A few years back, I bought a new car. I knew roughly what I wanted, but there were a few different models available, and so I test drove a bunch of them before making a decision. The garage in question knew full well that I’d be making test drives despite possibly not buying from them. And they didn’t charge me a penny.

If you’re thinking “well, of course they didn’t, idiot,” you might be in for a shock if the completely staggering stupidity in the music industry goes up another notch. And that’s because, according to CNET, the music industry now wants money for previews played in the likes of the iTunes Store.

Yes, that’s right—those 30-second previews that you use to see whether you want to buy a track are, according to David Renzer, CEO Universal Music Publishing Group, ripping off artists and labels, due to them not receiving ‘performance’ income.

So, essentially, people in the record industry want you to pay to see whether something is worth buying from them. They are mistaking ‘advertisements’ for ‘performances’, or, to put it another way, ‘abject stupidity’ for ‘common sense’. I’m sure if anything’s going to lead to a resurgence in the music industry, paying for previews is it. No, wait—the other one.

When I’m not writing, I’m designing websites. For me, usability is key, coming above most other considerations, and is a core element of good design. Clearly, whoever’s making the decisions regarding the pocket Tube map needs to understand such things.

An example of the new map is on Flickr, and two particular gems stand out. First, the map removes the Thames, thereby omitting the single biggest navigation aid the city has to offer; secondly, it doesn’t show the zone structure, so you’ve no way of knowing from the map whether another stop will stray outside of the zone you bought a ticket for. To have to look at another map for this information shows what a disaster this pocket map is.

Various other changes have happened, including the removal of East London line buses, multiples of stations, and icons that indicated stations that served airports. Clearly, someone was on a major minimalism kick, in order to ‘declutter’ the map. However, minimalism—while often beneficial—doesn’t equate to usability. The rule is to keep taking things away until the point where removing anything further would be detrimental; sadly, it looks like whoever designed this Tube map didn’t know when to stop.

Cnet reports that yesterday’s iPhone OS 3.1 update reverses ‘jailbroken’ devices. Services and apps installed by Cydia (and Cydia itself) will vanish if you update your device. Already, people are bitching about Apple being ‘invasive’, ‘closed’ and a little bit like an evil dictator that goes MWAHAHAHAHA a bit too much. So here are three helpful hints to anyone with a jailbroken device:

1. Last I heard, Jobs wasn’t traveling the world, forcing you to upgrade. Just wait until the hacking software is updated or update now, lose your hacks and quit your moaning.
2. Every single Apple update prior to now has reversed/wrecked unofficial hacks—why did you think this one would be any different? Apple’s remarkably consistent in this area.
3. Apple owes you nothing. Seriously. Why people think Apple should support a hack is beyond me.

That third point is especially obvious when you look at Apple’s desktop OS. Every time a major bump to Mac OS X happens (and, sometimes, a minor bump) a bunch of add-on hacks keel over and die. With Snow Leopard, every Safari add-on bit the big one. But these were essentially hacks to the system potentially affecting security, and certainly doing things over and above what typical apps do. Supporting such things simply wouldn’t be feasible for Apple, and so it is also with iPhone and iPod touch hacking.

Yesterday’s Apple event didn’t draw gasps of amazement of the good kind. Some great announcements were made (app management in iTunes 9, a cheaper iPod touch, a camera in the iPod nano), but the biggest surprise was the lack of a camera in the iPod touch.

This strikes a lot of people as crazy, but from yesterday’s event it’s pretty clear that Apple is aiming to differentiate each of its devices in a very clear way, rather than in the old days where everything played music and perhaps did a couple of extra things not particularly well.

The iPod shuffle is the truly mobile device, aimed at people who don’t care what they’re listening to, and don’t want any weight to carry around.

The iPod nano has been repositioned as a device to smack Flip with, due to bundling a VGA camcorder, but in a device much thinner than its rival.

The iPod touch, judging by the fact a quarter of yesterday’s announcement was about gaming, is now positioned as a handheld videogames device—Apple’s answer to the DSi and PSP Go. I still feel that the device’s name is a massive hindrance to true mass-market acceptance, but with 21,000+ games on the App Store, it’s clear where developers think the money is.

The iPod classic remains the player for people who must have every tune available at all times, under pain of death.

The iPhone is the device that mashes everything together in a profitable package for Apple.

Despite this desire to differentiate individual devices (presumably to encourage people to buy more of them rather than concentrate on convergence), it still seems odd that iPod touches lack a camera. Jobs argues in an interview with David Pogue that iPod touch is “the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw”. He says Apple was focused on “just reducing the price to $199 […] to get the price down where everyone can afford it”.

I suspect in the medium term, there will be an about-face on the camera decision, not least when you consider Jobs goes on to say in response to Amazon’s Kindle: “General-purpose devices will win the day [because] people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.” Right now, iPhone is the only truly general-purpose device; iPod touch is close, but really needs that camera to have the widest appeal and scope.

But next year will see flash memory reduce in price to the point that the iPod classic becomes irrelevant next to a 128 GB iPod touch. At that point, it’ll be a no-brainer to add a camera at least to the more expensive models in the iPod touch range, perhaps leaving the low-end without a camera, intended as a cheap gaming device to continue attacking Apple’s newfound handheld-oriented rivals.

LA Times reports that Norwegian lamp maker Luxo is suing Disney. Its reasoning is that Disney has moved from a purely animated Luxo to a physical animatronic in a theme park and actual lamps, bundled with the Blu-ray release of Up.

On the face of it, one might have sympathy for Luxo, because the company showed goodwill in letting Pixar/Disney ‘get away with things’ for so long, and it’s easily to argue that Disney’s current lamps are a clear breach of IP rights.

Despite this, one phrase is curious from the Norweigian company: it states Pixar lamps would “cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up”. Right. Perhaps the Luxos in the Up package will be relatively shoddy and potentially cause problems, but it’s surely undeniable that Luxo the character has added a hell of a lot of value to Luxo the company. But then again, lawsuits are also a fantastic way to get lots of press and added value.