[UPDATE: The original video, with Dylan soundtrack, is still playing for me here at home in Daly City, California. But Network World's Paul McNamara, commenters, and others are saying that it's blocked for them. Sounds like the geolocation technology that YouTube uses has decided that Daly City isn't in the U.S. Or something like that.]

Back in October, shortly after Steve Jobs passed away, I uploaded a wonderful video to YouTube. It was called “To Steven Jobs on his thirtieth birthday,” and was a film created by Jobs’ Apple coworkers in 1985 to show at his birthday party. (Craig Elliott, who worked at Apple when it was made and shown, was the generous soul who shared it with me.)

I’d never seen the video or many of the Jobs images it included, and thought they deserved to be more widely known. Now they are: The YouTube version has been viewed almost 240.000 times.

But Paul McNamara of Network World noticed something about the video which I didn’t know: It was missing. As he explains, when he tried to play it, he got a message saying it violated Sony Music Entertainment’s copyright and was therefore blocked. After reading his post, I checked, and got the same alert that he did.

And…I guess the video did violate Sony’s copyright. The (perfect) soundtrack was Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages.” SI didn’t regret uploading it–YouTube is bursting at the seams with copyrighted music. But if Sony took action against it, I’m not outraged. Just sad.

Here’s the thing, though: I just checked the video again, and it’s working again. For me, at least. As of right now. Here it is:

I see that it has a link letting you buy “My Back Pages” from iTunes, the Android Marketplace, or Amazon; maybe Sony is just as happy leaving the video up in hopes of monetizing it. If so, good!

But just in case: Here’s another version of “To Steven Jobs on His Thirtieth Birthday.” Without any audio at all. It’s nowhere near as good as the Dylan one, but far better than nothing…

As for the next-generation iPad itself, sources say it will be pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release: A device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but running a much faster chip, sporting an improved graphics processing unit, and featuring a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.

Over at the Atlantic, Robert Wright is being sacrilegious. He says he’s unhappy with the trend–seen in phones, laptops, and other products–to make gadgets as thin as possible:

Remember when Jobs first unveiled the Macbook Air? I do, because I had long been a fan of the small, lightweight computers that had until then been available only on the Windows platform. Jobs brought the machine onstage in a manila envelope, because the thing he wanted to wow the audience with was its thinness.

I thought: Who cares how thin it is? Thickness isn’t the dimension that really matters when you have to fit a computer into a tiny backpack or use it in a coach seat on an airplane. And, anyway, more important than any spatial dimension is weight. Sure, to the extent that thinner means lighter, thinness is good, but if you make thinness an end in itself, you start compromising functionality.

Bob has several specific beefs with whisper-thin gizmos. He points out that all things being equal, a thin case leaves less room for the battery, thereby leading to shorter battery life. He says that overly svelte devices are harder to hold and easier to drop. With laptops, he says, engineering for thinness leads to compromises in keyboard quality.

If you’re down on thin, you could point out other problems which Bob doesn’t mention–for instance, thin laptops and tablets often don’t have room for useful ports. (I might own an 11″ MacBook Air if it had an SD slot, but Apple jettisoned it.)

I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about Bob’s argument, and it’s been surprisingly tough. In some instances, I know I like thin: I’m certainly happier carrying a MacBook Air than a MacBook Pro, and it’s not just because of the weight difference. Skinnier notebooks are easier to hold; that matters to me, because I’m out and about a lot, and have been known to attend cocktail parties with my laptop tucked under an arm that’s also holding a glass of wine.

But am I subconsciously buying into the thinness fetish which Bob derides? If you carry a MacBook Air or a thin Windows machine, you might impress other people who equate thin with good. But nobody ever increased his or her social standing by lugging a particularly chunky notebook. Maybe that unspoken truth influences my purchasing decisions without me even understanding it.

With phones, I don’t feel quite the same impulse to defend thinness. My favorite phone of the pre-iPhone era was my Treo 650, was 23mm thick. The iPhone 4S is 9.3mm thick. And yet, if I made a list of the 20 top ways in which the iPhone 4S improves on the Treo, its dimensions probably wouldn’t make the cut.

At least Apple, through clever engineering and a willingness to postpone 4G, manages to give the iPhone decent battery life by current standards. (Even then, lots of people buy Mophie cases for their iPhones–effectively opting for a portlier, longer-running iPhone.) Numerous makers of 4G Android phones have released skinny phones with dismal battery life; in these cases, it’s painfully obvious that consumers would have been better served if the phones had sported thicker cases that had room for bigger batteries.

The thing is, phone makers are stuck in their usual war of numerical specsmanship. After awhile, it doesn’t matter whether thinner is better or not. Bob heralds the arrival of Motorola’s Droid Razr Maxx, a thicker, bigger-battery version of the Droid Razr. I’m glad Motorola is giving it a try, but I also worry that if the Maxx isn’t a hit, it’ll make phone manufacturers even more thick-averse.

And then there are HDTVs, a product category that Bob doesn’t mention. They too are obsessed with thinness as a marketing talking point. That really confuses me: Why should anyone care much about the one dimension you can’t see when you’re watching TV?

(Yes, I speak as someone who owns an aging Vizio LCD set that is, compared to current models, laughably thick. Sorry if I sound defensive.)

The bottom line here is actually pretty straightforward. Every gadget represents a series of design tradeoffs. Every gadget buyer has a different comfort zone when it comes to the balance of thinness-vs.-other-stuff. If Bob doesn’t want a super-thin notebook–and is willing to use Windows–it’s okay, because he still has plenty of choices. But if he doesn’t want a super-thin phone, his options are surprisingly limited. That’s a shame.

Do you think today’s tech products are inappropriately fixated on thinness, not thin enough–or just right?

The argument that iOS is a much more stable operating system than Android has been repeated on the blogs and even in the comment threads of stories about the two operating systems. There’s a problem, though: the data indicates that is untrue.

Mobile app monitoring company Crittercism released data Friday on crash reports from the period December 1 through December 15, and saying iOS has stability issues is putting it nicely. By a 2-to-1 margin, iOS crashes much more frequently than Android, according to Crittercism’s report. The biggest offender is iOS 5.0.1, accounting for 28.64 percent of all crashes.

By comparison, the most crash-prone Android operating system is 2.3.3, accounting for 3.86 percent of reports. That’s a huge difference and is sure to get the Apple blogosphere in an uproar over the survey’s methodology.

Yes, the firm’s work did have a disproportionate number of iOS devices in the test (162 million to 52 million for Android). However, to blunt that criticism, Crittercism split the data into quartiles, and looked at the crashes as a percentage of app launches.

The story is the same. In the top quartile, iOS apps crashed .51 percent of the time versus .15 percent for Android; in the second quartile 1.47 percent to .73 percent; and in the bottom quartile 3.66 percent to 2.97 percent. The data favors Android once again.

What’s causing the instability in iOS? It’s a good question without an easy answer. Apple’s walled garden approach in the App Store could leave a disproportionate number of users with outdated and buggy apps. Developers must wait to get updates approved by Apple just like the first time they submitted their apps; Android developers can choose to allow for auto-updating without any need for the Android market.

Even Apple’s iAd is at fault: Crittercism received reports that the Cupertino, Calif. company’s advertising platform at times does not play nice with developers’ ads, causing instability.

One caveat: Crittercism’s data period is early enough that Ice Cream Sandwich crash data may not be accurately reflected. The firm says it expects the percentages of crashes on the newest version to increase significantly in future data sets.

Either way, the data puts to bed a misconception over the stability of Android, and raises new questions about iOS. Does Android have better quality developers, then? You might be able to argue yes.

[Hat tip: Forbes]

While the first ads featured the Galaxy S II phone, a direct competitor of the iPhone 4S, this one is for the Galaxy Note. With its huge screen and pen, it’s both an anti-iPhone and one of the most distinctive phones on the market. So the gag feels a little muffled, and the Note doesn’t get enough explanation.

I’m still curious how the Galaxy Note will do–it strikes me as neat, but a niche. But the fact that Samsung plowed money into a Super Bowl spot presumably means that it thinks the phone can be a mainstream hit.

Immediate reaction to the news was intriguing, because it was split down the middle. On one side were those who read Browett’s credentials and the PR puffs. To them, it looks as if Apple has just hired a man who has succeeded at most things he’s tried, and spent the last five years steering a large retail business with more than 1,200 stores through a difficult period for the economy.

On the other hand, for those who know Dixons as it exists in the real world, the reaction was somewhat different: the most common refrain I saw was “Has Tim Cook ever been in a Dixons store?”.

Since 2007, Brower has been CEO of Dixons Retail, a large electronics merchant in the UK that owns two chains, Currys and PC World. It’s sort of both the Best Buy and the CompUSA of its territory.

When I think of the PC World stores, I think of the years when I worked at PC World magazine here in the states. I got a surprising number of e-mails from unhappy customers who were confused about which PC World they were contacting–messages along the lines of “I have a complaint about the price of ink cartridges in your Lancashire branch.” The fact that the logos of the magazine and the stores were nearly identical didn’t make matters any less confusing. (Both companies have since changed their logos–and they’re still very similar. Weird.)

Because I got so many missives from disgruntled PC World shoppers, I tend to have a negative view of Dixons despite the fact that my entire shopping experience with the company consists of having briefly visited a PC World in London about a decade ago. So I asked my UK Twitter pals what they think of Dixons and its stores. Here’s a sampling of what they said:

@harrymccracken OK as long as you a)know exactly what you want b)can avoid their staff as much as possible.—
Neil Williams (@NeilW_NI) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Fine if you find a good price and don't mind 4 different staff trying to sell you extended warranties on your way back out…—
David Hayward (@nachimir) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Big, bland, corporate, ubiquitous, lacking any real knowledge (ask staff for advice and they just read the shelf labels…)—
Mark Wilson (@markwilsonit) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Better than 5 years ago, but still pretty much the opposite of an Apple store – little to no product knowledge among staff—
Ewan Leith (@EwanToo) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken "Last resort" comes to mind re: Dixons / PC World—
Jon Norris (@Jn_Norris) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Their "Black" concept store in Birmingham was pretty decent last time I went – blog.emap.com/Rob_Gregory/20…—
Robin Morley (@mrrobinmorley) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Dixons high street stores are now under Currys brand. They're usually mediocre and highly variable. Think a meh Best Buy.—
Bobbie Johnson (@bobbiejohnson) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken not great. And that's being kind.—
Ian Betteridge (@ianbetteridge) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Awful, painful, hideous. Think the worst of Best Buy and Radio Shack combined.—
Ben Smith (@benptooey) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken Me: "Tell me about this", Salesman "This product has X". Me: "The label says it has Y, not X". S: "I don't think so"—
Alex Taylor (@adntaylor) January 31, 2012

@harrymccracken two of the worst stores to buy tech in, you thought best buy was bad, well go lower. Only interested in selling u warranty—
Chris Jackson (@jacmeister) January 31, 2012

Apple presumably devoted a huge amount of thinking to making this hire. But I do find it interesting: When it started the Apple Store, it didn’t hire anyone who was responsible for an existing electronics retailer, most of which have mediocre-to-poor reputations. It hired Ron Johnson, who’d worked at Target, a company that’s generally well-regarded by the industry and by its customers. Johnson brought a fresh outlook to his new gig, and it sure seems to have helped.

Brower, however, is in the electronics business already, and Dixons’ stores, which have little in common with the Apple Store, presumably reflect his views and capabilities. It’ll be fascinating to see how he does at Apple–and if there’s any discernible difference between the Johnson-era Apple Stores and the Brower ones.

Over at TIME.com, my Technologizer column for this week is about the theory that people who buy Apple products act like cult members. As the theory would have it, they snap up Macs, iPhones, and iPads not because they’re good products, but because they’re mesmerized by Apple advertising and think that owning the company’s products makes them better human beings. Or something like that.

My take is that the theory was always silly–and that it’s particularly nonsensical in an age in which truly vast numbers of people are buying Apple products. The company’s customer base isn’t made up of like-minded fanatics; it consists of a large variety of people who buy Apple stuff for all sorts of reasons. But mostly, I hope and think, because they find it useful.

I didn’t expect the cult idea’s true believers to read my column, slap themselves in the forehead, and instantly cease believing that there’s something morally and/or mentally suspect about Apple fans. So I wasn’t surprised that the story attracted some comments that said things like this:

What a blundering article.

The fact is, when you go to buy a PC you have to take in many facts; ultimately make a personal choice for what works best. There is minimal, if any real choices to be made about how your want your Mac laptop/desktop/phone to be. They make products for people who can’t take the time to distinguish one laptop from another, other than new models being skinnier than the older ~ it is less about them being a ‘cult’ and more about people mindlessly praising a product they really know little to nothing about. Honestly, do you need to pay Apple’s prices for what you do on any given day with your laptop? (Well…maybe if it was a gaming rig.)

Android has a reputation for attracting geeks, i.e. ‘people who know what they are doing.’ If I fall into dislike with HTC’s product line, I can switch to Samsung or Motorola & keep my apps, songs, movies, books ~ they aren’t trapped in one rigid ecosystem. It’s no secret that the iPhone sold on simplicity & image, so you’ll excuse us if we’re tired of hearing waves of praise from the unknowing masses. And that’s no stereotype.

Okay, according to this commenter, it’s not so much that Apple users are a cult. But they are “unknowing masses” who are “mindlessly” praising a product they don’t understand.

I guess I have three primary problems with this stance:

1) I’m not an idiot! At least I don’t think I am. And when I’ve bought Apple products, it hasn’t been because I was unable to compare products and make a decision. In fact, in every case, I have compared products–such as multiple laptops, including both Windows PCs and Macs–and chosen the Apple product.

(Sometimes, by the way, I consider the Apple product and buy something else instead.)

2) 37 million people bought iPhones in the last quarter of 2011 alone. They’re all morons? None of them know anything about computers?

3) Really, any theory that involves vast numbers of people all buying any one product for the identical reason is inherently specious. Human beings don’t work that way. There are dozens of reasons to buy Apple products–and dozens of reasons to not buy them–and different people make different decisions based on a variety of factors.

It all seems to boil down to this: Apple products don’t appeal to me, and that means that if they appeal to you, you’re an idiot.

Surely I’m not the only one who finds this attitude not just wrongheaded but sad?

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhonescreens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

Apple (which declined to comment for the Times) is not the only company that has issues like this: Foxconn, its principal supplier, assembles 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics, period. And Apple may be moving in the right direction when it comes to doing stuff about this and discussing the situation openly. But if you own Apple products or other gadgets made in China–and you do–you owe it to yourself to read the Times’ stories.

Judging from the turnout for our live coverage of Apple’s education event–which was much sparser than for something like the iPad 2 announcement–a lot of tech enthusiasts lost interest in today’s news when they figured out that it didn’t involve any new hardware. That’s a shame. The news–a new textbook-friendly version of iBooks, a free book-creation tool called iBooks Author, and a spiffier version of the iTunes U courseware app–has as much or more potential to make its mark on the world as any new iPad or iPhone could. Everything looks really, really cool.

But while the folks who did comment during our liveblog–a smart bunch–and the ones I ran into here at the event were impressed by much of what they saw, they also had questions. Lots of them. And so do I. Here are a few of them:

Just how likely is it that large numbers of great big school systems will buy into this? They’re not known for boldly seizing new opportunities. And even if a $500 iPad and $14.99 digital textbooks make more economic sense than a whole stack of $60 textbooks, how will schools acquire the iPads and textbooks and distribute them? Apple didn’t really address this during the event, but everyone I chatted with in the demo room wondered about it.

Is it an issue that these textbooks are iPad-only? You can’t read them on a Mac–let alone a Windows PC or a Kindle–even though you use a Mac to create them. I don’t blame Apple for its iPad-centric approach to textbooks, especially since the standards don’t exist to push out truly rich, interactive textbooks across multiple platforms. But I wonder whether schools will be wary about wedding themselves to one tablet, and whether any of them will have the guts to ask Apple if it plans to release an Android version.

Can we trust kids with iPads? College students, sure. But how about K-12 ones? (Apple’s Phil Schiller said that iPads are more durable than dead-tree textbooks because they don’t get dog-eared. But textbooks don’t shatter when you drop them.)

Will this democratize publishing? I came away from the event excited about the new stuff’s potential to change education–but I also started thinking about publishing my own books using iBooks Author. It’s already possible to self-publish for the Kindle, the Nook, and other platforms, but with iBooks Author, whipping up a beautiful, beautifully interactive book is theoretically within the reach of normal folks who know how to use a word processor. (Apple provides themes that help non-designers create books that aren’t eyesores.)

How about the competition? Amazon has dabbled in textbooks with the increasingly outdated Kindle DX and textbook rental, but it hasn’t set out to change the world. Startup Inkling is out to change the world, but it’s just getting started, and now it’s competing with Apple. I’ll be curious to see if Apple will be a one-of-a-kind player or part of a bigger revolution.

More thoughts later. For now, I’m interested in yours…