Stan's List

The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro glances at three Office suites for Mac OS X: Office 2008, NeoOffice, and Apple’s iWork. Often there has been rumors that iWork would someday include a spreadsheet. This would elevate iWork equal or above the open source alternatives. iWork does include Keynote. The problem with OpenOffice is that it requires use of XII, the UNIX emulator. If NeoOffice has true Office 2007 XML conversion, then it will be iWork’s only competition. More …

In a press conference today in London, Apple and EMI Music announced that starting in May 2007, EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase in DRM-free versions from the iTunes Store worldwide. Removing Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management system from the tracks comes with a price, though. DRM-free tracks will cost $1.29 rather than $0.99, although they will also feature higher quality 256 Kbps AAC encoding, which Apple claims makes them indistinguishable from the original recording. 128 Kbps versions with Apple’s FairPlay DRM will remain available for $0.99, giving users the choice of which track to purchase.

All EMI music videos will also be available without DRM, with no change in price. iTunes will provide a one-click option for customers to upgrade previously purchased EMI songs for 30 cents per song. More …

Steve Jobs estimates that half of the iTunes music catalog will be available in DRM-free versions by the end of 2007