This story is getting such extensive coverage in the Blogosphere, you’d think Moses just discovered an 11th Commandment etched on the back of one of his stone tablets. Something to the effect of, “Thou shalt not restrict a user’s ability to exercise a license they’ve legitimately paid for.”

Well, Steve Job isn’t Moses, but he is as close as you get to an iconic authority on the subject of downloadable music. And here’s what Steve had to say on the subject of Digital Rights Management, or DRM, in an opinion piece posted to Apple.com earlier today:

“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

For a media executive – and let’s face it, as the majority stockholder in Disney, Steve Jobs is a media executive – this is nothing short of sacralidge. And unbelievably cool.

To read Mr. Jobs treatise on the whole DRM issue, click here. It’s a good read, and we highly recommend it.

I have several devices that I depend on every day: my MacBook Pro, my Garmin StreetPilot 3270 GPS, my iPod. And while I can think of ways all these devices could be improved, there is only one device that I would gladly chuck into the ocean and never touch again, if not for the one vital job it does marginally well.

That device is my cell phone.

So when Apple introduced the iPhone, I had a geek-gasm right on the spot. Finally, my prayers had been answered: a handheld device that’ll connect me to people by phone, mail, IM, and to the Internet like a computer; and to my music and videos like an iPod.

Finally, a smartphone that’s actually smart. (more…)

Admittedly, it’s been a long time since Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Geordi La Forge was considered cool, even among Trek loyalists. But don a pair of these wrap-around shades, which resemble a cross between Geordi’s prosthesis and The Matrix’s de rigueur eyewear, and we can pretty much guarantee your Geek cred will bust the meter. (more…)

Apple’s had it’s big “It’s Showtime” press event just a couple of hours ago, and I’m still struggling to figure out what the hoopla was about. Modestly upgraded iPods, adding movies and TV shows at higher resolution to iTunes, and iTV – which is basically Airport Express for video. Uh-huh. Okay. That’s nice and all. But where’s the other stuff, the more important stuff, the stuff we’ve been waiting for Apple to deliver? (more…)

Has there ever been a moment that you can recollect, almost as if it were frozen in time, when you realized that technology was about to change your life forever? There’s one such moment that tops my list – the day my iPod’s true potential finally sunk in. It was late November 2001 and I was in Annapolis, explaining to a friend what this shiny white brick could do. As I was extolling its virtues it suddenly hit me: this simple little device is going to change, already is changing, the way I experience an entire category of entertainment. (more…)