In a February blog, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was all over the music industry for demanding that iTunes incorporate a digital rights management scheme in order to allow Apple to sell their product. Jobs said he would dispense with it, if he could. But some thought it was just posturing ahead of contract negotiations for new pricing on singles and albums.

As we all know, EMI took Jobs and crew up on the offer, so, at least for that company’s music, there’s a two-tier pricing system for singles, with the stuff free of copying restrictions selling for $1.29 per song, and no change for album pricing. Upgrades are 30 cents per song.

It’s also nice to have the songs encoded at 256K instead of 128K, and some people do seem to enjoy the improvements in audio fidelity, although it may be subtle on some of the junk that passes for hit recordings these days. However, the higher bandwidth does wonders for acoustic music, they tell me.

Other than early reports that the new DRM-free music library was selling well, there’s been no update, however. In reporting that some three billion songs have been sold by iTunes, and that Apple now has the number three music retailer in the U.S., there was no further mention of the future of this grand experiment.

Or maybe they are just waiting for The Beatles catalog to be released online.

A few weeks ago, there were published reports that Universal was balking at signing a long-term contract with Apple, and then the talk vanished, with the suggestion that an interim, short-term agreement had replaced it. Perhaps the iPhone knocked it off the front pages, or maybe tech writers just didn’t care to follow up something that was never actually confirmed in the first place.

So here we sit in the dark days of summer, and I have to wonder just what is the rest of the music industry thinking? Clearly they would love to be able to exact a higher tribute for their product, particularly singles, and Apple and EMI have shown the way to do it and deliver more value to customers at the very same time.

But all you hear now is silence. Why isn’t the music industry collectively cheering Apple for saving their bottom lines? I mean, do they really think it’s better to press CDs and ship them to retailers around the world or get a little bit less revenue from an online dealer and pay absolutely nothing for the raw materials?

Of course, the recording industry has always had difficulties processing logical information. After all, they have been enthusiastically suing their customers with abandon in the hope of stemming piracy, and it hasn’t stopped the problem. In fact, in a few cases, the RIAA has had to pay legal fees and suffer from bad publicity because of an overly-aggressive approach to enforcing its intellectual property. And it doesn’t help when they sue elderly people who barely knew how to handle a personal computer, let alone download illegal music files.

Now I should point out that I am absolutely four-square against music piracy. I have spent a fair amount of money over the years to buy music. The reason I have not done so to the same degree in recent years is not because I get my music free. It’s because there’s a dearth of product that appeals to me. Now maybe I’m just too old to appreciate younger talent, but it’s also true that lots of folks seem to agree with me, without any particular age distinction.

In the meantime, I should think that the music industry needs to stop living in the 20th century, or whatever century they are currently residing in. They need to find a way to embrace the new technologies in a way that’s fair to them and their artists and still provide good value to customers.

But maybe the music industry’s time has come and gone. In the old days, a recording company would nurture new artists, build a stable of product and even establish a brand identity. When it came to Motown, for example, you knew it was the “sound of young America,” and fans of all ages and racial distinctions just loved the music. Motown would even train its artists so they knew how to deliver professional live performances, using tried and true techniques of the entertainment industry.

Today, like the movie industry before them, musical acts need to do it all themselves. Indeed, one begins to wonder if there is any need for music labels anymore? Do they do anything that individual artists cannot do for themselves?

Indeed, while there’s still an industry left to save, the recording companies ought to start thinking how to work with Apple to sell product and stop fighting the future.

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It’s hard to believe that the first iMac appeared nearly nine years ago, that famous Bondi blue pear-shaped personal computer that proved to one and all that Apple was here to stay. In fact, I had a prototype model, although it soon had to be returned to Apple after a firmware update killed it.

After going through several generations with different color schemes and speedier processors, the iMac was reinvented as a lamp base with a display that was fitted onto an elaborate articulated arm.

Well, maybe that was too radical a form factor, because sales reportedly didn’t quite match those of the original. Regardless, the most recent iteration of the iMac is probably what it might have been in the fast place if the innards could have been miniaturized sufficiently. In other words, a slim display with the computer built-in. Indeed, the most recent incarnation is somewhat thinner than the original, and no doubt the size of the components will be reduced even further over time.

But today’s iMac hasn’t been changed since last year, despite speculation that we can almost smell its presence and that it’ll show up any day now. In fact, it could come within hours after this column is posted, or maybe not. Not even the rumor sites have a clue.

So how will the iMac change when the long-awaited upgrade finally sees the light of day? Will Apple find a way to make it thinner, to reduce the large expanse at the bottom to give a sleeker look? What about ditching the plastics and going for brushed aluminum, similar to the most recent style of Apple’s own displays? Or would that just be taking a step backward?

What is probably certain, although I do not pretend to have any secret information, is that many of the components that are now part of the MacBook Pro, which features Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset, would find their way into the iMac. But that’s nothing different as far as packaging is concerned, because the iMac’s internals have always been based on those of an Apple notebook.

So far, there are no surprises here. All this can be gleaned from past history and trends, and there’s little reason to think that Apple would have any incentive to change. After all, roughly two thirds of Mac sales these days are in the notebook category. Desktops are doing well, but there’s little incentive for any major design alterations.

The other brand of speculation has it that the 17-inch iMac is destined for the closeout racks. Why should this be? Well, perhaps the lower prices in raw LCD panels have made it possible to deliver a 20-inch version for almost the same price as 17 inches. That would be nice, of course, but if millions of Mac users are happily buying notebook computers with 17-inch displays, why should a desktop version be considered unacceptable?

I don’t pretend to understand the reasoning behind this theory. After all, if LCD panels are cheaper, then the price of an entry-level iMac with updated processors could also be reduced proportionately. Would you mind paying $799 or $899 for one? After all, original-style iMacs and its direct descendant, the eMac, were priced at that level.

Would it cannibalize sales, perhaps, from the Mac mini? Maybe, but another piece of conventional wisdom has it that the mini isn’t doing that well anyway, and could, perhaps, join the 17-inch iMac as a discontinued product.

As someone who has long championed low-cost Macs, this would be a sad day, should both models be discontinued. But if people aren’t buying them in sufficient quantities, Apple would have no business justification to keep building them. That is, after all, why they’re in existence in the first place. No, it’s not to make you feel cool because you own a product adorned with the Apple label.

But if the very cheapest Macs are no longer going to be produced, I might as well throw out one more thing for your consideration, since that’s how I started all this discussion a few years back: The headless iMac.

Indeed, that’s how I originally envisioned what eventually became the Mac mini, only I was thinking of something with the guts of an iMac, not an iBook and — later — the MacBook.

So what about taking the internal workings of the iMac and delivering a minitower computer with, say, room for two hard drives and an extra expansion slot? Is there sufficient potential demand for such a product or does Apple prefer to believe you’d rather buy an iMac or upgrade to a Mac Pro?

I don’t pretend to have the product research in hand, but I have long believed that there is a wide gulf between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro that the iMac simply doesn’t fill. But only Apple knows for sure.

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The other day, I got involved in a lengthy debate over finding an easier way to install message board software. Now this may not seem to be a big deal to you, except when you realize that any site you visit that includes a discussion forum is using some kind of software to generate those features. It may be something home built or a third-party application, but that’s how it is.

Now for The Paracast discussion forums, we use vBulletin, published by Jelsoft, a British company recently acquired by Internet Brands, Inc. It’s commercial, meaning you pay for a user license and ongoing support. There are lots of other forum applications out there that are actually open source, which means they are free, such as MyBB, which we use on some of our other less-trafficked sites.

Alas, vBulletin suffers from some of the same deficiencies as its open source-based brethren, because the installation process is a throwback to the 1980s. Instead of just double-clicking an installer, you first have to manually place all of vBulletin’s files in a folder on your Web server. Then you must run an installer or upgrade script to set everything up.

The manual file placement process is, in the scheme of things, not so difficult, except there are serious issues to confront if you’ve done any serious modifications to the software. You see, vBulletin is programmed in PHP, a scripting language, and all the files are open for power users to configure to their own needs. Sometimes it’s just to change the look and feel, but it also allows you to enhance the program’s capabilities, such as adding ad banners and other features.

Now that’s where the fun begins.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

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