Well it is that time of year again for more Apple rumors in advance of Macworld Expo. This one is pretty much the exact consolidated Mac mini wish list that was on like a zillion blogs the day the original mini was announced. See Think Secret.
Lets review shall we (before Cringley gets wind of this and somehow bends it into the worlds greatest conspiracy to take over, blah blah blah):
Intel processor (six months sooner than expected)
Front Row 2.0 (more goodies and assuming built in IR for remote)
tuner and DVR functionality
Built in iPod dock
Possibly larger
So is Think Secret right again? (For that matter, are they just Apples stealth marketing arm keeping up the buzz?) Or is it another I wish list? A larger, faster drive and a tuner card would be required adding cost and size. One thing though, if they did manage to pull of a Media Center PC style box for under 800 I think it would really give MS a run for the money. Ahh, how cool would it be if you could actually run MS MCE on it? Hmm. Back to reality. I predict that the next mini will certainly have Front Row 1.x and the IR port on it. But I doubt Apple is ready for full MCE functionality with tuner.
Well this is the week. I don't have much to say on the topic, just adding to the 360 blogging noise.
You can check BestBuy inventories here. 200 premium 360's for launch at the bellevue store. I predict that there will be more than that number who leave the store disappointed after they sell out Tuesday morning.
There have been two rumors lately that Apple will announce the Intel Mac this January at MacWorld. Forbes thinks it will be a Mac Mini. ThinkSecret thinks it will be an iBook.
Interesting that they both feel it will be a consumer based mac. This is probably a good bet. Also, January seems feasible. Apple often announces things that are not available for a couple months, and we know that OS X on Intel is at least far enough along to demo. ThinkSecret quotes someone as saying Apple will reduce the iBook prices to around $699 to "be competitive at the entry level." Ridiculous. iPod competes with much cheaper players and still does fine. I'd expect the new laptop to be around $999. In fact, I've commented before that Apple's current laptop prices are much more on par with the market than their desktop prices, which makes mac/windows laptops a great market for them to enter into.
ThinkSecret also mentions the possibility of dual-core mobile Yonah processors. Initially I thought that dual core would be nice, but suck too much power. But why couldn't you turn one core off? How cool would that be to run one core when mobile, and kick the other core on when plugged in. Regardless of what Apple does, I'm looking forward to seeing if this is the direction of laptops in general.
Running an OS per core is also be pretty interesting. You could feasibly run windows/mac in a window a'la VirtualPC, at almost full speed. Would be great for mobile development. I wonder how the virtualization goes about arbitrating the shared peripherals like ethernet.
All I can say is these apple laptops better OFFICIALLY run Windows as well, or they won't grow the market much. Microsoft is beatable now purely on tech (as we've seen with Google) If Windows people can buy a cool computer to match their iPod - they'll definitely boot into Mac to see what it's like. And since Apple bundles a lot more software than MS is allowed to now - they just might end up staying in OS X.
Well it has been a while since I blogged about alternate operating systems and UI. In fact I think I've been mostly silent on the topic since I started working on this little project.
Well my curiosity overcame me. I’ve been taking a look at the Mezzo UI Concept by Jason Spisak. After years of using basically every OS out there, he decided to see if he could design something easier to use. The Mezzo concept is what he came up with. It is aimed at the novice user, and looks to be about as easy to use as anything I’ve seen. The Greypaper is a good read (warning pdf file link). Some of his personal pet peeves are scrolling, nested menus, and the file manager type metaphor. There are a few little nits I have with his concept, but overall it does seem quite elegant.
There are at least two OS projects currently underway that are implementing this UI. JDistro has a ‘mezzo’ mode. (JDistro is a pure Java based desktop). And Jason’s own project Symphony OS, operated with Ryan Quinn. Symphony is a Linux distro implementing the Mezzo UI. I don’t see any reason someone couldn’t implement a Mezzo shell on top of Windows – but I don’t see any projects doing this yet.
It might be fun to play with Symphony to see if the UI concept holds up to the real world use test. Sometimes ideas that sound good in theory fall flat in practice. Alas, however, my curiosity is currently not strong enough to overcome my serious lack of time.
Some other Mezzo references:
Usernomics
Tuxmachines
Osnews
Neowin
Recently Microsoft bought foldershare. The assumed goal is to bulk up the folder sharing capabilities of the upcoming Live Messenger. They have now decided to make FolderShare free.
As if Sony hasn't been acting dumb enough with the recent DRM root kit nonsense. Now they appear to have applied for a patent that will lock a video game to the first console that plays it. This is an attempt to destroy the pre-owned gaming market. There is not specific mention of the PS3 in the patent, but boy I hope they put it in. If that happens the PS3 will be dead from the starting gate. He's dead Jim.
Just another example of how these guys don't get it. This one has nothing to do with controlling piracy - just another example of trying to screw their actual paying customers. (Disclaimer: the timing of this revelation seems a bit fishy, so I won't be too surprised if it turns out to be a hoax).
Furrygoat muses on the future of USB keychains. He mentions some strategies for running XP from USB via VM images. This could be done with various VM products including VM Player, which we have mentioned previously.
He has also championed the idea of 'portable CE'. This is running CE apps from a USB keychain via emulation.
There are a lot of resources floating around the web on how to get various apps (like Firefox) to run directly from flash. Many apps however don't lend them selves to this. More work will go on however as this idea becomes more popular. I find the prospect of carrying your favorite data and apps around with you very appealing. Another thing that would be nice would be for all your 'state' to be with you as well. This would be OS and app preferences, desktop settings etc. We are a little bit further away on this one.
Lastly a plug for a related idea that I've been hearing from some of my friends; In the wake of the recent hurricanes and other natural disasters, many people have found themselves not only without their homes and possessions, but without their important identity documents like birth certificates, social security cards, etc. The proposed solution is to scan these documents and store a copy via CD in a safe deposit box or with relatives. A variation is to keep them with you at all times on a USB keychain. I know a few people that do this, including photos of their family members for identification purposes. Of course security of this information would be a concern. To prevent identity theft I would strongly recommend encrypting this personal data somehow.
Here is something different. It gives the term peer to peer a whole new meaning. Peerflix is an online DVD service that allows you to trade DVDs rather than rent them. The idea is that you list the DVDs you have that you are willing to trade, and the ones that you want and they facilitate the transfer for .99 a trade (mailing envelope included). For each movie you trade out you earn ‘peerbux’ toward incoming movies. You can even buy peerbux if you want to score up more movies than you trade. Their site is setup a lot like netflix. You enter your trading library using the UPC code on the back of the case. Pretty easy.
I’m not sure I would ever use something like this however. I tend to only purchase DVDs that I really, really want to keep, it’s netflix for everything else. But perhaps there are others out there with large collections that are willing to part with flicks they are tired of. Someone out there seems to think so, they just got $8M in funding. What is your opinion? Would you use something like this?
I'm just passing along something I read here, I can't confirm any of this.
It look like MS is working on some new stuff called Windows Live. At first glace it looks like it is using start.com technology. There are some cools things coming from the article; advanced IM features, personalized home page with RSS feeds and sidebar gadgets, new email and more. There is a Live favorites feature I'm interested in. You can see some of the stuff they have planed here.
What if rather than putting a Tuner in the Mini, apple came out with something likeiCube's Play@TV? If FrontRow 2.0 interacted with that type of device it would keep the price of the Mini down and allow DVR functionality with not only the Mini, but any Mac that had the juice to upgrade and use FrontRow 2.0. Then the feature is there but the cost is offloaded to the wireless device as an optional component.
That iCube looks a lot like the D-Link DSM-320. I think this kind of media front end is the way to go for a lot of things, and Microsoft agrees with the XBox360. Unfortunately the Xbox360 doesn't play divx/xvid, opening the door to other players. For that reason alone, Apple has a great opportunity to push the new MPEG-4 iTunes video content to the settop.
The other thing missing with these settop players is a lot of extensibility. Tivo is trying to do some stuff (they paid a lot for Strangeberry) with Java applets you can play on your TV to provide weather, news, etc. The 360 of course is extensible with downloaded games, and who knows what other "Live" services. (Why not a "Web 2.0 email app", that wouldn't be bad on HDTV rez".)
Hap and I talked about Apple developing a TV UI for media in '97, and it will be interesting to see when it finally happens. Fox is implying recently that they want to make their content available through Apple, so we might finally see some movement here. I don't think it's the iPod video alone that's getting all these media execs hot and bothered about on-demand.
I agree that the DVR and all that isn't the best thing to squeeze into a mini. I like the concept of mini as powerful front end, and you can either plug in a little tuner/hard disk module or access content over the LAN or WAN. This modular concept is also similar to the 360.
Regardless of the outcome, I'm probably going to remain unhappy, given that the set top choices will be Apple or MS - each very much into proprietary applications, content delivery and codecs. I guess that's the price you pay for not having to deal with the MythTV nightmare, and getting content providers to make stuff available to your platform.
Well the mini as a TV box has some appeal, but I really don't see it happening. People don't buy mini's for that. Consider the cost of a mini against that of the 360. Also the 360 has a real reason to be hooked to your TV, the mini does not. In fact since most people have POTV (plain ole TV), if you hooked your mini up to it you'd be hard pressed to even surf the web at that resolution. So in the grand scheme I think the 360 has the best shot at owning that space so far. I do agree it is a drag about the Divx support, but maybe one of the media center plug ins like 'my movies' will find a way to working this out.
I agree that the gaming aspect is a huge reason to get 360 in the living room. But Apple has what MS doesn't - the most popular online video and music store, and this makes them like a virtual DVR. I would actually rather just hook the iPod to the TV and leave the Mini somewhere else, but at this point the iPod is not really powerful enough to drive HDTV. The rumor is actually that the iPod will dock to the mini on the TV, which makes some sense as well.
More detail from ThinkSecret. Funny how we've gone from freely broadcasting television over the air, to encrypted pay per episode with the content trackable to the individual user.
What's going to happen to advertising? Let's say you can either buy the show with no ads, or get the show for free with ads you can't fast forward. If the distribution method makes the same amount of money from people or advertisers, they don't care which wins. If there aren't TV ads, that would be devastating to a lot of companies - there's only so much you can say on a google ad, and product placement doesn't work for a lot of products. I guess I could see the advertisers trying to out-bid the commercial-free costs "we'll give you $1.50 per episode NOT to show it commercial free" - but I'm not sure that consumers will tolerate that kind of price escalation for shows.
Another huge problem with all this on-demand stuff is that in many ways, the 90% of junk on TV subsidises via ads the rest of the content. If people stop surfing an start "season passes" for just a few shows, it totally changes the medium. I already use TiVo to just get specific shows and I skip the commercials, but what will happen when this becomes mainstream?
I have to comment on the above article. There is a nice quote: "at no time will it ever actually be stored on a computer's hard drive."
So the idea is just to stream all the content directly. hmm, while i think that ultimately that will be a good model - today no one has enough bandwidth for this to be realistic. When it comes to bandwidth the US is practically a 3rd world country. Even with Apples crazy patented caching scheme, I doubt the quality with be worthwhile. Consider that most DSL customers can only get 144k - 768k access (even if they are paying for more). Now consider the kind of streaming video you are use dto seeing on the web. Yuck.
Battlestar Galactica episodes are available for the iPod now. I personally think that $1.99 per episode is a little high, although I guess it is cheaper than the first season DVD set with the equivalent of 17 episodes for $44 ($2.64/ep). Of course the DVD contains special features, much higher quality and a non-proprietary format. For now, I'll be sticking to TiVo and the 30-second-skip button for commercials!
Also note that the DVD set's actual pricing will be determined by the market and is not fixed as the downloadable, single source, version is. There is no searching the web for the best price with when there is an exclusive download provider.
You dudes are looking at it wrong. I only get basic cable that comes with my internet service. While I'd love to watch Battlestar Galactica on TV, I don't want to pay for extra channels I'll never watch. Paying $9/month (4.5 shows per month x $2) for BSG is better than ~$30/month for the extra cable package.
At any rate, I'd still buy the DVDs when they come out regardless of whether I saw it on TV or iTunes... the show is that good.
Yes online vs. DVD is only one part of the argument. Choosing to download a show vs. subscribing to cable is a different one all together. at 1.99 an episode you will quickly spend that $30/month if you are interested in a few shows. Now consider if you had a wife and kids who also wanted to watch some TV shows.
Yeah, paying for downloads doesn't scale when you want lots of shows, but in my case, the fact that TV is such a wasteland works to my advantage... I only want one show.
Now, if I could subscribe (via iTunes downloads) to a particular show or bundles of shows and pay $x per season, that would be worth something. How much would you pay to have Firefly continuned? Or, another season of Farscape? Media producers would get a pretty clear and measurable signal as to what people thought was valuable.
Anyway, I'm trying to do more "voting with my dollars", and being able to pick and choose the video I want makes way more sense than broadcasting a cable full of junk reality TV at me.
Oh yeah, putting the power in the hands of the consumers would be great. I don't know what the break down is though of revenue they get from advertisers so it's hard to know how much they would have to charge us to make it worth their while. Heck yeah I'd pay good money for another season of Firefly. I don't even want to know what I'd pay for more Farscape, I'd probably scare myself. But overall, if everyshow goes pay per view, I think we'll get screwed in the long run.
Your posts about paying to resurrect Farscape remind me of the Futurama episode where the Big Green Alien Race from light years away, arrive at the planet Earth demanding more episodes of "Single Female Lawyer". The show has been broadcast time-delayed for 1000 years, due to the vast distance of space. Fry, Leela and the gang stage a final episode, with a budget of about a dollar and a half. Could that happen with Farscape? I'm thinking sock puppets and Lego spaceships.
What if there was an iTunes channel, and you subscribed for $30/month and could download the shows you wanted? I'd rock that up!
Has anyone been watching Nerd TV? I think it's sized to video iPod format...
Well I would expect higher resolution than 320 x 200 - that is sooo video CD. Have you seen Battelstar in HD?? They broadcast it that way in Europe and it is amazing. Simply amazing.