and then discover later that it wa...

Apple today announced the availability of Boot Camp 1.2 beta, the latest version of its software for enabling Intel-based Macs to boot into Windows. This is likely to be the final update to Boot Camp before the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which according to Apple will include Boot Camp. The most prominent new feature is support for Windows Vista (but only 32-bit versions for now), which previously required awkward hacks. Also new in this beta are updated drivers for numerous Apple devices...

I tire of hitting gateway pages at Wi-Fi hot spots that ask me to enter account information I've already set up. Shouldn't there be a simpler way than what feels like a 1995 interface - you know, maybe some software that makes the connection easier? Devicescape has my number: Their eponymous Devicescape software and ecosystem lets your Mac connect to Wi-Fi networks at which you have accounts with less tedium. But there's a lot more to their approach. Now Boingo Wireless has long offered a sof...

Ladies and gentleman, start your rendering engines! Adobe has at last released shipping dates, product details, and pricing for its massive collection of updates to existing products under the rubric Creative Suite 3 (CS3). As John Gruber at Daring Fireball put it in response to Adobe's fusillade of press releases, "Translation: 'Please buy a new Mac Pro.'" CS3 now encompasses six separate Design Editions and 13 major applications, each edition carving out a slightly different piece of the gr...

I recently set up a JBL On Stage Micro with an old iPod for Tristan so he can listen to music when he goes to sleep and can wake up to music at the ungodly hour of 5:50 AM on weekdays. (He's 8 years old, wants control over when he wakes up, and his school bus comes at 7:00 AM sharp.) It was a frustrating experience, marred by confusing instructions (are batteries necessary even if you plug it into the wall?), difficulty finding four AAA batteries, an adapter that didn't fit a second-generation i...

My Internet service provider (ISP) Speakeasy Networks was just purchased by Best Buy. I was hoping the press release carried an April 1 dateline, but no such luck. I've been a customer of Speakeasy for home and business for several years. While they charge 10 to 30 percent more than Qwest, the incumbent phone company in Washington, they've earned the difference by being generally responsive: they have great technical support, they go the extra mile, they live up to their promises. In one c...

There's a line between abusive comments and criminal speech. I read very few blogs on a regular basis, and I've never become enmeshed in the "blogosphere," the entire collection of blogs and bloggers that link to and quote one another. But among those sites I do glance at regularly is Kathy Sierra's "Creating Passionate Users" blog, where she posts thoughtfully about code, interface design, marketing, t-shirts, and a host of other technology-related issues. Although we have friends in common ...

As a non-artist, I'm always a sucker for programs that let me create interesting graphical effects - especially with text - without requiring Photoshop. So BeLight Software's new Art Text is a dangerous program for me to launch, since I can waste way too much time playing with its many built-in and user-configurable options for turning text and simple vector graphics into cool logotypes. A few minutes of fiddling with various options produced this graphic of the word "TidBITS" in the Ransom font...

Although the iPod has been "video-enabled" for more than a year, Apple treats video playback on the portable device as an incidental extra feature. The upcoming iPhone comes closest to the video iPod that Apple fans have been waiting for, with its widescreen-capable display. However, it turns out that Apple's true video iPod was released last week - and it's the Apple TV. No one will mistake the screen-less, silver box for an iPod, of course, but in functionality - from the features to the me...

It was the call we all dread. The night was dark and overcast. One where the landscape glowed from the cold attempts of the full moon to break through the ominous mugginess pressing on the atmosphere. "Hi Mom." "Hi", she replied tersely. "Is something wrong?" "It's my email. It won't work. And the Internet is really slow." "Crud". I may be an executive in the world of information technology. One who works with some of the largest technology companies in the business, but to ...

iChat has increasingly become a necessary aspect of business and personal communication, but I still don't love the program. I remain peeved by its approach to status (see "iChat Status Report," 2004-03-29) and its general clumsiness. Oddly for an Apple program, iChat uses lots of individual windows, and since you often want to switch among them, having them in separate windows in the window-layered Mac OS X (as opposed to the way Mac OS 9 was by default application-layered) can require some add...

Michael Tsai has released SpamSieve 2.6, a notable update to his popular spam-filtering tool. This version adds Mozilla Thunderbird to the extensive list of supported email programs and improves detection of image spam and phishing messages. Both are tricky to identify, the former due to a great deal of random text along with the image payload, and the latter because the text so closely mimics normal messages. Other improvements include more efficient AppleScript support, improved compatibility ...

Other World Computing has a 3 gigabyte (GB) memory kit that they say is a first for Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook laptops. Apple doesn't offer this option. The same $340 kit - a set of one 1 GB and one 2 GB PC5300 DDR2 SO-DIMM modules - also works with the Core 2 Duo iMac and the 15-inch, 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. The other two standard MacBook Pro models include 2 GB as two 1 GB modules, and can be upgraded by swapping one of those modules for a 2 GB unit for $260 from the company. Apple d...

Freeverse has released Sound Studio 3.5, which adds many new features of interest to all users of this excellent audio editor and recorder. Sound Studio has long been my favorite tool for editing audio files whether I'm producing a podcast, trimming a file in my iTunes library or recording my son's funny snore one night (and later removing the laptop fan noise from the recording - it's important to have high quality embarrassment material for when he's a teenager). Among Sound Studio 3.5's ma...

"There goes the last DJ, who plays what he wants to play, who says what he wants to say." -Tom Petty in "The Last DJ" I've never been sufficiently involved with radio to quite understand Tom Petty's lament about the passing of the independent disc jockey as "the last human voice." But even if I missed hearing Wolfman Jack live in his prime, there are times when I'm listening to my favorite music in iTunes or on my iPod that it feels, well, a little repetitive. Sure, being able to play random ...

Apple has released iTunes 7.1.1, an update that "addresses a stability issue and minor compatibility problems in iTunes 7.1," according to Apple. The update is available via Software Update or as a 28 MB stand-alone download. A 36.1 MB download for Windows is also available. The company also released iPod Reset Utility 1.0 for Mac (3.4 MB) and Windows (2.2 MB), which is designed to reset either generation of iPod shuffle if iTunes is unable to reset it. ...

After all my puzzling over how to create permanent links to articles in the New York Times (see "Easier New York Times Linking," 2007-02-26), I was amused to hear from a friend that the New York Times is now making TimesSelect free to any student or faculty member with a valid college or university email address. (Staff and alumni with .edu addresses are not explicitly forbidden, but the terms as written require you to agree that you're either a student or faculty member.) TimeSelect includes ac...

A few months ago, Glenn Fleishman and I wrote a feature for Macworld about using smartphones with the Mac (see "Get in Sync" in the January 2007 issue). When we tested BlackBerry devices, PocketMac for BlackBerry was the only method of synchronizing data between RIM's smartphones and the Mac. Recently, a new contender has emerged. Mark/Space is currently offering a functioning public preview of The Missing Sync for BlackBerry as a 9.2 MB download. Like other versions of The Missing Sync, this...

At last month's 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, several academic papers - one from Bianca Schroeder and Garth A. Gibson of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the other by Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, and Luiz Andr? Barroso of Google - looked at the reliability of hard drives in large-scale installations. Among other conclusions, the CMU team found that real-world replacement rates were much higher than would have been expected from vendor-provided mean time to...

[Reader Note: Some of the URLs in this article use the gopher:// scheme rather than the familiar http:// scheme. These gopher URLs can be viewed directly in Camino or Firefox, but if you are using Safari, which does not support the Gopher protocol, view these pages using the HTTPgopher proxy. For more information, check out this document describing Gopher support in most Web browsers.] Back in the early 1990s, when I was an undergraduate at the University of California camping out in the beat...

The file-distribution system run by Pando has opened itself up to developers and podcasters. Instead of managing your own bandwidth and dealing with your service provider's limits or their overage charges on busy months, you could employ Pando's combination of centralized and distributed downloading at no cost at all for files of up to 1 gigabyte (GB) in size. Larger files can be distributed with their paid levels of service. With Pando, you upload an individual files or set of files (a packa...

Apple has released a swarm of updates, updating Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to version 10.4.9 and providing a security update for Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther. The security update is incorporated in the Tiger update, and could have be labeled "Fixes for the Month of Apple Bugs," a project we have written about before (see "MoAB Is My Washpot," 2007-02-19). Security Update 2007-003 and the related code in Mac OS X 10.4.9 fix dozens of problems reported in the Month of Apple Bugs, including the most seriou...

For Exploring Your Unicode Fonts -- A reader shares some tips on how to view Unicode characters. (1 message) Appointment/room scheduling software -- What options are available to schedule facilities among a small group without turning to enterprise-level software? Several options can be found here. (8 messages) Lessons on Internet Surveys -- Adam's article from last week about the validity of Internet surveys leads to a discussion of random sampling and response rates. (13 messages) Dragon N...

Clocks ticked ahead one hour last weekend for the new Daylight Saving Time adjustment, which we detailed in Daylight Saving Time Saved (2007-02-19). If some of your devices weren't updated for the change on 11-Mar-07, here are some quick resources to get you back on track. Mac Updates -- For Macs to deal with the change automatically, you would have needed to install either Daylight Saving Time Update (Tiger) (for Mac OS X 10.4.8) or Daylight Saving Time Update (Panther) (for Mac OS X 10.3.9), ...

It's time to start analyzing the results of our TidBITS 2007 Reader Survey. In this week's look, I examine the answers to the first few questions, which attempted to ascertain what kinds of people read TidBITS. At the moment, we've received 3,158 responses, and as I've said previously, the survey remains open if you haven't responded yet, but I doubt any of the percentages will move much. There's a tendency in this world for each of us to believe that everyone is like us. It makes sense; we hav...

I've been putting this review off, because it doesn't thrill me to warn even a subset of people away from a popular product. But that's exactly what I have to do - in short, although the Nike+iPod Sport Kit can be a fun addition for anyone who runs with an iPod or wants a bit more encouragement to run, competitive runners shouldn't bother with it. It simply isn't worthwhile as a training aid for anyone who values distance and pace accuracy. First, some background. I'm a competitive runner. I tr...

Apple has released iTunes 7.1, an update that doesn't appear to offer much on the surface, but incorporates compatibility with the upcoming Apple TV. A new Apple TV section in the preferences displays Apple TV units that have been authorized to work with iTunes. When the video streaming device is released this month, you will be able to synchronize media to the Apple TV's 40 GB hard disk for playback on a connected television (see "Apple TV Connects Macs and TVs," 2007-01-15). Also new in iTune...

Adobe continues to inch towards providing the scheduled release date of its suite of image, Web, and document handling tools known as Creative Suite 3 by announcing that it has an announcement. CS3 comprises Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, and InDesign, along with several support programs. GoLive will be dropped from CS3. The company said it will "launch" CS3 on March 27, which one presumes means that they will start taking orders and provide a date for release. The new version of...

Thanks to our EFF buddy Fred von Lohmann for a pointer to SonicLiving, a Web site that offers a similar service to the iConcertCal iTunes plug-in we covered recently (see "iConcertCal: Your Gig-Going Pal," 2007-03-05). Like iConcertCal, SonicLiving can generate a calendar of concerts based on artists in your iTunes library, though it does this via a Java applet that reads your artist list and then lets you select which artists to watch for. That's actually a good thing, since options let you s...

Safari RSS problem -- Here's a tip if Safari's RSS feeds don't seem to be updating regularly. (3 messages) Encrypted e-mail question -- A question leads to a great summary of how encrypted email works. (8 messages) Frequent Tech Questions (Was: How much to quote?) -- Technical questions come up all the time, but it's expected that people should do a little searching for answers on their own, first. But what do you do when an answer isn't easy to find? Readers discuss creating different resour...

Apple has released an update to QuickTime for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. QuickTime 7.1.5 fixes numerous bugs, along with a flaw that could enable a maliciously crafted file to crash a program employing QuickTime or to allow arbitrary code execution - a phrase that often means there's a potential for an attacker to gain control of a computer or, at least, install malware. Affected file types are broad: 3GP videos, MIDI files, native QuickTime movies, images in the ...

Tune in to the latest podcast interviews with TidBITS editors! At Macworld Expo, Adam talked about the show announcements with host Harris Fogel of Mac Edition Radio, and more recently, Joe spoke with Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl Live (he's in the final third of the 01-Mar-07 show). ...

I just bought a new laptop with Windows Vista preinstalled, and, hey, I kinda like it. As I dodge flaming arrows from regular TidBITS readers, let me note that it's not my main computer nor intended to be; that I've been using the Mac platform since 1985; and that I currently own something like five working Macs. (Yes, we Mac owners know the difference: I have two other Macs of ancient vintage that haven't been powered on in years.) I purchased a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop for two reasons. Firs...

Those of you who read our breaking news items in ExtraBITS may have noticed some changes this week. As part of the major overhaul to our back-end, something we're calling the TidBITS Publishing System, we can now make articles in our database available on our home page (and in searches) before they appear in a TidBITS issue. In the recent past, we did this by posting articles to a separate blog that wasn't connected to our searchable article database. But until we published the issue containing ...

We've been watching the results of our reader survey roll in, with over 2,800 responses so far. You can still vote, but I can likely predict how you'll vote, based on current responses. In fact, the percentages of certain answers have been stable since the first few hours of the survey. This fact - that not much data is necessary to draw accurate conclusions - goes against the strongly held belief among many survey professionals that a high response rate is necessary. In fact, for a proposed su...

As wonderful as Mac OS X is, it has a grave defect that can have an immediate adverse impact on the computer's usability: the way it translates mouse motion into pointer movement. For many users, moving the mouse feels unnatural because of the peculiar way that Mac OS X performs that translation. In industry parlance, the translation is called the "mouse acceleration curve." What is a mouse acceleration curve, and how is its implementation problematic under Mac OS X? Speedy Gonzales -- Mouse mo...

We often wonder how many of us there are. While Apple produces numbers on a regular basis of the number of active Mac OS X users, it's been harder to pin the tail to the total userbase donkey. Bank of America Securities, however, thinks is has that number: 22 million Mac OS X users of all versions of the operating system. It's highly likely that there are uncounted millions of Mac OS 9 and earlier users, too. AppleInsider reported today on some financial projects by the security firm, but I'm p...