Back in 2001, a fantastic little site called Crazy Apple Rumors was launched, dedicated to lampooning Apple and the rumor sites that hang on its every word. Since that time, Editor In Chief John Moltz and his dedicated staff have brought you all the latest made-up news on Apple. Sadly, CARS appears to closing up shop, due to financial difficulties related to the departure of their benefactor known only as The Entity.

For over six years, from sexbots to the scoop on the iPhone's one-buttony goodness to sexbots, it's been...uh...well, it's been over 1000 posts, that's what it's been. And that's something, right? Sure it is!

I'm not quite sure where I first learned of CARS, but in 2003, Apple linked to a CARS post on Al Gore from their Hot News section. A proud day for CARS! After that prestigious link, we knew we had to advertise. I'm proud to say that CARS has been sponsored in part by Rogue Amoeba since 2004.

It's difficult to pick a favorite moment from CARS. Virtually every post gave me a good laugh, and that's damned good track record.

The live keynote coverage provided by CARS has long been superior to that of all other sites combined. Read up and see all the news you missed the first time around at Macworld 2008 and other events. Over the years, I've also been honored to be mocked myself, in several articles. Once you've made CARS, you know you've made the big time. How sad for future generations, who will be unable to measure success with the CARS metric.

But before he rides off into the sunset, I'd like to thank John Moltz for his years of service to the cause of hilarity in the Mac world (and occasionally Macworld). It is a sad day, as the Entity's departure has seemingly brought an end to Crazy Apple Rumors. So long John, and thanks for all the rumors. We hope you'll be back someday soon.

For those who missed the CARS boat (ha!), begin at the beginning. You won't regret it.

Today, we're happy to announce full Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) support for yet another application. Version 1.9 of our own instant internet radio station tool Nicecast has just been released. This update includes Instant Hijack 2, enabling the hijacking of audio from applications which are already running on Leopard, as well as Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). As well, the System Audio Extra has been updated with Soundflower 1.3 and a new Track Titles drawer has been added.

This free update is recommended for all users on Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and can be downloaded right from the Nicecast page. And fear not, Audio Hijack Pro users, as we're hard at work on a final version of Audio Hijack Pro 2.8 as well.

Earlier today, two things happened. First, I wrote about our support of the EFF, noting that none of our products were created to facilitate theft. We'll get back to that in a minute, but it was a timely post. Second, CBS-owned music site Last.fm opened up streaming from their site. Where previously they'd provided 30-second previews of songs (a la iTunes), they're now providing on-demand access to full-length tracks and albums.

This is a very cool thing, as it makes music more accessible. Various individual artists in the past have streamed their new album or a single right from their site, with the idea that you'd take a listen or two and hopefully buy the album. Last.fm is looking to shake that model up and monetize the streaming itself via ads as well as sales of both individual songs and subscriptions. In fact, each play results in a royalty payment to the artist, which is great.

The basic assumption being made here is that streaming is fleeting, non-permanent. Simply put, that assumption is wrong. Tools like our own Audio Hijack Pro, as well as many others, enable you to record any audio. This ability has "substantial non-infringing uses", commonly known as the Betamax Doctrine¹. As part of this, it's possible to make a permanent copy of streamed audio.

This incorrect assumption has been around for years, but it was largely harmless. Such streaming was scattered, low-quality, and in the case of online music radio streams, random. Last.fm, however, has made an enormous catalog of music from the major labels available for streaming on-demand, and it sounds pretty good to my ears. Suddenly, this erroneous assumption could well impact the bottom line. If you don't need to stream music, they don't get to count plays or show ads, and artists don't get paid.

Ideally, users will do what's right, and purchase proper access to the music to which they wish to listen. My fear, however, is that potentially infringing uses of recording tools will become widespread. In that scenario, it's possible that instead of adjusting their model, the entertainment industry will just come after developers of recording tools. Should the Betamax Doctrine not hold up, these tools could disappear. That would be bad for us, of course, but it would also hurt the thousands of users using them legitimately.

An even more dire scenario would involve the music studios going after Apple and Microsoft to implement a required "secure audio path" in the OS. Vista has this in the form of the Protected Media Path, but it's currently in limited use. Things could get much, much more restrictive, and that's bad for everyone involved. Even the entertainment industry would likely suffer. They once opposed the VCR, with then-head of the MPAA Jack Valenti famously comparing the VCR to the Boston Strangler. Today, home video accounts for tens of billions in revenue.

This is an exciting development in access to music. Thirty second previews just aren't enough, and terrestrial radio doesn't provide access to new music as it once did. I hope this will work well for Last.fm, artists, and consumers alike. As part of that, I'll urge you to support the artists you love. If you listen to their music, pay for it, whether through albums or subscriptions. Your support is needed to enable them to keep creating the things you love (much like software developers). The iPod wrappers have long said it best - "Don't steal music".

Footnotes:
1. The Betamax Doctrine has been important for 20+ years of innovation in technology. It was established by the Supreme Court in 1984², and it basically says that if a tool can be used for obvious legitimate purposes, it's potential illegal uses do not make the device illegal. In other words, beating someone up with a baseball bat is still assault, but we don't need to shut down the Louisville Slugger factory. ↩

2. From Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984) (link). This is the same case that legitimized timeshifting, paving the way for things like TiVo and our own Radioshift. It's amazing the enormous effect this one case has had on both Rogue Amoeba and technology in general. ↩

Do you like freedom? Sure, we all do. But the freedoms we enjoy in the USA (and many other countries) didn't come easily, and they aren't guaranteed to stay. That's why organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) exist - to defend those freedoms.

When we were organizing MacSanta 2007¹ last November, we decided we needed a way to include only the more serious developers. We considered a participation fee to line our pockets, but opted insted for a charitable donation. And so, every developer who participated in MacSanta 2007 made at least a $50 donation to the EFF (and often, much more). All told, we raised around $10,000 for them in just a couple of days, from over 120 great Mac software companies. Not too shabby!

In response to this, the EFF sent some delightful swag our way along with a kind thank you note. I particularly appreciate the 4th Amendment packing tape, especially since we just ran out of tape due to all the boxes we shipped to Macworld.

But swag or no swag, we're proud to support the EFF. While everything we create is designed to assist you in working with digital media (and not to facilitate theft), some of our applications are at the edge of changes in digital law. As such, the EFF works to defend our business. Putting that aside, however, I think I can safely say that the entire crew here at Rogue Amoeba personally believes in what the EFF does as well.

So then: do you dislike your fair-use rights being restricted? Do you think warrantless wiretapping is a bad thing? In short, do you value free speech, privacy, and innovation? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should join the EFF. Any donation or swag purchase helps defend your rights in the digital world. You can tell 'em Rogue Amoeba sent you.

Footnotes:
1. I don't know if there will be a MacSanta 2008 (probably) or when it will start (some time in December). Potential customers should join the MacSanta info list to get email when it goes live (and of course, never any spam). ↩

Prior to Macworld, we had planned on having what we called the "Ammo Photo Booth" - basically, the idea was for visitors to stand with our giant inflatable mascot and get their picture snapped by our resident photog Joseph. See the ridiculous photo of me, Ammo, and Sinbad for one such example.

Joseph also coded up a nice web gallery to facilitate this, so visitors could come by after the show and nab their picture with Ammo. However, the realities of the show meant that while Ammo was a big hit, the photo booth idea was a bust. Nevertheless, Joseph still managed to capture plenty of great shots, including people with Ammo, as well as other action on and off the floor. You can view it all in the gallery here:

The snap of Delicious Monster's Mike Lee has to be my favorite - it's just great. In addition to Joseph's pictures, that gallery includes pictures from the Macworld photo collections of Mark Dalrymple, John Moltz, Mike Lee, Ian Baird and MyMac.com's John Nemerovski, so thanks to all of them as well!

It's an abundance of Rogue Amoeba-based content this week, thanks to a handful of interviews conducted at Macworld. Let's dive right in:

Chris Breen and I chatted about Airfoil 3 extensively on the Macworld podcast, recorded inside Macworld's "Podquarium", a glassed-in interview booth right on the show floor. Hat tip to Jason Snell of Macworld for that name - others have called it the Agony Booth.

I also got a chance to sit down in the Podquarium with Dan Moren, Derik Delong, and Dan Pourhadi of MacUser.com, and discuss the show announcements extensively. If this whole software development thing doesn't work out, maybe a career in punditry is within reach.

Finally, for this installment, I did a quick segment on Audio Hijack Pro with The Digital Media Dude himself, Marcelo Lewin. It's always great to meet and talk with the podcasters who use Audio Hijack Pro to make their podcasts!

Stay tuned for more links, from more MWSF interviews, in the future.

Just after the release of Airfoil 3, we received an email from our pal Brian Covey over at The Omni Group titled Airfoil Speakers: We love you.

No joke and no lies. You are my hero, and you guys' timing couldn't be more perfect.

We were *just* sitting around the lunch table today discussing putting together the perfect 'ladies eighties' playlist, but in our new office, we don't all sit in the same room.

[Thanks to Airfoil Speakers], I can promise "Pat Benatar brought to you by: Rogue Amoeba" signs posted liberally around the office. :D

Adoringly,
bwc

We occasionally have users try to use Nicecast for inter-office audio, but MP3 streaming isn't designed for synced audio. With Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers, however, we've got a fantastic solution. Run Airfoil Speakers on all the Macs in a lab, office, or house, and you can send audio to all of them. Individual users have control over volume, so they can mute or disconnect as needed. And of course, audio plays in sync across all outputs. About the only one who won't like it is the office cat.

Macworld San Francisco is over, but we'll always have the memories. They'll be blurry due to lack of sleep, but they're sure to be good nonetheless. When you're an established company, Macworld is a great place to interact with not just new customers, but with your existing customers. Our biggest source of day to day interaction with this group is when things go wrong (via support email), so it's nice to have literally hundreds of users come by and simply thank us for our software.

Perhaps most memorable among these visitors came on Friday, when a gentleman stopped by the booth to deliver delightful cookies ("Caramel Wafers - Traditional Dutch Stroopwafels") and a note, along with his heartfelt thanks for all our work. It was incredibly nice, and I hope he won't mind if I share with you. You can see the cookies to the right, and read the note below:

Rogue Amoeba,

Thank you for your perpetual contributions through blog posts and sharing of information to the Mac software development community. You are an inspiration and role model for those of us who one day aspire to strike out on our own.

Patrick S.

I try to express my gratitude for a job well done, and to receive such gratitude is much appreciated. Thanks again to Patrick of Squeaky Zipper and to everyone else who stopped by the booth!

Update: I totally forgot the other delectable treat we received, a special Alaskan peanut butter and chocolate bar from the Alaskan Apple User's Group. Thanks guys!

Airfoil 3 came out Thursday, and it's been incredibly well-received. We've fixed a few minor bugs, and we've now got Airfoil 3.0.1 ready to go. This update improves compatibility with firewalls and has better error handling for many small issues.

Just head over to the Airfoil for Mac page and see what the buzz is about, then download Airfoil 3. New users can purchase for the low price of $25, while Airfoil 2 users can upgrade for just $10. Users who've purchased since July 16th, 2007, automatically receive this upgrade free of charge.

Of course, Airfoil 3.0.1 is a free update for all owners of Airfoil 3.

We'll be at Macworld all week, so if you're here be sure to stop by our booth, #2738 in the South Hall.

Tuesday marks the start of the expo at Macworld, where Rogue Amoeba will be exhibiting. The keynote will be that morning, though Crazy Apple Rumors has the scoop on that already. After that, the expo hall opens, and things go nuts for four straight days.

So then, one last reminder that Rogue Amoeba will be exhibiting! We'll be in the South Hall, booth #2738. You can come by and see all our products, including Airfoil 3, in action. Or just come by and say howdy - we love to meet our customers!

Best of all, we've got a very special guest who will be with us at the booth all week. He's something of a celebrity, and we'll be snapping pictures of our visitors with him for you to remember him by. So, swing by and say hi!

If you don't know Steve Scott, better known as Scotty, you're missing out on some great podcasts. Two of the Amoebas recently had a chance to chat with Scotty, and you can tune in now.

First up, near the end of December, I had a chance to discuss exhibiting at Macworld, on the Mac Software Business podcast. We covered some of what was discussed in my original series of Macworld articles, but there was also plenty of new information. You can check out the episode here.

Meanwhile, Radioshift lead programmer Guy had a chat on the Mac Developer Roundtable. In Episode 3, he chatted with Scotty, Uli Kusterer, and two good friends of Rogue Amoeba, Gus Mueller and Daniel Jalkut. They discussed the past, the future, and errors and exception handling. You can give that a listen right here.

So there we are - tune in and hear all about it. And don't forget, we'll be at the Macworld this coming week, in booth #2738. Stay tuned for more information on that tomorrow!

In yesterday's Airfoil 3 tour, Mike talked extensively about Airfoil Video Player (AVP). As he noted briefly, we use Perian to play lots of video formats QuickTime doesn't support by default.

QuickTime is able to play a nice variety of files, but it also misses out on many popular formats. Fortunately, it can be extended with additional components, and the good folks at Perian have provided a free QuickTime component which provides support for a large number of popular audio and video formats. In order to ensure that Airfoil Video Player can play as many files as possible, we've bundled Perian inside it, and it automatically loads it as needed. Ideally you won't even be able to tell it's there, except for how AVP is able to successfully open and play your media.

AVP uses its own internal version of Perian (we don't install it, to minimize hassle and problems). If you have a newer version, however, AVP will pick that up and use it. So if you're interested in using Perian with QuickTime Player, just install it globally. You can find everything you need at http://www.perian.org.

In the spirit of Donald Knuth, we sent 0x200 hex bucks to Perian on the day we released Airfoil (That's $512 USD for those on a more normal monetary system). Apparently, in so doing, we shattered the single-donation record previously held by Michael Crichton (who also happens to own Audio Hijack Pro). You don't have to work at a bizarrely-named software company or be a Hollywood big shot to enjoy Perian, though. Check it out at the Perian site, and if you use it, make a donation.

We've just released Airfoil 3 and it has a lot of great new features we've been hard at work on for over a year. So join us on a tour of all the stuff that's been added in Airfoil 3.

Airfoil Speakers

The first thing you'll notice when opening the download is this little app called Airfoil Speakers:

Airfoil Speakers

Airfoil Speakers works as a virtual AirPort Express. You can run this little application on any computer you have connected to your local network. Once you do, that computer will show up as a remote speaker in Airfoil 3 and you can send audio to it.

Now your extra Macs can share the fun alongside your AirPort Expresses to get your audio into even more places. Airfoil Speakers can show the nice window seen above with spec meters and a volume control, or you can just tuck it away as an icon in your menu bar for minimal intrusion.

Airfoil Speakers works pretty much like an AirPort Express from the point of view of Airfoil. It advertises its services over Bonjour, then uses the same AirTunes 2 protocol that Apple uses. However, despite using the same protocol, iTunes won't talk to Airfoil Speakers. iTunes uses cryptographic authentication to ensure that it only talks to real AirPort Expresses, and we weren't able to mimic that. Until Apple removes those checks, Airfoil Speakers will only work with Airfoil 3 and Airfoil for Windows.

Local Playback

This feature is pretty obvious when you open Airfoil 3 and see the first entry in the main window:

That "Computer" speaker is always there, and represents your local computer. Airfoil 2 could do local playback, but it didn't delay the audio at all. Thus, everything played locally several seconds before it was heard remotely, making for a jarring experience. Now in Airfoil 3, the "Computer" speaker is delayed by exactly the same amount as the remote speakers, allowing your main computer to become a seamless part of your audio system.

Airfoil Video Playback

Another great new addition in Airfoil 3 is the shiny new Airfoil Video Player:

You can find Airfoil Video Player right in the source popup in Airfoil, or you can just drag a movie file right onto Airfoil and it will start Airfoil Video Player for you. AVP uses QuickTime and Perian to play all sorts of media files, and all with perfect synchronization between audio and video. AVP can't play everything - it needs to control the files, so they need to be local, not web-based. Likewise, Apple's FairPlay DRM prevents playback, which means AVP can't play movies purchased from iTunes. But thanks to QuickTime and Perian, we support dozens of popular video formats. Now you can watch your favorite movie files through your nice stereo system without needing any wires from your computer. And although support is still preliminary, Airfoil Video Player can play DVDs, also perfectly synchronized.

If you pop open Activity Monitor, you might notice that Airfoil Video Player takes up a bit more RAM and CPU than your usual video player. You might also notice that when you press Play, the movie doesn't actually start to move for about two seconds. Both of these are due to how Airfoil Video Player works inside.

The AirTunes 2 protocol has some delay built in to it, and when sending to remote speakers with Airfoil 3 the audio is delayed by two seconds. AVP has QuickTime play the movie as usual, but doesn't display it to the screen. While the audio heads out to Airfoil and your remote speakers, the video gets buffered internally to AVP. Once two seconds' worth of video has been buffered, AVP starts to draw them to the screen, resulting in perfect synchronization between video and audio output. This is a bit more resource intensive since AVP has to keep two seconds of video frames in memory at all times, but it turns out that on modern machines this doesn't have much of an impact. Even playing back a smooth 1080p video trailer downloaded from Apple's movie trailers uses under 200MB of RAM for the buffer, and other types of video generally use much less.

Perfect Sync

Airfoil 2 introduced the ability to send to multiple remote speakers simultaneously, and it did a pretty good job of keeping playback synchronized while doing it, but there were limitations on just how good it could be. Thanks to a new network audio protocol (AirTunes 2), Airfoil 3 is able to keep all remote speakers playing in perfect sync with each other.

This new protocol is also what allowed us to add all of the other new features discussed above and keep local audio and video playback in perfect sync with remote audio coming both from the AirPort express and from Airfoil Speakers.

Get It While It's Hot

So there you have it, the four big new features in Airfoil 3. I hope you enjoyed this tour and I hope you enjoy the app! You can learn more on the Airfoil site or just download directly.

We first started work on the newest version of our AirPort Express extender Airfoil over one year ago. Today, we're thrilled to announce that Airfoil 3 is now shipping. Airfoil has always allowed you to send any audio to your AirPort Express, but this update brings with it some major feature updates. They may just knock your socks off, so watch out.

Airfoil 3 lets you transmit any audio to multiple AirPort Express units, providing perfect synchronization between units. You can now play audio locally too, in sync with remote playback. But that's not all - now you can turn any Macintosh into a virtual AirPort Express, with the complimentary Airfoil Speakers app! Run Airfoil Speakers on any local mac, and it will appear in Airfoil as a standard output. With one click, you can transmit your audio to that machine and other Macs, all in sync and with no AirPort Express required. You can of course sync this with local playback and playback to AirPort Express units as well. It's your audio, everywhere!

As if Airfoil Speakers wasn't enough, Airfoil 3 offers a second huge feature - video playback! If you've ever wanted to watch video while using Airfoil, you know that the AirPort Express buffers audio playback by several seconds, resulting in video that's out of sync with the audio. No more! With the included Airfoil Video Player, however, this is no matter. Airfoil Video Player handles playing video locally in sync with remote audio, for the perfect viewing experience. Airfoil Video Player supports all of the most popular video formats, and even features preliminary DVD support!

Airfoil 3 also has many smaller updates, including full Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) support, interface improvements, and simplified preferences.

You don't need to take our word for it - head over to the Airfoil for Mac page and see what the buzz is about, then download Airfoil 3. New users can purchase for the low price of $25, while Airfoil 2 users can upgrade for just $10. Users who've purchased since July 16th, 2007, automatically receive this upgrade free of charge.

Last but not least, if you'll be at Macworld next week, be sure to stop by our booth, #2738 in the South Hall. We'd love to say hi!

While I was organizing the 2007 MacSanta promo, I put a call out to Brent Simmons, of NetNewsWire fame. Brent was interested, but needed to check it out with the higher-ups at NewsGator (owners of NetNewsWire). Ultimately he couldn't join in, citing reasons that were "quite good and non-evil", prompting me to query:

Alrighty, no worries. Is NNW about to become freeware? 8)

Brent dissuaded me from these ideas, but just over a month later NetNewsWire is indeed freeware, along with all of NewsGator's consumer level RSS clients. Brent and I talked briefly about it¹ and I'm happy for him. This move means his software will be even more widely disseminated than it has been to this point. In the short term, this is also good for users - we already had a great solution for RSS reading, and now it's free.

There's are a couple of fairly large problems though, and I think they must be considered. First, it's a very good bet that a free NetNewsWire has killed the paid RSS reader market on the Mac. Two, in the grand scheme of things, the perceived value of software on the Mac just went down.

The Value Of Software

I'll address this second point first, as I think it's the more important of the two. Unlike physical goods, software has little in the way of built-in value - there's no cost of base materials, no manufacturing cost per unit, and so on. Software is thus worth what the market says it is, instead of the sum of its parts plus a reasonable markup. Developers may set a price, but the market determines if that price is reasonable.

There's certainly a place for free software. But when a fully-featured product such as NetNewsWire is suddenly free, it effectively reduces the value of other for-pay software products. "Why should I have to pay for quality tools, when this quality tool is free?", the thinking goes. When something is given away for free, its perceived value is lowered. If software is treated as valueless, it becomes much, much harder to sell. One need only look at a quote from news coverage discussing the move to freeware to see this in action: "And thank [NewsGator] for this grand gesture...While you're at it, do pray that a few other software companies get inspired by this move and follow suit."

While I understand the sentiment, as someone who makes his living selling software, this is a disheartening thing to read. Yes, it might seem great if all software was free. But while NewsGator has the financial resources to accomplish this move, most companies do not. Very rapidly, you'd see a shrinking of the market, a loss of innovation, and ultimately, a decrease in quality. There's no market for commercial software on Linux, and the quality of solutions simply isn't on par with what's available on the Mac. By attaching a value to software, we give it value, in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

RSS Readers In The Past...

It's also worth considering the impact of this move on the specific market NewNewsWire occupies, RSS readers. NetNewsWire has long been the clear winner on the Mac for RSS readers, but there have been lots of other great clients available. Competing with a great product like NetNewsWire is tough. It's well-made, so the alternatives must be too. It's popular, so it's got a great head start in terms of mindshare. And it was competitively priced, making it hard to compete on price. It's tough, but not impossible to compete with all that. Make a well-designed, reasonably priced product, and you'll have a fighting chance. Excel in one area (customer service, advertising, a specific RSS feature), and you might capture an entire niche. Simply put, when NetNewsWire was for sale, there was a market opening in which to sell competing RSS readers on the Mac.

...The Present...

Now that NetNewsWire is free, that market just got rocked. It may well cease to exist, at least in any viable way for a full-time developer. If competing with a popular, well-designed product is tough, competing with a popular, well-designed product that happens to be free (while remaining fully-funded) is damned near impossible. And that's unfortunate, because ultimately, it's likely to lead to stagnation. The developers at NewsGator have done great work, but the more minds there are attacking a problem in different ways, the more great solutions we see. Look no further than the late nineties, when IE effectively killed Netscape. Web browsers stagnated shortly thereafter - Microsoft, with browser share at or above 90%, had little incentive to innovate, and smaller players just couldn't break in.²

...And The Future

I don't know what will happen from here. I think NetNewsWire will continue to be great for many years to come, and I hope those who worked on paid RSS readers will either be able to continue selling them (a prospect I find unlikely) or move on to more successful projects. Further, Brent's a good friend, and I don't want to come down on him. His hope is that the increased penetration will lead to improved attention data³, saving time for everyone as far as getting us the news we want to read, and things may well play out that way.

Ultimately, however, this strikes me as an overly aggressive move by NewsGator that has (presumably unintentional) negative side effects. If developers are upset when Apple kills a market (iTunes and the MP3 market, Watson v. Sherlock, and many more), can we hold major developers on the Mac OS X platform to any less of a standard?

Footnotes:
1. Brent also explained that he had to misdirect me from my lucky guess, as it was very private knowledge at the time. When he told me he hadn't even told his family, I figured I could forgive him. ↩

2. It's certainly true that we've enjoyed a recent renaissance in browsers, thanks in no small part to Safari on the Mac and Firefox on all platforms. That's far from a guaranteed result, however. ↩

3. Greg Reinacker, of NewsGator, explains attention data quite well:

"And second, we want to collect "attention" data (actually I like to call this activity data, but everyone else in the world calls it attention) and use it to make everyone's experience better. If there is a specific feed you love, and you're constantly emailing its articles to friends or saving articles in your clippings, that's interesting...and if there are a lot of people doing this, it's probably a good indicator about the "relevancy"" of that content for other users. Similar with individual articles that are getting a lot of attention from users. Basically, by using your data, in combination with aggregate data from other users, we can deliver a better experience for everyone. And that's a good thing - both for us and for you."

Excerpted from his aforelinked blog post. ↩

Every time we exhibit at Macworld Expo, we hand out CDs with trial copies of all our software on them. And every time, we face the same problem, of how best to create these discs such that the software on them is up to date with the latest we have.

At our first Macworld in 2004, we had 5,000 discs professionally pressed, placed in CD sleeves with product information printed on them, and delivered directly to San Francisco. This is the easiest option, but turns out to be the worst in terms of having up-to-date discs. Pressing has many weeks of lead time, particularly due to Christmas and New Years (with Macworld in early to mid-January), so we ran a high risk of discs being out of date by time we got to the show. It also makes it impossible to do something like release a product at the Expo, as it would have to be done weeks or months in advance to get it onto the disc.

So for our second Macworld in 2006, we devised an alternate system. We ordered 5,000 pre-printed blank CD-rs, as well as 5,000 blank paper sleeves, and a CD duplication robot. We then waited until two weeks before the show, at which point Paul then burned, sleeved and finally shipped out our 5,000 CDs. A lot of work, but with just two weeks of lead time, we were able to have all the latest versions of the applications on the disc. We were able to release Airfoil 2 at the show, while still getting it onto the disc. That said, the discs all became out of date two weeks later when we released Airfoil 2.0.1.

This year we're employing a modified version of this same system - pre-printed blank CD-rs, with professionally printed CD sleeves (the fabled infosleeve) so we don't have to give out a flyer as well. However, we've improved the CD itself with a solution to prevent the discs going stale after the show. Instead of just burning our applications directly to the CD, we display them through an application we wrote called Live Disc:

Live Disc presents a window much like a customized Finder window, with application icons that you can drag for copying or double-click for launching. The magic is, if a newer copy exists on our web server, it will copy or launch that version instead, seamlessly.

When Live Disc launches, it compares each application from the disk, to what our web server reports is the latest. If you then copy or launch an out of date application, it automatically downloads the newest copy from the web server, extracts the .zip or .dmg (thanks to SUUArchiver from Sparkle), and finally presents that version instead. From the user's perspective, you drag an the icon for an application such as Fission, drop it on your Desktop, and get the latest version, every time.

That said, it isn't a truly perfect solution. If there is no internet connection available, Live Disc has no choice but to use the versions it has on the disc. Even when there is an internet connection, there are progress bars to watch as downloads complete and are extracted. But otherwise it works pretty nicely.

If you are attending Macworld this year, be sure to come by our booth (#2738 in the South Hall), say howdy, and grab a disc to see Live Disc in action.