“Icon Mobile helped us with the icons and other parts of the UI, but Sprint took a more aggressive role than we ever have in designing this device,” Owens said. “It’s the most aggressive push into UI I’ve seen by a carrier, and I spent 18 years at AT&T.” Sprint conceded that the iPhone exposed a weakness in the market: user interface, so the carrier decided it needed to build a UI consistent with the iPhone experience, while creating a device that leverages the capability of Sprint’s Rev. A network. [Emphasis added]

You know, I thought one of the reasons for the iPhone’s success was that AT&T stayed the hell out of Apple’s way and had almost no impact on the UI development.

All told, 14 of the top 25 best selling MP3 players were iPods. There are only (only?, eh) 17 iPod variants and the Product (Red) versions are only available through Apple. Plainly, the silver 160 GB Classic is not carrying its own weight. Something must be done about this. Retribution will be swift and fierce.

As of 4PM on December 2nd, 14 of the 15 current generation iPods sold on Amazon were in their top 25 best selling MP3 players, at least. The Amazon best seller list may not be the most scientific of measures but, damn, that’s vaguely absurd.

1. Yeah, these are all affiliate links. I didn’t conceive of this post to go affiliate farming; I was actually curious about the status of the best sellers list and amused by the iPod’s complete dominance.

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

Nice article by Walt Mossberg concerning the state of the U.S. mobile phone industry. A little over a week ago, I was having this same discussion with several of my friends. We were trying to decide just how far back the U.S. mobile market has been set by the cellular providers. I think the consensus was at least 5 years. Even if we hadn’t all considered the iPhone an innovative device, we agreed it was good to see a phone manufacturer dictate terms to one of the cellular providers.

Guess that clearance pricing makes the low-end model even more popular.

anyone else starting to feel like there are too many versions of the
iPod?

I was slightly disappointed to see that there are now 4 entries in the iPod family. With the iPod touch, your iPod-buying decision is no longer simply a question of size/storage trade-off. Without a doubt, the iPod touch is a very interesting piece of hardware, but from an iPod standpoint, it has the same shortfall as an iPhone — limited storage. I’ve always been an iPod classic kind of guy because I wanted the hard drive space. I also enjoyed having access to all of the iPod features that the nano and mini lacked (thought the refurbished Nano’s have been tempting, if only to use with a Nike+). Now, among the screened iPods, the Classic appears to offer the the most storage space while offering fewest features. You obviously miss out on all the Touch’es iPhone-esque features while also missing the Nano’s Nike+ support (you do gain Search functionality, though, which I forgot about until visiting the new iPod classic’s features page).

Looking at the new offerings, I get the feeling that the iPod classic is not a long term product. Much like the Mac Classic marked the beginning of the end for the original Mac styling, I suspect the iPod classic represents the beginning of the end for the original iPod design. I think it’s just a matter of Apple not wanting to cede the high-capacity market while not compromising on the design of the Touch.

In addition to paying homage to a piece of Apple history, the iPod classic name rolls off the tongue better than the originally proposed name — iPod discontinued when flash prices drop.

I didn’t read anything one way or another, but it looks like the changes to the iPod OS are more than just cosmetic — according to the iPod Games section of the iTunes Store, games need to be updated to work with the iPod nano (video) and the iPod classic. Right now, Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man, and Sudoku are in-line for updates. Does this mean that the new models have made the jump to OS X? If it were simply a matter of updating the games to recognize the new iPods, I’d imagine all the games would be updated.

(Klondike, Vortex, and iQuiz have already been upgraded and come bundled with the Nano and Classic).

Follow-up thought — will Apple offer updates to anybody who already bought these games?

Mari Silbey:

Engadget is already calling the Starbucks feature weak, but I think I
disagree. (How’s that for a strong statement?) Impulse music buying is
still largely untapped. Sure you can bookmark songs with some services
in order to buy them later, but we haven’t really seen an effective
on-the-go version of this feature before.

I agree with Silbey’s assessment that the Starbucks features isn’t weak. Although I’m not the lounge-in-a-Starbucks type, plenty of people are. Starbucks has clearly found that it can make money by selling music, both in-store and via iTunes. I have to assume that Apple has found the existing iTunes-Starbucks partnership rewarding. The infrastructure costs for supporting the new integration can’t be that high. Given the number of people you already see in Starbucks with laptops and the number of iPhones and iPod touches you can expect to see, I think it’s reasonable to expect both sides to profit from this expansion to the Apple-Starbucks relationship.

See that piece sticking out the back of the hinge? That’s supposed to be connected to the screen casing. Yeah, not really happy with myself right now.

Verizon Wireless will pay the Broadcom Corporation as much as $200 million to bypass a possible ban on some handsets that use Qualcomm chips.

Something tells me that Broadcom gained a little bit of leverage in these negotiations on June 29th.

One of my first thoughts when I read about this deal was that it sounded similar to last summer’s agreement between Microsoft and Universal Music Group. You know, the one where Universal gets $1 for every Zune sold. The need to get the iPod and iPhone competitors to market caused both Microsoft and Verizon Wireless to make the sort of agreements that previously weren’t seen in their respective industries.

You have to assume that $1/player issue came up in the recent Apple-Universal negotiations. It remains to be seen how the Verizon-Broadcom deal will effect the future of the wireless phone market.

Before the International Trade Commission ban went into effect, there were rumors that Verizon was going to market the LG Prada as their competition to the iPhone. Theoretically, the ban could have provided Verizon executives with some degree of coverage in the face the iPhone’s success — “We had a plan in place to counter the iPhone, but we could not bring our new phone to market due to the ITC ban.” If the iPhone continues to rewrite sales records even in the face of Verizon’s new handsets, executives at Verizon may have nowhere to hide when shareholders question the wisdom of passing on the iPhone.

What has changed is that Apple unveiled iTunes+, complete with unprotected AAC files. In theory, these files should “just work” with TiVo’s existing AAC support. Of course, as is true of many things, the transition from theory to reality did not go as planned. As reported by The Apple Blog, iTunes+ still are not playable through HMO.

We come here not to bury TiVo, but to fix it.

On The Apple Blog, the suggested solution to this problem is to use iTunes’ Convert Selection command to convert your files to either MP3 or AAC. I’m not crazy about this, because you either take extra hard drive space storing two copies of each track or you introduce an additional lossy compression into your only copy of each track. The trick is to make TiVo Desktop recognize the “Purchased AAC audio file” type.

For the record, I’m pretty about everything that follows, but there’s always the slim chance that following my instructions could reduce you system to a smoldering pile of rubble, or something slightly less drastic. Make sure you’ve got a backup of everything and proceed at your own risk.

Inspired (heavily) by Dan Benjamin’s Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger, here we go.

What You Need

1. Mac OS X 10.4 (previous versions might work, but I have no idea).
2. Developer Tools
3. TiVo Desktop
4. Some level of comfort with the Terminal and editing some Java code.

Getting Started

Before doing anything, you need to make sure TiVo Desktop is not running. Open System Preferences and select the TiVo Desktop Preference Pane. If it says “TiVo Desktop On” underneath the TiVo logo, click the Stop button.

To keep things simple, we’re going use one working area for pretty much everything. I suggest creating a folder called tivo in your home folder. To do so, enter the following into a new Terminal window:

mkdir tivo
cd tivo

Keep the Terminal window open so you stay in this folder.

LAME

Not a social commentary on my part, LAME is the tool that TiVo Desktop uses to support AAC files. TiVO Desktop uses LAME to convert AAC files to MP3 files on-the-fly and sends the MP3 file to your TiVo. The AAC file on your hard drive remains unchanged.

You can copy the following lines into your Terminal one at a time. When the current line finished, proceed to the next line.

We’ll end up using the sudo command a few times during this process. One or more times, you may be prompted to enter your password. Do so when asked.

curl -O http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lame/lame-3.97.tar.gz
tar xvzf lame-3.97.tar.gz
cd lame-3.97
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
cd..

If you get an error like this:

checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

then you don’t have the Developer Tools installed. You should have a copy on your Tiger CDs/DVDs or you can download a copy from the Apple Developer Connection website.

JAD

JAD is a Java Decompiler. Basically, it lets you get back to the Java source code used to create Java byte code files. The portions of TiVo Desktop we care about are written in Java, so this tool will enable us to make the necessary modifications to support iTunes+ files.

JAD is not a Universal binary — there are separate Intel and PowerPC version. Make sure you download the appropriate version. Also, I have not tested the Intel version. The JAD website indicates that the Intel version is for Mac OS X 10.4.6. I assume that means 10.4.6 or newer, but I can’t be sure.

Intel

curl -O http://www.kpdus.com/jad/macosx86/jadmx158.zip

PowerPC

curl -O http://www.kpdus.com/jad/macosx/jadap158.zip

Once you’ve downloaded jar, you expand the file and make sure jad is configured as an executable.

unzip jar158.zip
chmod a+x jad

TiVoDesktop.jar

TiVoDesktop.jar is contains the Java byte code that we’re going to be modifying. We’re going to copy this into working area before making any changes, extract the byte code from the archive, and decompile the byte code we care about back into a Java source file.

cp /Library/Application\ Support/TiVo/TiVoDesktop.jar .
jar xf TiVoDesktop.jar
./jad -sjava com/tivo/util/SoundConverter.class

Editing SoundConverter.java

The jad command above will create the SoundConverter.java file, which contains the source code for the SoundConverter class. Open this in your favorite text editor and find the method named:

public static boolean isConvertibleToMPEG(String type)

This method pretty short — only 6 lines. The first 2 lines check if a TiVo will natively support the file type. The second 2 lines check if the file type can be converted into a file type a TiVo will support. The last 2 lines indicate that the file type cannot be used with a TiVo.

It’s the second 2 lines that interested us. Specifically, this line (split into 2 lines here for readability):

if(type.equals("AAC audio file") || type.equals("AIFF audio file")
    || type.equals("Apple Lossless audio file") || type.equals("WAV audio file"))

This line sees if the file type can be converted to MP3. We need to add “Purchased AAC audio file” to this list to support iTunes+ files. So, replace the above line with the following (again, 1 line in the source file, 3 lines here for readability):

if(type.equals("AAC audio file") || type.equals("AIFF audio file")
    || type.equals("Apple Lossless audio file") || type.equals("WAV audio file")
    || type.equals("Purchased AAC audio file"))

The only change was adding || type.equals("Purchased AAC audio file") between the last two closing parenthesis.

Updating TiVoDesktop.jar

Once the source code has been edited, we need to update TiVoDesktop.jar. This involves generating the byte code for the SoundConverter class and replacing the old byte code in TiVoDesktop.jar.

javac SoundConverter.java
mv SoundConverter.class com/tivo/util/
jar uf TiVoDesktop.jar com/tivo/util/SoundConverter.class

If you get an error after running the javac command, you’ve made a mistake in your code. You can either try to find your error or you can delete the SoundConverter.java file start back at the jar command under “TiVoDesktop.jar”

Replacing TiVoDesktop.jar

Now it’s time to replace the old TiVoDesktop.jar with our updated copy.

pushd .
cd /Library/Application\ Support/TiVo/
sudo mv TiVoDesktop.jar TiVoDesktop.jar.old
popd
sudo mv TiVoDesktop.jar /Library/Application\ Support/TiVo/

Finishing Up

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re pretty much done. All that’s left is to restart the TiVo Desktop (open the TiVo Desktop Preference Pane and click Start) and start playing your iTunes+ files through your TiVo.

Theoretically (there’s that word again), this should be relatively simple for TiVo to implement. However, development of TiVo Desktop for the Mac has not proceeded at a brisk pace. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next release doesn’t come out until after the release of Leopard (assuming the current TiVo Desktop doesn’t play well with Leopard).

Since I implemented this change, the only issue I’ve seen is occasional when my TiVo is playing back the converted tracks. Since the files are being converted and streamed on demand, the skipping’s probably due to the 5-year-old computer I’m currently riding like a rented mule (the skipping didn’t occur if I left the computer alone while it was streaming). I suspect that those of you with more modern hardware won’t have any problems.

…and no, I wouldn’t suggest using this trick to try and add support for Protected AAC audio files. Something tells me the results might not be pretty.

The other option would be another year of MLB.tv, but that offering left me thoroughly unimpressed last year. Supposedly, the stream quality will improve to 700 Kbps for next season (versus 350-400 Kbps last season), but you still have to contend with the blackout issues.

I have two main questions/concerns about the Slingbox.

1) How’s the video quality when streaming over the Internet?

2) What’s the impact on the location you’re streaming out of? For example, would my parents notice a slowdown if I was streaming a video off of their internet connection?

Yes, moving to DirecTV would be another option, but it’s not an idea I’m particularly fond of for several reasons. Right now, I live in an apartment, so the dish is a no-go. I like the option of having the TiVo UI, either through dedicated TiVo hardware or the upcoming TiVo software offered by Comcast. I don’t want to use satellite internet and it’s generally cheaper to bundle Internet access and television (since I don’t have a landline, DSL isn’t a real option).

Last year or so, I saw an article in the New York Times about the growing disconnect between area codes and physical location. With the advent of cell phones and nation-wide calling plans, people have been keeping their existing phone numbers when they move to new areas.

I’ve certainly seen this at since I started business school. I can think of only one classmate who switched to a local number when he moved out here. For the most part, it’s easier to keep your existing number since so many people already have it.

I seem to have found one place where this technique falls short — porting a number once you’ve moved to a new area.

I’ve been less than thrilled with T-Mobile, both in terms of coverage and in terms of phone selection. For the past few months, I’ve considered moving to Cingular, going so far as to buy a Cingular phone a few months back, only to return it due to my dis-satisfaction with some of the phone’s features. When Cingular started carrying the Sony-Ericsson w810, though, I decided to give them another shot.

I ordered the phone through Cingular.com and indicated I wanted to port my Massachusetts number. I received an error massage saying that my number wasn’t eligible, but no explanation as to what this meant. I’d already ported my number once in the past, so I just figured this was a temporary glitch and that I’d handle the situation with customer support once I received the phone. That’s how I handled porting my number the previous time.

Of course, it’s never this easy. When I called Cingular, I was told that I couldn’t port a Massachusetts phone number to a DC-based account because it was out of area. This explained why my port attempt failed when I was using the web site and, had Cingular.com indicated as such, I could’ve avoided most of the issues that arose during this whole process. To keep my Massachusetts number, I’d need to have a Massachusetts-based account.

“OK”, I said. My folks still live in Massachusetts, I can just set up my account at their place, then move the billing address down to DC. This’ll take what, 10 minutes? Of course, it wasn’t this easy. To have a Massachusetts-based account, I need a different SIM card. That’ll take 3-5 days to arrive. Then I need to active the Massachusetts account and cancel the DC account. Then I finally get to port over my existing phone number.

Had I realized all this at the beginning (or had the error message on Cingular.com been more informative), I could’ve avoided this situation by setting up a Massachusetts account at my folks place but shipped the phone to DC.

So, while the area code may be losing some of its meaning in today’s increasing cellular-dependent world, there are still some geographic hang-ups in the system. I don’t know if all carriers work this way, but it’s something you should keep in mind if you ever find yourself wanting to port a number outside the area where you originally got the number.