Amazon girds its loins for battle with the music industry, Microsoft throws the book—namely, the dictionary—at Apple, and the iPad 2 suffers another ignominious teardown. The remainders for Wednesday, March 30, 2011 are wandering lonely as a cloud.
Amazon on Cloud Player: we don’t need no stinkin’ licenses (Ars Technica)
There’s been some contention over whether or not Amazon’s recently unveiled Cloud Player, which lets you use any Web browser to play back music you’ve uploaded to its storage service, needs the blessing of the music industry. Says Amazon, “Heck no.” Says the music industry, “Ehhhhh, wait a second.” Dudes, come on: it’s the cloud—your Earth-bound laws don’t apply here, man.
Microsoft keeps gunning after Apple’s ‘generic’ App Store trademark, brings in a linguistics expert (Engadget)
Microsoft and Apple are continuing to wage their battle over whether or not Apple should be allowed to trademark “App Store.” Now Microsoft has brought out the big guns, in the form of Dr. Ronald Butters, Professor of English & Cultural Anthropology, Emeritus, at Duke University. And, we might add, proprietor of TrademarkLinguistics.com. And here I thought nobody had ever said “I want to be a trademark linguist when I grow up.”
Microsoft Co-Founder Hits Out at Gates (Wall Street Journal)
Speaking of Microsoft, co-founder Paul Allen is taking potshots at his other half, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, in his forthcoming memoir. Ah, it’s another said case of geek said, geek said.
iPad 2 3G GSM & CDMA Teardown (iFixit)
As if one dissection wasn’t enough, iFixit has now torn down the 3G versions of Apple’s iPad 2 alongside the Wi-Fi model. Not only does iFixit lay out their innards for all to see, but it even offers valuable advice like “Of the three, having the Wi-Fi-only version in your chest pocket is your best bet if someone decides to shoot at you.” Hmmm. Expect an addendum to our iPad 2 review soon.
Former Lala CEO says Apple bought them ‘for the people’ (TUAW)
Bill Ngyuen, the former CEO of Lala, says that Apple purchased the cloud music service “for the people.” MY GOD. Sure, we joke about human sacrifices, but this is over the line, Apple. We have it in our minds to start a picket line right outside 1 Infinite Lo—
Oh wait. Like engineers and programmers. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh. Cancel the picket line.