Morning Music Notes – Apple’s Sandpaper for Your Fingers
Arcade Fire Album Likely Out….at the End of 2013
We know Arcade Fire are in the studios, so when is the album coming out? Those hoping for a few months time will be disappointed. Drummer Jeremy Gara spoke to Ottawa radio CKCU 93.1, where he worked back in the day, and noted they are working full time on the album, and it should be out by the end of next year (that’s 2013).
Describing where they’re at, Gara said “We are just working like we always have. We took a couple months off and we’ve been writing songs. Now we’re in the studio pretty much full-time just doing what we do. And we kind of shut the door. We haven’t really gone out and done anything in over a year now. We haven’t done photos or interviews or anything. We’re just working on music and growing beards and living at home a lot and going out to dinner together” (via Pitchfork).
I’m not looking forward to seeing Régine with a beard, that’s for sure. Although if Win Butler can pull off that haircut, I’m sure she can pull off a beard. It’s totally rock and roll.
When Numbers Become Meaningless: Discussing Apple’s Sales
Apple have discussed their 4th Quarter numbers, and they contain many confusing 8-digit numbers. Let’s just say they are doing well for themselves. In the 3 months during Q4, Apple sold 125.04 million iPhones, 58.23 million iPads, 18.1 million Macs and 35.2 million iPods (via Tech Crunch). In all of 2011, they sold 72 million iPhones – apparently it’s not a dying market.
Tech Crunch also brings Steve Jobs’ famous quote about not making a smaller iPad to the forefront, with a response from Apple CEO Tim Cook. Jobs said, “While one could increase the resolution to make up some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size. Apple has done expensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can place physical elements on a touch screen, before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.”
Cook said yesterday, “On comments that Steve made before about 7 inch tablets, let me be clear, we would not make one of the 7 inch tablets, we don’t think they’re good products, we’d never make one.”
Bring out the sandpaper! Yup, won’t make a 7 inch iPad, but 7.9 is totally acceptable.
Kim Dotcom’s New Service to Launch January 20, 2013
File sharers – of completely legitimate purposes – get ready. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has said that his new Mega service will launch 1 year to the day of the anniversary of the police raids on his mansion (via Digital Trends).
Aparently, Kim Dotcom’s bail agreement has said that he cannot restart Megaupload (damn!) or a similar business. Dropping the “upload” part from Megaupload, and having a bunch of promotional videos is not the most sly way of avoiding your bail conditions. The Department of Justice has issued a statement, saying “If defendant Dotcom intentionally misled the court in New Zealand about his intentions and capabilities…[it] might endanger Dotcom’s bail situation or even subject him to additional charges.”
Watch! Skye – Featherlight
When Florence + the Machine pulled out of Optimus Alive in Portugal this year, they were replaced by formidable trip hop act, Morcheeba, who didn’t disappoint us. The singer from Morcheeba, Skye, is releasing a solo album next week called Back to Now.
She has a relatively new video for you to check out, which is full of lots of glitter (like my Halloween costume). The track is called Featherlight and is a little more upbeat than a lot of Morcheeba’s laid back vibes. Has Skye not aged in the past decade? I’ll have what she’s having. Check it out below.
Skye – Featherlight
