Typically ARM based video players can't just play what you happen to have lying around. Things need to be translated into a format basic enough for the hardware to handle. This can be done permanently on a per file basis (Handbrake) or in real time as needed (AirVideo,Plex).
You don't want a USB port on the front of your AppleTV/Roku because it would choke on your home movies.
Once you've gotten to the point that you're willing to build your own appliance, you're in the same territory as people willing to put Linux on that homemade appliance.
> Because with TV you can only blacklist what you do not want to watch.
This hasn't been true for a long time.
Perhaps you should stop living in the 80s.
If you can't whitelist the stuff you want to pull out of the local cable stream, you need to update your tech to something current before trying to declare TV and moving on to the "next thing".
The beauty of the 90s technology is that you can just connect it to the content services that already exist. Your appliance does not need "special content deals" in order to function.
Even if I don't know the commands, automating something will likely be a lot quicker than babysitting a GUI for n+1 iterations.
If a "programmer" is "designing" eBooks, I would imagine that the result would be a program rather than n+1 manual designs. The result would be very much like iLife where you've got some cookie cutter templates that you force all of your content into.
The whole "not remember commands" thing is also bogus.
Complex GUIs have the same problem here. It can be so hard to find stuff that you might want to use a command line or script instead. Some GUI's are just bad (Windows) or some things are just complex.
A comprehensive GUI for a complex task may give you lots of easy switches and buttons and provide no indication of what those things are or how you are supposed to use them.
You can hide things that are generally not necessary, or make things easier to find but some tasks will always have technical elements related to that task. A big shiny button won't change that.
CableCard is it's own can of worms. It's no bed of roses either. It's a manifestation of the fact that cable companies don't want to relinquish control.
That is entirely irrelevant to the question of invention.
You are not the inventor if you merely popularized something or plagarized the real inventor. You are portraying Apple's potential ability to get away with theft as invention.
What does it matter? You're still going to get stuck in traffic anyways. At least from the "consumer" perspective, there really isn't much difference in this particular context between the best most expensive and newest thing you can get yourself in 2011 and what you would have to settle for in 1870.
Sometimes the added tech and expense just doesn't get you much.
Any OS that is not prone to malware is suitable for the "light web user". It doesn't have to be a Mac. It just has to be preloaded and ready to go out of the box.
> IR blasters are a kludgy "solution" that won't even let me watch something and record something else at the same time
Not true. This isn't the 1999 Tivo we're talking about.
You can have as many recording devices as you like.
You can have as many playback devices as you like.
They can be the same devices, or not.
An IR blaster is only kludgey when you first set it up. It's pretty transparent after that. This is why Tivo was ever able to survive the age before cable cards.
Create a separate app that looks like it belongs with either one of them and your average user won't be able to tell the difference.
Now THIS is an area where Canonical could actually make themselves useful. Develop a nice proprietary BLOB that integrates with what is already available to provide something that would not otherwise be available.
The old Suse kind of provided that back in the day.
You can get the same thing from an open CIFS share created with the standard menus that have been available to Windows users since Windows was still a 16-bit OS.
A separate DLNA server simply doesn't offer much value.
The only reason it is preferable for a particular consumer appliance is the lack of support for a 17+ year old network protocol in those devices.
The main problem with DLNA is the disconnect between what is on the server and what any particular device will support for playback. Also, most DLNA servers don't provide much of anything in terms of metadata.
You might as well just have a vanilla file browsing protocol.
DLNA doesn't "just work" most of the time. There's usually something left out.
Now you've stumbled onto a situation where the fancy bit of paper doesn't cut it. Yeah, you heard me right. A doctor isn't going to get to cut on you just because they have that bit of paper. They also have to go through a sort of traditional apprenticeship. The education itself isn't considered enough.
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It's cheap, low power, and inferior performance.
Typically ARM based video players can't just play what you happen to have lying around. Things need to be translated into a format basic enough for the hardware to handle. This can be done permanently on a per file basis (Handbrake) or in real time as needed (AirVideo,Plex).
You don't want a USB port on the front of your AppleTV/Roku because it would choke on your home movies.
You aren't most people.
Once you've gotten to the point that you're willing to build your own appliance, you're in the same territory as people willing to put Linux on that homemade appliance.
> Because with TV you can only blacklist what you do not want to watch.
This hasn't been true for a long time.
Perhaps you should stop living in the 80s.
If you can't whitelist the stuff you want to pull out of the local cable stream, you need to update your tech to something current before trying to declare TV and moving on to the "next thing".
The beauty of the 90s technology is that you can just connect it to the content services that already exist. Your appliance does not need "special content deals" in order to function.
You don't have the "GoogleTV" problem.
Even if I don't know the commands, automating something will likely be a lot quicker than babysitting a GUI for n+1 iterations.
If a "programmer" is "designing" eBooks, I would imagine that the result would be a program rather than n+1 manual designs. The result would be very much like iLife where you've got some cookie cutter templates that you force all of your content into.
The whole "not remember commands" thing is also bogus.
Complex GUIs have the same problem here. It can be so hard to find stuff that you might want to use a command line or script instead. Some GUI's are just bad (Windows) or some things are just complex.
A comprehensive GUI for a complex task may give you lots of easy switches and buttons and provide no indication of what those things are or how you are supposed to use them.
You can hide things that are generally not necessary, or make things easier to find but some tasks will always have technical elements related to that task. A big shiny button won't change that.
This entire article seems to be yet another case of "design guys can't be bothered" and "management isn't interested".
It's a management failure and there's really no need to slander programmers.
It's not an argument if it's meant to be an open philosophical discussion, especially if creationism is being portrayed as some sort of quasi science.
It's all good until religiously motivated busy bodies try to distort public policy.
> So, anything which is untestable given the current state of technology is inherently irrelevant to your life?
I will up the ante.
It doesn't matter if each and every scientific "truth" is contradicted tomorrow. It simply doesn't matter.
Science does not exist to give you some sort of warm fuzzy or a sense of continuity.
Except it doesn't just mean day. It can also mean epoch. It's not quite that cut and dried. It's not like "day".
The Darmok problem occurs far more often than not.
Except scientists aren't usually trying to invade churches.
This is quite commonplace for "the other side".
It's hard to achieve "peaceful coexistence" with Ghengis Khan. Temujin just won't let you.
They like to play the victim but they aren't really.
Defaults should be sane and useful.
Apple fanboys aren't the only people that can whine about design principles.
> 1. thumb drives are really cheap, you can fit a lot of PVR-quality video on 32, 64 or 128gb of memory
???
PVR-quality video has the same footprint as BluRay.
Why not?
It's a Unix machine if you bother to look under the covers.
It's also not "server" stuff. It's basic end user Windows stuff that's been there since 1994. No "admin" required. Just use the shiny happy menus.
Any whiny complaint you can direct at basic file sharing, probably goes triple for any more specialized "server".
It's really not rocket surgery despite everyone's attempts to pretend otherwise.
> without buying multiple cable boxes
That is an entirely artificial requirement.
CableCard is it's own can of worms. It's no bed of roses either. It's a manifestation of the fact that cable companies don't want to relinquish control.
Doesn't work with sat cable either.
> and sold gazillions of them
That is entirely irrelevant to the question of invention.
You are not the inventor if you merely popularized something or plagarized the real inventor. You are portraying Apple's potential ability to get away with theft as invention.
What does it matter? You're still going to get stuck in traffic anyways. At least from the "consumer" perspective, there really isn't much difference in this particular context between the best most expensive and newest thing you can get yourself in 2011 and what you would have to settle for in 1870.
Sometimes the added tech and expense just doesn't get you much.
OLD doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Any OS that is not prone to malware is suitable for the "light web user". It doesn't have to be a Mac. It just has to be preloaded and ready to go out of the box.
> All these things can do is cut a slice of the PC market
+...which by far the biggest piece of the pie.
They could be an "also ran" in the PC market and still ship more units than Apple.
Or a Roku.
Except you don't have to "jailbreak" a Roku in order to get support for all of the interesting things you already have in your video collection.
> IR blasters are a kludgy "solution" that won't even let me watch something and record something else at the same time
Not true. This isn't the 1999 Tivo we're talking about.
You can have as many recording devices as you like.
You can have as many playback devices as you like.
They can be the same devices, or not.
An IR blaster is only kludgey when you first set it up. It's pretty transparent after that. This is why Tivo was ever able to survive the age before cable cards.
...which is probably why he included XBMC.
You can even launch XBMC (or Hulu) from MythTV if you want to.
MythTV is really flexible that way.
Create a separate app that looks like it belongs with either one of them and your average user won't be able to tell the difference.
Now THIS is an area where Canonical could actually make themselves useful. Develop a nice proprietary BLOB that integrates with what is already available to provide something that would not otherwise be available.
The old Suse kind of provided that back in the day.
You can get the same thing from an open CIFS share created with the standard menus that have been available to Windows users since Windows was still a 16-bit OS.
A separate DLNA server simply doesn't offer much value.
The only reason it is preferable for a particular consumer appliance is the lack of support for a 17+ year old network protocol in those devices.
The main problem with DLNA is the disconnect between what is on the server and what any particular device will support for playback. Also, most DLNA servers don't provide much of anything in terms of metadata.
You might as well just have a vanilla file browsing protocol.
DLNA doesn't "just work" most of the time. There's usually something left out.
Now you've stumbled onto a situation where the fancy bit of paper doesn't cut it. Yeah, you heard me right. A doctor isn't going to get to cut on you just because they have that bit of paper. They also have to go through a sort of traditional apprenticeship. The education itself isn't considered enough.
So an MD is kind of a bad example.
If you want to dump the personal vehicles and depend on central planning for transportation, that's pretty much your only option.