PC World Philippines

iPad won’t be print media’s silver bullet – Ovum

By Fei on May 29, 2010

May 29, 2010

Despite forecasting a ‘gold-rush effect’ that will see the total value of downloaded applications on the iPad hitting $68.8m this year and $511.8m in 2011*, Ovum believes Apple’s much-hyped tablet device alone will fail to secure the future of news and magazine publishing.

By way of contrast, Ovum has forecast that the global mobile applications market will be worth $5.7 billion by 2014, with total paid downloads of 3.3 billion applications.

Ovum’s research indicates that volumes of the iPad will take time to build. In addition, the tablet media market will soon become as congested as the smartphone app store market.

Adrian Drury, Ovum’s principal media and broadcasting analyst and report co-author, said: “The iPad promise is a set of new distribution channels for packaged media, but it is one device and volumes will take time to build. Traditional publishing’s challenge to find a new and sustainable business model is immediate.”

He added: “Previous attempts at defining this fourth screen product category have so far failed. Apple, however, is doing more than just selling a hardware platform; it is also leveraging the content and the volume of pre-existing iPhone applications (most of which will run on the iPad) to demonstrate the utility of this form factor. Apple needs the content ecosystem to drive mass-market appeal.

“The iPad and the tablet product category are a revenue opportunity and a showcase for the future of packaged media. However, this new fourth screen does not alone represent the silver bullet for the news and magazine industry.”

Ovum forecasts total shipments of Apple’s iPad to reach 13.2 million by end of 2011 (by comparison, Apple shipped 25 million iPhones in 2009 alone).

Ovum provides clients with independent and objective analysis that enables them to make better business and technology decisions. Our research draws upon over 400,000 interviews a year with business and technology, telecoms and sourcing decision-makers, giving Ovum and our clients unparalleled insight not only into business requirements but also the technology that organisations must support. Ovum is part of the Datamonitor group.

* The report, authored by Ovum analysts Adrian Drury and Tim Renowden, is entitled Reformatting News & Magazine Media.

** This figure excludes revenues from web advertising, iTunes music and video sales and sales through the iBook bookstore. Based on empirical iPod Touch data, Ovum estimates average application revenue per user per month of $7.05 for the iPad, and discounted average application revenue per user per month of $6.35 for tablets based on Android and other platforms. Using this analysis, Ovum estimates total gross application retail revenues of $86.5m in 2010, and $570m in 2011 for the tablet market as a whole. The iPad will attract the lion’s share of this revenue, with revenues of $68.8m and $511.8m in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Assign a Keyboard Shortcut to Any Installed Program

By Fei on May 28, 2010

By Rick Broida
May 28, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO – Looking for a lightning-quick way to launch, say, iTunes? Or Microsoft Word? Or any other frequently used program?

Sure, you could drag its icon to your Quick Launch toolbar (or the Windows 7 taskbar), but then you still have to reach for the mouse every time you want to run it.

(Actually, that’s not entirely true. As Vista and 7 users may recall, each toolbar/taskbar program icon is automatically assigned a number and corresponding Windows-key shortcut.)
If you hate reaching for the mouse as much as I do, there’s a splendid alternative: assign your favorite program(s) a keyboard shortcut. It’s easy; here’s how:

1. Right-click the desktop icon for the program in question (let’s use iTunes in this example), and then choose Properties.

2. Click inside the Shortcut key field, then press whatever key combination you want to assign to that program. For iTunes, you might use Ctrl-Shift-I or Alt-Shift-A (as in Apple). The only requirement is that the shortcut start with Ctrl-Shift, Ctrl-Alt, or Alt-Shift. (You can’t, for example, just go with Ctrl-I.)

3. Click OK and you’re done! (Windows may ask you to approve administrator privileges, which you can go ahead and do.)

Now just press that key combo and presto: the app launches, no mouse required. You can set up as many of these shortcuts you want for as many programs as you want–though unless you have a really good memory, I’d limit it to a handful.

Microsoft Could Make the iPad a Great Business Tool

By Fei on February 4, 2010

By Bill Snyder
February 4, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple has made a bone-head play that damages the iPad’s potential for business. But, Microsoft, believe it or not, could come to the rescue. Here’s why:

Apple put iWork–not a great tool to begin with–on the iPad. It’s better than nothing, but while iWork can read Microsoft Office formats, it can’t be set to save DOC files by default. What a mistake. While Apple’s home and student customers may be fine with this annoying limitation, business users can’t be endlessly exporting documents to share with colleagues and customers. Unless Apple makes this important change to iWork on the iPad, the forthcoming tablet will be a good device to view written content, but will fall flat when it comes to creating it.

But suppose Microsoft (hold the boos, please) decided there was money to be made here, and created a version of Office for the tablet? Given the relative lack of storage and so on, iPad Office couldn’t be full-featured, but since most of us only use a fraction of Office’s capabilities, that wouldn’t be a show stopper. In fact, we’d have a device that would be useful for small business, and would probably cut deeply into sales of netbooks.

Apple has some additional work to do as well. If the iPad is to become the super-light computing device of choice, it has to support a full-featured browser, and that means supporting Flash. Whether Apple likes it or not, Flash is ubiquitous, and going to a Web site and getting that annoying error message and chunk of blank screen is a bummer.

Google Docs and ZOHO: Online But Not Offline

Am I serious about Microsoft stepping in? Yes, it would be a great idea, and it would make money for Microsoft. But I’d be surprised if Ballmer & Co. had the imagination to make that move. So, I don’t expect it to happen, at least not immediately.

But there are alternatives, albeit limited, you can likely use as soon as the iPad hits the stores.

Google Docs would probably run fairly well on the iPad, but there are two caveats. The first has to do with screen real estate, the second with Google Gears.

When the iPad is in the editing or writing mode, a virtual keyboard pops up, making it hard to see the tools you need to write and edit a document. You might be able to work around this issue, but it would certainly slow you down.

More serious, I think, is the lack of support for Google Gears, which is necessary to run Google docs offline. Without that capability, there’s no way to work on documents on an airplane, for example, which is a mighty big downside. When Google and the somewhat similar ZOHO are used offline, they can later be synched with the cloud versions, ensuring that you have the current versions of your documents. (Thanks to Harry McCracken of Technologizer for mentioning these points to me.)

ZOHO also needs Google gears to work offline. However, since the Safari browser already supports parts of the developing HTML 5 standard, it shouldn’t be too long until ZOHO, and likely Google, will work offline on the iPad, says Raju Vegesna, ZOHO’s chief evangelist.
HTML 5 is expected to reduce or even eliminate the need for the many of the plugins needed today by browsers. Indeed, HTML 5, which is strongly backed by Apple, should ultimately make the Flash-support issue disappear, Vegesna says. But how long that will take is unclear.

QuickOffice and Roambi Could Help

Then there’s QuickOffice, a nifty little app that runs on the iPhone and a number of its competitors. It gives basic editing capabilities to use with Word and Excel documents, and allows you to view (but not edit) PowerPoints.

Clearly, that’s not the way you want to work all the time, but I find QuickOffice helpful even when used on the small iPhone screen. It should be quite a bit better after the company tweaks its app to take advantage of the comparatively huge iPad. That should happen by the time the tablet reaches consumers, the company told me on Monday.

Roambi produces colorful charts and graphs from your spreadsheets and business intelligence reports, making complex data readable on the small iPhone screen, so it should work on the iPad. The processing occurs on Roambi’s secure server. Like QuickOffice, it is available from the iTunes app store.

Apple Tablet: Content Will Be Key

By Fei on January 21, 2010

By Ian Paul
January 21, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – On January 27, Apple is holding an event to unveil its “latest creation,” which is expected to be a 10-inch touchscreen tablet. Apple’s rumored device has been generating a lot of buzz and excitement, but it’s not clear yet whether tablet excitement — assuming that Apple really is unveiling a tablet, of course — will turn into tablet dollars at the cash register.

One factor not working in Apple’s favor is that tablet devices have never proven to be successful with paying customers. Ken Delaney, an analyst at Gartner, recently told Bloomberg that tablet computers only account for one percent of the PC market despite being around since the 1990s. Granted, Apple’s device may look more like a large iPod Touch than the traditional tablet laptop with a swivel screen, but even so Apple will need more than just flashy hardware to make its tablet product successful.

Perhaps more than any other product the company has produced, the rumored tablet will need an ecosystem of compelling content to convince people they want to buy this device. But what would that look like?

iTunes LP and iTunes Extra

The most obvious use for a tablet would be for playing back music and video sold through the iTunes store. Just like your laptop, iPod, or iPhone, an Apple tablet would offer a way to watch movies and television shows and listen to music. The device may also convince people to buy albums with the iTunes LP feature, and movies with iTunes Extras, the DVD-like special features included with movies downloaded from Apple.
Applications

It’s not clear yet what kind of an operating system Apple’s latest creation will have. If it runs a standard version of OS X then the rumored tablet will run the same computer programs your Mac does, but if the device is running the iPhone OS that opens up Apple’s wide catalog of third-party iPhone applications available through the iTunes Store.

Games

Most iPod Touch and iPhone video games are controlled by the use of an accelerometer where you tip the device to one side or the other to manipulate on-screen movements. That may be a relatively easy thing to do on a handheld device with the flick of the wrist, but a 10-inch tablet would require you to grip the device with both hands much like you would with a steering wheel, which may not be as compelling for gaming. But there are some games, such as Madden NFL 10, that make use of on-screen controls that could be more interesting, and two-player games like Touch Hockey: FS5 would be far easier to play on a bigger screen. Of course, putting iPhone games on the tablet assumes the device would be running the iPhone OS and not Mac OS X.

Books

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday morning that Apple is in talks with Harper Collins and other publishers to bring e-books to the rumored tablet device. But unlike books on the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, or any of the numerous e-readers announced at CES, books on Apple’s tablet may have interactive features including video, interviews and social networking. That may be a compelling format for a children’s book–imagine Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are with embedded clips from the movie–or business-oriented books that could benefit from interactive illustrations or news video, but do you really need interactivity when reading fiction? By my estimation you’d lose more than you’d gain reading works by John Steinbeck, Philip Roth, or Jonathan Safran Foer with interactive features.

Mags and Rags

There’s been a lot of buzz ever since Sports Illustrated unveiled its electronic magazine concept, and now there’s more news that The New York Times’ long-awaited second attempt at a paywall may be timed with Apple’s product announcement next week. Many other companies are also considering or working on new digital formats including Time Inc., News Corp., and Hearst. But there’s a big question mark hanging over the issue of whether people would be willing to pay for online content again.

About those paint splotches…

A rumor out yesterday, and first reported by Fox News, says that Apple may also be introducing new versions of iLife and a preview of iPhone OS 4.0. Is it possible that Apple’s new device will have some kind of artistic bent to it, as the company’s event invitation suggests? Could Apple’s new device be ideal for using iMovie, iPhoto or iWeb in new and interesting ways? Only a few days until we know for sure.

Control iTunes from the Windows 7 Taskbar

By Fei on November 22, 2009

By Rick Broida
November 23, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – One of my favorite Windows 7 amenities is thumbnail previews, which appear when you mouse over any running program in the taskbar.
In fact, each thumbnail has a little red X in the upper-right corner, meaning you can close that program without first having to maximize it.

iTunes takes this a step further by adding player controls. As you can see in the screenshot below, the thumbnail sports three little icons: previous track, play/pause, and next track.
These buttons work just like the controls in iTunes proper, but they save you from having to actually switch to the program whenever you want to, say, skip to the next song or temporarily pause playback.

Of course, savvy users know that you can add an entire iTunes toolbar to the taskbar in both Windows 7 and Vista, but that just adds clutter. Here you get basic playback controls without consuming extra space. Nice!

Migrating to Windows 7: Final Touches

By Fei on November 19, 2009

By Rick Broida
November 17, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – For the past month or so, I’ve been leisurely migrating to Windows 7–at my own pace. If you’ve been following along, thus far we’ve partitioned the hard drive and installed Windows 7 on a new partition, and then used a couple free programs to install favorite apps and copy over Firefox bookmarks. This week I’ll show you how to finish up the process by migrating your Apple iTunes library and copying over your data.

Move Your iTunes Library

Copying over your iTunes library is a drag-and-drop procedure, though it may take some time.

Start by making sure you’re running the latest version of iTunes in your original version of Windows (XP or Vista). Then boot to Windows 7 and install that same version of iTunes. Any mixing of old and new iTunes library files could lead to unpleasant results.

While still in Windows 7, exit iTunes, then click the Windows Explorer icon in your taskbar. (Wasn’t it nice of Microsoft to finally make Windows Explorer readily accessible?)

Browse into the Computer section; find your original Windows XP/Vista partition (on my system it was Drive D:, even though it appears as Drive C: when I boot to that partition); then navigate into the Users, Your Username, My Music, iTunes folder.

You should see various iTunes Library files and subfolders. Now, find the corresponding iTunes folder in your Windows 7 partition–but don’t open it. Instead, select all the files and folders from within the original partition’s iTunes folder, then drag them to the new partition’s iTunes folder.

Depending on how much music, video, apps, and the like you have, the copy process could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more.

Along the way, Windows will likely notify you of a few duplicate files. Make sure to select the Copy and Replace option, as you want to overwrite the newer (and mostly empty) iTunes files with the ones from your original installation.

Once Windows has finished copying everything, start iTunes. Everything should be exactly as it was in your older OS. One cool exception: When you mouse over the iTunes icon in the Windows 7 taskbar, you’ll see Play/Pause and Skip controls you can use for music playback without needing to maximize the program.

Copy Important Data

It’s time to start wrapping up the process, installing any programs that didn’t get installed earlier, copying over data files, and setting up peripherals like printers. In other words, the time has come to start living under Windows 7′s roof, returning to XP or Vista only when necessary. Before you turn off the lights and lock the door, however, make a list of the programs you still need to install and the data you need to copy. Allow me to help with the latter.

Here’s a list of common data you’ll want to make sure you don’t leave behind:

Documents: Everything in your My Documents folder, and in any other folders you use to store Word files, spreadsheets, presentations, and the like.

Music: If you don’t use iTunes, or you keep your MP3s in a folder other than My Music, make sure to copy them over.

Photos: Most folks store them in the My Pictures folder, so all you have to do is copy the contents to the eponymous folder in Windows 7. Same goes for…

Videos: Most folks store them in the My Videos folder, so copy the contents to that same folder in Windows 7.

Financial records: If you use Intuit Quicken or Microsoft Money, your best bet is probably to use either program’s built-in backup option, saving the backup file(s) to an easy-to-find spot on your Windows 7 partition (the Documents folder, for example), then run the program in Windows 7 and restore the backup.

E-mail: If you use Gmail, Yahoo, or another Web-based e-mail service, you’re golden. Just sign into your accounts as usual using your browser. However, things are a lot trickier if you hang your e-mail hat in Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Live Mail. Because I can’t cover the migration steps for all those programs here, I advise you to do a little Google searching and find the instructions you need. They’re out there.

As I’ve noted before, the beauty of this slow migration is that if you forget something, no problem: You can copy it over as needed.

At some point, perhaps after a month or so, you can make this move more permanent by shrinking the partition for the old OS and enlarging the one with Windows 7. I’ll cover that at a later time.

Apple update fixes 46 iPhone security holes, but iPod Touch owners have to pay

By Jon on June 22, 2009

IT security and control firm Sophos is urging iPhone and iPod Touch users to upgrade their devices with the latest version of Apple’s eagerly awaited operating system – not just for the enhanced usability features, but because the update fixes more than 40 security vulnerabilities.

Existing iPhone users can update their operating system for free via iTunes to version 3.0, and take advantage of a number of longed-for new features such as cut-and-paste, spotlight search and a landscape virtual keyboard. However, Sophos experts note that Apple has also included a number of important security patches inside the update, making it crucial for both sets of users to patch as quickly as possible. Sophos warns that the iPod Touch customers are required to pay $9.95 for the privilege.

According to an advisory on Apple’s Web site, iPhone OS 3.0 patches 46 vulnerabilities, including some that could potentially allow hackers to run malicious code on a user’s iPhone if they visited a booby-trapped website or viewed a specially-crafted image file.

“If left unpatched, hackers could run malware on your iPhone just by you visiting a website or viewing a maliciously-crafted image,” explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. ”Although we haven’t come across any examples of hackers creating malware to exploit these vulnerabilities as yet, it is vital that iPhone and iPod Touch users understand the importance of this latest update. Without it, they are leaving themselves potentially wide open to attack – it pays to remember that no operating system is invincible.”

“There’s no doubt that some iPod Touch users will be unhappy that they have to pay for their devices to be fixed, and it’s certainly unusual for a company to charge for important security patches like this,” continued Cluley. “In an ideal world Apple would make free fixes available for iPod Touch users who don’t feel they need cut-and-paste and other new features, but do want to be able to use the internet securely.”

For more information, please visit: www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/06/18/apple-update-fixes

Convert iTunes Store music files

By blogadmin on March 15, 2009

By Kirk McElhearn

Macworld.com

February 17, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – One of the biggest announcements made by Apple during the recent Macworld Expo was the news that, soon, all music sold by the iTunes Store will be free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Currently, some 80% of music sold on the iTunes Store is without DRM, with the remainder to follow by the end of March.

While this frees up iTunes Store purchases for playback on other devices, or with other software, there may still be a hurdle if you don’t use a compatible device, or if you want to use these files with Windows software. For the music files sold by Apple are in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format. (Contrary to what many believe, this is not a “proprietary” format owned by Apple, but rather part of the MP4 specification.) But not many devices support AAC. Aside from Apple’s offerings, Microsoft’s Zune, the SanDisk Sansa, several Sony devices (the PlayStation Portable, Walkman and some phones), the Sonos Digital Music Player, the Squeezebox, and some other devices can play back AAC files. A handful of player programs support AAC, but not some of the most commonly used Windows programs such as Windows Media Player. But nearly every digital music player can play back the more ubiquitous MP3 format, as can most home DVD players and car stereos (via MP3 CDs).

If you want to take advantage of the vast catalogue of music available on iTunes (while Amazon.com has a broad selection, iTunes still has many exclusive albums, or albums with bonus tracks, and, in some areas, has a wider range of music), why not buy AAC files and convert them to MP3 if you want to use them on non-Apple devices? Some people think it’s heresy to convert music from one format to another, but, in reality, if you convert a 256 kbps AAC file to a 256 kbps MP3 file, you won’t hear any difference or degradation.

Converting these files with iTunes is pretty simple. Choose iTunes: Preferences, click the General tab, then click on the Import Settings button. If you have never changed the default settings, this will be set to AAC Encoder at 128 kbps (what Apple calls High Quality). Choose MP3 Encoder from the first menu, then, in the second menu, choose Custom, then 256 kbps. (Use this bit-rate, which is the equivalent of the iTunes Plus AAC files’ bit-rate so you lose as little quality as possible.) Then click OK twice to save your settings.

Next, create a playlist with the tracks you want to convert. Select them all, then choose Advanced: Create MP3 Version. iTunes will take a few minutes (depending on how many tracks you’re converting), and will make you new MP3 versions of your files. In order to find which they are–they’ll be filed together in your library with the originals–check your Recently Played playlist, or create a smart playlist where Kind Contains MPEG and Date Added Is today’s date, in the form 1/20/09. Next, Control-click on one of the tracks and choose Show in Finder. If iTunes organizes your music, you’ll find all the tracks for a given album in the same folder; just spot the MP3 versions and copy them to another folder or device.

(If you often change from one format for ripping your music from CD to another when converting files, you might want to use Doug Adams’ Quick Convert script. It lets you convert tracks using your choice of encoders, then restores your encoding preferences after conversion.)

So the above technique works for iTunes Plus files, which are DRM-free, and which allow you to convert them to other formats. But what if you have older iTunes files with DRM? You can’t use the same technique; iTunes will tell you that can’t convert protected files to other formats. So the trick here–which is a bit time consuming–is to burn your music to CD, then rip it from the CD in MP3 format. Don’t bother ripping at a bit-rate higher than 160 kpbs (iTunes files with DRM are 128 kbps, but it is commonly agreed that AAC files are better at lower bit-rates; using 160 kbps for MP3 should retain the same level of quality). You’ll then be able to have DRM-free files to use on other devices, while you wait for the true death of DRM.

Convert Your iTunes Purchases to MP3s

By blogadmin on March 15, 2009

By Rick Broida

PC World (US)

January 21, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – As you’ve probably heard by now, Apple just announced plans to ditch DRM for good. That means all songs you purchase from iTunes will arrive on your PC without the usual copy-protection shackles.

However, this doesn’t give you carte blanche. Because Apple still encodes songs using the proprietary AAC format, your downloads won’t play in many phones, PDAs, MP3 players, and so on.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to convert iTunes Plus purchases (i.e. the DRM-free versions of songs) to the universally compatible MP3 format. Here’s how.

In iTunes, go to Edit, Preferences, General. Click the Import Settings button. Change the Import Using option to MP3 Encoder. In the Setting field, choose Custom, and then set Stereo Bit Rate to your desired setting (I recommend 256 kbps or 320 kbps). Click OK three times to exit the various windows.

Now you’re all set to convert any iTunes Plus download to the MP3 format. To do that, right-click the song and choose Create MP3 Version. Wait a minute or so and presto: iTunes plops an MP3 copy of the song into your library.

Note that you’ll have now both versions of the song in your library, so you’ll have to do a little housekeeping.

The bigger downside is that converting from AAC to MP3 necessarily involves some loss of audio fidelity. Not much, but if you’re a purist, you may want to skip iTunes altogether and buy MP3s outright from a store like AmazonMP3.

Convert iTunes Store music files

By blogadmin on March 5, 2009

By Kirk McElhearn
Macworld.com
February 17, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – One of the biggest announcements made by Apple during the recent Macworld Expo was the news that, soon, all music sold by the iTunes Store will be free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. Currently, some 80% of music sold on the iTunes Store is without DRM, with the remainder to follow by the end of March.

While this frees up iTunes Store purchases for playback on other devices, or with other software, there may still be a hurdle if you don’t use a compatible device, or if you want to use these files with Windows software. For the music files sold by Apple are in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format. (Contrary to what many believe, this is not a “proprietary” format owned by Apple, but rather part of the MP4 specification.) But not many devices support AAC. Aside from Apple’s offerings, Microsoft’s Zune, the SanDisk Sansa, several Sony devices (the PlayStation Portable, Walkman and some phones), the Sonos Digital Music Player, the Squeezebox, and some other devices can play back AAC files. A handful of player programs support AAC, but not some of the most commonly used Windows programs such as Windows Media Player. But nearly every digital music player can play back the more ubiquitous MP3 format, as can most home DVD players and car stereos (via MP3 CDs).

If you want to take advantage of the vast catalogue of music available on iTunes (while Amazon.com has a broad selection, iTunes still has many exclusive albums, or albums with bonus tracks, and, in some areas, has a wider range of music), why not buy AAC files and convert them to MP3 if you want to use them on non-Apple devices? Some people think it’s heresy to convert music from one format to another, but, in reality, if you convert a 256 kbps AAC file to a 256 kbps MP3 file, you won’t hear any difference or degradation.

Converting these files with iTunes is pretty simple. Choose iTunes: Preferences, click the General tab, then click on the Import Settings button. If you have never changed the default settings, this will be set to AAC Encoder at 128 kbps (what Apple calls High Quality). Choose MP3 Encoder from the first menu, then, in the second menu, choose Custom, then 256 kbps. (Use this bit-rate, which is the equivalent of the iTunes Plus AAC files’ bit-rate so you lose as little quality as possible.) Then click OK twice to save your settings.

Next, create a playlist with the tracks you want to convert. Select them all, then choose Advanced: Create MP3 Version. iTunes will take a few minutes (depending on how many tracks you’re converting), and will make you new MP3 versions of your files. In order to find which they are–they’ll be filed together in your library with the originals–check your Recently Played playlist, or create a smart playlist where Kind Contains MPEG and Date Added Is today’s date, in the form 1/20/09. Next, Control-click on one of the tracks and choose Show in Finder. If iTunes organizes your music, you’ll find all the tracks for a given album in the same folder; just spot the MP3 versions and copy them to another folder or device.

(If you often change from one format for ripping your music from CD to another when converting files, you might want to use Doug Adams’ Quick Convert script. It lets you convert tracks using your choice of encoders, then restores your encoding preferences after conversion.)

So the above technique works for iTunes Plus files, which are DRM-free, and which allow you to convert them to other formats. But what if you have older iTunes files with DRM? You can’t use the same technique; iTunes will tell you that can’t convert protected files to other formats. So the trick here–which is a bit time consuming–is to burn your music to CD, then rip it from the CD in MP3 format. Don’t bother ripping at a bit-rate higher than 160 kpbs (iTunes files with DRM are 128 kbps, but it is commonly agreed that AAC files are better at lower bit-rates; using 160 kbps for MP3 should retain the same level of quality). You’ll then be able to have DRM-free files to use on other devices, while you wait for the true death of DRM.

Posts Tagged ‘ iTunes ’