Other than a bit of head scratching after the announcement in June, I’ve been quiet about Apple’s switch to Intel processors. Now, ArsTechnica’s Jon “Hannibal” Stokes has written some of the most intelligent material I’ve seen since.

How’s it work? Hannibal thinks Apple’s relationship with IBM soured to the point where they refused to play the game. And Apple is imagining a world of devices Macs, iPods, and as yet unannounced portable, personal lifestyle devices. The announcement Apple didn’t make is its switch to Intel’s XScale processors for those portable devices.

It’s worth reading the whole story.

tags: apple, arstechnica, big switch, intel, ipod, mac, personal lifestyle, switch to intel, wwdc, xscale

I’m not sure what to think about Steve J’s WWDC announcement (video stream) of Apple’s switch to x86 processors. Coverage at MacNN, Mac Rumors, Ars Technica, etc. I’m not sure, but it would be easier to take if I wasn’t the only one who saw conspiracy in it. Does this relate to Intel’s recent shoehorning of DRM onto the CPU?

It wasn’t long ago that I was praising Apple for making devices that served the remix world that exists in the void between fair use and copyright infringement, but moves since then have concerned me. I live with iTunes DRM, but can I tolerate DRM throughout the OS all the way down to the hardware? Can I tolerate something that eliminates the (entirely legal) me2me sharing that I expect (and is revered in the analog world)?

Anyway, there’s some mixed news about PPC on X86 emulation that will be part of the next OS release, and I expect the jabbering about the effect of this announcement will last all summer. Here’s some now from MacNN, and PowerPage. And here’s something I can laugh at.

Technorati Tags: apple, arstechnica, copyright, cpu, drm, emulation, guinea pigs, intel, itunes, macc, macintosh, macnn, macrumors, pcworld, ppc, tomshardware, wwdc, x86, x86 emulation, x86 processors

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did another one of his monkey acts when he went ape about music and DRM.

Most people still steal music…We can build the technology but there are still ways for people to steal music.

The most common format of music on an iPod is ’stolen’.

It could just be a picture of what happens when Microsoft wakes up and realizes it doesn’t own and can’t control everything, but it also reveals a lot about where the company is going. Ballmer could have said that the shifting of purchased music from one device or format to another is a legally protected form of fair use (at least for now). Instead, he argued something like “Microsoft’s DRM is the only solution to piracy.” Anyway, it’s a crock of shite. Teleread (always an anti-DRM advocate) has picked up on it.

– And –

tags: arstechnica, content, content consumer, content creator, copyfight, copyright, copyright law, drm, ipod, piracy, shite, steve ballmer

Copyfight’s Donna Wentworth reports on an article by Laura Murray about copyright law in Canada. Here are some items quoted from that work:

Spend more than a few minutes browsing Canadian court rulings, policy materials, or public hearings on copyright, and you will come across somebody seeking or promoting “protection.” “Protection” seems to be a good thing, and somehow copyright provides it, or should be providing it. But protection of what? Protection from what? … Only a few argue for protection of consumers or those whose creativity builds on copyrighted works, and fewer still the citizenry or the public domain.

How do we differentiate between “creator” and “consumer?” Are they really “distinct entities placed on either side of a fulcrum(?)”

In fact, as many have pointed out, we cannot draw a firm distinction between “creators” and “users”: every single person alive on earth is a consumer of culture, and anyone who ever puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) is also a creator.