Tag: iPod

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Tapbots on the iPhone OS 3.0 adoption rate:

The data seems pretty clear. Prior to June 8th we have a fairly low adoption rate of ~3%. Starting on June 9 this jumps up to 6-8%, which can be directly tracked to the developer release at WWDC. Starting on June 17th we get a huge jump as all the non devs start upgrading. We’re currently running at an overall 75% upgrade rate which is pretty insane considering the number of devices and the fact that its only been 5 days.

The article is a great read both because this level of uptake in an upgrade release is phenomenal—even with the iPod touch, which is around 50% (and you have to pay $10 for it)—and because the statistics and data in the post are, well, really nerdy.

Apple deserves credit for making the upgrade process more or less an automatic thing. You sync the device, it checks for updated software, and shouts at you to upgrade. A couple of clicks and some time later, and you’re good to go. Lots of things should be so easy and decided for you.

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I’ve recently been performing some research into so-called “social DRM” as it applies to digital files for my own knowledge bank. I’ve been very interested in the approaches to DRM shown by groups such as The Pragmatic Programmers and ebooks purchased from outlets like Lulu, where the name of the purchaser is automatically embedded within the purchased file in order to provide it with some measure of discouraging sharing/piracy.

iTunes has done this from the start, and even though they have dropped the traditional notion of DRM from their music files now, they still mark each and every file you download with the email address of the Apple ID used to purchase the song. It’s not used in any sort of enforcement application (that we know of to date), but knowing it’s there stops some people from posting the tracks publicly or sharing them with anyone who is not a close personal friend or relative (my conjecture).

In doing this research, I ran across a two year old blog post from Bill McCoy of Adobe. He has some words to say about the same, which is fascinating coming from the GM of their ePublishing department. His comments are in reaction to the Steve Jobs note from 2007 regarding music and DRM—something that ended up happening less than two years after the fact. I also ran into some more recent comments from McCoy, speaking to the establishment of a DRM standard that is cross-platform instead of complete advocacy for the removal of traditional DRM systems from ebook titles.

Let’s talk about why this isn’t feasible and how we can learn from the past.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Ebook DRM Standards”

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I’m now the proud owner of one 16-gigabyte iPod touch, and after a good half-day of messing with it and playing to try and figure the thing out, I have to say that I’m coming away from the first experiences very, very impressed. I find that music library management is going to be difficult for me, at least at first, as I’ve just now filled up my 40-gig fourth generation iPod, and Smart Playlists have become much more important for both iPods. I may have to pick up a 160-gig iPod classic at some point to continue to have at least one device that contains my entire music collection.

In any case, I wanted to jot down some of my thoughts for those who read, so if you’re thinking about picking one up, or you have questions about it, I figure more of those will be handled by what I have to say. You can already see some of my commentary in my tweets from earlier this evening, while I was messing around with it.

Continue reading “It’s iPod, Except with More… Touching… in a Good Way…”