Almost a year ago, Jan. 17, 2005, to be exact, I was reading about iPod Shuffles on Apple’s site (http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/) and found this in the small gray type at the bottom of the page:
“1. Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
3. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles
and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of
charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries
for more information.
4. Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock
or a USB cable extender (sold separately).”
Checking back today, I see that # 2 has been removed and replace with the text of #1, and #1 now has a reference to the 2 different sizes of the Shuffle. It just got me to wondering…. do ya think someone got fired over that original little note? I wonder how long they let it be, before it was removed. Heh…
Apple plans to update its .Mac service very soon. One of the major updates that will be included is Backup Version 3 which has been undergoing a very thorough beta test. On my wish list is an increase in storage space. What do you hope Apple will include to keep this service worth its price??
Apple released Safari Update 1.3.1 for Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther” and Safari Update 2.0.1 for Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” today.
The updates are available from the Software Update System Preference pane or for download from Apple’s Web site.
Apple indicates that both updates offer “improved web site compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications.”
The Tiger update requires Mac OS X v10.4.2, according to the web site, and measures 4.5MB. The Panther update requires Mac OS X v10.3.9 and measures 3.8MB.
So it’s now pretty much common knowledge that the Intel development build of OS X has been leaked. In fact there’s even a wiki documenting the progress made in getting it running on any old Intel box. It’s also been spreading around like wildfire that this build includes kernel support for Intel’s DRM, and people are automatically up in arms about how Apple is in bed with the MPAA and RIAA and has become an evil controlling corporate entity much along the lines of what is often said about Microsoft.
I’d just like to point out that this is not necessarily the case. Yes, there is DRM built into the kernel. But I could have told you that before the developer build was leaked (without breaking any NDAs even). Through friends at Apple I already knew that my planned attempts to install OS X on my ThinkPad would be difficult, if not impossible. For one, OSx86 (as people seem to like calling it) requires SSE3. In addition, it performs hardware checks to make sure it’s running on Apple’s own dev boxes. My guess is that this is the purpose of the DRM code in the kernel. In fact I’d say it’s about 95% certain that this is the case.
Apple, as they always have, want to make sure that the Mac OS runs only on their hardware. Hence, they need some sort of hardware authentication. Intel chips provide exactly the sort of hardware authentication Apple needs in the form of TPM. So why would Apple do anything other than use the already existing functions of the hardware that do exactly what they want to be done? They wouldn’t.
DRM has been on Mac hardware for a very long time. If it weren’t Mac clones other than the very few that Apple authorized a couple years back would be all over the place. People would be using home-build PPC machines to run the Mac OS right now because they’d be able to, as they can with Windows and Linux, run their OS of choice on whatever cheap hardware they wanted with all the driver and compatibility issues that entails. Apple, as they always have, want to avoid this. And as they always have they are using DRM to do this. The only difference is that now DRM is considered to be unequivocally a bad thing because of the uses the content creators want to put it to.
I’ve seen a number of people say that if OS X still contains the TPM code when it ships they’ll abandon the Mac platform. This, as with the similar statements about the move to x86 altogether, strikes me as rather hasty. We don’t know if Apple is going to use DRM to do anything more sinister than what they’ve always used it for. We don’t really know anything about the release version of OSx86 at this point. What we do know is that Apple does and always has used DRM in one form or another and so it’s premature to assume that this new incarnation of that technology will be used any differently than the previous ones were.
Since the announcement of Apple’s move to Intel x86 chips, a lot of people have been asking why Intel?, why not AMD? When they’re not decrying the x86 ISA and swearing to switch to Linux so they can run inferior (though still good) software on basically the same hardware they could be running OS X on, that is.
Well, as it turns out, there are some very good reasons for this which are gone into in depth over at DrunkenBlog, and which I’ll provide a (brief) overview of. For one, AMD is in a similar underdog position as Apple. Actually, one might argue that AMD is in an even worse position than Apple. Yes they have a slightly larger share of the processor market than Apple does of the desktop (16% as opposed to Apple’s ~2%, ok maybe that’s not so slight), but that’s about all they have going for them. Intel, by comparison, has about 80% of the processor market. Intel is also consistently profitable, something AMD has never been and something AMD probably won’t be in the near future. Despite the common perception, AMD’s technology isn’t really all that superior to Intels. It is in some areas (most notably the server area where the Opteron wipes the floor with the Xeon and even the Power4 and G5), but the truth is having burst back onto the scene with the cheap, fast, reliable Athlons AMD is starting to fall behind again. The Pentium M is by far the superior mobile chip when compared with AMD’s Turion, and even in the dual-core processor arena Intel is consistently getting higher clock speeds than AMD (and as these are both x86 chips, let’s forget about the MHz-myth-myth).
In reality, the only real appeal of AMD right now (unless you’re looking at servers) is that they enjoy the same underdog status as Apple, and unlike Intel are neither monopolistic nor tainted by a close association with Microsoft. AMD may be the cool kid of the x86 block, but Intel’s a bully that can actually back up its bravado. So, as much as we might not like Intel for being part of the unholy Wintel alliance, and as much as we might not like Intel’s monopolistic tendencies, and as much as we might buy the PR that AMD has done so well with, the truth is that Intel is definitely the right choice for Apple. For now, anyway.
Two days ago I posted about an idea I’d been kicking around for a couple weeks: video podcasts. Today I read an article on Wired about the new trend in blogging: video blogging. Apparently Apple (along with several others) was way ahead of me, and iTunes 4.9 already includes support for video-casts or, as some marketing genius decided to label them, vlogs. Now I really wish I had posted when I first though of this after reading about Apple contracting with Alphamosaic for mobile video chips way back in April (linky linky).
It’s nice when everything comes together, isn’t it? Apple already has video-cast (so much better than vlog, in my opinion) support in iTunes, there’s all sorts of evidence that they’re gearing up to provide some sort of mobile video device using either Alphamosaic chips or Intel’s XScale or both, and places such as Akimbo are apparently already offering tv content through video-casts. Perhaps my dream of watching my favorite shows on my vPod while riding BART to work in the morning will come true far sooner than I had expected (sadly Akimbo’s BBC offerings don’t seem to include rugby matches …yet).
The only question left is when Apple will announce the iTunes video store where you can subscribe to commercial video-casts and the accompanying vPod.
Jon Stokes over at ArsTechnica has published an article about the future of Apple and how the switch to Intel relates to the iPod. The upshot of his article is that the future of Apple lies not with the Macintosh, but with the iPod. He claims that the current success of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store are simply part of a transition away from the personal computer and towards mobile devices, much like the transition from mainframes to personal computers that started largely due to the success of the Apple I and II. With this in mind, Stokes offers the theory that the switch from IBM to Intel had little to do with performance and a lot to do with volume, pricing, and the XScale. With Intel processors powering the entire Macintosh line and the volume discounts that Intel offers on chips, it would make sense to use as many Intel chips as possible in as many products as they can go into. And so Stokes predicts the rise of the XScale powered video iPod, a competitor for the Sony PSP.
The video iPod has been one of those persistent rumors, hanging around for years and rising out of the background at nearly every product cycle. Usually it’s dismissed as impractical: the screen is too small, no one wants to watch video the same way they listen to music, &c., and for the most part I’ve agreed with these objections. Until recently.
TiVo has shown the world that people like to watch tv on their own terms. None of this prime time crap for us, we want to watch the shows we like at the times we like, and we want to be able to watch them even when they air simultaneously on different channels. And isn’t that pretty much exactly what podcasting is? It is, or at least can be, a method for time-shifting radio broadcasts. And Apple’s recent embracing of podcasting with iTunes 4.9 has raising some interesting possibilities in my mind. Apple has basically brought the podcast to the mainstream. They’ve made it easy for anyone to find and listen to a podcast in the same way they made it easy for anyone to buy and listen to digital music. So what’s the next step?
In my opinion, the next step is video podcasts. Instead of using your iPod to fill your commute with glorified talk radio, I plan on using my video iPod to fill my commute with the latest episode of HBO’s Entourage, or BBC’s broadcast of last night’s rugby match that aired at 3am California time (and not even on any stations I can watch). It could finally be real on-demand television: what you want, when and where you want it.
The industry usually follows the pirates. With 56k modems and early broadband we saw the rise of mp3s, Napster, and the age of free music. That stuff is now passé; anyone with a cable modem can download music at a decent speed, and get it at high quality from legitimate sources. Now the pirates are all about video: with a BitTorrent client and a good source you can download the same movies you can see in the theater, old film classics with your favorite actor/actress from yesteryear, full seasons of your favorite television show, just about whatever you want. And as with the music industry, the future path of the video industry—whether they like it or not—is to just go along with it. There are already plans in the works for commercial digital video distribution networks, and I think Apple is intentionally positioning themselves to be a major outlet for these networks, just as they did with the iTunes Music Store.
Well, it seems as if my musical mishap is all right. Still have to work on a few of the playlists updating them with songs that had been dropped from the process but I didn’t lose any music. Just in time as well, since I’m getting into the Podcast groove. I never listen to the radio while working in Singapore, which is atrocious at best, so it’s a nice touch listening to decent content. I am even thinking of creating my own Podcast, just to test it out. More on that next week.
Well, one of the “nice” things I found was that my iPod and my backup music library aren’t matching. Like more than 1,200 songs not matching.
I’m trying a new app to try and retrieve the songs from the iPod. It seems to be working but it is slow. I’ll post more on how it works tomorrow as well as the update on the system.
Now, I know why I’ve always used an encrypted disk image when I need security.
It has taken me much longer to get my first Blog entry started than I had originally anticipated. This is because of a wide variety of things actually, but mostly because of an unusually high about of business travel. I’ve currently been in London for a little over a week and a half now. I’ll most likely come home this weekend.
That said: I now had 3 opportunities to visit the Apple Store located on Regent’s Street. For those that are unfamiliar with this location it is the same store that Steve Jobs shows off in nearly every keynote he gives. It’s a fantastic location in a building that is owned by the Royal Family. (See here for a pic of the front: http://images.apple.com/uk/retail/images/photo-regentstreet040705.jpg)
Anyway: In all cases I was in the store while it was a “slow time” and in all cases the store was packed. There were well over 200 shoppers in there at any given point in time. I saw people purchasing the usual iPods, as well as iMacs, G5s, Minis … there were people jamming the seats in the cinema for the GarageBand tutorial. The line at the Genius bar was pretty long and all appeared to be happy and were having a good time interacting with each other.
Shouldn’t Mac sales be down now that the Intel announcement has been posted? Wow … if this is down I can’t wait to see how these stores do once the Mactel boxes start selling!
I came away from these observations with a feeling that the future of the Mac is very strong. As a software developer you always have to judge your market opportunities. I can’t remember a better growth market in the past 5 or 6 years.
That brings me to the point of what I shall be writing about in this blog: Software Development on the Mac. I am a long time (12+ years) developer of Windows software. I’m very versed with the windows tools (C++, MFC, ATL, COM, C#, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, VB.NET, Java, etc…) all of which read like alphabet soup. Prior to that I programmed on OS/2 and variants Unix. However I am new to Mac programming. My desire is to write about what I learn; what I find interesting and what I find challenging. I’ve got a few app ideas and I’ll focus my discussion on one of them at some point.
I am very curious as to Microsoft’s reaction to the Intel announcement. I’m sure that they are not sitting idle. We’ll have no way of knowing until they launch something. I’m absolutely positive that they will continue development of most of the Mac BU products, such as office as they are profitable businesses to them. As for Virtual PC? We’ll see. This will be the third time that Apple has asked them to do a major re-engineering in just a few short years.
Until next time …… cheers!
