Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.

Langston Coleman.

Ars:

Our international readers wanted to know if iTunes Match will be available outside of the US. Unfortunately, for now, iTunes Match is limited to US iTunes Store users. While the service may eventually be available to users in other parts of the world, it will require inking agreements with record labels, music publishers, and other rightsholders for each separate country or region. Apple may be in the process of doing that now, but the company said there is nothing to announce regarding availability of iTunes Match outside the US at this time.

Crap.

This was too good to be true. Particularly in Spain the situation doesn’t look good at all, since the SGAE (General Association of Spanish Authors, manager of copyright licensing fees) has a track record of putting barriers to the arrival of new services like Netflix with its abusive licensing fees (reported to be 2-3 times higher than other European countries like France or Germany).

If I were to publish everything I know regarding tomorrow’s announcements, it would be a short and decidedly unsensational article. What I know are a handful of minor features at the edges. The big picture regarding iOS 5 and iCloud — and how the two interrelate — is an utter mystery to me. These things have been as well-kept secrets as any major projects from Apple in recent years.

John shares his thoughts prior to WWDC. Interesting read, my gut tells me that he will be right in pretty much everything he wrote.

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.

Anatole France (1844 - 1924), French novelist.

Once we have machines doing our high-level thinking, there’s so little need for ourselves and you can’t ever undo it – you can never turn them off. You don’t realise it’s happened until it’s there and I think that awareness of machines is getting very, very close and we’re getting close to where a machine will really understand you.

I knew it was coming. I knew it all along. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go plan a one-way trip to the North Pole.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Henry Ford (1863 - 1947), US automobile industrialist.

It’s been two interesting weeks. I needed a break from all the linking and commenting on the tech circle’s everyday news in order to reconsider what it is that I’m doing here, really. I felt that most of the energy that I was putting into this site went into trivial things, instead of being focused on the topics that I feel are most important. That’s the reason why for the last 15 days there have been no new links on the site.

It’s not like there hasn’t been anything going on lately. If we think back for a moment and consider only Apple-related news, between Lodsys’ threats to independent iOS developers, the rumors of a new iPhone (or not) in June, the Mac Malware Apocalypse and the imminent announcement of iCloud and iOS 5, there has been plenty of movement to keep the site freshly updated every day. As you see, the lack of content is not the point I’m trying to make. In fact, it’s rather the opposite.

Links are great of course, I’m not denying that. They’re a convenient way to voice my opinion on the latest topics on the Internet, and they can be a great source of information for the casual reader. For as long as Analog Senses is published, links will continue to be a part of it. The problem is, they were becoming a disproportionately big part of the site. I had gotten into the habit of publishing somewhere between 3 and 6 links per day, which are enough to reasonably cover most of the daily news in the tech community. However, the amount of time I needed to devote to it every day in order to find the best pieces to link to had recently started to get out of control. That would be perfectly OK if I felt that those links are the main thing contributing to the overall quality of the site, but as I’ll explain in a moment, I don’t believe that to be the case.

Unfortunately, my days only have 24 hours, and so the amount of time that I’m able to put into publishing this site every day is limited. I don’t do this as my full-time gig, nor do I want to. I love my job, and I’m determined to excel at it and build an honest career doing what I love. Given that, whenever I choose to spend my time here trying to stay on top of what’s going on, I’m inevitably choosing not to write something original instead, something true to myself, that could hopefully contribute to the greater conversation going on in the Internet.

Sure, I have published a number of articles in the last few months, and I’m actually quite proud of how some of them turned out, but somehow I couldn’t help but feel that my voice was getting lost among the links, and I needed to take a step back. I was beginning to wonder if those 3, 4 articles couldn’t have been 6, 7 or even 8 had I not been too busy linking to half the Internet. It’s clear to me that the answer is yes, there would surely have been more articles that way. And lately I’ve come to realize that I’m not OK with that.

I’m not in the linking business. I enjoy them occasionally, but that’s not where my heart is. There are plenty of sites that do it much better than I ever could, so let them do it. It all became clear after considering my options: I could continue trying to be a poor man’s version of John Gruber or Shawn Blanc[1. I know that both John and Shawn do a heck of a lot more than just posting links, and I’m not implying that the links are the main feature of their sites. I merely cite them as examples because they have been able to find a perfect balance between links and original content that I’m still trying to figure out.] , or I could leave them to do what they do best, and focus on raising my own voice instead. I’m confident I can create a much better site that way, one that hopefully many people can enjoy by itself. The kind of site that I would like to read, and that I hope you would like to read, too.

However, if you enjoy the links, fear not: they will not disappear. They will simply be more focused, more appropriate to the greater idea of Analog Senses, if you will. That probably means there will be fewer of them, and that is expected. But the ones that do appear will have a powerful reason for being there.

Starting today, the ship is changing course. You may argue that it’s not a radical change, but it’s a change nonetheless. And every little change can alter everything.

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965), US businessman & politician, 1940.

The 13-inch MacBook Air has everything I do need, nothing that I don’t, and even a few additional features such as being light weight and having a thinner form factor. Which means that for me, going from a 15-inch MacBook Pro to a 13-inch MacBook Air will be an upgrade.

This is just what I needed to read. Since I purchased my iPad 2, my 2010 13” MacBook Pro has rarely ever left its bag. Besides, my 24” iMac is slowly starting to show its age. I believe getting rid of the iMac and purchasing a nice display instead would be a great upgrade to my setup.

It just doesn’t make sense to keep two Macs AND the iPad around. It’s too much, it’s a hassle to sync everything, and it kills me to have the Pro just sitting around most of the time. At first I thought about selling the two computers and getting one of the newer iMacs, but I will need to travel with a computer sometimes, so I cannot really go desktop-only.

If I had to start from scratch, I could easily see myself rocking a next-gen Air like Shawn, but I’m afraid it may not be powerful enough for my development work. I guess we’ll know about it soon, but in the meantime, Shawn’s article gives me some things to think about, and some new angles to consider.

The reason is obvious – Apple wants to make it even easier to listen to that music anywhere you have an Apple device so you buy more music. From Apple. To play on Apple products. Have an Apple product? Great! Any music you can buy in iTunes will be available to stream over WiFi or 3G to any Apple device.

Interesting analysis of the fabled iCloud from Patrick, over at Minimal Mac. His point is so brilliantly simple and it makes so much sense that he just might be on to something.