Category Archives: Mac

Everything about my life with Apple products

Take this iPhone…

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Earlytel, a french company, is legally selling unlocked and localized iPhone in France and the rest of Europe.

This is how French see the Apple business model for iPhone! I love that! I definitively like most Apple products but I hate their arrogant attitude and their lake of respect for customers.

Due to a specific french law, Apple is forced to sell its iPhone unlocked in parallel of its agreement with Orange…a big hole for their business model! Therefore they have decided to sell the iPhone unlocked for 1.000Euros!!! And here comes EarlyTel. Thanks guys, I like this kind of struggle

NotMac: a .Mac for all

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I love those guys! I went back to notMac Challenge website to see if someone was able to finally find a solution to simulate .Mac service from Apple with open-source code…and what did I find? YES, a guy named Ben Spink proposed a solution that seems to work. I hope I can try it soon…

Now there a business coming: setup a .mac competitor for 1/10 of the price!

Amazon.com MP3 download – Tip 1

A quick tip to keep track of your mp3 you bought in Amazon.com if you are using iTunes. On a Mac, by default, it imports your downloaded mp3 to iTunes, nice, but it does not create a specific ‘Amazon.com’ playlist to easily find them, like the ‘Purchased’ you have for titles bought on the iTunes Store. Since they are not doing it for you…DIY (Do It Yourself!):

1. Each mp3 from Amazon contains a comment with ‘Amazon.com Song ID: xxxxx’ (xxxx is a unique key per song I guess).

2. Create a smart playlist with in the comment containing ‘Amazon.com’

Done!

Amazon launches MP3 shop (DRM-free)

Finally real competition is starting on the music download market, thanks to Amazon. They have launched their MP3 (DRM-free) shop with a couple of millions of titles. They may be able to make Apple move and innovate again in this market.

I went there to try it…and guess what?…it just works! As easy as an Apple product, design and user interface excepted though! It is still limited to US titles mainly but it works even from outside US, I was able to “buy” their free song as well as buy the latest Norah Jones with my asian credit card (something you cannot do on the iTunes Store) and it was even cheaper with better audio quality than iTunes Store!

It is simply amazing how those big names they change their mind about DRM, or at least, how they are force to… Anyway it is good for us customers, and guys, you see, you make me buy music again!
Now my only wish would be that they open to all their artists, not only by country, so I can get french titles or whatever I wish. Anybody listening this?

I forgot to mention: I was able to use my Amazon account (created on Amazon France) without any problem, again iTunes is out on this point since you must create different accounts for each iTunes store.