iTunes Store Sells 3 Billion Tracks

Apple announced today that the iTunes Store has now sold more than 3 billion songs. It's also the third-largest music retailer, behind Wal-Mart and Best Buy and now ahead of Amazon.com.

iPhone Sales Disappoint

Remember my previous post about analysts estimating that Apple sold a half-million iPhones in its first weekend of release? Wrong, sorry. Apple just announced its latest quarterly results, and the real number of iPhones sold wasn't 500,000, it wasn't 400,000, it wasn't even 300,000. Nope, AT&T reported activations of just 146,000 iPhones. Now, that's not a small number, but it's not a half million. (And it's nowhere near the 8 million copies of the last Harry Potter book sold in its first weekend of release.)

Some analysts are predicting iPhone sales to increase from current rates, but I think not. The first weekend was a tremendous sales surge, based on pent-up demand from die-hard Apple cultists, gadget geeks, and fashion trendists. Sales from here on out will be to normal people, and normal people are less fascinated by Apple's overpriced, under featured first generation phone.

I hold to my previous advice. Wait for iPhone 2.0 -- it'll fix all that's iffy with the current model, and probably be a better deal, besides.

500,000 iPhones Sold

Various reports say Apple sold more than a half-million iPhones in its first weekend on the market. That puts it well on the way to meeting the 10 million units Steve Jobs says it will sell by the end of 2008.

The iPhone is Here!

In case you missed all the media hoopla and long lines outside your local Apple or AT&T Store, the iPhone is now shipping. It looks like everybody who waited in line got one, and there were a few left over after that. Initial reports are mainly positive, with some common negatives.

The positives:

• Touchscreen interface is everything it promised to be
• Activation is quick and easy (for most users) via iTunes; you choose your AT&T plan directly from the iTunes interface
• Voice quality appears to be good
• The web browser is terrific -- with one qualification (in a minute...)
• The screen is also great for viewing movies.
• The auto-swivel feature works quite well, reorienting the screen when you turn the unit in your hand.
• The 2 megapixel camera is pretty good for a phone
• It's a great iPod music player, except for the storage limitations

The negatives:

• Web browsing and email via AT&T's EDGE network is slower than slow -- several minutes to retrieve a message or load a web page. Intolerable, especially for device that has souch a great web browsing interface.
• The touchscreen keyboard is difficult to type on at best, impossible at worst. This is not a phone for heavy instant messagers or emailers.
• No connection to corporate email servers means you can't use it for work email, as you can a Blackberry. Which is why most corporate IT departments are saying "no" to the iPhone.
• The lack of MMS messaging means that you can't send the photos you take via text messages. (You can send via email, however, but not to another user's cell phone via text.)
• Lack of stereo Bluetooth means you can't use Bluetooth headphones -- although you can use Bluetooth mobile headsets, like the Jabra.
• You only get 4GB or 8GB of storage (actually 3GB and 7GB, after you account for operating system software), which isn't enough to store a lot videos or big music libraries.
• There's no voice activated dialing, which is baffling in a phone of this overall caliber.
• In spite of previous reports (wishes?) to the contrary, you buy the iPhone, you're locked into a 2-year AT&T service plan.
• AT&T sucks, of course.
• It costs freakin' $600!

My advice? Unless you absolutely, positively have to have the latest and greatest, don't buy a first-generation iPhone. Wait for the second-generation model, probably in January, which should fix most of the negative issues. (There will be lots of negative press in the days and weeks to come; people will have buyer's remorse.)

Strip Personal Info from iTunes Plus Tracks

iTunes Plus is great in that it offers you DRM-free tracks at a higher sound quality. But it's not so great that Apple embeds personal information in each track, in kind of a digital watermark. This way Apple or the RIAA could track you down if you posted an iTunes Plus track on a file sharing site, for example.

Fortunately, somebody has already figured out a way to strip that personal information out of the DRM-free tracks. Privatunes is a free utility you can use to make your iTunes Plus tracks nice and clean, and totally untraceable. Take that, Apple!