Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Whoever made this, “mad propz” as they say. FairUse4WM is a tool that strips WindowsMedia DRM 10 and 11 (not DRM 9)—it surfaced first on Engadget. This is the kind of protection that the tracks you listen through subscription services (Rhapsody, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Napster, etc.) come with. The app looks easy to use and [...]
More details on Zune’s interface and features: nice write-up from the iLounge guys:
The big question being asked around these parts right now is whether Zune has any feature so compelling that it can really rival the iPod juggernaut. Right now, the feeling is that Microsoft may have gotten a few things closer to right than [...]
“Zune: what we know, think we know, and don’t yet know”: ...and there goes our own lengthy post on Zune wasted (it was already written and scheduled to go live this week). This is the best wrap-up on Zune so far.
Two MS employees working on the Zune project are talking about it on their blogs: [...]
According to a WSJ story (registration req. to read the article—ATRACLife has republished it), Sony admitted to reporters they failed to meet the initial sales target for their new line of models introduced over the past year. Sony president Ryoji Chubachi, who was quoted saying “We miscalculated with the Walkman”, declined to point out a [...]
A few days ago the beta version of WMP 11 surfaced, it sports a cleaner look than its predecessor (we had posted a preview with screenshots back in March) and features a built-in music store (like the iTunes Music Store within iTunes) called Urge. Urge is the fruit of collaboration between MTV Networks and Microsoft; [...]
BusinessWeek runs a piece on Tim Schaaff, Sony’s Senior VP of Software Development: the man who left Apple to undertake a huge task—make Sony’s software work. That means bringing the various departments closer, giving more power to software developers and keeping a low profile so as not to collide with the rather autonomous hardware engineers.
Review: [...]
RealNetworks’ CEO gets $2.9M bonus for the settlement with Microsoft: remember that the deal got Real a nice $460M in hand and collaboration with MS on several departments.
Microsoft considering coming up with their own PSP competitor: PSP, PSP, PSP. As suggested by Xbox division’s boss Peter Moore, the thinking is to add gaming capabilities to the device; so there’s no way on earth this is going to be an iPod competitor (as I’ve already read in tons of sites).
PMC v2 allows OEMs to add support for more codecs: from Jason Dunn’s notes at the recent Mobius 2005 conference:
New devices will have user interface extensions that allow OEMs to add new menu items. OEMs will also be able to distribute new CODEC support via Flash ROM updates. This is a great update, because it [...]
Jobs says Microsoft should come up with their own MP3 player: based on the sensible rationale that you can’t achieve perfect synergy unless you make both the hardware and software on your own.
What’s going to happen is that Microsoft is going to have to get into the hardware business of making MP3 players. This [...]