Apple and the Podcasting Trademark

I posted a comment on the Apple/Podcasting trademark controversy earlier today on Mark's blog. While I was going to write something more extensive here, I don't have time, so I'll just repost the text of my comment here:

Changing the name would make a lot of sense. Not to sound like the Apple apologist I am, but I expected this to happen for legal reasons. I don't think anyone can deny that the Pod in Podcasting comes from iPod. No one referred to MP3 players as *pod until Apple came around with the iPod. Like any sensible trademark holder, Apple has looked down on derivative trademarks, because those weaken the trademark holder's claim to their own name (failure to defend a trademark will destroy the trademark holder's claim to the name per U.S. law –– this isn't Apple's peculiarity, it is our government's).

Note that with Linux, for a company to use Linux in their product name (e.g. Red Hat Linux), one must obtain a derivative trademark agreement from, IIRC, Linux International, Linus Torvalds's designated authority for the matter.

In the end, they did help to create it [Mark suggests they are freeloading on the podcast phenomenon], because 1/2 of the name is from their product. It would be like calling a subscription to a non–Kleenex brand “tissue of the month club” 'Leenexcasting. I'd bet a lawsuit would transpire in no time. :–)

The big point, I'd say is this: anyone who didn't see this coming was far too naive. I thought it was kind of a stupid thing to name it to begin with for this very reason. Something that played off the name blog would have made a lot more sense than Podcast, and not only from a legal perspective but descriptive one too. Moreover, Apple doesn't want the “iPod halo effect” to go over other devices like the Zune, and since a lot of podcasters are outside of the whole iPod ecosystem, I can see why they would be concerned that very thing is happening.

iTunes 7: First Impressions

Of course, I'm not one to complain with slow changes to something I like. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes. iTunes 7 ignores this advice in several areas, not the least of which is the new UI look. First we had metal, then “unified dark,” now we have what I can only think to call “unified dark professional.” The overall colors of the new release are mostly the same, but the Aqua scroll bars and other interface cues that had survived the other different looks have now given way to drabber, less shiny widgets that remind me of the ones in Apple pro apps. Given that one of Mac OS X's major selling points has always been its UI, Apple really ought to settle down on one look and be done with it (or provide a themeing system by which users can easily make their entire OS match one of the many different looks Apple likes to dabble with).

But, I digress. This should not be taken to say that I don't like the new release. The nice ordering of different types of objects (libraries, devices, store-related items, and playlists) in the side column makes a lot of sense and I already feel much more organized with the cleaner look it provides. A big addition, that has been needed for a long time, is support for gapless playing, which will make classical and live CD's much more pleasant to listen to. I have not tried this feature yet, but it would appear one thing still missing is the ability to tell iTunes to always play two or more tracks together when shuffling (for example, I have two Yo-Yo Ma tracks that really should not be played apart from one another) — this would seem to be a logical thing to add alongside gapless playing.

The new release also has some interesting new features related to album viewing. While I'm not so sure about whether the cover flip mode will really be practically useful, it was kind of fun to flip through my albums and be reminded of what they look like. The other new view, which adds grouped by album listings, probably will be more useful from a day-to-day usage standpoint. As far as eye candy goes, though, I think the best addition is the integrated album art-grabbing tool. While I have always been fine with doing it manually, and some other tools can pull decent artwork off Amazon and other places, the iTunes Music Store (now blandly just “iTunes Store”) often times had the best quality artwork. That Apple is allowing its users to use that artwork for CDs that are ripped rather than bought from the store is a nice nod to keeping customers happy (and demanding better iPods that can show all of the pretty covers).

The new iPod interface is also a much-appreciated change — especially the disk usage meter. The new meter shows how much of the iPod's space is going toward audio, photos and other stuff, so that you can understand what is filling up your iPod at a glance, rather than just knowing your iPod is full. This isn't as big of deal for those of us using 4G black-and-white and older iPods, but I'll probably find it somewhat useful on my iPod nano, and I'm sure it'll be even more useful for owners of newer 4G and 5G iPods. The curious use of the name “devices” rather than “iPods” could be explained simply as a nod to the fact that they put audio CD's under the heading — and perhaps the Motorola iTunes-compatible phone as well — but I wonder if it perhaps hints at more devices appearing in the coming months?

The update is not anything huge, but it does at least feel like a real bit of progress. I'm sure I'll find more to like (and perhaps dislike) about the update over the coming days, but for the moment, this update feels a lot more satisfying than any other iTunes release in recent memory.

iPod/iTunes

Apple made some great looking changes to the product line today. I'm especially impressed with the tiny new iPod shuffle (in an aluminum case and coming with an included dock for $79!), although the new iPod nano should fix one of the major complaints (scratching) too, now that it has become somewhat of a hybrid of the Nano 1G and the last iPod mini. The 5G iPods didn't get much of an update, but a brighter screen is always nice.

I haven't looked into the new movie store yet.

If Time Is Money...

then Google's cache just saved me mucho cash. I met a client tonight to demonstrate how to use SAFARI to edit his new site. The site uses Greek characters, and unfortunately, it seems that Greek doesn't transmit through forms very well in Internet Explorer (just as it does not work well in Apple Safari). By the time I noticed this, we had tinkered with one of the largest pages and all of the Greek had turned to gibberish.

I figured that was no problem, I'd just pull out the weekly backup. The weekly backup includes a MySQL dump of each client's MySQL data. Unfortunately, this backup too showed many of the exotic characters as gibberish — maybe my text editor doesn't support the characters, I'm not sure. At any rate, the backup wasn't going to do the trick.

Now what? Then it dawns on me. The site had recently been picked up by Google. If I just Google the URL, I can grab Google's cached copy of the page and restore it. So I did just that, and after about an hour of fruitless struggle, I was able to solve the problem with a quick cut-and-paste action. Thanks, Google!

TQ: (Programming) Languages

This week's TQ from Mark is on programming languages.

1. What was the first language that you learned/used?
If it counts, MS-DOS batch scripting. If not, then Visual Basic.

2. What is your favorite language and why?
Perl. Partly because I've just become comfortable with it, partially because it seems more efficient for most tasks I do than PHP and provides easier to read code than other alternatives such as Python.

3. What is you least favorite and why?
Of those I know anything about, Visual Basic, but the scope of my knowledge is rather limited.

4. What language would you like to learn next?
Latin, French or Spanish. Oh, sorry, programming languages. Er, right. I really don't have any big desire to learn another programming language, although back when I was more into that kind of stuff, it would have been C++.

5. What language do you have no desire to ever learn?
Fortran.

6. What language do you think is the best to start learning programming with?
Probably C/C++ just because of its flexibility.

7. What method you prefer, functional or OO?
For the most part, I've only used functional programming. I'm quite happy with that.

The Big Thing that Was Ignored

After all the hubbub had settled down over WWDC '06 itself and, especially, the alleged lack of anything “really exciting” being announced by Apple, I stumbled across something that seems to have been mostly ignored that is very exciting: iCal Server. One of Apple's major server offering weaknesses has been the lack of a groupware solution. While Mac OS X Server comes with most everything else you might want in a SMB server package, it offers nothing analogous to the full Exchange package. OpenDirectory does provide directory services using OpenLDAP and Samba, and Apple has also long included Postfix for e-mail serving — but the lack of a server counterpart to iCal has always seemed odd to me.

While not much of a deal was made of it, Apple released a number of FOSS projects at WWDC, not the least of which was Darwin Calendar Server, a python based calendar server which will be included with the next Mac OS X Server as “iCal Server”. This is much like the arrangement by which Darwin Streaming Server is known at QuickTime Streaming Server when included with the OS.

Why is this big news? To my knowledge no FOSS calendaring server has claimed Microsoft Outlook compatibility thus far. I could be wrong, but to my knowledge, such servers, as FOSS versions of older proprietary products, have been stripped of that function, necessitating the purchase of a module from the donator of the code to achieve Outlook support. Support for Apple's own iCal has been even shakier for most of these projects (though Apple claims in a case study that is no longer the case for the Zimba Collaboration Suite). Now, I'm not sure exactly how Apple has this all worked out, but if you can truly get Outlook's calendaring to work with this FOSS project, it will prove a giant boon to system administrators looking for a completely Open Source groupware solution, when assembled with the rest of the Mac OS X Server middleware stack.

Apple also released its launchd startup manager (which, let me tell you, is far faster than any other *nix launching system I've seen and dramatically reduced Mac OS X's boot time when it made its debut in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger), the latest Bonjour (f.k.a. “Rendezvous”) zero-conf implementation and the “infamous” x86 version of the Darwin kernel code. While Apple continues to keep its crown jewels closed, it still seems to be creating a very decent portfolio of in-house created FOSS projects. Moreover, while Darwin Calendar Server is not yet cross-platform, I suspect it will be in the future, just as Darwin Streaming Server is.

In other words, this is big news for everyone who desires FOSS server components, not just Apple users.

DNS Woes Fixed

Well, I called Charter today and had the DNS issue elevated to level 2 support. After doing that, apparently they got right on the issue — I am able to access my sites via my Charter's DNS again. Although using Level 3's DNS servers on my home computer worked OK, I'm glad to be back on Charter's DNS, which seems to provide a bit snappier response.

Note: I think there was some confusion by those who read my last post. The problem was not one with my server or its DNS — those were operating normally the whole time down at the Planet's NOC in Dallas, Texas. The problem had to do with the DNS service that comes with my Charter High Speed cable internet access for my home. Charter's service would not refer my computer to the authoritative name server for the sites I host (my company's DNS). I have no idea why Charter's DNS would fail to work specifically on my site (most likely it also impacted other servers that I am not aware of), but that's apparently what happened.

DNS Woes

I've been quiet today because Charter's DNS has developed a peculiar problem: it fails to resolve the sites of just one server (so far as I can tell): mine. I can access every site I normally do except those I host and provide DNS services too. The server is up and running (confirmed via remote access I have to another computer, my server monitoring tools, as well as the help of Ed and others). While I could access the server via IP, I didn't feel like changing all of my programs so that they'd do the same for what I hope is a short outage.

Right now, I'm back thanks to a suggestion to try using the DNS servers 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 in lieu of Charter's ones that are normally fed to my computer via DHCP, and using those servers I can again access my sites.

It's a revolting development to be the only one unable to access your own site!

Burning Batteries

It seems that Apple announced a massive battery recall while I was out of town. This recall, related to the largest ever electronics recall Dell made concerning batteries a short time ago, is caused by defects in the Sony produced batteries used in various laptops over the past three years. While I've not noticed any of the issues that have been ascribed to these problems, my PowerBook has one of those batteries, according to the recall information.

Sometimes getting involved in a recall is just an issue of frustration, but I'm rather happy about it, actually. My battery still works great, but is showing a bit of age after running for almost two and a half years. That this will result in me getting a new battery is really a treat.

Leopard's TextEdit to Support ODF

I'm not sure how legit this is, but one supposed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard beta tester has posted a screenshot of Leopard's version of TextEdit (roughly analogous to Windows's WordPad) that supports OpenDocument Format. See here.

Very interesting — I wonder, assuming this is legit, what else Apple might be up to with ODF?