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The Odds at Macworld
Moby Cock writes "Jason O'Grady has posted the odds on what is to be announced at the Macworld Expo beginning next week. Coming in at 100:1 is OS X 10.5 and even money on a new and sexy Intel Mac Minis and iBooks. Gentlemen, start your credit cards."
1. Improved video iPod with larger horizontal screen
2. More tie-ins with TV producers
My blog
10. OS 10.5 - not gonna happen. Apple is focused on Rosetta/Xcode QA for Mac OS X86. Whatever works well gets ported to 10.5 (think of 10.4 as the beta for X86)
9. X86 Powerbook - Could be. I would bet on this one.
8. iWork '06 - Could be. Who cares? I really like iWork '05. Pages is a treat, and Keynote is indespensible for me. But if they are working on a spreadsheet, yeah, this is the time to release it.
7. iLive '06 - Unless it adds things similar to Front Row, I don't see that it needs anything more than bug fixes. I wouldn't bet on it.
6. BT remote - Definitely going to be some kind of Front Row remote. Bluetooth? Probably. All new Macs have it, for several months now.
5. iTunes price increases - Not gonna happen. Steve knows this market. The market will not ignore him, no matter how greedy they are. Too much money is being made.
4. AirPort Ultra - Neat idea, but I won't bet on it. I would buy one, though
3. 1GB iPod Nano - Don't think so. The shuffle fills this space, but that's not big enough for the Nano's market segment.
2. X86 Mac Mini - I'd bet on this. I might even buy one for my parents. Their old IBM suck ass.
1. Widescreen X86 iBook - This one is obviously going to happen, but probably not now. Apple will drop 4:3 format entirely, as will the rest of the world (showing they are, as always, technology leaders). They just won't cannibalize Powerbook sales with iBooks until they have milked it long enough.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Oh, man, that's gotta hurt the Mac zealots even more than the switch to intel. Apple hiring *PC laptop designers* to build the next Powerbook.
Why? Who do you think makes the laptops for Apple? The same OEMs that make all of the PC laptops, that's who.
I would have to agree with you. The music industry is looking INSANELY greedy with this move. I hope Apple holds out and holds their feet to the fire.
My prediction: If Apple goes to $ 1.99 for popular songs (read all but a small token number of the songs on the sight), allofmp3.com will begin to become an _enourmous_ hit (think Napster at its height). The RIAA is going to absolutely freak out and do everything in their power to shut them down. The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music online (along with giving customers what they want, no DRM crap), but as much as they _say_ they are capitalists, the RIAA is just a price fixing oligarchy.
Sakyamuni taught that primordial Ignorance (avidya) produces Desire-to-be (trishna), unsatisfied Desire is the cause of life, and life results in old age, disease and death, i.e., Suffering (dukkha). To overcome Suffering, therefore, it is necessary to escape the Cycle of life and death; to escape the Cycle of life and death, it is necessary to extinguish Desire; and to extinguish Desire, it is necessary to destroy Ignorance.
u rteen-fundamental-buddhist-tenets.htm
http://www.dharmafellowship.org/library/essays/fo
Curious how Jobs being buddhist, he is responsible for such slavering of desire (according to the above, amongst the 'ignorant') in the products he works to create. I wonder if he tries to reconcile this in some consumerist branch of Buddhism.
Attaining Great Awakening (maha-bodhi), the Buddha Sakyamuni realized four profound insights: namely, that all created phenomena are impermanent; that due to the mutable impermanence of phenomena, all created phenomena must result eventually only in suffering; that there is no independent absolute 'I'; and that the seeker of Truth can transcend created existence and attain, through spiritual practice and mystical contemplation, a supreme state of peace called Nirvana.
Hm it seems doubtful Apple products are actually the path to spiritual awakening.
I'd bet a wad of cash that, assuming they're introduced at MacWorld, both the new Mac Mini and iBook will sport Intel Integrated graphics.
I know game performance isn't exactly up to snuff on the Mac but I certainly don't think such a move would help the matter.
I'd be happy if it was offered as a two-button mouse on the powerbook, personally. Everything else is easy enough to swap out - and I could even see keeping it to one-button on the iSeries. But I'd like a two-button on my next OSX laptop.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Musicians obtain the vast majority of their income from live performances. Recordings serve the same purpose as radio play -- to promote performances. AllofMP3 does not represent a market failure.
There was music before there were records or radios. Selling copies of pre-recorded music is a very recent phenomenon for this art form. The disappearance of substantial cash flow from record sales will not harm our musical culture.
Just because they're not paying the creators, doesn't mean it's not legal. They say they have the money put aside, ready for when the various publishers register for it (as required by Russian law).
I've never seen a site that says "yep, allofmp3.com is illegal". In fact, I've never seen a music or RIAA rep say that, which is pretty unusual.
Firstly, I would say that the music industry guys WON'T register as required, as they DON'T want to provide legitimacy to the site. With the site running from Russia, and the apparent rules over there that let this site be set up in the first place, you can see that they are unable to force a particular pricing model, right? No, you have to register for the money that is required, without any ability to influence pricing.
Surely they don't want to make this site legitimate, when they legally have no way of controlling it (only benefit from it).
Just to address those people that say "well, they should be sending the money to the companies, instead of waiting for them to ask": when someone goes on government provided welfare (that is, when there is a law that provides financial recourse for your situation), is it the government's job to make sure they know who needs it and just send it directly?
Again, if someone can show me (a half believable) link that says "yep, allofmp3.com is illegal" I'll accept that, but until then, I have to believe that Russian law permits this...
Personally, I'm hoping for a BT Mighty Mouse.
He doesn't bring that up, or do most think it is so insignifigant, that it doesn't rate being mentioned.
Here's hoping that the new Mac Minis, whenever they arrive, have a few specific improvements:
1) Optical Audio (we want surround sound!)
2) Better DVD playback software (for a UI centered company like Apple, "DVD Player" program blows donkey wang)
3) RF receiver (for my kick ass universal remote, or maybe Apple can make a bluetooth+RF remote)
4) Better support for my TV (having to use VNC to set it up is beyond most people)
I've been using a Mac Mini as my entertainment hub for a while now (almost a year), and its great. DVDs, AVI and WM files, ITunes though my stereo, internet surfing on my HD TV, flash, movie previews, games; the list goes on and on. Its quiet, low power, wakes quickly, and does what I want it to do.
Oh, and can you guys please make it so I can autohide the menu bar? You know, like the dock can do.
It's not like this wouldn't be known up-front. Further, I would expect the very fact that so much runs, and so well, that any apps not ready yet won't be given much weight. And, they'd be shipping early.
Do you honestly think Apple is going to sit on their hands until Adobe gets their act together and ships?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
It may be 6 months or 6 years until Apple makes a cell phone, but I know only that I want one and that I will buy it.
Sent from my iPhone
The last time I was at a Mac World was in the early 90s in Boston when I was a teen. I was supposed to be giving out free subscriptions to macworld magazine or something, but ended up mainly talking to Julie Strain and some other Penthouse Pets that were there promoting some Penthouse VCDs and the programmers of it. :)
;)
Some executive from Microsoft coming over and hanging out too. With the programmers, basically talking about some info John Carmack posted on Worldnet BBS about using Eigenvectors for color quantization of video to 256 colors. A great excuse to spend some time in their booth
When Carmack came up, of course so did Wolfenstein. I remember the MS guy talking about how it gave him motion sickness. LOL
I was suprised by the sheer amount of porn there. They had one porn booth that was enclosed in a curtain with the hardcore stuff. There were so many dudes in there, when you walked by, you could see their shapes presses against the curtains. Like in the movies when the ghouls start coming out of the wall.
Damn that's creepy. Last place I'm going to watch porn is pressed against 20 other dudes.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Which makes the hiring of Vaio engineers (if true, of course) all the more amusing.
I'd like to see them open up the .Mac XMLRPC schema so it'd be easier for users to roll their own .Mac.
Ah heck, lets just list a couple of things I'd like to see (which are completely unrelated to iLife):
Okay, I'm done... for now.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
Quicken for Mac is awful.
I'm glad to know I'm not alone in this sentiment. I tried migrating from Quicken 2005 for Windows (running in VMWare) to Quicken for Mac 2006 and it was a disaster. Migration issues aside, when I managed to get enough imported to start using it, it crashed left and right. Intuit's "support" consisted of a painful java-based chat with some ESL monkey who was totally unhelpful...
Now I'm working on getting my money back and figuring out some other way to get my wife involved with the finances.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
I have never seen a laptop that had two hardware buttons and was comfortable to use.
the best solution is something like SideTrack which lets you use your trackpad as up to 5 buttons and 2 scrollbars.
plus the design of only *needing* 1 buttons is great.
allofmp3.com is not illegal in russia, that's why RIAA bought a resolution on the american senate on an atempt to bully russia into passing some sort of DMCA. here.
now let the "soviet russia" jokes begin.
What ? Me, worry ?
You're right, although I would like to see Apple support the OpenDocument format with the Pages application and TextEdit.
Tier 1: Music you don't buy: $.49
Tier 2: Music you do buy: $2.99
Imagine if this were literally true: the prices you see are prices pitched to you individually based on their profile of you and your purchasing history. If your history shows you buy everything put out by a particular artist, those titles are pitched at higher prices to extract more money from your obsession-compulsion. Others may pay more or less.
It is technically feasible today: pricing not for what the market will bear but what each individual will.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It's true. It doesn't work well with right-handed use. Still, for having the easiest scroll ball, having the easiest side scrolling, and the easiest middle button of any scroll mouse, I think it still wins, just not as large of a margin as it should.
The side buttons are kind of worthless though, given how much force it takes to activate.
I just want 10.4 to stop crapping out as a Domain controller. We are rebooting our domain controller and file servers so often management is actually having me put together a proposal to migrate back to Linux. For those of you not in the Know, 10.4 server has a nasty bug that locks of the server when a particular sequence of events occur, usually during replication. (Which on an active Windows Domain happens every few minutes.) Apple has acknowledged the problem and a fix has been "any day now" ever since Tiger was released.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is exactly my point, but we all can't have it both ways.
People complain "but it's taking money away from the artists". I say "no, it's the artists' managers and so on who are taking the money away from the artists, as they're frightened of admitting that it's a legal form of distribution, while still having no way to limit that distribution".
The record companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place in that that is their exact situation: they either take the money and have no control or don't take the money and screw their artists.
I'm sure they'll take the second option, but that doesn't automatically mean that allofmp3.com is the baddie. If you owed me $100, offered it to me and I don't take it, no-one would point at you and say "man, you're an arsehole, not paying back that money". No, they point at me and say "you moron, why didn't you take the money?"
But for some reason when it comes to record companies and allofmp3.com, most people in this whole offtopic debate keep doing the former...
I see this falsehood repeated so often, especially when P2P is the subject. Having spent twenty years in the music industry, I can say with assurance that both of the above sentences are completely backwards.
In 2003, US gross numbers for live music totalled $2 billion. That same year, recorded music grossed $12 billion.
Most touring acts are lucky to break even. The exceptions are the top tier acts (U2, Rolling Stones) that can get $300/seat, and jam bands like Phish and the Dead who can count on their fans attending more than one show per tour and who have a low overhead (e.g., no flashy video walls). Losing money on a tour is so common that many bands' lawyers and accountants set up a shell corporation for the duration of the tour just to shelter the bands' assets from their creditors.
There are so many people getting paid during a tour, so many hands out waiting for their cut: the owner of the club/hockey arena/stadium/muddy field, the promoter, the insurance agency, the ad agency, the hired security goons, the (union) riggers who fly the lights and PA speakers, the people who lease the PA, the people who lease the van/semi/bus, the people who drive the van/semi/bus, roadies, techies, caterers, your manager, your agent, your lawyer, your accountant, and the person who stays behind at your house to make sure your rent is paid, your bills are paid, your plants are watered, and your cat doesn't die of loneliness and starvation. Don't forget your per diem on the road, meals on the road, and a place with a hot shower and a soft bed waiting for you at 3AM when your day is over. Touring is an exercise in logistics that makes Operation Desert Storm look like a picnic at the beach.
Bands tour in support of their record. That's why many recording contracts allow for label support of a tour once the recording is released. Not the other way around.
Finally, there are many acts that don't tour or stopped touring altogether. XTC rarely played live because Andy Partridge had stage fright. The Beatles played their last show in 1966 and kept releasing records for nearly four years, getting filthy rich in the process.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank