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What's Next At Apple
pinqkandi writes "Business 2.0 is running a fascinating article on what might be coming up in Apple's future. Besides speculation, some interesting statistics are included, such as how the iPod should create equal revenue to the Mac for Apple in 2006, if not surpassing it. A good read for the Apple lover or loather."
Orange Telecom's motto is "The future is bright, the future is Orange" so, who's right ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Considering Microsoft's current problems with the EU, I would expect Apple to be fully focused on expansion into the massive European market.
Apple needs to produce a PVR and start an image of being "the" media center. I know I think of graphic artist when someone talks about using an apple. Now with iPod and that little Mini Mac the circle would be complete with a media center Mac. I would think of Mac as being the elite of home entertainment.
I read this last week!
2 4/ 1638226&tid=3
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/
It's true, Slashdot has turned into another Apple rumour site.
.\.\att Clare
Lev13than writes "Slashdot recently ran a fascinating article on what might be coming up in Slashdot's future. Besides speculation, some interesting statistics are included, such as how long it takes a dup to get as many comments as the original post, if not surpassing it. A good read for the /. lover or loather."
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I imagine they'll just keep doing the same thing over and over again...
Kinda like Slashdot.
I don't know about other markets, but here in Pittsburgh, I see no Apple TV spots other than for the iPod. I don't get it. They have the greatest consumer-level desktop environment in the world, but they're not pushing it at all. It's as if they're relying solely on word-of-mouth advertising. I really think there needs to be more "power of OS X" type TV commercials to push this kick-ass system.
Cepstral: Quality TTS for OS X, Linux, Windows
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they introduced a low-end G5 (as in near Mac Mini) as a grey-box substitute.
A video iPod is completely plausible, especially if they bundle the xVid codec or some licensed variant of VLC with it - anime fanboys with money'll snap them right up to watch fansubs on the go (about 150MB an episode on average - take three or four series - at 26 episodes apiece - with you plus your tunes). The only concern might be battery life, and whether they would use a passive-matrix or active-matrix screen in addition to how the movies would get on there; presumably, iTunes would figure in, which would imply that it would eventually evolve into a video store in addition to a music venue.
This may not concern Apple directly, but especially in regards to yesterday's "World's Smallest Linux Box" story, with a few revisions to iPodLinux, it could be possible to use the iPod as a server (plug the Firewire cable into a Cisco switch; they have Firewire expansion cards). It would be interesting to see if Apple could develop software to turn the iPod into a NAS device as well, but an iPod server would just be a cool toy.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Next up iKickass. The program that makes people actually think all the schlock they make with garageband and imovie is worth listening to/watching.
Oh, please. Smugness 2.0 was out ages ago. Followed by Smugness X, Smugness '04, and more recently Smugness HD. You really should try to keep up.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The Wireless iPod is a certainty. I can't wait. Looks like Apple has filed patents for wireless podjacking support; sharing playlists over WiFi.
They will continue to take away rights. iTunes version 4.7.1 only allows streaming to 5 unique users per day, it used to support any 5 simultaniuse users.
As appealing as a proposed video iPod might be, I doubt it would sell in large numbers. The difference between music and video is that music can be a background activity. One can work, read /., jog, talk with friends, drive a car, etc. whilst music is playing. In contrast, video requires too much visual engagement -- some super-multitaskers might disagree, but even that small group is unlikely to watch video as much as they might listen to music.
Whereas large numbers of people can imagine themselves using an iPod everyday and at many times of day, much fewer people can see themselves using a vPod and for much fewer hours per day.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...at least this time you can read the full article w/o being a subscriber. If you're into RTFA that is.
Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever!
Apple certainly doesn't want to be seen as a bastion of piracy. A DVR which can feed into something like Final Cut Pro would be an amazingly great way to master your own show archives, but I think that Steve doesn't want to draw the ire of the TV networks or the movie studios... especially with the whole Pixar connection.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Knowing Apple suing left and right for speculations, I must post anonymously.
Hopefully and probably, I am not the only person contacted by Apple's HR for job "feeler" ("Do you want to work for Apple?").
Because I only post my resume's on Gamasutra, I'm speculating that Apple is beginning to search for programmers and developers specific to games.
Could Apple be jumping onto the bandwagon towards game softwares?
To paraphrase a wise man, myself, who paraphrased a wise man, Steve Jobs, Why is it that the people who keep posting repeats at Slashdot just don't get it?
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
is to offer the iTunes Music Store in Australia (and other countries where its not offered).
Not having the ITMS in australia is almost certainly hurting iPod sales since people are more inclined to buy an MP3 player that works with the australian music services (which as far as I am aware all use Windows Media DRM) instead of an iPod which doesnt play any music you can legally buy from an online music store in australia.
If they can offer the ITMS to the US, the UK and all the other countries where it is offered, what is so !@#$#@!@# hard about offering it to us aussies?
Very droll.
However, your point 3 take issue with do I:
3. Continuing victory of Form Over Function
On the contrary, there is a tremendous depth of functionality that I think we're only scratching the surface of with macs, that isn't even available on PCs.
Example: Applescript and iTunes.
Most OS X apps are to some extent scriptable, with every new release of iTunes its become more and more scriptable. I really do miss not having that degree of control over my music that I have at home. Such as being able to skip the long rambling monologue the 'artist' decided to record at the end of my favourite music track, or being able to tell it to play at a lower volume if I kick the script off after 10pm but before 6am.
I'm on holiday and I've recently had the 'privilege' of using a 'low end' PC (1+ Ghz) with both Linux off a CD (two different flavours of Knoppix), and XP. The winner for speed of browsing was DarnSmallLinux with Firefox...
But neither of them holds a candle to my 1Ghz eMac at home. And the reason isn't how pretty they are, or how fast they are (though OS X beats the undead crap out of both of them on that count), but rather the reason is that OS X provides a system wide scripting language.
Now I don't know if one or two M$ apps have their own scripting languages, I do remember programming the different flavours of VB for Applications (of which VB for Excel was hands down the best until they tried to make VBA more consistent, and hobbled it with a whole bunch of horrible syntax from Access' VBA).
And Linux being Linux, I suspect that each app has not just one, but *ten* different scripting languages! (But wait, there's more! Send no money now and you'll receive a full set of Ubuntu steak knives at no extra cost!) The problem is that they will be a different ten for the next app, and the next app.
Whereas with OS X because its the same scripting language across the apps, you can do a lot of funky things.
Also, although it looks like a 'form' thing, the massive amount of keyboard shortcuts, with an unusually high degree of consistency across all apps... is *actually* a 'function' thing. Why? Because some of those things which are obviously to do with 'form' speed you up... and increases in speed means higher productivity, and productivity is definitely a functionality thing.
I guess there is a high degree of developer B&D required to make it like that across most of the apps. XCode and Interface Builder help a lot though, firstly by providing you with a lot of that up front anyway, and you can enable most of the common stuff simply by control dragging from the menu item to the first responder and viola! just pick the appropriate method from first responder and it does what you'd expect.
You may think I'm a rabid Mac fan, but quite the opposite, I'm a raving Java fan, and for years I've believed that the operating system is (or should be) irrelevant.
Ironically, Java suffers from the same problem that Linux does when it comes to scripting - everybody and their dog have their own different ideas about how this should be done, so you end up with 50 squillion different implementations, most of which are utterly incompatible with each other.
As an aside, DarnSmallLinux was a lot nicer to work with than my previous experiences with Linux, which had all been excruciatingly painful. The thing which I most appreciated was that it 'just worked' out of the box (well, cd in this case). Sure some things didn't work very well (egs apps crashing after coming back from the screen saver kicking in) - so I wouldn't use it as a main system, but over all I was impressed with it (compared to the horrible experiences with RH 7 et al).
As for the Safari vs Firefox debate - I think Safari clearly wins on one point, if no other... that it is scriptable, and that scripting language is the one I can also use to script iTunes.
Specifically, the ability to fit your entire music collection on it. That is the basis for its dominance over other MP3 players. It's just so much more convenient to load everything once, and update every now and then, than it is to get into the capacity-management required with a player that only holds a few MB. THAT is the key to the iPod's ease of use--just load and use.
Once you start having to delete songs to make room for other songs, you're into the realm of trying to predict what you'll want to listen to later. It's a much better user experience to just have it all with you. The interface and ID is nice, but the capacity is what really makes it convenient.
To replicate that in video is the next frontier. Jobs would need to convince the industry to allow him to build a device that decodes CSS and allows storage of movies on a HD. Then he would need to source huge-capacity drives at very low prices. Then he would need to squeeze it all into a stereo-rack-size component with great ID and a clean interface.
Imagine the convenience of having all your DVDs available at the touch of a button whenever you sit down on your couch. Even better, imagine having a nice clean easy-to-use interface to download DVDs (through the iTMS).
He is in a very good position to do it. He has a good record of protecting DRM for the music industry (or at least trying hard to). He is already a movie industry player. And he runs a studio, giving him a sympathetic connection to other studio heads trying to protect their movies. They're all in it together--he's one they can trust.
Downloading movies will be a much harder deal for several reasons. Obviously there is a bandwidth issue. But possibly worse, it is in direct competition with the on-demand services that many TV service providers are rolling out. Since cable modems outnumber DSL 2 to 1, a large portion of the delivery network would be under the control of what is essentially a competitor to the video iTMS. Plus, many DSL providers have long-running plans to offer TV over DSL. And Jobs does not have any existing or special relationships with network service providers. He would likely need to develop them to make it work.
what would be nice is a video equivalent of the iTMS. Netflix has the best distribution model right now (not counting "Video on Demand" from cable companies, but DVDs are still more versatile) but as bandwidth continues to climb, the true video revolution will take place on the desktop computer. It's a lot like what's happened with music--why buy a CD if you can download it for the same price and make your own CD?
Apple should have a QtVS (Quicktime Video Store) where you can browse through thousands of films, TV shows, recorded speeches, documentaries, and videos. You could preview them much like you can with the iTMS and its music selections. Then, for a price comparable to a DVD, you could download these videos and burn your own DVDs. And now with H.264 coming in full force during the next few months, these videos could have very high quality with rather small file sizes.
In the next decade, the movie industry is going to find itself in the same position as the music industry was a few years ago, and it will have to change and adapt. Apple should be ready, and be able to offer a viable solution.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
I agree with you on the phone. No matter how nice a piece of hardware they can cook up, and no matter how well they think out the features, they're still going to have to wrestle for control with a carrier. Even ignoring the whole Jobs' ego deal, the amount of back and forth compromise will ruin a lot of it.
Apple makes some expensive stuff, and often overcharges, but they don't try and screw customers over anywhere near as hard as the cell phone carriers do.
Add in the fact that, in the US at least, almost all cell phone services are subscription or pay per use based. You spend a chunk of change up front for this phone with all these cool features, but then you have to pay a little extra for each one of those features you use every month. That goes totally against Apple's ease-of-use, integrated design philosophy.
the iTMS has some DRM restrictions on how you can use the songs you purchase, but it doesn't hold a candle to the cell phone crap. $1 for a song that you can put on multiple computers/iPods/CDs vs. a $3.50 midi ringtone of the same song that expires in 90 days? Good luck finding a quality compromise there.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
What's the differnt between fanboy and twat?
Oooh! I know: most of us wouldn't stick our cocks in a fanboy?
What do I win?
A one-button mouse!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Dear Steve,
Last week had two events of significance for me. One was the digitizer on my Palm Tungsten T died and the other was the Sony PSP was released. The problem is that I don't want either of them. There is nothing that I want to replace my TT with and I don't want a PSP.
What I want is the Apple Newton II!
Here is my recipe for the new Newton:
One Tapwave Zodiac (gaming but Palm compatability)
One PSP (screen aspect ratio and quality, build quality, 802.11/USB, and a (soon) real game library)
one Zaurus SL-C3000 (modern CPU hardware, form factor with keyboard and touchscreen (twistable), open source OS (linux or xBSD), hard drive, CF slots), real I/O
Add iPod mini functionality and storage >= 10Gb
Add Newton HWR(inkwell?) and general Newton goodness
Add replacable AA batteries that will last a FULL day so I'm never stuck
Vendor support of an active development community
MS Outlook sync for PDA functions (calendar and contacts) (my job requires it, what can I say....)
Stir to make it all cool and integrated and still be work meeting/date/wife safe
I would pay $699 tomorrow for all of this and even pay $50 a year for a software subscription for the basics.
What do you say Steve, can I have one?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
WMP is unusable, not letting you share at all!
In fact what other players do let you share? They are all terrible!
Ban media players now!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Um, ins't that the company that bought Apple in 1997? Or am I being redundant?
Don't even mention the Newton in Steve's presence. He'll kick you in the nuts, pour hot tar into your hair, go over to your house and kill your cat, then piss in your corn flakes, all the while muttering, "Goddamn sugar water salesman."
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
3. Continuing victory of Form Over Function
This is just so stunningly wrong. The secret of Apples success is that they are devoted to the proposition that Form FOLLOWS function.
Whether form is considered or not by the person producing it technology products HAVE form. By NOT thinking about it at all most tech companies produce forms that don't relate well to function, get in the way or hide function. Certainly they don't produce forms that enhance function in any way. Ironically by ignoring form altogether they produce products that put "form over function"
On the few occasions that they consider form at all they think of it as something decorative, divorced from function and just make things worse.
An example: Look at Microsoft's approach to icons compared to Apple's. Apple popularized the GUI, and the use of icons. They thought about function first and then thought about forms to access those functions. They used icons where it made sense. I'm convinced that Microsoft looked at that success and without understanding it AT ALL decided to emulate it. But to Microsoft it boiled down to: "icons are pretty" and "I hear they make computers easier". As a result of that "thinking" they made EVERYTHING an icon. Rows upon rows of completely meaningless icons that don't help anything and make finding the function you seek an exercise in frustration. THAT is form over function, people just fail to recognize it as such because it manages to be UGLY as well.
...because they're too intelligent to do so, and here's why:
As a composer, as much as I hate to admit it: for most people, music is no more than a background to their day to day lives. If you think about it, you could, feasibly, listen to music about 80% of your waking life, and still remain productive in most individual activities (most jobs, driving, walking/exercising). Most humans only need their hearing for communication, but solitary activity--which takes up most people's time--requires little to no communication, meaning the aural senses are free to do other things, like listen to music. However, most tasks, individual or cooperative, require constant usage of the visual senses, making video far less attractive as a background activity while doing other things. Think about your day to day life, how much time, do you think, you could spend, while not at home or at a computer, watching video? It requires a time in which both the visual or auditory senses are free. For a huge majority of people, that period of time is extremely small. The only market for a portable video player is for those that use mass transit, this may seem substantial in some cities, but it's still a very small percentage of the American population. Also consider that the smallest unit of video is 30 minutes, so a video player is only reasonable for a person who can find time on the go for 30 minutes or more of visual distraction. People do not have to change their day to day routines for portable audio, but they would have to "find time" for portable video.
Apple have always seen themselves as a champion of the common people, in a similar fashion to Ford Motor Company when it first began. Their original intention was to create a computer which everyone (at least a large majority of people) could use... their only mistake (as opposed to Henry Ford's success) was that they didn't create a computer which everyone could afford. Apple have never been, and never will be, intentionally a provider of hardware products for niche markets. The iPod built on a mainstream market that was already there: portable audio, something that's been around since Sony's "Walkman" in the early 80s. There is to date, no mainstream market for portable video, and there isn't nearly enough public outcry to create one.
The only mainstream market for portable entertainment devices other than purely auditory hardware is video games. The unit of measurement in playing a video game is one level, usually around 2-4 minutes tops for most portable games, a chunk of time that's much more manageable while on the go. Also, consider that a huge majority of school age children are either driven or take a bus to school every morning, so having a portable video game unit aimed at children has a huge market. Playing games is also, obviously, an offshoot of solitary play, something that children have always done on busses, or when they have free time. Being entertained, however, is not something that children have done on a regular basis while away from a house. Even so, don't expect Apple to get in on the portable video game market any time soon. Nintendo's Gameboy Advance SP is already the iPod of the industry, and arguably does everything that it needs to in a simplistic and portable form which seems uncannily similar to Apple's line of development. This is also the same reason why I believe, without question, that the Sony PSP will fail as a mainstream device, it does far more and is far more complicated than the average child (the bulk of the market) has use for during transit, but that's another topic.
To sum things up, the only way Apple will ever make anything close to a portable video device is that in the next year or two they will undoubtedly add video support to the iPod Photo. Like video confrencing in iChat, it will be a gimmick, and no one will ever use it, but it won't matter anyway because that isn't the reason people buy an iPod in the first place.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.