Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Where do Mac users buy their digital music? Well, overwhelmingly they purchase at iTunes. Despite the many mentions I hear of alternative music sources, nearly 75% buy from iTunes.

I wish I could compare this to the same poll taken a year ago, just before Apple announced that iTunes would be DRM-free. Since removing copy protection, I have removed my own personal boycott of iTunes. (My problem was that DRM hurt honest music buyers like myself much more than it hurt pirates).

For online sales there was a strong runner up in Amazon.com. Amazon has been selling DRM-free mp3 files for some time now and nearly 25% of those responding said they have purchased from Amazon.

But Amazon was only in 3rd place. In 2nd place with a 35% response was “Buy physical CDs, then rip them to my Mac/iPod.” This was the original method for getting music on to your iPod before the iTunes store was born. And it was the method I used for years to avoid DRM.

A lot of other services were listed in the poll, but none received more than a 3% response. This shows just mow much of a hold iTunes has on the industry.

Here is the original poll post:
Where do you buy your downloadable music? Do you get it from the iTunes Music Store? Or, do you have another source? Perhaps you purchase CDs and rip them to iTunes instead of buying online? Let’s narrow down the scope of the poll by not including free sources of music, but only places where you purchase music. And, of course, the music must be compatible with the Mac and iPod or iPhone. You can select up to 6 answers if you use more than one of these services.

The MacMost.com Guide to Online Password Security
When you create an account at a Web site you are usually asked to provide a password. What do you choose? Your child’s name? Your dog’s name? Your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Choosing a weak password opens your account up to being invaded. Someone could mess around with your Facebook status and spam your friends. Someone could order gifts for themselves on your Amazon account. Someone could drain your bank account or credit card. Or, worse, they could steal your identity and cause problems that could last for years.

With the end of the year here and not much news coming from Apple or third-party product makers, the rumor mill is filling the news void. The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are reporting rumors that the Apple tablet device is almost here, with perhaps a January announcement from Apple and availability a month or two later.
Other rumors point to a smaller-than-expected device with a 7-inch screen instead of a 10-inch one. This would certainly indicate a gadget more like the iPod Touch than a touch-screen Mac. We’ll keep tracking the rumors at the Apple rumors page at MacMost.com.
Other rumors talk about Apple offering a subscription music and/or video service that would include some television networks. The idea would be that you could subscribe to the service and get television programs as an alternative to cable or satellite TV. Reports are that Disney and CBS will offer programming over the service, while NBC, ABC and Fox may wait and see.
There is also an update this week in the 27-inch iMac screen situation. Apple has released an update that may fix some screen issues for some new iMac owners.

Want to quickly see how big a hard drive is and how much space is available? Select the drive on your desktop or in a Finder window. Press Command+I to bring up the Info window. You’ll see the drive’s format, capacity, available space and used space. If it is your main drive, you will also see the version of Mac OS X installed.

I didn’t expect to recommend the iPhone 8x Telescope with Tripod when I ordered it. It looked more like a curiosity than a useful gadget. It is a small telescope that fits into a custom iPhone 3G/S case. It also comes with a special tripod adapter and small tripod. But the thing actually works and it is less than $30. Heck, the tripod adapter is the best I’ve used and might be worth the price alone. But the telescope attachment lets you take decent pictures and videos too.

The iPhone’s has been a fantastic innovative space for game developers. Here’s another odd and creative game: Tipoli. You control two little guys one of whom is stuck to the surface and the other who is continuously bouncing. All you do is touch to switch them. Very very simple, yet also very interesting. Give it a try.

Want to get a taste of speech recognition for free? The new Dragon Dictation app lets you talk into your iPhone and it will translate your speech to text. It’s not perfect, but works surprisingly well, especially considering it is free. You can then edit the text on the iPhone and send an email

Sick of jumping back and forth between your music library and the iTunes store? You can view both at the same time by opening them up in new windows. Just right+click or ctrl+click on an item in the left sidebar of iTunes and you get the option to open it in a new window. So you can have your music library in one window and the iTunes store in another. You can also open up different parts of your library in different windows, such as music, movies and podcasts each in its own window.

If you want a new 27-inch iMac for Christmas, you’re going to have to settle for next year. Shipping times for the largest-ever iMac have now slipped to two weeks or more. Many are speculating that this is due to the numerous reports of screen problems with the larger iMacs. But Apple simply states that it is due to the popularity of the model.
The reports are of cracked screens or screen flickering. It is apparently in a small minority of the 27-inch iMacs. It is unclear whether it might be caused by a manufacturing defect or damages during shipping.
Apple tweaked the design of the App Store inside the iTunes Music Store this week to re-arrange information on the app pages. Now when you view information about an app, you can see screen shots in a horizontal scrolling area and much of the specifics of each app are in a sidebar to the left.

HTML Source Code:

<html>
<head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function getGPS() {
	if (navigator.geolocation) {  
		navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(showGPS, gpsError);
	} else {  
		gpsText.innerText = "No GPS Functionality.";  
	}
}

function gpsError(error) {
	alert("GPS Error: "+error.code+", "+error.message);
}

function showGPS(position) {
	gpsText.innerText = "Latitude: "+position.coords.latitude+"\nLongitude: "+position.coords.longitude;
	
	// alternate
	//gpsText.innerHTML = "<a href='http://maps.google.com/maps?q="+position.coords.latitude+","+position.coords.longitude+"+(Your+Location)&iwloc=A&z=17'>"+position.coords.latitude+","+position.coords.longitude+"</a>";
}

</script>
</head>

<body>

<a href=# onclick="getGPS()">Get GPS Data</a>

<div id=gpsText></div>

</body>
</html>

Both real news and rumors combined this week to give us a potential picture of Apple’s future. In the real news area, Apple purchased Lala, a company that ran an iTunes-competitor, with a twist. Lala allowed you to access your music everywhere, by storing it on the Internet, or “in the cloud.” Theoretically, this could mean that the future of iTunes will look more like a service where you buy a license to hear a song, and then that song is instantly available on any of your net-connected devices.
On the rumors front, several analysts are predicting that an iPhone 4G is in the works, and that it may be available on Verizon in the U.S. next year. In addition, more speculation about Apple’s tablet device place a release date for that at March of 2010 at a whopping price of $1,000.
In third-party software news, Google released a beta version of the Google Chrome browser for Mac, and says they plan to have extensions for this version, unlike the earlier Alpha release.
Adobe announced that the Flash player for Mac will be switching to Intel-only in 2010, leaving PowerPC Mac users with a stable but never-to-be-updated version of Flash. They say this is because new performance enhancements will require Intel processors.

One of the strangest and marginally useful text editing tips on the Mac is to use the F5 key (fn+F5 depending on your keyboard preferences) to autocomplete a word. “Autocomplete” is sort of a misnomer, as it brings up a list of words that all start with the same letters you have typed so far. So it doesn’t really help your typing speed much, but it will help you spell words. And if, by chance, the letters you have typed can only match one word, it will, in fact, autocomplete.

Taking notes on the iPhone just got easier. Thanks to Note Taker you can write on the iPhone’s screen instead of typing. It uses a clever method of shrinking your letters down to fit on a page, and a lot of other interesting features. It doesn’t convert your chicken scratch to real text, but for the purpose of taking notes it is well suited.