macCompanion August 2006

The August issue introduces macCompanion's new logo, which I designed. This month I reviewed:

• LocationFree Player Pak for Macintosh
  Sony is not famous for being Macintosh-friendly. Of course, it's not famous for being friendly with hardly anyone, considering it usually tries to force its proprietary formats on everyone (Betamax, MiniDisc, ATRAC, UMD, copy-protected CDs with rootkits) at the expense of consumer ease-of-use. Its latest venture, LocationFree, is no exception.

There are two things I didn't mention in my review of Sony's LocationFree system. The first is that it is most directly competing against Akimbo, not Elgato's EyeTV products. But Akimbo is not (yet?) Macintosh-compatible, and that is the focus of macCompanion. Second, Sony requires a separate user license for every machine you own. So if you want to watch TV streamed from your LocationFree base station to your desktop, that's one license. But if you want to use your laptop, that's another license you must purchase. And if you want to watch with a PSP, that's another license to purchase. Imagine purchasing a DVD for $20 and then being forced to pay another $20 to watch it on a DVD player in a separate room. And another $20 if you loan it to a friend to watch.