As you may have heard, Apple released newly designed Macbooks and Macbook Pros this week and they have eliminated all Firewire ports from the Macbook and left a single Firewire 800 port in the Macbook Pro. Every Mac since the advent of Firewire 1394a in 2000 has had at least one Firewire port. Hell, eMacs even came with two Firewire 400 ports.

According to an email that may or may not have come from Steve Jobs, Apple’s explanation for this nickle-and-dime elimination of the Firewire connection is because “all of the HD camcorders released in the last few years use USB 2.0.”

We get that you’re a visionary product guy, Steve. We understand that you can see the future and Firewire is nowhere in it according to you. However, in the real world present day us long time Apple fans have a shitload of Firewire products that need a way to get connected to our computers. We generally don’t toss out all of our existing electronic gizmos like hard drives, video cameras and iPods because Apple has decided it’s no longer appropriate for us to use.

And since the last time Steve had to deal with a technical problem on his computer was when he made Wozniak hack a problem with his Apple DOS boot loader floppy on his Apple II, he doesn’t see the inherent value of the brilliant, lifesaver Target Disk mode. I can tell you as someone who is constantly fixing people’s issues with their computers, it’s the Macbook users who need me to be able to mount their computer’s hard drive and deal with it… not Macbook Pro users. This feature is one that makes Macs better, different and more usable than your run-of-the-mill crap Dell laptop.

And all those folks who’d used and loved the earlier version of iMovie with their standard def video cameras (through Firewire), iMovie fans got the big F U from Apple when they completely dropped the familiar product (which I’m sure took people a long while to get comfortable with as they made awesome home movies of their kids) and replaced it with a completely new product lacking many of the features that made the tool so great.

Well, like it or not, Steve, Apple’s market share is growing and you’re extending your reach into the more common folks who are not as tech-savvy and not dripping with extra cash to replace their complete computer/video hardware portfolio every couple years. These folks go through a significant decision to spend $1,000+ on a Mac. Your decision is arrogant and puzzling, considering how little it would have cost to include a single Firewire port. And don’t you know that USB 2.0 is a crap standard?

Why is that? Here’s why (from Wikipedia):

Although high-speed USB 2.0 nominally runs at a higher signaling rate (480 Mbit/s) than FireWire 400, typical USB PC-hosts rarely exceed sustained transfers of 280 Mbit/s, with 240 Mbit/s being more typical. This is likely due to USB’s reliance on the host-processor to manage low-level USB protocol, whereas FireWire delegates the same tasks to the interface hardware. For example, the FireWire host interface supports memory-mapped devices, which allows high-level protocols to run without loading the host CPU with interrupts and buffer-copy operations.

FireWire 800 is substantially faster than Hi-Speed USB.

Hear that? USB 2.0 uses the processor of your computer to manage the protocol so it’s inherently slower. You can digitize video while you do something else on your computer. Good luck doing that with USB 2.0.

Why aren’t you leading the charge against promoting such a weak alternative? And if you’re really so gung-ho on USB, what steps are you taking to make sure USB supports the kind of cool things Macs should offer, like Target Disk mode.

Now if you take Apple’s logic on this forward, that Apple provides the ports we “should” be using and really need, how come my Macbook Pro doesn’t have the ports that I need? Why are you reducing the number of ports I have on my high-end laptop? Where’s SATA 3.0 port on any new of the new Macs? As a Pro user I have several SATA external drives and this standard is wicked fast, yet I don’t have it. Sure I can drop another $100 on a lunky ExpressCard to add the capability, but that still doesn’t feel right. How about an HDMI-in? An HDMI-out? How about something new and better than all of these that us forward-thinking Apple Pro users “should” be using?

It strikes me that this decision stems from the same type of arrogance that leads Apple to provide updated software for their computers who’s tech notes describe the update as only containing “bug fixes” rather than the actual specific fixes they have done.

The only thing I could find in the system log was this cryptic error message:

11/13/07 9:25:49 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.samba.smbd[11536]) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 11538 PPID 1 smbd

It’s the Finder’s fault. Relaunched Finder using the Force Quit dialog box and voilà, the PC’s and Samba servers have returned.

[UPDATE]
I have solved this issue. On my computer I currently host two IP addresses through my Ethernet adapter. It appears that the Samba client would randomly choose which IP address it would use for nmblookup calls. Once I deactivated the second IP, leaving only my primary IP on the LAN (where the PCs and Samba servers live), the servers appear AND they all appear to work now. It’s still a bug, but not related to the Finder.

Note the triangle in the kind column, but the computers are not sorted correctly.

Acting as a proxy soldier for the Music Industry’s third prong of attack on itself, Jeff Zucker, President & CEO of NBC Universal, attacked Apple (and the iPodfather) for destroying the music industry’s pricing model.

Zucker’s statement is painful because it’s so far from reality. The music industry was aware of the changing digital marketplace throughout the 1990’s and launched venture after venture to try and capture a piece of the digital music market. They failed. Again and again they failed. The iTunes Store opened in 2003 after Steve Jobs, likely sick and tired of watching the Music Industry’s bungled attempts to sell music hurt Apple’s iPod business, decided to bring his golden consumer touch to the world of selling music.

When the iTunes Store opened, the music industry had already spent 10 years trying to sell music online. With crappy subscription models, oppressive DRM, limited selection and overpriced music tracks (I’m talking to you, MusicNet, PressPlay and Rhapsody), they’d fail to gain any traction with consumers (not that it was their fault…labels like Universal basically made that impossible with their licensing terms).

Finally, Apple comes along with enough clout to make a deal and a simplified pricing model and the features consumers wanted (the ability to easily play tracks on multiple computers and burn CDs).

Zucker is mad that Apple wouldn’t let them sell downloadable copies of NBC shows for $4.99/episode (something that NBC took pains to deny, but Apple had confirmed). You read that correctly: $4.99/episode. You mean a season of Heroes is worth $115? In digital form? At 640×480 resolution? With no incremental costs to NBC for distribution? Wow. We are still talking about the show that beams for free through the airwaves to every home in America, right?

I can buy the DVD set for $40, but the digital version is $115? And the DVD set includes “several behind-the-scenes featurettes, mini-documentaries, 50 deleted scenes, select episode commentaries, the original pilot (w/ commentary), and a character map?” And I can get the HD DVD for $70. But Zucker wants to charge me $115.

Zucker, you’re nuts. I can’t wait to see Hulu.com. Perhaps they’ll sell episodes of 30 Rock for $30? Oh wait, Hulu content is free with commercials. Huh?

I get that the Industry is bitter at their inability to build a store that could sell their own products, but to blame Apple for the problem is complete crap. If Zucker really believes this, I would seriously question Hulu’s future. Apple didn’t do anything that the industry couldn’t have done (more easily) for themselves long ago.

[UPDATE]
Just how delusional is Zucker? “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money,” complained Zucker. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.” So now he’s retroactively bitter about all that money Sony, Magnavox, RCA made selling TVs. Clearly the flavor of the month at NBC Universal is charging the hardware manufacturers for their content.

And just to be clear, Zucker, Apple made millions of dollars off of MY content: my music, my shows. Items that I own and purchased.

As a very early adopter of Leopard (installed 10 minutes after receiving the DVD via FedEx), I was only a bit worried that somehow the installer had munged the HFS+ partition on my Macbook Pro (the only one on the disk, by the way). Before rebooting, I ran Disk Utility from the installer DVD and it only saw the physical disk, not the volume, so I rebooted back into 10.4.10 and whoa, my “Macintosh HD” hard drive was still there.

I would have thought it was a fluke, but in upgrading my iMac G4 this morning, the same thing happened. No hard drive volume visible in the installer. In this case, my external 250GB firewire drive showed up, but no volumes from my 40GB internal HD.

I rebooted the G4 and let it sit on the “Choose a language…” screen while I wrote this post and when I arrived on the “Select a Destination” panel, the installer had found the proper volume.

My theory is that the installer starts some sort of disk verification (which unmounts the volume), but inexplicably allows me to continue through the install process. What gives? Anyone else seen this issue?

Looks like Mail is finally shaping up into a slick tool.

When you’re running your computer on a network that has an Apple OS X server, this little app automatically pulls up a list of all the Users and Groups in the Open Directory tree. It’s the new front end for shared contacts and resources on the network. Why this wasn’t simply integrated into Address Book is puzzling.

Here’s Apple’s description of its functions (most of which sound suspiciously things that Address Book should be doing):

Users whose computers have Mac OS X v10.5 and are bound to a Mac OS X server can use Directory to view shared information about people, groups, locations, and resources. They can use Directory to share contacts, set up group services, and manage their own contact information in a server’s directory.

Seems like Apple might have had competing product teams working on Directory and Address Book and as usual the business-focused product looks unfinished.

Directory is a basic front-end to Open Directory: of two preferences available in the application one is whether you want to display a person’s name as First Last, Last First or Last, First; and the other is what type of authentication you want to use.

Perhaps Directory will grow up into a beautiful swan of an application and replace the tired Address Book. It does have a nice Kinko’s meets Facebook icon and that’s a good start.

Arriving about three years late, with the Leopard 10.5 release Apple has finally included an always-visible progress bar in it’s Mail program. It’s time to say good riddance to the stupid Activity Viewer window (and its stop sign-shaped cancel buttons) that would always seem to be hidden when you wanted to see what was happening with your mail.

As Big Music swirls down the crapper, Universal is trying to throw out a lifeline with another new digital music distribution product: A product that simultaneously changes the way people interact with their music and changes the ownership model for music. Big Music has been trying this for years, but I’m sure this new pitch is GOLD.

According to an article in Business Week, Doug Morris, head of Universal Music, wants consumers to think of music like a utility (like water and gas). I think this idea is more like a buffet.

Like your meal at a buffet, one buys admission by purchasing a “Total Music” player and then “never shells out a penny for the music. ‘You know that it’s there, and it costs something,’ says one tech company executive who has seen Morris’ presentation. ‘But you never write a check for it.’ ” Talk about reducing the value of your music.

What does Steve Jobs think of Morris? I can’t help but hear a backhanded slap in this quote he gave Business Week, “He’s the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He’s old school.”

I’m not really a buffet-type. I prefer the hotel’s 24-hour sit down restaurant or Spago when I’m in Vegas. I avoid the buffet because a buffet, even a Vegas buffet, draws you in with a few high cost items and fills the rest of the serving line with awful stuff. I’d rather eat well and eat what I want.

• destroy the goodwill of music fans by entrapping the children, the poor and the technically illiterate then suing them;
• continue to release music that no one would be caught dead sharing;
• turn their back on profitable, legal sales by backing out of deals with legal music sales entities, like Apple’s iTunes music store;
• finally, gut fair-use by pursuing those true thieves–their own customers–who burn mix CDs or rip their own music for their iPods.

In the circle of life the big labels are headed back to dust.

Destroy the goodwill of music fans
The music industry has always been populated with greedy bastards. It’s a fairly common story to hear of the band signing a deal with a big record label and then being forced into using that label’s own producers, studios, and marketers, only to have their earnings from music sales eaten up by exorbitant charges: charges that were paid right back to the label itself.

Now, in the name of the artists, the RIAA, with evidence gained from its hacker team, is suing individuals under the weakest rationales. The RIAA is now celebrating its first win in the courts. This is clearly going to bring tons of goodwill to the industry and its artists. Brilliant.

Release Unsharable Music
Given that the radio industry has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the music industry, the labels can continue to release trash music with an extremely short half-life and be assured that it will get tons of airplay. This isn’t music people want to buy. It’s like a pop version of Muzak. This music will embarrass any potential file sharer. If you become the butt of jokes because you’re sharing the latest Britney Spears album, you’ll be a lot less likely to share music. Again, brilliant.

Turn its back on iTunes
While the music labels whined about Napster and pursued pathetic attempts to market digital music via repressive DRM and subscriptions, Steve Jobs and Apple single-handedly saved the retail music industry by opening the iTunes Store and giving the public a reasonable way to purchase music online. For that, many labels in the music industry are now crying foul and threatening not to renew their deals with Apple or going month-to-month on their deals.

I think they’re right. They own the music. And if they don’t want to sell any, they should back out of those deals. This will be a very effective prong of their strategy.

Start suing their own customers
In the most depraved prong of their strategy, the labels now appear poised to begin criminalizing the fair use of music. Always bitter that the software industry had a better model for selling their product than they did (licensing per device), the music industry is now hinting that they will begin pursuing their own customers for ripping music onto an iPod or burning it on a CD. By doing this, the industry reduce even further the value of its music to its customers. This is likely the final nail in the coffin for Big Music.

With this four-pronged strategy, I believe Big Music has sealed their fate.

I’m not a serial music sharer, just a long-time customer of Big Music. I purchased and own thousands of CDs. I feel like I did my part to support good music being released by the big labels. At this point, though, I will never purchase another track from the big labels. I’ll buy from Radiohead. I’ll buy from independent artists on iTunes. And I’ll continue to buy from Beatport. Those folks get it. The “Industry” doesn’t.

[photo by Erica Marshall]