I imagine Fox will follow closely behind to complete the offering.

After nearly two years off the air, Mad Men starts up again on Sunday. Can’t wait.

Obviously, I’ve been bitching a lot about the new season of Game of Thrones because I can’t watch it (legally) for a year since I don’t have cable. But the same isn’t true of Mad Men — I already bought the season pass through iTunes. I have to wait a day longer than those with cable (well, technically until midnight most of the time), but I’m fine with that.

Amazon also emailed this morning to say they have a season pass option for the new season of Mad Men through Amazon Instant Video. Also cool. One problem: I can’t for the life of me find a price anywhere. And there are about 17 possible buttons to click. This entire design really needs to be re-thought. 

Anyway, good on AMC for giving me options to give them money for their great content.

AKA: when you have an exclusive deal, milk it.

Interesting. I had had no idea this limit even existed in the first place. There are probably some songs I have from years ago that I’d like to get the entire album.

So UltraViolet is a turd, this much we know. It’s the most surprising development of the year… to no one. Unless you run a Hollywood studio. 

But what’s really great is that UltraViolet is such a massive turd that the studios are being forced to give customers copies of their films on the staying-the-hell-away-from-UltraViolet Apple platform.

Ouch.

Brian Womack and Andy Fixmer reporting for Bloomberg that Google’s Music Store is set to launch tomorrow. Their opening paragraph:

Google Inc. is entering the online music market almost a decade too late to pose a threat to Apple Inc., the largest seller of songs on the Web.

There you go. No need to read the remaining 18 paragraphs. 

This is a pretty clear sign that it will launch soon. Of course, there have been signs before.

The weirdest thing about this launch timetable miss is how it impacts other products. There’s a switch in iOS that currently does nothing. And the latest Apple TV update features a major music menu that is worthless. It’s totally dependent on iTunes Match.

This type of misalignment is very un-Apple-like. 

While NFC has been the talk of the town in terms of mobile payments, Square has quietly worked around it one way, and Apple just did it another way.

The most interesting thing about this test though is the real big picture. It’s a reminder that Apple has hundreds of millions our credit cards in their iTunes system which is now connected to every iPhone. When you add these two things together in the real world, guess what it equals?

Apple making a shit ton of money. 

Sucks, but not all that surprising, to be honest. The dev version that people were testing out still needed a bit of work. 

Weird that Apple turned the switch for it on in iOS a week ago though. 

Way too much smoke gathering for there not to be some kind of fire. The real question: just how far along is this project?

Steve Jobs telling Walter Isaacson, “I finally cracked it” sure sounds promising. But in the 60 Minutes episode about the biography, Isaacson notes that the one area Jobs would have liked to transform was television — indicating that it may not happen. Of course, Isaacson could have just phrased it that way since Jobs unfortunately will not be around when the transformation happens.

Hardware and software are one thing. Apple will eventually get to where they need to be on those, no question. The true question is the content. An Apple television is great. An Apple television that transforms the television landscape in the same way that Apple transformed the mobile phone landscape is what we really need.

If Apple can’t get there, this may be just another project being worked on at Apple that doesn’t see the light of day. But Jobs’ comment and all this smoke sure seem to suggest otherwise. 

Yep, it just showed up. Go to Settings -> Music and you’ll see it magically appear at the top. The service isn’t live just yet, but it sure looks like it will be soon.