Google streams the video to you as H264. How much CPU is consumed when you play it doesn't depend on how Google formulates it - it depends on your hardware and software.
It ain't 1080p, but I've tried hi-def movies and hi-def Youtube videos on one of the early models of the Acer Revo's (these are very small and cheap atom CPU + ION computers) with Win7 and Flash 10.1 and the CPU was barely working.
> Under $1k' (read $999) is what everyone thought the iPad would sell for. > But actually it's half that much, $500 for the base model (which I have and is fine).
No, actually it's much, much more.
Part of the trick (and success) of Apple is that the purchase price is just the beginning.
And with the iPad they have finally managed to get rid of every standard connector so everything must be bought from them or partners that they have approved of and taxed. Noting that the plastic charging base is $70 (Canada) you can see how it goes. Shouldn't that have been included?
Apple could give those things away and still make money with all the ways they've developed to get revenue from you once you've got their product.
But who knows, maybe Cisco knows how to play that game too?
Hummm, I thought IPS was developed by Hitachi? And I assumed that Apple just brought this to market (and probably did some final work on it). So yes, I have exactly the attitude to Apple that you think I do.
Relative to other companies their size Apple has a massive marketing budget and a puny R&D budget. Recently we've been hearing about how Apple has grown bigger then MS, but their R&D budget was 10% of Microsoft's in 2009. Investors have became angry with other companies for spending so much on R&D and they point to the example of Apple that makes better much money by spending their money on marketing.
In the case of this display, Apple's problem was that they couldn't get Samsung's Super AMOLED display. If they had, I"m sure you would be telling us about Apple incredibly ground-breaking R&D on reducing the power consumption of a display. Apparently though, now that the iPhone 4 is using IPS, we've decided that 'retinal' resolution is the key and giving thanks to Apple for inventing that.
I don't think Apple is known for giving its users options.
I'm not suggesting that Apple can force existing Mac owners to adopt iOS, but they amount of money they can make from a locked down user is so much more then for a regular free user that I would expect that eventually, all Apple products will come with iOS.
The most likely way to implement this is just to slowly reduce the resources put into the Mac line, and to continue to expand the iOS line until it replaces most of the Mac line (except servers).
Yes, I'm not denying that there is something to the idea that Flash is a poor experience on phones. Heck, I don't even like it PC's.
But I maintain that that is not Apple's reason for blocking it. Note, for example, that silverlight is much more efficient and better suited to phone then flash, but there is no way that Apple would allow Silverlight. It is ultimately a strategic decision, not a user one.
Actually, it used to be the same with web pages (and still is for many).
They were designed for large screens and are very hard to use on the small screens of phones.
Slowly though, mobile browsers are getting better at handling the problem, and web pages are being redesigned to make things better.
Now, Flash doesn't have the same luxury of time - nor would I want them to because I don't really like Flash - but I think that they should be accorded some opportunity for adjustment. Just because it doesn't work well on a random site the day of its first release (full Flash for mobile, that is) doesn't mean it should be discarded immediately.
If it is about the tiny screens of phones then why is there no Flash on the iPad.
No, there are a variety of strategic reasons why Apple doesn't want Flash on their products. For example, Apple wants to force as much materials as possible (games, video, news, etc) into the app store or iTunes. This allows them to take a cut of any revenue and block it if they don't like it.
Flash goes against that strategy. For example, it allows DRM'ed media and lots of cross-platform games to be delivered via the web, independent of Apple.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Flash is as efficient as native code, but then again, neither is JavaScript. Sometimes we need to make trade-offs.
Wake me up when we find that they actually did something with the data.
Yes, Google was stupid so they now have a zillion lawsuits to deal with and will watch their engineers more closely. Don't we have more serious crimes to ponder?
I got an Acer Revo with the Nvidia Ion GPU for about that price ($250) about a year ago.
I connected a 1 TB external drive via the eSATA port and the thing works great. It is not speedy but the ION allows it to play just about any HD video with only a slight increase in CPU load. It is pretty close to silent.
I guess this mac must have better specs, but I can't imagine what would justify such a high price. Small, silent computers were expensive several years ago, but now they are cheap.
Or maybe its aimed at the living rooms of Apple users.
In other words, it is not meant to make new converts, it is meant for a segment of Apple users who are (a) wealthier and less price sensitive then the average user, and (b) locked into the Apple platform to a certain extent (though much less so for mac then for iOS).
A new and aggressively priced Apple TV is probably still in the works. This is just about revenue generation - imagine their margin on this thing!
Apple is trying to force publishers to sell their content via Apple. I presume this is because it allows Apple to take a cut of the revenue, to block content they don't like, and to hurt Google's ad revenue at the same time.
The reason I would call this 'force' is because publishers and consumers allready have this options. Personally, I hate ads and would be willing to pay for my content, but most consumers seem to prefer ads.
In order to get more publishers to sell content to people like me who are willing to pay, Apple could have reduced their cut, or promised not to arbitrary block content, but instead they decided to undermine the ad supported model in order to try to FORCE publishers to use Apple's model.
I disagree with your suggestion that Android and Google are rather unique examples of the good side of your equation.
Have RIM, Nokia, Palm, or even MS ever done what Apple is doing?
I know that MS can be just as nasty a company as Apple, but the issue here is censorship now and I don't think that any of Apple's competitors have declared that they can control what their customers can use and consume for whatever reasons they feel like.
So far, this is not about Google being uniquely good, but about Apple being uniquely bad. On the other hand, now that everyone sees how lucrative it is to treat your users this way - and that you users won't even squirm - I would expect some of the others to follow suit. Maybe you will be right in due time.
Hummm, I guess we are reading in different places. The mainstream press that I read has been pretty much obsessed with the iPad and then iPhone4 for the last couple of months.
Barely a mention of Chromium and just a few articles about Google TV - which is fine since (as you said) they don't exist yet.
Before we had a straight-forward, written, rule. Now we are back to the usual app-store situation where we have a rough idea of what will get blocked, but Apple reserves the right to block things for whatever reason it wants.
You can only view pages that have been pre-approved by Apple - and Apple gets 30% cut of anything revenue generated by the page.
As an added bonus, any media gets re-routed to iTunes - where Apple will take their 30% cut and wrap it in a container that prevents you from mistakenly trying to use it on a non-Apple device.
But this is all just to protect you and preserve the user experience (patent pending), of course.
Yeah, and its a bit scary that we have such misinformation even here on/. where we are supposed to know a lot about things like Wi-Fi and geolocation.
How does such a misinformed and misleading topic description get through?
That doesn't really make sense.
We are just reaching a point in time when Google realizes that Apple is a bigger threat to their business then Windows ever was (Windows users have the option of installing alternate codecs, browser, toolbars, etc), and Windows has finally got its security act together, and NOW Google is going to switch from Windows to Mac?
Mozilla can get Firefox on the iPhone the same way Opera did, by following the rules. No interpreted code, which probably means a complete rewrite of the Firefox architecture. Mind you, there are apps to play Ogg on the iPhone, so I doubt that would be an objection. Apple doesn't seem to have any problem with Ogg in general, they just want to use a hardware optimized format as much as possible for defaults.
What I'm suggesting is that, if Apple changes course and allows Firefox on the iPhone, they will require that Mozilla remove support for Ogg Video (particularly now that Ogg video is being supported by Google). Hopefully I'm wrong.
You should probably do some more research. Apple makes little or nothing in H.264 licensing. They're a very minor patent holder in the pool. It's not in any way significant compared to the money they make selling more iPhones and iPods.
I doubt anyone is making much off of H264 right now, but if you want to get some idea of how much could be made from H264 once its position is secure take a look at MP3 - Thomson is making a ton off of that and I think that video has much greater potential.
You are correct that I don't know what Apple's share of any proceeds from H264 would be. If someone knows please enlighten me (don't give me patent count - that doesn't mean anything). I think that Apple's hostility to Ogg would be just as much from Google involvement with Ogg as from any ability to make money from H264.
In any event, the ideal would be for Apple to explain the rules for what they block and what they don't and enforce them consistently. If they want to block all porn, or things that use too much battery (e.g. Ogg) then great - tell the world the specific rules so that the issues can be resolved. For now, it appears that they reserve the right to block anything that is not in their financial and strategic interest. The Google Voice incident was particularly illuminating because the FCC had the power to reveal the truth.
This is not news.
Mozilla is free to put as many apps as they want on the iPhone so long as they follow Apple's rules. Unfortunately, Apple won't tell us what those rules are, but we have a pretty good idea that you can't say anything bad about Apple or powerful people, and you can't compete with any Apple technologies or strategic plans (e.g. what Google Voice did).
So, it would be news if Mozilla puts Firefox on the iPhone without stripping out their HTML5 Ogg support since Apple has a financial interest in H264.
If Mozilla gets Firefox on the iPhone by agreeing to tailor Firefox to Apple's wishes (e.g. strip out Ogg or anything else that Apple doesn't like) then that would be a total sellout on Mozilla's part.
This way everyone wins.
Hulu doesn't have to redesign their whole site, and iUsers access the site via an app instead of a website so Steve Jobs gets to maintain his control over his platform.
One potential problem would arise if any Hulu content said anything bad about Apple. Remember that apps have been kicked off for mentioning competitors, so surely content that criticized Apple would result in an app getting rejected?
I get all of my video from downloading - I never pay a cent.
I would happily switch to a legit source and start paying, but as others have said, the service has to satisfy some criteria. Others have mentioned price - this is less important to me - and I'd lke to add two more issues:
- In some countries, such as Canada where I live, most of the services that you might know, such as Rhapsody, Amazon Video, and Hulu are not available. We seem to be blocked from everything but iTunes.
- Purchasing legit content should not lock me into a vendor's products. It is reasonable to ask for my money for your content - it is not reasonable to use my purchase to prevent me from buying your competitor's products. Unlike many here I have no philosophical problem with DRM, I just don't want the lock-in that happens to be associated with the current DRM options.
So I keep using bit torrent.
You seem to have been following the special Apple version of the news.
You think that their blocking of GV was not about blocking their competitor? Let's remember that Apple lied and lied about the whole thing until the FTC broke it open and Apple was forced into some wierd backtrack double-talk. And you are still accepting their explanations?
Regarding the formats, Yes, content can be consumed in the supported formats - which Apple controls to avoid competition. I'll give you a well known example. Apple doesn't license their DRM. Only their DRM is allowed on their platforms, so nobody can compete with iTunes if they want to use DRM and it is much harder to run a content distribution business without DRM.
Regarding the book prices I think you missed the fact that Apple worked with the publishers to force booksellers (most notably Amazon) to raise their prices.
Regarding the playboy thing - well, you've said you don't care so I won't bother. Let's just say that Apple's claim that they were savings thier user from the evil of porn didn't apply to companies big enough to work out a deal with Apple.
The only thing I agree with you on is the mistakes of their competition, but I'm not sure why that means that Apple should be let off for treating its customers so badly and behaving so anti-competitively.
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That doesn't make sense to me.
Google streams the video to you as H264. How much CPU is consumed when you play it doesn't depend on how Google formulates it - it depends on your hardware and software.
It ain't 1080p, but I've tried hi-def movies and hi-def Youtube videos on one of the early models of the Acer Revo's (these are very small and cheap atom CPU + ION computers) with Win7 and Flash 10.1 and the CPU was barely working.
> Under $1k' (read $999) is what everyone thought the iPad would sell for.
> But actually it's half that much, $500 for the base model (which I have and is fine).
No, actually it's much, much more.
Part of the trick (and success) of Apple is that the purchase price is just the beginning.
And with the iPad they have finally managed to get rid of every standard connector so everything must be bought from them or partners that they have approved of and taxed. Noting that the plastic charging base is $70 (Canada) you can see how it goes. Shouldn't that have been included?
Apple could give those things away and still make money with all the ways they've developed to get revenue from you once you've got their product.
But who knows, maybe Cisco knows how to play that game too?
Hummm, I thought IPS was developed by Hitachi? And I assumed that Apple just brought this to market (and probably did some final work on it). So yes, I have exactly the attitude to Apple that you think I do.
Relative to other companies their size Apple has a massive marketing budget and a puny R&D budget. Recently we've been hearing about how Apple has grown bigger then MS, but their R&D budget was 10% of Microsoft's in 2009. Investors have became angry with other companies for spending so much on R&D and they point to the example of Apple that makes better much money by spending their money on marketing.
In the case of this display, Apple's problem was that they couldn't get Samsung's Super AMOLED display. If they had, I"m sure you would be telling us about Apple incredibly ground-breaking R&D on reducing the power consumption of a display. Apparently though, now that the iPhone 4 is using IPS, we've decided that 'retinal' resolution is the key and giving thanks to Apple for inventing that.
I don't think Apple is known for giving its users options.
I'm not suggesting that Apple can force existing Mac owners to adopt iOS, but they amount of money they can make from a locked down user is so much more then for a regular free user that I would expect that eventually, all Apple products will come with iOS.
The most likely way to implement this is just to slowly reduce the resources put into the Mac line, and to continue to expand the iOS line until it replaces most of the Mac line (except servers).
Yes, I'm not denying that there is something to the idea that Flash is a poor experience on phones. Heck, I don't even like it PC's.
But I maintain that that is not Apple's reason for blocking it. Note, for example, that silverlight is much more efficient and better suited to phone then flash, but there is no way that Apple would allow Silverlight. It is ultimately a strategic decision, not a user one.
Actually, it used to be the same with web pages (and still is for many).
They were designed for large screens and are very hard to use on the small screens of phones.
Slowly though, mobile browsers are getting better at handling the problem, and web pages are being redesigned to make things better.
Now, Flash doesn't have the same luxury of time - nor would I want them to because I don't really like Flash - but I think that they should be accorded some opportunity for adjustment. Just because it doesn't work well on a random site the day of its first release (full Flash for mobile, that is) doesn't mean it should be discarded immediately.
Your still accepting the company line on Flash?
If it is about the tiny screens of phones then why is there no Flash on the iPad.
No, there are a variety of strategic reasons why Apple doesn't want Flash on their products. For example, Apple wants to force as much materials as possible (games, video, news, etc) into the app store or iTunes. This allows them to take a cut of any revenue and block it if they don't like it.
Flash goes against that strategy. For example, it allows DRM'ed media and lots of cross-platform games to be delivered via the web, independent of Apple.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Flash is as efficient as native code, but then again, neither is JavaScript. Sometimes we need to make trade-offs.
Wake me up when we find that they actually did something with the data.
Yes, Google was stupid so they now have a zillion lawsuits to deal with and will watch their engineers more closely. Don't we have more serious crimes to ponder?
I got an Acer Revo with the Nvidia Ion GPU for about that price ($250) about a year ago.
I connected a 1 TB external drive via the eSATA port and the thing works great. It is not speedy but the ION allows it to play just about any HD video with only a slight increase in CPU load. It is pretty close to silent.
I guess this mac must have better specs, but I can't imagine what would justify such a high price. Small, silent computers were expensive several years ago, but now they are cheap.
Or maybe its aimed at the living rooms of Apple users.
In other words, it is not meant to make new converts, it is meant for a segment of Apple users who are (a) wealthier and less price sensitive then the average user, and (b) locked into the Apple platform to a certain extent (though much less so for mac then for iOS).
A new and aggressively priced Apple TV is probably still in the works. This is just about revenue generation - imagine their margin on this thing!
That's not where the force comes in.
Apple is trying to force publishers to sell their content via Apple. I presume this is because it allows Apple to take a cut of the revenue, to block content they don't like, and to hurt Google's ad revenue at the same time.
The reason I would call this 'force' is because publishers and consumers allready have this options. Personally, I hate ads and would be willing to pay for my content, but most consumers seem to prefer ads.
In order to get more publishers to sell content to people like me who are willing to pay, Apple could have reduced their cut, or promised not to arbitrary block content, but instead they decided to undermine the ad supported model in order to try to FORCE publishers to use Apple's model.
I disagree with your suggestion that Android and Google are rather unique examples of the good side of your equation.
Have RIM, Nokia, Palm, or even MS ever done what Apple is doing?
I know that MS can be just as nasty a company as Apple, but the issue here is censorship now and I don't think that any of Apple's competitors have declared that they can control what their customers can use and consume for whatever reasons they feel like.
So far, this is not about Google being uniquely good, but about Apple being uniquely bad. On the other hand, now that everyone sees how lucrative it is to treat your users this way - and that you users won't even squirm - I would expect some of the others to follow suit. Maybe you will be right in due time.
Hummm, I guess we are reading in different places. The mainstream press that I read has been pretty much obsessed with the iPad and then iPhone4 for the last couple of months.
Barely a mention of Chromium and just a few articles about Google TV - which is fine since (as you said) they don't exist yet.
One thing that is both interesting and sad about this whole episode is how it is reported in the mainstream press.
Even the New York Times reported that they were getting people bank account numbers.
And try reading some of the user comments for those articles. People are convinced that the Google vans are stealing their thoughts.
Unfortunately, I think it is time for Google to spend less time giving away technology and more time on P.R. and advertising.
Before we had a straight-forward, written, rule. Now we are back to the usual app-store situation where we have a rough idea of what will get blocked, but Apple reserves the right to block things for whatever reason it wants.
I think we can expect to see much, much more of this, as Facebook tries to change their CEO's image.
Apparently there is an unflattering movie coming out in the Fall and I assume they want to get ahead of that.
You can only view pages that have been pre-approved by Apple - and Apple gets 30% cut of anything revenue generated by the page.
As an added bonus, any media gets re-routed to iTunes - where Apple will take their 30% cut and wrap it in a container that prevents you from mistakenly trying to use it on a non-Apple device.
But this is all just to protect you and preserve the user experience (patent pending), of course.
Looking for chemical agents that could defeat the biological and chemical weapons that might be used by the terrorists?
No surprise they decided to use stuff found in fast-food and cosmetics. I just don't know what the 'green' reference is about?
Yeah, and its a bit scary that we have such misinformation even here on /. where we are supposed to know a lot about things like Wi-Fi and geolocation.
How does such a misinformed and misleading topic description get through?
That doesn't really make sense. We are just reaching a point in time when Google realizes that Apple is a bigger threat to their business then Windows ever was (Windows users have the option of installing alternate codecs, browser, toolbars, etc), and Windows has finally got its security act together, and NOW Google is going to switch from Windows to Mac?
Mozilla can get Firefox on the iPhone the same way Opera did, by following the rules. No interpreted code, which probably means a complete rewrite of the Firefox architecture. Mind you, there are apps to play Ogg on the iPhone, so I doubt that would be an objection. Apple doesn't seem to have any problem with Ogg in general, they just want to use a hardware optimized format as much as possible for defaults.
What I'm suggesting is that, if Apple changes course and allows Firefox on the iPhone, they will require that Mozilla remove support for Ogg Video (particularly now that Ogg video is being supported by Google). Hopefully I'm wrong.
You should probably do some more research. Apple makes little or nothing in H.264 licensing. They're a very minor patent holder in the pool. It's not in any way significant compared to the money they make selling more iPhones and iPods.
I doubt anyone is making much off of H264 right now, but if you want to get some idea of how much could be made from H264 once its position is secure take a look at MP3 - Thomson is making a ton off of that and I think that video has much greater potential.
You are correct that I don't know what Apple's share of any proceeds from H264 would be. If someone knows please enlighten me (don't give me patent count - that doesn't mean anything). I think that Apple's hostility to Ogg would be just as much from Google involvement with Ogg as from any ability to make money from H264.
In any event, the ideal would be for Apple to explain the rules for what they block and what they don't and enforce them consistently. If they want to block all porn, or things that use too much battery (e.g. Ogg) then great - tell the world the specific rules so that the issues can be resolved. For now, it appears that they reserve the right to block anything that is not in their financial and strategic interest. The Google Voice incident was particularly illuminating because the FCC had the power to reveal the truth.
This is not news. Mozilla is free to put as many apps as they want on the iPhone so long as they follow Apple's rules. Unfortunately, Apple won't tell us what those rules are, but we have a pretty good idea that you can't say anything bad about Apple or powerful people, and you can't compete with any Apple technologies or strategic plans (e.g. what Google Voice did). So, it would be news if Mozilla puts Firefox on the iPhone without stripping out their HTML5 Ogg support since Apple has a financial interest in H264. If Mozilla gets Firefox on the iPhone by agreeing to tailor Firefox to Apple's wishes (e.g. strip out Ogg or anything else that Apple doesn't like) then that would be a total sellout on Mozilla's part.
This way everyone wins. Hulu doesn't have to redesign their whole site, and iUsers access the site via an app instead of a website so Steve Jobs gets to maintain his control over his platform. One potential problem would arise if any Hulu content said anything bad about Apple. Remember that apps have been kicked off for mentioning competitors, so surely content that criticized Apple would result in an app getting rejected?
I get all of my video from downloading - I never pay a cent. I would happily switch to a legit source and start paying, but as others have said, the service has to satisfy some criteria. Others have mentioned price - this is less important to me - and I'd lke to add two more issues: - In some countries, such as Canada where I live, most of the services that you might know, such as Rhapsody, Amazon Video, and Hulu are not available. We seem to be blocked from everything but iTunes. - Purchasing legit content should not lock me into a vendor's products. It is reasonable to ask for my money for your content - it is not reasonable to use my purchase to prevent me from buying your competitor's products. Unlike many here I have no philosophical problem with DRM, I just don't want the lock-in that happens to be associated with the current DRM options. So I keep using bit torrent.
You seem to have been following the special Apple version of the news. You think that their blocking of GV was not about blocking their competitor? Let's remember that Apple lied and lied about the whole thing until the FTC broke it open and Apple was forced into some wierd backtrack double-talk. And you are still accepting their explanations? Regarding the formats, Yes, content can be consumed in the supported formats - which Apple controls to avoid competition. I'll give you a well known example. Apple doesn't license their DRM. Only their DRM is allowed on their platforms, so nobody can compete with iTunes if they want to use DRM and it is much harder to run a content distribution business without DRM. Regarding the book prices I think you missed the fact that Apple worked with the publishers to force booksellers (most notably Amazon) to raise their prices. Regarding the playboy thing - well, you've said you don't care so I won't bother. Let's just say that Apple's claim that they were savings thier user from the evil of porn didn't apply to companies big enough to work out a deal with Apple. The only thing I agree with you on is the mistakes of their competition, but I'm not sure why that means that Apple should be let off for treating its customers so badly and behaving so anti-competitively.