obfuscated.org

Panic’s Steven Frank explains the company’s MacWorld bribe policy:

• Sandwiches / Pizza / Burritos: A sincere effort will be made to resolve the bug upon our return
• One of whatever new hardware Apple announces: Our special “white glove” service — while working on your bug, we’ll wear tasteful white cotton gloves
• Cash bribes in excess of $10,000: Please talk to a Panic representative regarding our Platinum Level Bribery Plan, which includes rights to sleep on our office couch when in Portland and a secret handshake

Good stuff.

This fun little tidbit over on Daring Fireball absolutely floored me.

What’s interesting about this is that the single-computer license isn’t enforced in code by the operating system. (Or at least that’s been the case with Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.4.) And, I suspect, most DF readers are aware of this. Which means many readers are doing the right thing simply because they’re honest. I have no idea if this breakdown is representative of the Mac user base as a whole, but if it’s even close, these family packs are a huge success for Apple.

This simply isn’t how things work with for-pay software. Let’s take, for example, my recent experience with Windows. I run XP in a virtual machine for work. I reinstall the VM fairly regularly. If I try to install with a license that I’ve used before, the install gets all fussy and tells me that the license is already running on another computer and I’ll have to call India to get it up and running. (Amusingly, re-activating my XP license is the only time I’ve ever actually been connected to an off-shored call center, or at least the only time I’ve been aware of it.) It’s an amazing pain in the ass, and the only thing that’s saved me is the big stack of XP licenses I traded beer for a few years ago. (Thanks, Pat!) I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do once they run out. (Probably beg IT to install a VPN that works with OS X.)

We have three computers at home, so I had planned on buying a family pack, anyway. (Can you even get multiple retail copies of Windows for less than the same multiple of the single license price?) Knowing that I don’t have to makes me feel a lot better about doing that.

(For all you Canadians out there: Yes, I’m aware that Linux is still free. Thanks.)

Apple announced some new products and prices today, and apparently some people aren’t exactly (update: not all that displeased, as it turns out) pleased about the prices of iPhones dropping by $200 so quickly after they were introduced. Which I sort of get and then sort of don’t. Yeah, it’s a bummer and all that it cost more when you bought it, but then they’re not taking any of your functionality away. I think John Gruber sums the situation up nicely:

And for those of you who’ve already bought one and are pissed about the price cut, if you didn’t think the iPhone was worth $599, you shouldn’t have bought it. That’s how supply and demand works.

Indeed.

My price point for an iPhone is “free with a service contract like my current crappy phone.” When it hits there, I’ll probably get one. Why not?

For the time being, however, the prices on “classic” iPods — the kind that just plays music, which is all I’d use it for, anyway — have dropped and the disks have gotten bigger. For the same price that I got my 40GB model for a few years back they now have a 160GB model. That’s more space than my laptop has! I’m already having to filter out tracks when I load the iPod, so seeing these much bigger models at the same old prices is quite nice. (Not that I’m going to buy one, mind you. But still.)

Brad mentioned that Google Gears doesn’t work in Safari for Windows. I wondered, naturally, if this wasn’t just a Windows Thing. To find out, I fired up Safari on a mac to try to install Gears. Imagine my surprise when I see the following:

What’s up, Google? I know that there are differences between the browsers and all, but this is just weak. My favorite part is the install button. Here it is on Safari:

And the same thing on Firefox:

Now, I know that this is nitpicking. I know that bugs happen. But seriously, guys. You’re freakin’ Google. You’re the kings of the web. This is a Microsoft move.

You can do better.

Hands up if you’re excited about Safari running on Windows. As I don’t even use it on OS X, I can’t say that I am.

Apparently Apple is putting your account information in the DRM-free media files it sells. I’ve come up with a clever solution to this problem: don’t put the files on file-sharing sites. That way, your personal data can never get out. Easy! I’m relatively certain that your off-brand media player or TiVo or whatever you end up feeding these files in to (hooray for being able to feed the files in to whatever you want) won’t sell your email address to spammers. (And if you’re really paranoid, convert the m4a/aac files to mp3 and be done with it.)

So Apple is going to sell “premium” tracks on its iTunes store for $1.29. The “premium” part? 256-bit encoding and no DRM. Which I guess is pretty cool. I wonder what the over/under on how long this lasts is?

The deal doesn’t include Beatles’ tracks, but will supposedly cover the rest of EMI’s catalog. Wikipedia has a list of artists signed to EMI. Notable members of the list (for me) include:

• Frank Sinatra
• Dean Martin
• Bowie
• The Yardbirds

So what’s the more interesting part of the “premium” tracks: No DRM, or upped bitrate? One could already get around the DRM without a lot of trouble, so I might lean towards the bitrate. However, not having to fuss with breaking the DRM or burning/re-ripping is braggable.

Lifehacker is currently running a beginner’s guide to Quicksilver. Quicksilver is an amazing utility. It completely changes the way you use your computer, replacing tons of mousing with a few keystrokes. If you depend upon your wrists for your livelihood, I can’t recommend getting to know Quicksilver quite enough.

When I put a new hard drive in my computer, I decided to reinstall the operating system and install applications and data from scratch. Unfortunately, I had a small mishap and accidentally imported two copies of my iTunes library. Removing duplicates by hand would have been possible, but it would have been tedious as well. Mercifully, I stumbled on to RBOSA, so I was able to let the computer do it.

RBOSA is basically Applescript for people who never got around to learning Applescript. The interface to things like iTunes is very simple, so it didn’t really take a lot of work to get something to find duplicates up and running.

The strategy I used was to look at songs in the main library (the method I used for finding the “main library” looks kind of suspect, but it worked. Use caution if you try this at home) and put all duplicates in to a new playlist. Once they were there, I was able to check them over to make sure that they were dups and delete them.

Now, if you’re playing the home game and you know the secret trick for finding and deleting large groups of duplicates (around 8,500 tracks in this case) without busting out the programming: please tell me. I’m pretty sure that I’ll need to do this again at some point, and I’m all about doing things the easy way.

Follows is the script. I used Ruby 1.8.6 and RubyOSA 0.3.0.1 (installed via gem.)

require 'rubygems'
require 'rbosa'

itunes = OSA.app 'iTunes'

dups = itunes.make OSA::ITunes::Playlist
dups.name = 'Duplicate Tracks'

class OSA::ITunes::Track
  def eql?(o)
    artist == o.artist &&
      album == o.album &&
      track_number == o.track_number &&
      name == o.name &&
      time == o.time
  end
  def hash
    to_s.hash
  end
  def to_s
    "#{artist}/#{album}/#{track_number}/#{name}/#{time}"
  end
end

seen = Hash.new
itunes.sources[0].playlists[0].tracks.each do |track|
  seen[track] ||= Array.new
  seen[track] << track
end

seen.values.each do |tracks|
  if 1 < tracks.length
    # Keep the file with the largest bitrate.
    tracks = tracks.sort { |a,b| b.bit_rate <=> a.bit_rate }
    keep, rest = tracks[0], tracks[1..-1]
    rest.each { |t| t.duplicate dups }
  end
end

I recently worked with two local service providers: Gem Plumbing and Di-No Computers. Both got the job done both quickly and well. I recommend both.

We called Gem a few weeks back when the line running from our bathroom backed up. The disclosure statement for the house suggested that this would happen and that we would indeed have to just get it snaked out every six months or so. My experience with plumbers so far has been mixed. They get the job done, but I have had to sit around for hours waiting for them to show up. I don’t like waiting.

Gem showed up exactly when they said they would. In fact, they called an hour before they were supposed to be there and said that they could get started early if I wanted them to. As I don’t like waiting, this on its own is golden.

When they got to the house, we pointed them to the room, gave our layman’s take on what was up and got out of the way.

Less than half an hour after that we had a functioning drain, an explination as to where the problem was and why it wasn’t any of the other things we thought it might have been and a few things we could do if we wanted to solve the problem permanently. So, yeah. A positive experience to say the least.

Di-No fixes Apple computers. When I bricked my laptop the other day, I called the Apple store who cringed, said that it sounded like an ugly and expensive problem, and referred me to Di-No. I gave Di-No a quick call, verified that they are indeed open during lunch, (why did I think that they wouldn’t be?) took the machine over to them and told them how I had broken it.

The only down side to Di-No is that they weren’t even able to look at the computer for almost a week. (There is a very visible sign on their front desk stating when they will be able to get to your computer, so there were absolutely no surprises involved.) However, once they did, they ordered a replacement part and had it back in to my hands within two days. Further, the repair was all done under warranty, so not one thin dime came out of my pocket. When I picked the computer up, they strongly recommended that I purchase AppleCare, as my factory warranty will run out in May. I think I’ll take them up on that.

If you need a Mac fixed or a drain snaked, you know where to go.