Apple Inc., the most popular source of music in the United States, stripped copy protection from all the songs in its iTunes music store and disclosed plans to charge as little as 69 cents a track. Under a variable pricing plan, songs will cost 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29 starting in April, with most albums going for $9.99, Apple marketing head Phil Schiller said yesterday at the Macworld conference in San Francisco. He spoke in place of chief executive Steve Jobs, who said Monday he’s undergoing treatment for a “hormone imbalance.” Apple had drawn criticism for using so-called digital rights management on most tracks, prompting Jobs two years ago to make a public plea to music labels to change their licensing terms.
The protections prevented customers from listening to music on unauthorized devices and limited the copies they could burn onto CDs. The company also faced competition from Amazon.com Inc., which charges as little as 79 cents a song - with no copy protection. While record labels liked having DRM, they also wanted variable prices, letting them charge more for popular songs, said Barry Jaruzelski, a partner at the consulting firm Booz & Co. in Florham Park, N.J. Until now, Apple sold most tracks for 99 cents each. Starting yesterday, about 8 million songs were being offered without copy-protection software as part of the iTunes Plus service, Apple said. By the end of March, the other 2 million songs in its catalog will be available without such software.
Microsoft releases Windows 7 and is available for download
The first public trial, or beta, version of Windows 7 has been released. Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer used his keynote speech at CES to announce that software developers would get at the trial version on 7 January. On 9 January members of the public will get the chance to download the successor to Windows for themselves. Mr Ballmer said Windows 7 would be the pivot of a broader Microsoft push to improve the way its separate software and service families work together. In delivering the opening keynote, Mr Ballmer has taken over from Bill Gates - who in 2008 bowed out of day-to-day involvement with the company he founded. In a nod to the chilly economic climate, Mr Ballmer said: “We face some really big challenges. We are all feeling it and its impact will likely be with us for some time.”
But, he said, the global economic slowdown would not hobble the pace of technological change. “I believe our digital lives will only continue to get richer,” said Mr Ballmer. “There’s no turning back from the connected world.” The newest version of the Windows operating system would, he said, be the “linchpin” of an effort to make it easier for customers to do more with the different Microsoft gadgets and services they use. Microsoft is expected to cap the number of copies of the beta version of Windows 7 available to the public. The minimum requirements for running Windows 7 are a PC with a 1 Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16 GB of disk space, 128MB of video memory and support for DX9 graphics. Some of the Windows 7’s features help it work with other devices. A “home group” system makes it straightforward to enrol PCs, Xbox consoles, media servers and other gadgets into a local network that can share media and content.
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