Tags:Apple, Apple TV

Jobs has said for years that renting movies makes sense whereas renting music doesn’t. So when it came time to launch a movie rental service, Apple had to start including secure digital clocks in the latest round of devices. Connected devices like the iPhone have other ways of checking content permissions, but in order for such a service to work with the rest of the iPod line would require something resembling Microsoft’s solution, unless there’s something I’m missing (granted, I’m a tech journalist, not an engineer).

This explanation is a good as any I’ve heard.

Tags:Apple, DRM, iPod

Tags:Apple TV

Singer Ali Campbell is leaving the reggae band UB40 after selling tens of millions of records worldwide in a career spanning nearly 30 years, a spokesman for the group said on Friday.

No Ali Campbell …. No UB40

Tags:UB40

1. Slim laptop.
2. iTunes movie rentals. Some seem to think there will be a subscription plan along with al a carte pricing ….. I don’t think so on the subscription, but yes on the al a carte.
3. Revised Apple TV.
4. More music labels selling DRM free music on iTunes. The labels are going to have to do it sooner or later, I think one or two will announce tomorrow.
5. Beatles will finally be available on iTunes.
6. A revised Airport Express with 801.11n and possibly a NAS to work with Time Machine or Apple TV.
7. iPhone with more storage.
8. “One more thing” out of left field.

The record industry is in such a mess. I called for what it was when college kids first started download music for free — that they were crooks. I told every record label I spoke with that they just lit the fuse to their own bomb that was going to explode from under them and put them on the street.

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free? I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called “Monster” — a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year.

The record industry doesn’t have a f—ing clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

McCartney tells Billboard.com that “it’s all happening soon. Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be happening next year, 2008.”

McCartney adds that any delays in bringing the Fabs’ music to the Internet have been due to “contractual” issues as well as deliberate planning by all parties involved. “You’ve got to get these things right,” he explains. “You don’t want to do something that’s as cool as that and in three years time you think, ‘Oh God, why did we do that?!”

Lets hope that it’s the remastered versions and they are DRM free.

Tags:Beatles, Digital Music