10 posts tagged “apple”
Incidentally, my lack of posting recently has been due to a pretty busy period at work, which looks like continuing for the new few weeks. But since it's the weekend, I'm making up for lost time. :)
Anyways, I came across these two Apple-related links and [these are good].
The first is a blog entry on why the AppleTV is going to be successful, from ZDNet's Alan Graham. I think Graham pretty much hits the nail on the head, and certainly expresses why "I WANT MY APPLETV!". Basically, instead of trying to force a computer into people's living rooms, like M$'s MediaCenter or whatever it's called, Apple have again gone the simple route and designed a device that does what people want : give them a way to watch TV that they've downloaded on their TVs, with the simplicity of a DVD player or Tivo.
It's not surprising to me at all that one of the usual rumor sites reported that Apple has already sold out their initial order of 100,000 AppleTVs, totally surpassing their own expectations. 100,000 x US$299 is a cool US$30 million of brand new revenue. I have no idea what kind of margins Apple might be getting on AppleTVs, I'm sure that they are going to end up making a lot from them, since they are basically 40GB harddrives with A/V out, a wireless 802.11n chipset and a cheap Intel processor to handle decoding.
Moving to the second link, it's a Flickr gallery of someone's basement Mac museum (Thanks again to the ever-interesting Daring Fireball for the link).
And I thought my collection of Macs was bad...
Following up my earlier post complaining about the pricing of ST:TOS on the iTunes store, I first ought to admit that I got my pricing info for the DVD sets wrong. I may have looked at the prices when there was a special offer going on, but the price per season at Amazon is now about US$68 - about US$10 more expensive than the iTunes price.
However, what is more eye-opening is that some of the episodes being sold on iTunes are the newly-remastered 40th anniversary versions.
Yes, some. And while the iTS can claim some vindication on their pricing, they've really botched it again by not indicating which of the episodes on sale are the remastered versions. Fortunately, numerous fans have posted info the iTS reviews regarding which episodes are, in fact, the remastered versions.
It isn't entirely iTunes' fault, because the remastering is a work in progress and Paramount isn't doing the episodes in order, so they simply can't sell the entire first season in remastered form because most of the episodes haven't been done yet.
But you would think they would have done one of two things : either clearly label the remastered episodes or - and this would probably be the preferred solution - only sell remastered episodes as they become available, regardless of season. Of course, that would mean they can't sell season sets, but they could instead sell a 'series pass' for the entire set of 80 episodes.
Still, it appears from the customer reviews that people are buying these episodes. Including me, because I just downloaded the remastered versions of 'Balance of Terror' (my all-time favorite Trek episode of any of the series) and 'Space Seed'. And, for all my gripes, they were worth the US$1.99.
When I first heard about the remastering project and saw clips of the first few episodes, it struck me as fairly minimal tweaking. Nice to have, and certainly a good idea with HD on the horizon, but nothing earth-shattering.
However, having compared the remastered versions to my old DVD copies(1), the difference really is pretty impressive. It's not so much the redone special effects as the general cleaning up of the image quality - rich colours, finer detail (even at iTS resolution). Can't wait to see these on my plasma over an AppleTV connection.
Also, judging from the excellent sub-site on the remastering at StarTrek.Com, it looks like they are gaining in confidence and doing more to the episodes. Check out the gallery to see some of the changes they are now making to backgrounds, in particular - including one ridiculous example where, in 'Arena', the sky in one scene is inexplicably filled by an image of crumpled metal, which has now been replaced with normal sky.
The new version of the hollow asteroid world Yonada from 'For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky' (clunkiest episode title in the history of television) is also really nice.
(1) Not the current season sets, but the ridiculously expensive two-episodes-per-disc version from several years ago, although I understand that the season sets are no better in picture quality. When they released these in the early days of DVD, I bought all forty volumes as they were released, at a total cost of over US$700...and these don't have any extras whatsoever, unlike the newer season sets. Sigh, the price of fandom...
OK, so a few days have passed since my initial reaction to the iPhone, and I must admit that - given time to recover from the effects of Jobs' famous Reality Distortion Field - I've started to see some of the weaknesses in the product.
I don't agree with those who say that the lack of 3G is huge omission. It has wi-fi which is faster, so who needs 3G? I can understand that some people may not have access to free (or paid) wi-fi hotspots and just want to surf off their 3G telephone service, but I still don't think it's that big a deal.
However, I do have misgivings about the virtual keyboard - although what else do you do if you have a touchscreen device? - and the fairly poor battery life that Jobs mentioned. The harddisk space - either 4GB or 8GB - is also pretty pathetic given that this is supposed to be a multimedia (i.e video) player, but I suppose that's also an inevitable trade-off between size, price and battery life.
I still think that the iPhone is going to be a huge hit. It isn't perfect, but neither is any other competing product in the market. And Apple still has five months to get it right(er). Plus, the beauty and ease of use of the interface and design probably overcomes any of the shortcomings.
As for the Cisco trademark issue, that's an unfortunate PR screwup that took some of the shine off the initial euphoria; not helped, of course, by the 'revelation' in the WSJ that the Feds were investigating Jobs' long-since-cancelled options grant - didn't we know this already?
As these things usually go, Cisco and Apple will probably end up settling, although Apple seems ready for a fight. At first blush, the advantage appears to be Cisco's, but some interesting possible arguments on Apple's side have already surfaced, including the possibility that Cisco itself might have failed to 'renew' their trademark.
Sure, it would be great if AppleTV also supported DivX, but I've been using VisualHub to convert my DivX content into MPEG-4 anyway, so that it plays nicely with similarly non-DivX iTunes. If you want stuff to 'just work', there are bound to be some limitations.
In fact, in preparation for the AppleTV, I also bought a Miglia EvolutionTV external DVR box yesterday. While Elgato's EyeTV line is far more visible and popular, the advantage of the EvolutionTV is that it can do hardware conversion to MPEG-4 (and also DivX) when recording. In contrast, the EyeTV 250's hardware conversion is only to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, neither of which would play nicely with the AppleTV. So with the EvolutionTV, I can record stuff (like United matches) directly to MPEG-4, and send that directly to iTunes or the AppleTV.
New toys to look forward to. I'm a happy camper.
Steve hasn't even left the stage yet, but...words just can't describe how amazing the iPhone is. It really isn't just a phone. It really is a handheld Mac, essentially.
Wow. Wow. Wow wow wow.
No announcement on release date yet, but it's so spectacular that I don't think that makes a difference anymore. People will just wait until it's out.
As for me - I'd buy it just as an iPod alone, because the screen is so beautiful, but I hope that there'll be a way to make this thing work here in Singapore, even if it isn't officially supported.
Again...Wow.
Note: I'm going to try and resist the urge to post more about the iPhone or the keynote until later today, when I've had a chance to digest it all (after catching up with work back at the office!). I haven't even started on Apple TV (the actual name of iTV) yet, and that I'm definitely getting).
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is partnering with Cingular to provide phone service for the iPod phone, and that Apple is also going to add Paramount's back catalogue of movies to the iTunes Store.
Unlike rumor sites and even other sites like News.Com, the Journal doesn't publish 'rumors' unless there's real substance behind them. It's called good journalism (no pun intended). So I think you can pretty much put those two tidbits down as 'fact'.
I now expect Apple to announce the iPod phone tonight. But I don't see it being available until later in the quarter. Hopefully, the announcement itself is big enough to outweigh any negative impact from the delayed release.
This is one situation where Jobs' past record of announcing cool stuff that is 'available right now at Apple's online store' can really come back and bite, but it really shouldn't. Launching a phone isn't like launching an iPod, and it would be impossible to maintain secrecy while setting up an immediate rollout of the iPod phone with an outside partner like Cingular, who would have to train staff, prepare marketing materials, etc.
As for the Paramount tie-up, that's good. They've got a strong portfolio of movies, like the Mission: Impossible franchise.
Oh, and if you're staying up for the keynote coverage, check out Macworld keynote bingo.
You should also check out Jon Gruber's predictions at his popular Mac-centric blog, Daring Fireball.
The Newton mention earlier reminded me of the very first website I created, way back in 1998. Back then, I was already a Mac nut, and decided to start my own Mac opinion site.
I posted one editorial, on the death of the Newton.
Anyway, I dug it out of my hard drive where I had archived it, and put the site back up on my iDisk.
So, ladies and gentlemen, fresh from 1998, I present MacWatch.
An interesting article by John Markoff for the NY Times, predicting that Apple's big announcement at tomorrow's Macworld keynote will be a handheld Mac - basically Apple's answer to the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) that Microsoft 'launched' unsucessfully last year. The main difference is that, besides the obvious PDA and media-playing functions that a handheld Mac would be useful for, this would also be a phone.
In other words, Apple is relaunching the Newton, but done right. And it's a phone, too.
I like this idea, and suspected that Apple had some kind of PDA device in the works when they unveiled the enhanced scheduling features to be added to Mail and iCal in Leopard. Business-wise, it also takes away some of the pressure of producing a successful iPhone, because a handheld Mac would have appeal to a wider audience and wouldn't stand or fall purely based on how many people wanted an iPhone.
More importantly, it's a lot more Apple's style to create a whole new product category, instead of just trying to make a better phone. Jobs can say, "Well, we think this thing is gonna change your life, and if you want to, you can make calls on it."
We'll see...it's just a little under 30 hours to go till Steve Jobs takes the stage in San Francisco.
Since I've started using the iTunes Store, it's become something of an addiction. However, one really irritating non-feature is the lack of any rebate if you purchase a full album or TV season after having bought individual songs or episodes. In many cases, it's been a deterrent to my buying stuff - either I avoid buying the album or season because I refuse to pay twice for the episodes I've already purchased, or I hold off buying an individual item because I might want to buy the whole package eventually.
Late last year, there were some rumors from the usual sites that Apple was going to do something about this. But it would cause tremendous problems with people who have succumbed to this iTunes 'double-dipping' in the past. Also, while I'm sure they could re-jig their systems to handle the calculations, it might be more trouble than it's worth.
Another really dumb iTS move recently was to price the first season of Star Trek : The Original Series at US$57, more or less the price of buying all 29 episodes individually. Virtually every other series on the store is available at a (slight) discount for season passes. More importantly, all three seasons of TOS can be bought for about US$100 altogether on much-higher-quality DVD. The episodes for sale on iTS aren't even the new remastered 'enhanced' versions!
Dumb. Hope Steve mentions something about the first complaint during his Expo keynote next week.
Man...if he does take a leave of absence and/or Apple doesn't announce some kind of 'iPhone' - or a product so surprising that it eclipses that expectation - my AAPL shares might be in for a serious pounding.
Given Apple's aggressive 'first 30 years was only the beginning' pre-MacWorld campaign, they must have something huge up their sleeves. It can't just be the iTV, because they already announced that, and stuff like dual-quadcore (that's eight cores) Macs aren't mainstream-friendly. More movies on iTunes or a new widescreen iPod are also incremental, rather than earth-shattering. Even an instantaneous Leopard release would be no big deal.
What would be earth-shattering?
(1) iPhone. Actually, given the expectations, this would be more of a relief than a sensation. I'm sure Apple can pull of a great design, but it's the distribution/business model that is really going to determine this. Knowing Apple's style, I'd expect them to take a 'disruptor' approach and do an end-run around the traditional distribution channels.
(2) Unexpected iTV features. Things like recording. At the price that Steve mentioned previously, it would seem pretty difficult. As it stands, the iTV is probably just a video Airport Express. However, one thing I can imagine is a new range of HT-friendly displays (already rumoured) that fit with the iTV, with built-in iSights to allow iChatting through the iTV - but that's niche appeal, at best.
(3) Subnotebook-sized MacBooks or MacBook Pros. New notebooks hardly seems earth-shattering, but every 12" PowerBook or iBook user I know is dying to replace their machines with Intel-based equivalents. The 13" iBooks are still too bulky, and also aren't in sexy aluminium. Tablet functionality would be interesting, but not vital. If Apple were to announce 12" subnotebooks, they'd have a huge hit on their hands.
(4) Something else so cool and unexpected that only Apple could've come up with it.
These aren't predictions, they're wishes.
For the sake of my Mac fetish and the AAPL share price, I hope Steve doesn't disappoint, and I certainly hope he isn't taking any leave of absence...
For those not interested in the previous entry on football...
My Current iTunes Library Stats
13794 items, 39.9 days, 66.97 GB
1972 artists, 884 albums
Painstakingly genre-ized, rated and smart-playlisted.
Favourites in 256kbps, with the rest mostly 160kbps or higher.
Think I need a bigger iPod...
Current track : 'Everything Counts' by Depeche Mode.
Yes, I do want one of these...
(OK, maybe not...but they are really cute, no?)
