Views from the Ivory Tower

 by Ted Bade 

As Apple products continue to grow in popularity, we are going to see some companies do their 

best to perpetuate the misconceptions of the past about Apple and its products. Those guys in 

Redmond will no doubt, be more then happy to fuel these misconceptions and use their clout as 

the most popular as well as the richest technology company to this end.  

For instance, I have a Tivo Digital video recorder. It would be nice to make backups of certain 

shows I have watched to see them again at some later date. If I owned a Windows PC, I could do 

this. somehow, someone has convinced the people at Tivo Corporation to only support 

Window's Media Players digital rights management (DRM). And for some unknown reason, the 

version of Window's Media Player for the Macintosh doesn't provide this feature.  

I expect to see other covert attacks at Apple and its computers and other devices as time goes on. 

I suggest we all complain bitterly to those vendors that leave the Macintosh out of their equation. 

With enough people complaining, perhaps we can make a difference! 

iTunes 4.9 brings Podcasts to your Mac   We have been hearing a lot about Podcasts. A 

Podcast is an audio show produced to be disseminated across the Internet and listened to on an 

iPod. The material it contains could be anything one can imagine. Think of it as AM radio talk 

shows on steroids. Anyone with basic computer equipment can produce one and you don't have 

to live near a radio station that broadcasts it to listen. Mostly, you find Podcasts by visiting web 

sites of interest. If the person or organization offers a Podcast, you can download it. There are 

literally thousands of different Podcasts available on the Internet.  

Apple now provides any iTunes user easy access to most of them. Using iTunes version 4.9 you 

will see a new item in your playlist area, called Podcast. There is also an area in the iTunes 

music store that lets you search through the giant list of Podcasts to find one or more right for 

you. In this area the Podcasts are organized by topic, such as Arts & Entertainment, comedy, 

politics, science, technology, and more. Each of these categories has one or more sub category. 

Chances are there are more then one Podcast you will find interesting. Apple has made these 

items easily accessed by organizing links. They also provide automatic updates. Once you use 

iTunes to subscribe to the Podcast, you can easily access new ones from that author or group 

with iTunes. You can listen to the Podcasts on your computer or on your iPod.  

I think this is really terrific. Apple has provided easy access to the thoughts of anyone wishing to 

express themselves for whatever cause!   

Intel chips   I have seen a lot of conjecture about why the move from the PPC platform to Intel 

as a chip for Macs. In one quote I read, a representative of IBM mentioned that they could have 

kept up better production of the PPC chips and they don't know why Apple decided to leave that 

chip.  

Perhaps they could have, but from where I am sitting it looks like they didn't produce better 

chips. Moving from Motorola to IBM chips only stalled the change to a new chip format. If IBM 

could have made a better chip, they should have. Frankly, I believe that the sales to Apple are 

  MPN, LLC 2005 macCompanion 

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August 2005, Volume 3 Issue 8