It's been a long time since a Wallet update, and it seems like people are emailing me every day concerned about its future. It's true that most of my time for the past year has been focused on Acrylic, but I'm a Wallet user too, and hate to see my favorite apps abandoned just as much as anyone else. Next week I'll be releasing Wallet 2.7 (pictured above) to play nicer with the newly released Leopard. It's not 3.0 by any means, but it will bring a refined user interface, a number of bug fixes, and a few new goodies. Of course, it will still work with older versions of Mac OS X all the way down to 10.3.

It's no secret that our #1 Wallet request has been a version of Wallet for the iPhone. Sadly, Apple hadn't yet provided an ideal solution for creating apps for it. Web apps are an OK solution for some types of products, but not password managers. You don't want to have important data like that stored/served over the web. Of course, some of our competitors rushed out to create versions of their software for the iPhone, and being web-based, are hacks at best. It's definitely not the kind of solution we'd want ourselves, so we passed on doing a web app entirely.

Luckily, not too long ago Steve Jobs revealed that Apple was indeed working on a real SDK for the iPhone. With true capability for iPhone development promised, we can now imagine the kind of mobile Wallet solution we've always wanted. I think the iPhone is capable enough for this to be a full featured app and used on its own, with full read and write access. It might look something like this old mockup:


In short, Wallet is still an app I use all the time myself and would love to keep updating one way or another, even if the same can't be said for other Waterfall apps. I have plenty of ideas for improvement and innovation, and hope to show them with a major update around early 2008.

P.S. If you'd like to test out Wallet 2.7, send me an email - dustin at waterfallsw dot com - and I'll shoot a beta your way. Thanks.

When Radiohead was reported to be in disagreement with the iTunes structure, many simply thought that Radiohead 'didn't get it.' The so-called announcement wasn't surprising to Radiohead fans; you've never been able to find any of their albums on iTunes. iTunes, of course, lets you pick and choose which songs you'd like to buy off an album, at $0.99/song. This is a good system; most mainstream music is so terrible that labels only care about singles, and have been stuffing them into "albums" which are really only a medium to sell their singles with filler content for more profit. All albums sold on iTunes must supposedly follow this individual song model (though many do not). It's a great model for sure, especially with the dwindling state of mainstream music. But it is undeniably the death of the album format, which many still feel is important.

Radiohead is one of the few bands left that still cares about the album. Fans know that lots of work is gone into creating albums where each song is a piece of a bigger picture. Have a few listens of OK Computer and you'll know what I mean. Ultimately, it's their decision as an artist anyway to decide what medium they want their work to be sold in, and that's respectable.

Is it a greedy move to sell entire albums, or do they really just want people to listen to their music the way it was meant to be heard? They've definitely proven it's the latter.



Their new album, In Rainbows, is now available for pre-order online. But here's the twist: you choose the amount you want to pay, even nothing if you want. This totally defeats most reasons for piracy - why pirate if you can get it online immediately, DRM free, for a price you think is fair? You could even download it for free to preview, and pay later. It's the honour system at its finest, really. No tricks, no feeling cheated. There are also no labels involved, which arguably aren't even necessary in this day and age.

And Radiohead can be sure that their work is being distributed the way it's meant to be.

Earlier this year, Trent Reznor spoke of a similar idea, suggesting that once his record label contract expired, he'd be interested in simply putting up new music the day it is ready on his website, with a PayPal link. See here.

I've have one record left that I owe a major label, then I will never be seen in a situation like this again. If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal. Come see the show and buy a T-shirt if you like it. I would put out a nicely packaged merchandise piece, if you want to own a physical thing. And it would come out the day that it's done in the studio, not this "Let's wait three months" bulls---.

If you support this kind of radical thinking, as I certainly do, head on over to Radiohead's website and pre-order their new album before it is released on October 10th. If proven successful, we could see the beginning of the end for music labels, even the RIAA. And at the very least it will leave a significant impact - showing that perhaps fairness works after all, and that it's the music industry that needs to reposition its stance, not the consumers.