While I find Cringley thought provoking, even when pushing the outer limits, I agree with you that the utility of the HD is obvious. Cringley is focused on being able to stream from a system running iTunes. In that case the HD isn't needed. However, Apple sells more portables than desktops and sees the trend continuing. One member of the household might want to watch a video when the laptop is on the road.
Cringely is on to something with Apple being able to deploy p2p at will. Other poster's are correct that iTunes is an even more viable platform than AppleTV. (Apple could do both of course.) Think of an opt in system that provides discounts or store credit for providing bandwidth. Would people opt in if they could earn a free song every month or week for bandwidth while they sleep? I would.
iTunes has become more than a program and is now a full blown platform. Apple can change the rules of any number of games by simply releasing a new version of iTunes and ITMS.
There is a "File Services" white paper linked off of he above page but here is the relavant marketing:
New in Mac OS X Server v10.4 are access control lists (ACLs), providing flexible file system permissions that are fully compatible with Windows Server 2003 Active Directory environments and Windows XP clients.
It's a great way to get new music, you can browse, listen to previews and when you found something you like, hit your favorite P2P network to get a DRM free copy.
Now only if they would get rid of the DRM, I would actually buy stuff there too.
You mean the way you are buying your music on P2P networks now? Right.
The thing about Apple's fairplay DRM is that it balances the interests of multiple parties well. If you have purchased a CD then rip it into and un-DRM'ed MP3 or AAC and let your conscience be your guide. If you want to purchase on-line from then use iTMS and live with DRM'ed files that you can load onto up to five computers and as many iPods as you have. And, as noted elsewhere you can burn them to CD and re-rip them if you feel the need to be DRM free. But most honest people who purchase their songs to support the artitsts (and not a few record executives) don't feel the need or find it too time consuming.
Fairplay helps honest people stay honest and as a result helped to coax the music industry into the modern on-line world. When combined with the great user experience of the iTMS you end up selling a LOT more music on-line than anyone else.
They would ship earlier if possible but this is the best business decision for Adobe. It will take a huge effort to move years of code out of CodeWarrior and into Xcode. Perhaps they should have started that process when it was clear CW was dead instead of waiting for Apple's Intel announcement last summer to force their hand, but that doesn't change where they are today.
They could devote enourmous resources to migrating the OS X version of CS2 over to Intel and then charge customers what? From the customer perspective, they already purchased the existing product and wont' want to pay more. Apple is charging $49 for crossgrades and is getting grief for it.
Worse still, by putting their resources on going universal they would end up pushing out CS3 on Mac AND Intel thus delaying the next upgrade cycle. (They could split their team between MS and OS X but then how would you feel having CS3 on Windows and CS2 on OS X? The current plan is much cleaner from a development perspective and mitigates the risk on future revenue.
If you really need native CS2 on OS X with fast h/w pick up a PPC system while you still can.
Smartest post I've read here. Apple was doing well with the iPod, but they screwed up by releasing the a new iPod, with all the old iPod's features, plus some more, at the same price? Huh?
Totally agree with parent and grandparent. Apple is being very smart about how they introduce video.
While Apple continues to generate sales based on the undiminished music capability of the iPod it is also seeding the market for the sale of future video products. The current content offerings are only a toe in the water. When more become available there will already be millions of people who have devices that can purchase and play the content. Just because someone doesn't see a need for the five programs currently being offered doesn't mean that there won't be something that hooks them in the future.
By keeping the same price points, Apple is in essance giving customer's video capability for free. Or at least there isn't a percieved cost in the customer's eyes. Apple is priming the pump.
What they aren't doing is launching a special purpose product with a higher price point that lives or dies on Video. Wall Street would fret over every sale and declare the whole thing a failure becuase the product didn't meet it's own absurd expectations.
The current iPods use an ARM chip from Texas Instruments, but we can expect to see Intel inside future versions of the iPod line.
This point was totally unsuported in TFA other than to say that Apple wants a volume discount. Even though Apple grew desktop market share over 3x compared to the mareket in Q1, the volumes still are small when compared to the overall industry. Even when you compare Macs + iPod's Dell is buying way more chips. The whole "Let's expend a lot of effort to move OS X to Intel so that we can buy chips for the iPod from intel." line of thought makes no sense and to make the move away from PPC for the Map about the iPod, is just twisted and ignores the entire emphasis of Apple's announcement at WWDC.
Who cares about migrating to a new architecture? Let's ignore the consumers who have been conditioned, via marketing, to think that a new chip really makes them happier or more productive than what they currently have. OK, so the question isn't quite right. Who NEEDS to care about migrating to a new architecture?
The answer of course is developers developers developers. . . . er . . .
Seriously, how many iPod developers are there? We don't know b/c they all work for Apple. Fact is Apple could switch the iPod to any chip architecture they wanted and no one would notice. They can manage that transition totally internally w/o any market impact.
In June at WWDC, Apple did what it needed to do to keep the Mac busines line, which still generates most of the company's revenue and profits, competitive. And to do that it needed to show the OS X developer community both the technical and the business way to move forward. It all comes down to providing tools to quickly generate universal applications that support both architectures in the same binary. There was no discussion at all about iPod in the context of the Intel announcement.
I'm not saying that Apple will never sell an iPod or follow on product with Intel technology as the engine. However to make that the driving reason for Apple's desktop announcement is missing the obvious straightforward point. And yes music is huge and will likely grow even larger but that doesn't mean that a company wants to neglect a multi-billion dollar business like the Mac.
Another contributory factor is that you much less likely to be sued for using a generic term like an animal name. Apple has had bad experiences with scientists (Carl Sagan) and muscians (Bob Dylan) when naming products. Also, don't forget that other "Apple" that keeps coming back for more money every time Apple Computer, Inc. does something even remotely related to the music industry.
These issues won't matter to most of us in a home environment since we can run the b and g networks in parallel.
When I add an 802.11g device to my stable of equipment (Which in all likelihood will be the oh so portable 12" Aluminum PowerBook.) I will of course need one of the new Airport Extreme base stations (or other g access point). My reliable, though by comparison slow, Airport will still work fine but I will assign it a different channel in the b/g spectrum. New stuff will go fast on the g channel and old stuff, like my Cube, will continue to work just as fast as ever on the b channel.
Tri-mode chip sets may come to be, but will still require a second antenna to support the 802.11a spectrum and will still have the undesirable power requirements of a, which takes about 2x the power of b/g. Who's looking for shorter battery life?
Regarding interference in the 2.4Ghz range, I haven't had any problems with that. My access point is in the basement, the cube I'm writing on is on the second floor and the 2.4Ghz phone is on the ground level along with a wireless laptop. When you consider my ISP provides a MAX of 1.5Gb down, probably less in reality, I can lose 50-75% of my wireless throughput before even noticing a slowdown to the net. Real world, this is not an issue for most people smart enough not to place the phone base (or microwave) next to their AP or computer.
G will dominate the future. The combination of backward compatibility and lower power consumption for portable devices will be the main reasons why.
One other point regarding Apple's g implementation in the Airport Extreme Base Station is worth mentioning. It is now possible to tune the signal strength. This is very important when laying out channels for AP?s in a crowded business or educational environment. You can now turn down the power to cover just a single room without bleeding through the walls into the next room covered by another AP. This will be very helpful in managing channels to get the best performance from your spectrum. As a home user I could care less of course. (I need more power Scotty!)
"It's tough to find something when you don't know what you're looking for"
Plan 9 From Outer Space
Slashdot Mirror
Cringely is on to something with Apple being able to deploy p2p at will. Other poster's are correct that iTunes is an even more viable platform than AppleTV. (Apple could do both of course.) Think of an opt in system that provides discounts or store credit for providing bandwidth. Would people opt in if they could earn a free song every month or week for bandwidth while they sleep? I would.
iTunes has become more than a program and is now a full blown platform. Apple can change the rules of any number of games by simply releasing a new version of iTunes and ITMS.
Mac OS X Server 10.4 (Tiger) already has this. See: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/fileprint.html
There is a "File Services" white paper linked off of he above page but here is the relavant marketing:
You mean the way you are buying your music on P2P networks now? Right.
The thing about Apple's fairplay DRM is that it balances the interests of multiple parties well. If you have purchased a CD then rip it into and un-DRM'ed MP3 or AAC and let your conscience be your guide. If you want to purchase on-line from then use iTMS and live with DRM'ed files that you can load onto up to five computers and as many iPods as you have. And, as noted elsewhere you can burn them to CD and re-rip them if you feel the need to be DRM free. But most honest people who purchase their songs to support the artitsts (and not a few record executives) don't feel the need or find it too time consuming.
Fairplay helps honest people stay honest and as a result helped to coax the music industry into the modern on-line world. When combined with the great user experience of the iTMS you end up selling a LOT more music on-line than anyone else.
Don't hold your breath.
They would ship earlier if possible but this is the best business decision for Adobe. It will take a huge effort to move years of code out of CodeWarrior and into Xcode. Perhaps they should have started that process when it was clear CW was dead instead of waiting for Apple's Intel announcement last summer to force their hand, but that doesn't change where they are today.
They could devote enourmous resources to migrating the OS X version of CS2 over to Intel and then charge customers what? From the customer perspective, they already purchased the existing product and wont' want to pay more. Apple is charging $49 for crossgrades and is getting grief for it.
Worse still, by putting their resources on going universal they would end up pushing out CS3 on Mac AND Intel thus delaying the next upgrade cycle. (They could split their team between MS and OS X but then how would you feel having CS3 on Windows and CS2 on OS X? The current plan is much cleaner from a development perspective and mitigates the risk on future revenue.
If you really need native CS2 on OS X with fast h/w pick up a PPC system while you still can.
Totally agree with parent and grandparent. Apple is being very smart about how they introduce video.
While Apple continues to generate sales based on the undiminished music capability of the iPod it is also seeding the market for the sale of future video products. The current content offerings are only a toe in the water. When more become available there will already be millions of people who have devices that can purchase and play the content. Just because someone doesn't see a need for the five programs currently being offered doesn't mean that there won't be something that hooks them in the future.
By keeping the same price points, Apple is in essance giving customer's video capability for free. Or at least there isn't a percieved cost in the customer's eyes. Apple is priming the pump.
What they aren't doing is launching a special purpose product with a higher price point that lives or dies on Video. Wall Street would fret over every sale and declare the whole thing a failure becuase the product didn't meet it's own absurd expectations.
This looks like a very smart move.
This point was totally unsuported in TFA other than to say that Apple wants a volume discount. Even though Apple grew desktop market share over 3x compared to the mareket in Q1, the volumes still are small when compared to the overall industry. Even when you compare Macs + iPod's Dell is buying way more chips. The whole "Let's expend a lot of effort to move OS X to Intel so that we can buy chips for the iPod from intel." line of thought makes no sense and to make the move away from PPC for the Map about the iPod, is just twisted and ignores the entire emphasis of Apple's announcement at WWDC.
Who cares about migrating to a new architecture? Let's ignore the consumers who have been conditioned, via marketing, to think that a new chip really makes them happier or more productive than what they currently have. OK, so the question isn't quite right. Who NEEDS to care about migrating to a new architecture?
The answer of course is developers developers developers. . . . er . . .
Seriously, how many iPod developers are there? We don't know b/c they all work for Apple. Fact is Apple could switch the iPod to any chip architecture they wanted and no one would notice. They can manage that transition totally internally w/o any market impact.
In June at WWDC, Apple did what it needed to do to keep the Mac busines line, which still generates most of the company's revenue and profits, competitive. And to do that it needed to show the OS X developer community both the technical and the business way to move forward. It all comes down to providing tools to quickly generate universal applications that support both architectures in the same binary. There was no discussion at all about iPod in the context of the Intel announcement.
I'm not saying that Apple will never sell an iPod or follow on product with Intel technology as the engine. However to make that the driving reason for Apple's desktop announcement is missing the obvious straightforward point. And yes music is huge and will likely grow even larger but that doesn't mean that a company wants to neglect a multi-billion dollar business like the Mac.
Another contributory factor is that you much less likely to be sued for using a generic term like an animal name. Apple has had bad experiences with scientists (Carl Sagan) and muscians (Bob Dylan) when naming products. Also, don't forget that other "Apple" that keeps coming back for more money every time Apple Computer, Inc. does something even remotely related to the music industry.
These issues won't matter to most of us in a home environment since we can run the b and g networks in parallel.
When I add an 802.11g device to my stable of equipment (Which in all likelihood will be the oh so portable 12" Aluminum PowerBook.) I will of course need one of the new Airport Extreme base stations (or other g access point). My reliable, though by comparison slow, Airport will still work fine but I will assign it a different channel in the b/g spectrum. New stuff will go fast on the g channel and old stuff, like my Cube, will continue to work just as fast as ever on the b channel.
Tri-mode chip sets may come to be, but will still require a second antenna to support the 802.11a spectrum and will still have the undesirable power requirements of a, which takes about 2x the power of b/g. Who's looking for shorter battery life?
Regarding interference in the 2.4Ghz range, I haven't had any problems with that. My access point is in the basement, the cube I'm writing on is on the second floor and the 2.4Ghz phone is on the ground level along with a wireless laptop. When you consider my ISP provides a MAX of 1.5Gb down, probably less in reality, I can lose 50-75% of my wireless throughput before even noticing a slowdown to the net. Real world, this is not an issue for most people smart enough not to place the phone base (or microwave) next to their AP or computer.
G will dominate the future. The combination of backward compatibility and lower power consumption for portable devices will be the main reasons why.
One other point regarding Apple's g implementation in the Airport Extreme Base Station is worth mentioning. It is now possible to tune the signal strength. This is very important when laying out channels for AP?s in a crowded business or educational environment. You can now turn down the power to cover just a single room without bleeding through the walls into the next room covered by another AP. This will be very helpful in managing channels to get the best performance from your spectrum. As a home user I could care less of course. (I need more power Scotty!)
"It's tough to find something when you don't know what you're looking for" Plan 9 From Outer Space
After upgrading to 10.2.5. you can open the Directory Access app and see that it now has an option to configure NIS. Nice.