#FF00AA

@apple@

If you’ve got a Core 2 Duo Mac and you don’t want to buy the new AirPort Express, there’ll be a patch to activate 802.11n, and it’ll cost five bucks… because of accounting requirements due to the post-Enron law.

the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point.

It’s so absurd (especially in those times of financial scandal around Apple and Jobs) that I want to believe they’re for real — it would make any sense as a marketing decision.

John Gruber:

Back when the 5.5G iPod were announced in September, there was a bit of speculation about why certain of the new features, like searching, weren’t made available via a firmware update for owners of original 5G iPods. A couple of friends at Apple told me their best guess was that it was for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley.

I’m not much for granting Apple the benefit of the doubt these days, but I still choose to believe that one.

 

@apple@

The iPhone’s lackluster battery life isn’t only bad for its users, but for everyone. Just like you can’t get a phone with a monochrome screen and better battery life anywhere now (remember when you could read the time on your phone without waking it up to get backlighting? ah, good times), the market is going to follow as soon as Apple demonstrates that you can get many, many people to buy a cellphone that needs charging every night just so it can be thinner.

 

@apple@

I don’t understand why having the Beatles on the iTunes Store would be a big deal. People who like them are likely to own the CDs already, aren’t they? And I don’t think that iTunes or iPod quite need the popularity symbol anymore.