CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XLVII: NBC Universal chief says Apple "destroyed" music pricing

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker clearly did not get enough raisins in his cereal this morning, because dude was not holding anything back during that speech he gave at Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications -- in addition to saying NBC had made only $15M in iTunes video sales despite being the number one producer of content, he flat-out said that Apple and iTunes had "destroyed the music business" in terms of pricing and that video was next unless "we take control." Of course, seeing as consumers can access Universal's entire music catalog with various subscription services for under $10 a month ($36 a year, in the case of Yahoo Music) and entire NBC shows for free on the web, but still choose to buy songs and shows straight-up on iTunes anyway, it might be fair to say that NBC Universal is still figuring out how to monetize its content effectively, but really, where's the fun in that? Round 7, fight!

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Toshiba A2 HD DVD Player for $200 at Circuit City

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

When they say "competition's good," they obviously meant "competition means cheap HD DVD players": Wal-Mart's $198 Toshiba HD-A2 has been copied by Circuit City, which is now selling the same player for $197.99 online. Add it to your cart, and see for yourself. As one tipster said, with deals like this popping up this early, signs are looking good for one helluva Black Friday.

[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]

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Sprint Sprints to be the First to Agree to Phone Unlocking [Sprint]

from Gizmodo by Haroon Malik

Sprint has become the first American CDMA wireless company to begin unlocking their hardware once contracts have been honored. The move will allow other unlocked handsets to function on Sprint's network, but whether the reverse will occur with the other carriers is yet to be seen. For ex-Sprint customers who are happy with their phones but want to move to a different provider, it will not be imperative to purchase a new handset for the switch. This is because the unlocked handsets will function on all compatible carriers across the board. Well done to Sprint for being the first out there to get the, now inevitable, mass unlocking phenomenon well underway. [Boy Genius Reports]

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The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You [Mac OS X Leopard]

from Lifehacker by Gina Trapani

If you're running Leopard and you've got an external hard drive, you will back up your data, even if that wasn't your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac. That's because Leopard's system snapshot mechanism, Time Machine, is dead simple to enable—and Leopard prompts you to turn it on the moment you plug in your FireWire drive. You'll think, "why not?" and why not indeed.

In System Preferences, Time Machine has exactly two settings: the On/Off switch, and what backup drive it should use. Once it's on, it creates hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots of your Mac, and automatically deletes the oldest ones when you run out of space on your drive—no user configuration required (or even possible, as far as I can see).

That terrible day you delete a file you need, to restore a past snapshot you'll use Time Machine's overwrought interface to fly back through space and time to that happy day when your file did exist. Gimmicky? Sure. But Mac guy John Gruber says that's a good thing:

Apple has made something so effect-laden and so extraordinary that users want to see it in action—the fact that that something is backups, which, let's face it, is effectively a chore, is a noteworthy achievement. Making backup software that people can't wait to try, and which, once activated, just automatically kicks in and does its thing on a regular schedule, is like making people want to go ahead and sign up for life insurance.

In short, Apple's used the best productivity trick in the world: to make the right thing to do the easy thing to do. Leopard's release will no doubt bring on an uptick of Mac users who diligently back up their system and data without even thinking about it.

Leopard [Daring Fireball]

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Leopard Hacked For Self-Hating PC Users [Hacks]

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

We had written a very smug, Macs rule PCs drool post reporting that PC users could run Leopard. And then our Mac froze up and we lost it all. So now you just get the news straight, without our giggling. The news, once again: OSX Leopard has been hacked to work on all Intel PCs, and the process is ridiculously simple, requiring a small .zip and a touch of blank media. [UPDATE: And it looks like you need Tiger pre-installed, too.]

Of course, by installing Leopard on a PC, you are endangering the stability of the space/time continuum, risking not just the future of the Earth and our own humanity, but the existence of everything in the Universe. And we could never condone anything that Back to the Future told us was best avoided. [ OSx86]

Thanks Jason!

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