Forgive my triple Post Hiccup. When Textmate posted my blog posts, I got errors.
Thinking the post had not completed, I retried until I figured out the problem.
If you use Wordpress V2.3 and post with Textmate, then don’t try to add a new category when posting an article. You get this problem:
Fatal error: Cannot use object of type WP_Error as array in wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 1010
Looks like I am not the only one.
Practically un-announced, Apple have made available a limited number of TV shows on the Australian iTunes Music Store.
While I commend the move, I have to question their pricing. The US store offers TV shows @ USD$1.99 per episode (with Some more expensive) The Australian Store offers the episodes @ AUD$2.99, which equates to approximately USD$2.85.
Why the difference? You can’t tell me Apple has set-up different infrastructure and have different hosting for Media in Australia. They are not paying to send the data over international links. So why the over 40% increase in pricing from the US?
I think the local media companies and licensers got greedy. It is as simple as that.
It’s not just the price that gets me down. The content is different. The continually stupid regionalisation of content has shown to be a road block to people GLOBALLY. For example:
Yes this is a global economy people. The ease of Torrent sites to circumvent this division of content drives the end user towards increased use of torrents. It is now apparently easier to get a season of your favourite show from the internet than wait for it to appear on TV; or on iTMS. The only people wising up to this are the Movies Studios whom now do simultaneous global releases, because they were losing too much money.
Until the pricing on the Apple store is the same, and Australia gets the same releases as the US at the same time (on TV or on iTMS) - people will continue to use torrent sites as their source of the latest TV shows from the USA. Plain and simple - “Listen up Media conglomerates!!”
Update: It looks like they did release a press release yesterday.
I’m not posting much these days since I’m currently heavily involved in a current development and build effort for a Client. (Solaris platform with Oracle 10g)
All other hours are either commuting, sleeping or playing WoW. Look forward to a number of upcoming posts on Dansguardian SQL logging, OpenBSD and of course Apple and the iPhone.
Zug Zug…. you WC3 fans will know what I mean.
Apple now have links to two of the major carriers in Australia from their Australian iPhone website. Telstra are, not surprisingly, missing from this list.
My preference is Vodafone so I clicked through and pre-registered with them. You can do so too at their pre-registration page - and apparently a sales rep will call you back. I’m currently with them on the $79 cap, so I should be able to carry right on and hopefully get the best data plan possible. More details after a Sales person calls me.
Now that we know the 3G iPhone is coming to Australia in July, I was reading back through the pre-announcment 3G rumours to see what where true. Late last month, Afterdawn wrote that according to an anonymous insider, the iPhone will be faster on Telstra by the end of 2008.
If you follow through and read their referenced article at Electronista then the story changes slightly. They state that the iPhone will allegedly support up to 42Mbps by the end of 2008 in Australia (on NextG is inferred) “according to a senior offical“.
One more click through to the claim at ITNews and the referenced senior official is actually Sol Trujilo the Telstra CEO; and the article doesn’t mention anything about the iPhone. It is about Telstra offering a HSDPA+ service via their NextG by end of 2008.
The 3G iPhone does actually support the NextG frequencies which operate on 850 Mhz. The technical specifications on Apples iPhone page show that the 3G unit works on UMTS/HSDPA frequencies of 850, 1900 and 2100 MHz. This doesn’t mean the 3G chipset actually supports these NextG speeds.
Telstra have not yet announced the iPhone to be available through them despite Optus and Vodafone issuing press releases intending to carry the phone.
And now we come to the price. Stevie J announced in his Keynote Speech that the price of the 8GB model would not exceed USD$199 even in other countries. That comes in at about AUD$210 for an iPhone 3G 8GB at todays exchange rate. Historically there is a severe markup of 30% or more on products sole in Australia out of the USA, made by Apple.
We will see where there goes in the near future when pricing is actually announced. I’ll see you all with your new iPhone in July!
