The Apple [AAPL] social network for music, Ping, seems set to become something you want to use, rather than an embarrassing relative you try to ignore. That’s because the company has reached a series of key major label deals to support its mythical cloud-based music services, even as its competitors — including Google and Amazon — fail to reach deals for their own unlicensed attempts. We’ve also learned that Apple has been developing the service for years, with a new patent filing showing a unique approach to service delivery.

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iPhones, iPads and other Apple [AAPL] products may be harder to get than usual as the impact of the terrible tragedy that hit Japan in March begins to be felt across the company’s supply chain. Confounding the problem it seems finding enough workers to help meet Apple’s aggressive iPad 2 and iPhone production orders is also challenging.

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Google’s digital music service falls short of ambition

“Generally there were demands on the business side that we think were unreasonable and don’t enable us to have a sustainable, scalable music business,” says some Google suit.

What annoys me here is that Google is blaming the labels for just how crappy its new digital music service is, yelling at the music ‘people’ because the cash they wanted wouldn’t let Google run a scaleable business…..in other words, the music biz wanted enough cash to pay itself and the artists, while Google wanted to pay peanuts for creativity in its mission to ensure all creativity is searchable and findable by people using those also crappy Google Chrome client terminals *$499, while stocks last, so get an iPad and don’t be simple-minded* and ‘the Google’ search engine. Also so that people sucking on the GOOG Kool-Aid “we’re beyond good and evil” post modern, neo-fascist, religio-philosophical bullshit can make their money while the people who, you know, actually make the music and other creative stuff, find the music and other creative stuff, sell the music and other creative stuff and support the music and other creative stuff starve. But that’s alright because it lets the Google location and user data glutton continue in its multinational quest to get rich simply by designing stupid computer programs which let you find stuff and thing, some of which you didn’t need a decade ago.

I’m waiting for Apple’s cloud. I love music. I love all the creative arts. I’m willing to pay for them. Google is a hitchhiker, but it has the cash it needs to buy its own car. Thanks for dropping in.

Oh come on, this is science fiction. That thing you wear on your wrist? It’s gonna Facetime for you, and be controlled by voice. OK, sure, it might not be this year, it could be next year, it could be later, but it’s on the way so get with the show. What we do with this new uber-connected reality where you can ask your wristwatch where the local vinyl exchange is and be told it got shut down by lazy labels in the digital dawn? Where you can ask your watch for coffee and it’ll tell you to go there for coffee. Where you can hit Grinder if you’re gay/lesbian or OK Cupid if you’re straight (or both if you’re both and frankly if you can handle that much time management challenge, hats off to you) and make an immediate date? This augmented reality, all carried on your wrists, well until old Woz’ future prediction gets it right and we all have AAPL-branded cyborgs in our ear….

Returning briefly to reality, here’s a pic of the Facetime camera on iPod nano. By which we’ve basically established a low power processor to handle the connectivity and call, even if only over Wi-Fi, so suddenly what’s up top doesn’t feel quite so crazy anymore, maybe…. Over to you, I take comments here, too.

[OK, sure, it might not be this year, it could be next year, it could be later, but it’s on the way some day so get with the show.]

Fact or fake, doesn’t matter. You know something like this will happen. After all, I did say it was science fiction…

Apple [AAPL] seems set to kill the optical drive when it releases Mac OS X ‘Lion’ as a downloadable upgrade via the Mac App Store. While this begs questions — principally how a Mac user can launch a faulty Mac from disk, without a disk — this isn’t the first time Apple’s changed an industry. Here’s a short — and necessarily incomplete — list:

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Apple [AAPL] watchers are asking just how long it will be until Apple’s much-loved boss, Steve Jobs, moves aside to become special advisor to new Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Today I’m beginning to believe Steve has one more card he wants to play before he pulls back a little — he wants to reinvent television, and I hope he gets to do it.

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