August 21, 2009, 4:58 PM — Three things to contemplate while we wait for new iPods and whatever else our heat-addled fancies can cook up at the tail end of summer.
1. Snow Leopard is coming
Maybe as soon as a week from today, according to a raft of anecdotal evidence. (Incidentally, that first link is to IDG Norway. We dig hard so you don't have to.) Now, this isn't really news, though "August 28" sounds a lot better than "September" (still the official line from Apple). But who knows, maybe there will be something nifty in iTunes 9 - which you'd think will debut along with new iPods in a couple of weeks, dubious screenshots notwithstanding - that's tied to the new OS version. This iTunes-OS link would be a first, but 10.6 will introduce the new and improved Quicktime X media framework, and a few only-on-Snow-Leopard features would give a boost to upgrade sales. This could be especially important because while Snow Leopard lacks the usual eye-catching new features (hence the $29 price), Apple has a lot riding on getting users (and hence developers) to move up to the new underlying technologies.
2. Keep your hands off my people!
Bloomberg reports that Steve Jobs approached Ed Colligan, the then-CEO of Palm, with a proposal to stop recruiting one another's employees. Colligan is alleged to have turned the offer down, calling it "wrong" and "likely illegal." Assuming things happened as reported, Colligan is right on both counts. But it's also obvious that Palm had zero incentive to agree to a deal, since they got much of the talent behind their company-saving Pre directly from Apple. None of this could have been a surprise to Apple, which suggests that the offer was less a proposal than a threat: "Leave our people alone, or else ..." Or else what? We shall see.
3. Music and books
Finally, a note on the increasingly cynical opposition to the proposed settlement between Google and the publishing industry. This doesn't have much to do with Apple directly, since they haven't shown any interest in selling books themselves. But there's one persistent analogy comparing Apple to Google that's misplaced and has been muddying the waters around the settlement. This is the idea that Google is working to set up an "iTunes for books," that is, a legal digital marketplace where none currently exists. This isn't really right even on its face, since we already have the Kindle store and others, but the true problem is deeper. What was revolutionary about the iTunes Store was that Apple negotiated with the labels to make the music they (the labels) owned available online under reasonable-ish terms. The whole problem in the Google books case has to do with so-called "orphan works," where no one knows who owns them, so no one can negotiate terms for online sales. The publishers' part of the deal covering in-print books is no problem, exactly because it's just like the iTunes Store. You can think what you like about the wisdom of the orphan works provisions in the settlement and the rights registry it envisions, but these have nothing to do with an Apple-style agreement about current content.
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