Taylor Swift v Apple: Why she won

Taylor Swift has triumphed - and she did for artists, big and small. Photo / Getty Images

This week we learnt that Taylor Swift isn't just a mega popstar, she's a superhero who swats aside giant corporations that attempt to deny musicians their hard-earned royalties.

Even Apple, notorious for doing pretty much exactly as it likes without listening to anyone else, withered before Swift who published a powerful polemic against the company's plans to hold off on payments for users' free three months' trial of its new streaming music service.

The day after Swift's Tumblr post, Apple boss Eddy Cue had to shame-facedly step in reverse the no-payments policy. Artists will now be paid for the three months' trial period and also get royalties at a slightly higher 71.5 to 73 per cent of revenue rates than the industry norm.

So Apple should. The company is on its way to becoming worth a trillion US dollars and has more cash in the bank than many countries.

Asking artists on Apple Music to accept deferred payments for three months would be plain offensive.

Good on Taylor Swift for changing that. Here's hoping Apple will name a programming language after her to atone for its misstep.

The case shows that making a living as an artist or creative can be quite complex in this day and age. Still, it's nothing compared to what Amazon's doing, which is to pay authors in its Kindle Direct Publishing Select scheme by the page read.

Not the number of books sold, then, and the idea seems an attempt at making more money for writers whose works are in the Amazon Lending Library.

For that system to work, Amazon has had to create a measure for a standard page. They're calling it the Kindle Edition Normalised Page Count or KENPC version 1.0, and it defines things like the font used, line height and spacing, and will be used to stop authors from gaming the system. Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Randal Jackson

I was sad to hear that fellow technology journalist and former Computerworld reporter Randal Jackson had passed away over the weekend.

Randal was already a Computerworld veteran when I started writing for the paper, with several great stories under his belt.

These included breaking the story about the Integrated National Crime Information System (INCIS) scandal that saw IBM burn through $110 million of taxpayer money in the 90s without finishing the project.

Enjoying life to the full, Randal was himself the source of great many stories. Most are best left for his friends to remember but suffice to say, his escapades were legendary.
Kippis, Randal.

Gear: Samsung SUHD 4K curved Smart TV UA55JS9000W

Here's a Samsung Smart TV that does just about everything right, with minimal fuss and discreet design while providing excellent picture quality with a curved screen that measures 55 inches diagonally.

While the full name of the JS9000W is nigh impossible to memorise, its LED 4K screen is excellent, with great colours, contrast and sharp images that have almost a three-dimensional realism to them and no discernible backlight bleed even in a darkened room.

UltraHD 4K Netflix movies looked fantastic, and the JS9000W upscales lower-resolution 720p and 1080i/p material very well too, to the point that you don't think about the difference in resolution.

The same goes for the curved screen: while I'm still unconvinced that it's worth paying more for a bent TV, the feature seems to add a little something to watching movies and you get used to it fast.

I've been lukewarm on the smart TV features in the past, since they don't really add to the viewing experience and besides, using a remote to navigate them is tiresome. Samsung's sat down and worked on the usability for the interface in the JS9000W and most of the apps I tried are simple and quick to use. The video on demand apps in particular are easy to use.

To get the best out of the JS9000W set, have it calibrated by someone who can wade through the extensive set of options for image and sound quality. It's not totally necessary to hire a pro to tweak the set as the factory settings are fairly good and not that hard to improve on with a bit of trial and error.

However, the JS9000W sells for around $6,500 in NZ so spending a few hundred on calibration is worth doing to get your money's worth.

The sound from the JS9000W is much better than the slim chassis would suggest, and I was happy not to use external speakers with the TV. Having a central hub, the One Connect box, with all the necessary connectors on it is a good idea by Samsung as it means far fewer cables have to go to the TV; instead, you hook them up to the hub and can keep things tidy.

If I had to nitpick, the Tizen Linux-based operating system that drives the JS9000W can be a bit slow at times. Several software updates arrived during the review period, making the set more responsive, so it looks like Samsung's optimising Tizen.

It does have the controversial voice recognition feature that sparked privacy concerns about TV watchers' utterings being recorded and transferred without their knowledge, fears that Samsung's tried to allay but which will continue to haunt the company for quite a while longer.

The price for the UA55JS9000W is on the high side, but Samsung's come up with a great set that provides high image quality so if it fits your budget, it should be high on your list.