A report by Don Clark and Nick Wringfield in Monday's WSJ confirms that Apple's move will begin next year, starting with the Mini.

WSJ seems oblivious to the existence of QuickTransit [1, 2] or sufficiently skeptical of Transitive's claims to not bother mentioning it in their report, despite referring specifically to emulation in the context of the shift from 68k to PPC.

WSJ lends some credence to the theory about a collective decision to let Jobs speak for everyone on this latest move. They say that Apple has already briefed their plans to IBM, Microsoft, and other software companies. It is being made to look like an Apple NDA is in effect, but it's more likely a mutual agreement, at least between Apple and Intel.

WSJ suggests that Intel will subsidize Apple's use of Pentium processors through the transition period. Perhaps the subsidies will help Apple cover the licensing costs to Transitive, and Apple notebooks will get faster without getting more expensive.

This whole story is especially interesting for what it isn't saying about AMD, who may increasingly come to dominate the no-margin "value PC" market even as the traditional PC platform fades into history. Today's industry realignment leaves them looking like a fifth wheel -- in the West, anyway. But if Lenovo and AMD can deliver on the promise of $100 laptops for the developing world, they might be able to stake out an early claim on a major international growth market.

[1] "Transitive expects to announce that a second computer OEM [after SGI] will deploy products enabled by its technology during the 1st half of 2005 and that others will deploy QuickTransit before the end of the year. Unfortunately, strict confidentiality obligations prevent us from discussing these relationships in any detail."

[2] "Alasdair Rawsthorne, founder/CTO, and Bob Wiederhold, CEO, were perfectly silent when asked why, given the vast installed base of Sparc and PA-RISC iron and disgruntled users on those boxes, Transitive would work on the IBM Power platform first. This may be because IBM approached Transitive first to encourage them to do this, which seems unlikely unless you think about how IBM might want to port mainframe applications to future Power6 servers. Maybe this is how IBM will do it--if it consolidates the mainframe onto the Power platform at all."

John Markoff adds to the coverage on the industry realignment. What comes through here is that circumstances are forcing this change on Apple. This isn't Steve Jobs, cooking up some grand vision of an Apple dominated world. This is about Paul Otellini manuevering now so he can still make his quarterly numbers in three years.

This is not about Apple. This is about establishing the structure of one of the major growth industries for the next decade. Based on the other parties' refusal to comment to the media, it seems they've decided to let Apple spin this as a Macintosh thing, at least for now. But make no mistake; this story is not about notebook computers. This is about the whole post-print, post-cinema, post-broadcast, by-subscription media landascpe.

"This is a seismic shift in the world of personal computing and consumer electronics. It is bound to rock the industry, but it will also be a phenomenal engineering challenge for Apple."

It is likely that Intel forged the alliance with Apple in an effort to counter the powerful home entertainment and game systems coming from Microsoft and Sony.

Markoff makes no mention of the QuickTransit product that was mentioned in the Wired News story.

Apple Plans to Switch From IBM to Intel for Chips

The merger of AOL and Time Warner has long since become a symbol of the misbegotten assumptions and skewed calculations among old and new media at the height of the technology bubble.

The challenge is how to create a free Internet site compelling enough to attract traffic and advertising -- with much of the content it previously reserved for paying customers -- without hastening the demise of its subscription business.

"The question remains, How does AOL fit into that new world? Is there a place for AOL in the Internet?"

"My biggest problem is the walled garden," said Mr. Kelly, who runs all of AOL's Web properties in addition to ad sales. "The world can't see the good stuff we do every day."

Free Internet Site: A Portal to AOL's Future?

How technology has transformed the sound of music
by Alex Ross

For most of us, music is no longer something we do ourselves, or even watch other people doing in front of us. It has become a radically virtual medium, an art without a face.

For music to remain vital, recordings have to exist in balance with live performance, and, these days, live performance is by far the smaller part of the equation.

Like Heisenberg’s mythical observer, the phonograph was never a mere recorder of events: it changed how people sang and played. Katz, in a major contribution to the lingo, calls these changes "phonograph effects."

In 1916, the conductor Ernest Ansermet brought Igor Stravinsky a stack of American pop records, Jelly Roll Morton rags apparently among them, and the composer swooned. "The musical ideal," he called them, "music spontaneous and ‘useless,’ music that wishes to express nothing." (Just what Jelly Roll was after!)

Contemplate Coldplay for a moment.

At a Dada concert in 1920, Stefan Wolpe put eight phonographs on a stage and had them play parts of Beethoven’s Fifth at different speeds.

How could a single record do justice to those endless parties in the Bronx where, in a multimedia rage of beats, tunes, raps, dances, and spray- painted images, kids managed to forget for a while that their neighborhood had become a smoldering ruin?

It thrives on the buzz of the new, but it also breeds nostalgia, and a state of melancholy remembrance.

Feedback is the sound of musicians desperately trying to embody the superior self they glimpsed in the mirror and, potentially, turning themselves into robots in the process.

Is there any escape from the "feedback loop"?

This is a paradox common to technological existence: everything gets a little easier and a little less real.

I’ll take "Rubber Soul" over "Sgt. Pepper’s," because the first recording is the more robust, the more generous, the more casually sublime. The fact that the Beatles broke up three years after they disappeared into the studio may tell us all we need to know about the seductions and sorrows of the art of recording.

The Record Effect

À la carte charges are the way business is done on eBay, but not on the commons of Craigslist.

What part of "free" is difficult to understand?

Data collected by Nielsen/NetRatings show that eBay's page views in April 2005 grew by less than half a percentage point, compared with the previous April. At Craigslist, page views grew 130 percent in the same period. According to the company's data, its traffic is now about a fifth of eBay's. And the operational efficiencies are astounding: Craigslist has 18 employees; eBay has 8,800.

What eBay Could Learn From Craigslist

Imagine movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain -- granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix

Students are able and willing to attend to issues of readability and surface error only when they have written something that is of enough value to make the arduous task of making it readable worth the effort.

Stanley Fish's assignment - asking students to create their own language - is brilliant! At last an educator who gets students to think about language.

Sometimes a student needs to step outside her own conventions to see that she was trapped by them in the first place. And when she understands the logic behind the rules and conventions, she is no longer trapped, but freed.

Remember: continous learning.

I am routinely appalled by writing that is not edited for correct syntax beyond these computerized quick fixes. The result is something that at best sounds unprofessional and at worst is incoherent.

As am I, and I'm not talking about the work of students.

Writing clean English sentences is a learned craft. And like any other craft, it requires practice and guidance. But what student, confronted with contemporary popular artists of all stripes, wants to be a craftsperson?

As long as artistry is perceived as celebrity, and not the embodiment of art, the acquisition of skills is less necessary than an ability to generate clever ideas.

Very true.

What You Write, How You Write It

Are you a Coldplay fan? I know we have a few here. Enjoy!

Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade.

The lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English.

Coldplay has spawned a generation of one-word bands that are more than eager to follow through on Coldplay's tremulous, ringing anthems of insecurity.

Coldplay follow-throughs are redundant; from the beginning, Coldplay has verged on self-parody.

The new album is faultless to a fault, with instrumental tracks purged of any glimmer of human frailty.

It's supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, magnanimous, inspirational. But it sounds like hokum to me.

The Case Against Coldplay

Movies have grown darker over the decades, but they've also grown more insecure.

Maybe that explains the Scientology trailers on the sets these days.

Filmmakers and studio executives no longer trust such niceties as dialogue, characterization, style or even movie star charisma to involve viewers in lovers' conflicts. Instead, today's filmmakers feel the need to pump up the volume and ramp up the firepower to make sure they hold the interest of impatient audiences.

So it's all your fault. Why can't you just pay attention?

Brad and Angelina's Old-Fashioned Romance

It is known, somewhat deceptively, as a cooperative advertising agreement. In plain terms, it means that many of the books on display at the front of a store or placed face out at the end of an aisle are there because the publisher paid for them to be there, not necessarily because anyone at the bookstore thought the book was noteworthy or interesting.

Pay-for-display programs are nothing new in the retail world, but the practice seems less savory in bookselling, where bookstore owners and managers were once assumed to serve as an editorial presence, recommending and featuring books they liked.

Co-op advertising has acquired a reputation as a kind of dirty little secret of the publishing business.

In many Barnes & Noble superstores, about 70 percent of the books on front-of-store tables are there because co-op money secures their spot.

While publishers disagree about the merits of paying for display, one thing about the arrangements is clear: they further concentrate money and attention on the books that need it least.

The phenomenon has been called the reverse Robin Hood effect.

The bookselling business has fallen prey to the blockbuster, too.

Cash Up Front