Friday, February 25, 2005

back by popular demand

Steve Jobs is so enigmatic. A couple weeks ago at MacWorld, he introduced the 2.9 lb. Mac Mini and the reaction was so great it was like he had re-invented the PC. Readers are all excited by the little box and have been asking me for my take on it. Like everyone else, I had to scratch my head a bit and ponder what this thing is really for. I know, I know, it is for all those PC drivers who bought an iPod and are now supposed to trash their Windows PC for a Mac Mini. Yeah, but what's it REALLY for?
http://www.pbs.org/

12 Comments:

Blogger bryan said...

jonathan, aka logos thinks this article is crap. matt, from what i remember thinks it is pretty right on. i personally think it is possible but am not sure of the likelihood. i do think it is important to maintain a mentality of where the machine could be taken rather than its abilities at the present moment. there were some valid concerns that jonathan made to me such as the fact that hard drive capacities now and in the future are a concern and as well, if DVD burning capability wanted to be implemented, the technology is no where near available for HD DVD burns.

Fri Feb 25, 03:03:00 PM GMT-7  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think the future of this lies in H.264 and in the streaming of movies, rather than downloading. H.264 allows the compression of HD movies and television to an extremely low bitrate which can easily be streamed via broadband. Imagine if Apple had a giant selection of movies and TV shows available online and people could buy them through their Apple account, but instead of saving them all on the HDD, which would get full rather quickly, it simply opened them up for viewing. You pay for movies which you can watch whenever you want to, but that you need no HD space to store. They should also include a 'backup movie' option for those who want to watch the content offline or who have the extra disk space, but imagine the possibilities: You go to your friend's house to watch a movie and you simply log on to your account and watch the movie.

Fri Feb 25, 04:09:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger Michael and Natalie said...

man you guys really ARE technology enthusiasts

Fri Feb 25, 07:04:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger Michael and Natalie said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Fri Feb 25, 07:04:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger bryan said...

here another article that may shed some more light on the subject



article

Mon Feb 28, 03:13:00 PM GMT-7  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Most estimates put Apple's cash supply at around 6 billion dollars. While I agree that they won't spend all of this to push their movie service, I can see them using a significant fraction. I'm sure you've heard the rumors of Apple buying TiVo, but imagine if Apple could acquire a significant number of those customers who use TiVo. They would already feel comfortable with the TiVo name (which Apple would probably keep as the app that actually records the TV) and are being introduced to the other features Apple can provide.

As for the movies, I agree that Hollywood would be terrified to let people burn their own DVDs of HD movies... just as the RIAA was afraid of iTunes doing it. However, I think that Apple will be able to negotiate a DRM system similar to Fairplay, that will allow users to burn copies of these movies. This is where H.264 comes into play. I think it is quite believable that the user can fit a movie onto a single DVD using H.264, albeit at less resolution (as many DVDs are now.) For those without an HDTV, the differences is unnoticable and for those with one, perhaps there will be an option to split the movie into two discs. It may well be that Apple simply launches a TiVo like app to record and timeshift TV and waits until the next generation of digital media comes out, so that they already have a user base in place that will subscribe to their service.

Tue Mar 01, 11:34:00 AM GMT-7  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No it doesn't put Mac minis in user's homes, but it does give Apple a chance to capitalize on those who already know and like TiVo.
As for the "Year of HD" talk, the movies would still be watchable on your TV as HD and you could save them to a HDD in HD, but the burning of them could be at a lower resolution simply to facilitate the larger files.

Tue Mar 01, 05:53:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger bryan said...

i think when jonathan says "It is one thing to say, Apple is going to release a device that is compatible with HD-movie-download services that are going to be availible through another company. It is quite another thing to say that apple is going to release a proprietary movie download service..." he's right. but apple is pushing heavily H.264 so there is something to that. i dont really see apple doing all of this on their own as with itunes. i do think that apple would be biting off more than it could chew w/ that. but i dont really see it as a problem getting these mac mini boxes into peoples homes. nobody cares about microsoft and their home media software. (i realize you sited numbers, but im talking about the buzz around something) there were many MP3 players out before the ipod was even an idea. there were many small figure low cost PCs out before the mac mini was an idea. yet the macmini is selling faster than they can produce them. apple is able to take a market that already exists... better the product and create enough buzz so that they have great success. this all started when jobs came back and they realeased the first imac. i mean... a cheap all in one computer w/ colored plastic. what was sincerely special about that? but it saved apple... so... i dont really think the xbox analogy applies. theres too many examples of what apple has already done to counter that.

i do think however that jonathan makes some very sound arguments on the technicalities of it all. i mean.. having your media available to you, but only being able to burn it at a different quality. it all seems too complicated and reminds of music download services that try to compete w/ the itunes music store (ie napsters song rentals) i dont think that H.264 would be lower res. then current DVDs. i should research that but why would they come out w/ a new codec thats not even better. it seems to me that movies would be available as H.264 to download and _maybe_ burn to DVD w/ some type of DRM. i think im going to find out if possible the file sizes one is dealing w/ w/ H.264

matt posted an interesting article in the above post

http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/macmini/macmini_ipod.html

Tue Mar 01, 07:23:00 PM GMT-7  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

H.264 is a codec that lets you compress video no matter what resolution you scale it to. It can be small enough to send videos on cell phones and can go all the way to full HD quality video. It is at a very low bitrate for the content, but that doesn't make it small enough to fit full quality HD movies on a current DVD-5, as jonathan pointed out.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/h264.html

Tue Mar 01, 10:10:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger Aaron said...

It sounds like some people might be wondering through Job's reality distortion field. I know I am. I'm eager to see what the future brings regarding all this crap you techies have been talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Wed Mar 02, 01:09:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger Aaron said...

I meant wandering. I really did.

Wed Mar 02, 01:10:00 PM GMT-7  
Blogger bryan said...

steve jobs has spread his seed

Thu Mar 03, 01:15:00 PM GMT-7  

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