journal: mac

Report: Apple to hike iTunes movie prices

By Nick, December 3, 2007

There’s a report floating around the interwebs tonight that Apple will be raising the price of a movie on the iTunes Store in order to appease Hollywood studios. Ars Technica reports that, according to a claim by Pali Research(membership required), Apple will raise their wholesale movie price to $15 US a pop. The Ars report does note that it is uncertain exactly how this price increase will affect the actual selling price (aside from the obvious fact that it’s going to go up!).

As of right now, Apple charges $12.99 US for new releases sold on iTunes, and $9.99 US for older titles. What does this get you? A 640 x 480 digital copy of a movie that you can’t legally burn to a DVD and pop into your DVD player.

As of right now, Apple sells movies from Disney and Paramount, and those companies’ subsidiaries. Keep in mind this report is very much unconfirmed.

Deep Thought’s (very annoyed) take: Oh, how I hope this isn’t true. Say it ain’t so, Steve. Say it ain’t so!

More movies. Good. Higher prices not so good. As Ars notes, it doesn’t seem like movies on iTunes have really set the world on…
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Fun Stuff: Chi Pet widget for Dashboard

By Nick, November 30, 2007

You don’t have a green thumb. You tried a little gardening and failed miserably. You even killed a Chia Pet or two. Maybe you need to try a virtual Chia Pet before you take on the real thing. Enter Chi Pet. Chi Pet is a Chia Pet-like widget for Dashboard. Unlike the real thing, you don’t need to remember to water it; just remember to click the water droplet from time to time to keep your Chi Pet nice and green.

Come on, you can do it! If you’re successful, who knows? Maybe one day you can grow a Chia Pet for real! wink

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Sure, this little guy looks naked now, but in time it will grow a lovely green
coat of sprouts--provided I don’t kill it first.

via Mac News Online. And no, I am not the same Nick who wrote the Mac News Online article.


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A first look at CandyBar 3

By Nick, November 29, 2007

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Believe it or not, I’ve never used CandyBar ($29, $24 to upgrade) until now. I’ve never really had the need to tinker with the appearance of OS X.

Well, until Leopard, anyway. I switched off the 3D Dock, and have even modified the 2D Dock to something, uh, less white-border-y (I use the so-called Niqu Dock, but with the standard divider and active app indicator). And with the mixed reactions to Leopard’s folder icons and semi-transparent menubar, there’s no better time for developers of Mac UI tweak apps (ShapeShifter aside—Unsanity’s still working on that). So let’s take a quick look at this tasty morsel known as CandyBar.

The delicious chocolate coating

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Icon Quick Look in CandyBar 3.

First and foremost, CandyBar is Leopard-only, as it makes use of some Leopard-only technology. At first glance, it certainly looks like a Leopard application: no side window borders, blue sidebar, medium-gray window theme.  Beyond that, CandyBar 3 includes support for Leopard’s monster-sized 512 x 512-pixel icons, Quick Look for icon previews (it also includes a Finder Quick Look plugin for previewing icontainers), and Dock modification support. Sweet!

The soft nougat filling

Modifying the Dock is simple: drag replacement images into their respective image…
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Malcor: the last word

By Nick, November 28, 2007

I already wrote about this whole Malcor Matter (ooo, alliteration!), but that was before MacHeist confirmed that they were behind Malcor all along. Also, since I wrote my initial post, I’ve done some more thinking on the topic. Here goes nothing.

There are two issues at play here: responsibility and credibility. These two go hand-in-hand. Those who run their site in a responsible manner tend to gain credibility. Those who aren’t responsible usually lose credibility. Being a responsible blogger or tech site operator involves a number of things. It involves striving for accuracy in everything you write. It involves admitting mistakes when you are wrong. It involves respecting your readers. Last but not least, it involves honesty. If you can nail each of these, I feel that you’ll be taken seriously as a blogger and/or site operator, thus you will gain credibility.

The problem with the whole Malcor Matter is that it was flat-out irresponsible. Instead of respecting readers, the sites that took part in the Malcor Matter treated their readers as fools by leading them to believe that their sites were indeed hacked. Closely related is the issue of honesty, or lack thereof. By its very nature, the Malcor…
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Musings on Malcor

By Nick, November 27, 2007

Note: Earlier this evening, the guys over at MacHeist admitted that Malcor was their doing. This article was written before MacHeist made their admission. While there was some speculation that MacHeist was behind it, I didn’t feel like dragging them into it when I wrote this piece since there was no confirmation that they were indeed behind Malcor at that time. As such, this article assumes that the malcor “hacks” were a PR stunt carried out without MacHeist’s involvement. My opinion has changed since then, but I’m not writing any more about this mess until I’m ready to do so. Please keep this in mind as you read this article. --Ed.

It’s hard to run a tech news site or blog. It’s hard to keep writers motivated, and it’s hard maintaining and growing a readership base. For this reason, I can understand why some Mac sites participated in the Malcor hoax, which Hadley Stern of Apple Matters admitted was a bad PR stunt. I can understand why these sites would take part in an out-of-the-box way to gain publicity. No publicity is bad publicity, as the old saying goes.

That doesn’t mean it’s right, though.

Readers expect those who operate…
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