Thoughts on today's Apple announcements

Apple made some recent software and hardware announcements which, once again, have both excited and angered me:

1. New MacBook pro 17 inch model

This is a great move that people were expecting, since the MacBook 13 inch and MacBook Pro 15 inch received upgrades, it was just a matter of time. While I think a removable battery is a priority for some, if the battery really has an 8 hour life on a full charge, I think people will make an exception.


2. iLife and iWork

Love, love, love that iWeb now supports true FTP publishing (at least, that seems to be the case). I have multiple sites, and it's been a hassle to publish them to a folder, then publish them seperately using another program. This is an excellent feature.

The lessons for Garageband are neat, but more geared towards beginners, so I probably won't use it. I am curious to see what new software instruments and effect are built into the new version. With the launch of iwork.com, I'm hoping they one day incorporate something similar for Garageband, that allows users to collaborate on songs.

iPhoto's face recognition and tagging features are great, and the fact that it will sync to and pull info from Facebook is just outstanding. It will take some work to get into the habit of using it though (I still haven't quite caught on to organizing my photos into events).


3. iTunes Music Store - Layered Pricing & DRM Free Music

At first, I was absolutely ecstatic about a completely DRM free (no proprietary security that only lets songs be played on iTunes/iPods) iTunes store. I could not wait to upgrade my songs to DRM free. Then I found out there was a 30 cent price tag to upgrade - per song.

I've been purchasing from the iTunes store since 2005, and have accumulated over 4,200 tracks since then. That means I would be paying about $1,300 to "free" my tracks. I already paid my dollar for each song, and the DRM free songs are a dollar. I understand charging something to recover the cost of providing bandwidth for users to download the new versions of the tracks, but charging 30% of the cost a song just to upgrade is mean. It a decision that is made 100% in the interest of making money, and 0% in the interest of making customers happy. For, I feel like I'm being punished for having supported iTunes for so long, while new users are reaping the benefits.

To be fair, Apple probably isn't solely to blame; I'm sure the record companies are pocketing most of that money. Their greed is only going to backfire when users revert to stealing music instead of upgrading the stuff they have. I might accept 5, maybe even 10 cents per track, but this is just unacceptable to me. Apple made the right decision when they gave a credit to the first iPhone buyers after dropping the price after 2 months. I certainly hope they consider making a similar choice in this case - they should be rewarding the loyal customers who helped turn iTunes into the #1 music retailer in the United States.