I am starting to understand why Jon Gruber got so infuriated with Brian Krebs over at SecurityFix. Generally, I think Krebs’ reporting is no better or worse than anyone else trying to present readable yet accurate coverage of security issues that may affect the average user.

However, this post irked me within the very first paragraph.
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I am unimpressed by what I am reading about the Zune, really. Scanning through Engadget’s very comprehensive story on installing the Zune companion software, well, I don’t think Apple has much to worry about in the immediate future.

There has been a lot more interesting speculation about the Microsoft, Universal licensing deal where the Redmond giant has agree to shell out a nominal license fee per hardware unit. A concession most of the labels would dearly love to extract from Apple. But the only point on which Jon Gruber and Ed Felten agree is that unlike Apple, Microsoft is in a weak market position when it comes to music licensing. They have to take what they can get, like anyone else who does not have nine tenths market share.

Beyond that, Gruber thinks Microsoft is trying to poison the well. He worries that the hardware royalty will eventually spoil the whole market as labels continue to pursue what they no doubt feel is essentially a piracy tax. He thinks this will eventually include Apple, despite their dominant market position.

Ed Felten disagrees on that point and is largely unconcerned. I’m solidly the fence, though I am leaning heavily towards Felten’s view. Apple has not been afraid to tell the labels, “no”, when it is in their best interest to do so. Giving up hardware royalties would immediately affect their bottom line, no if’s, and’s or but’s. However, I hate making prediction as the universe is inherently unpredictable, so I’ll concede that is possible if perhaps unlikely that Microsoft and Universal are laying the groundwork for a shift in some future balance of power negotiation between Apple and the labels.

Is this a big deal? Its not like semthex’s work allowed you to run the full stack, all the way up through Aqua, on your run of the mill beige box. I guess it is disingenuous to play to the open source practitioners then yank the rug out from under them, regardless of the reason. If Apple is so afraid of OSX escaping onto non-Apple hardware, why go the open source route with any of their low level systems software in the first place? You can’t tell me that Marklar doesn’t predate or wasn’t at least closely contemporaneous with their license decision.

This is mildly intriguing, if only because as opposed to previous attempts, it may be slightly more legal, from a license standpoint. The fact that you still can’t run Aqua makes this less exciting. It also begs the question of how is this different from Darwin?

I suppose this is somewhat like the distinction between Linux and BSD, as expressed by my original Linux mentor, Kurgan. Linux enthusiasts like that it allows them to run Unix on a PC, BSD enthusiasts because it is Unix on a PC. (Hope I got the emphasis right, it is admittedly a subtle distinction.)

So if this newsworthy because Mac enthusiasts can run OSX on a PC, even if it is essentially the same as Darwin due to the lack of Aqua?

I’ve had a Yak Pak flap doozy for years. Actually, I bought it through the MegaTokyo fan shwag store. I bought another flap doozy from them it one of the pieces of hardware on the strap came apart within a few months of buying it. Yak Pak hasn’t sold this particular messenger bag directly from their site in quite some time. I ordered what I thought was the equivalent bag from Yak Pak, the small commuter doozy, and it is a joke. I can fit my 12 inch PowerBook, in its sleeve, into the bag, but that’s it. And several inches of the machine hang out, so the flap doesn’t close all the way.

Does anyone else who has either a 12 inch iBook or a 12 inch PowerBook have any suggestions of a rugged yet stylish messenger bag, large enough to fit a sleeved laptop snuggly as well as the usually assortment of geek gear, like the power brick, assorted connectors, pens, and maybe even a computer book?

As always, Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball, has a great essay up commenting on the recent high profile switches away from OS X to Linux. I focused more on how data formats have little to do with open source in my rant last week. He gives a pretty compelling argument for another reasons that open source may not matter as much as these switchers think.

For those that listen to the podcast, I mentioned that I ordered one of them there new video capable iPods last week. I have been coping with an incurable gadget fetish, well, for most of my self aware life. I thought I had gotten it under control, recently, settling into a good two to three year cycle with any new computer or gadget.
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I can’t believe I didn’t try this before. It even occurred to me that this would work as a way to get around the silly 999 bar limit in GarageBand. If you decrease the BPM setting when you create a new project, that has a proportional effect by increasing the maximum time duration of the recording. The default setting is 120 BPM, so if you halve that, you double the maximum recording length from about 30 minutes to about 60 minutes.

I had to cut a news item from this week’s podcast, so the hard limit was rankling a bit. I think I will set the BPM on next weeks project to 90, splitting the difference and given me fifteen minutes of padding, if I need it. I still think 30 minutes is about right for me, given interest level and how much pre-production work is required. But being able to forget about a hard stop and wind down when I am ready to do so will be nice.

I wonder if I can alter the BPM setting afterwards, just in case I get to the new limit and realize I still need just a squidge more time?

UPDATE: When am I going to remember it’s just easier to try something? If you get track info (command-i) and change to the master track tab, you can adjust the BPM setting. Kewl.

Granted, this is still naught more than a rumor, but it seems increasingly credible. I forgot where I read it, but I recall some coverage of Microsoft vowing not to lose the portable video player market to Apple like they obviously feel they have the portable music player market.

I see only one problem with portable video…
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I knew there were many reasons I enjoyed reading Jon Gruber, and this is one of them. In my last podcast, I spoke about Apple’s extension of RSS for features specific to the iTunes Music Store (ITMS). Jon does a much better job of explaining why this is by and large a good thing, in the end. He also points to some conversations that I also found in continuing to read up on the subject after the podcast, saving me from having to track down and post those links. He also provides the most clear write up of another issue on which I just couldn’t get a good enough handle to include in the podcast. That is problematic XML parsing in iTunes handling of podcast feeds. He shares some good conversational evidence, though, that Apple will make good faith efforts to address legitimate complaints.
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