Microsoft lowers the price of Zunes by $20. Sorry if we didn’t hear about this earlier, it was under our radar. Here’s the new lineup vs. the nano equivalent:
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…good luck with that…
The iPhone and the Apple TV were born together. Sharing the same stage at Macworld 2007, both products were an attempt to extend the reach of products they already had, the iPhone growing on the iPod and the ROKR, and the Apple TV growing on the Mac Mini and iTunes. The spotlight at the event was primarily on the iPhone, as they were banking on it to extend their market reach and to bring multi-touch into the mainstream, but the Apple TV was a sleeper product that they hoped would take over the small but growing industry of Internet TV.
Two years later, the iPhone has exploded into the best selling phone of any cell phone, with high critical acclaim and an App Store that is revolutionizing application distribution, and the Apple TV has, well, been sleeping. Sales numbers haven’t been revealed, and the Apple TV remains the hobby that Steve Jobs called it after it flopped. Rabid fanboys have defended the Apple TV, saying that Apple did a great job on it, and its an excellent product if you learn to appreciate it. The problem is, consumers aren’t going to pay 230 dollars for a product they have to "learn to appreciate."
So what’s the problem with the Apple TV? It’s simple: it doesn’t do anything that consumers can’t already do. Movie Rentals? Everyone with cable or satellite can do that with the same titles at the same price. TV Shows? Everyone can watch TV Shows, and most can record them, for free, which sure beats paying 1.99 per show (or 2.99 for HD). Music? Music Channels are aplenty on cable and satellite, and one can easily burn a CD of their own music to play. Purchasing Movies? Everyone has a DVD player, and they would much rather use the DVDs they already have or rent one at Blockbuster than to start their collection from scratch. Youtube? Well, you got me there, but I don’t see Apple TVs selling like hot-cakes because you can watch Youtube pixellated on a flat screen TV as opposed to your computer. The point is that the Apple TV has nothing unique or innovative that makes it worth the asking price for the average consumer, and with the economy the way it is, the Apple TV has the lowest bang for the buck of any Apple product.
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Now don’t start bashing me for hating on the Apple TV: I am a proud owner of an Apple TV, and have loved every bit of it. As a filmmaker, there is no better way to showcase my films to friends than the Apple TV. As a person who has been blacklisted from all the movie rental stores in town for forgetting to return the rentals, and who hates navigating and troubleshooting the clunky DVR rental system that is included with my cable, the Apple TV fits the bill perfectly for me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the bill for most people, and the potential Apple has to make this a killer product is through the roof.
The question remains: what should Apple do to fix it?
First of all, they need to change the focus again. Its not Movies, Movies, Movies as Steve Jobs declared last MacWorld. Its TV Shows, TV Shows, TV Shows! The number one thing that consumers use their TV for is TV Shows, period. Movies are not the primary focus of a TV. Apple needs to figure out a way, through live TV, ad-supported content, and great consumer choice to make the Apple TV a worthy alternative to cable or satellite. People are NOT, I repeat, NOT going to shell out 2-3 dollars per TV Show. This is stupid, moronic thinking. Perhaps Apple could offer a way to deliver standard channels for a monthly fee per channel. Instead of packages, people could pay a certain amount of money per month, per channel, allowing them complete control as to what is on their TV, and what’s not.
Next, the Apple TV needs one of these two things. Either they establish a movie catalogue as large as the one of Netflix, or they include a built in DVD player. They cannot expect to take over DVDs if they can’t offer as many titles, and if they don’t offer as many titles, in one of those two ways, they can not expect to sell Apple TVs. If they really want to be an advocate of consumer choice, they could offer a DVD player and a large catalogue, but that isn’t very much like Apple.
As far as the iTunes movies work, they need to change the way the rentals work. Something along the lines of 7 days to watch the movie as many times as you want before it expires, similar to the way a physical video rental service works, would be much better than the confusing model they have today. Also, all movies should be available for rent and purchase from the second they hit the store. I’m aware that its primarily the studios to blame, but its not as though Steve is setting the best example himself.
Also, the Apple TV needs a new remote. The white one that gets lost in your lap must go by the wayside. I think a multitouch universal remote would fit the bill perfectly, and although it would be fairly expensive, it would be worth it. iPhone and iPod Touch users could use their devices to control the Apple TV as well as the music they can already control. More on the advantages below.
Also, the Apple TV could benefit greatly from an App Store. Developers could add apps for online services such as Hulu, and could create games that could be controlled by the universal remote. Imagine controlling a car racing game with the universal remote as the steering wheel for your big screen. The possibilities are tantalizing. Couple this App Store with a better graphics card (nVIDIA anyone?), and you may have a recipe for success.
Finally, the price. If the Apple TV was a viable alternative to cable and satellite, consumers would be willing to pay more upfront. I could envision a 249 starting price with a 299 and a 349 option, the only difference between the models being hard drive size and graphics.
Apple created the Apple II and the Lisa before it found success in the Macintosh. The iPod was a niche product until PC support was added, which allowed it to take over the music industry. The iPhone started at 599 and did fairly well, but it wasn’t until Apple created iPhone 3G for 199 did it take over the cell phone market. Hopefully it will have taken Apple the first Apple TV to take over the living room as well.
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Apple_TV_The_Recipe_for_Success’; align=”left”
Just get it over with already…
Hot Carl iCahn and crew can pretend like they are looking for a leader but all they really want is their money. Can we just put Yahoo behind us now?
Computerworld’s Gregg Kaiser, exposes some of the behind the scenes emails going on around the Vista marketing campaign at Microsoft. Microsoft was already preoccupied with the Mac’s reputation and how, in particular, Walt Mossberg had been singing its praises:
"You won’t have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer’s Macintosh computers, which don’t run Windows," Mossberg had written. "Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger [at that time, the most-current Mac OS X — Ed.], is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista."
Warrier added his own comment. "A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column]."
That got an almost-immediate rise out of Russell, who acknowledged that Microsoft had not done its job in promoting Windows Vista. "My takeaway from Walt’s article is that we have failed to communicate Vista’s value," Russell said in an e-mail reply sent just 20 minutes after Warrier fired off his.
Russell went on to defend Vista, specifically its ability to "run on a very wide-ranging set of systems from the minimally capable to the incredibly capable," he said. "Apple doesn’t do that."
All of this is part of the larger "Vista-capable" Microsoft case that is set to go to court next year. The plaintiffs contend that Microsoft lowered the computers specs on what "running Vista" could include artificially so much that consumers were misled into buying machines that really couldn’t run Vista properly.
Google’s Grand Central has had a somewhat slow start, especially on the Mac platform. Today, however, Google’s Mac Labs have unveiled Vocito…
Vocito is a desktop UI for GrandCentral for the Mac. It allows you to easily dial anybody from your desktop. Using GrandCentral it will dial the remote phone and your local phone simultaneously, and connect you together.
It integrates into Address Book, Quicksilver, Automater, system services, supports "tel" URLs, and is fully AppleScriptable.
All this integration makes it easy to have Vocito automatically dial your phone from just about any application that supports scripting, html, or Automator actions. For example, you can easily set up your iCal meeting appointment to automatically dial the conference call for you at the correct time.
Vocito also allows you to save little applets that will automatically dial the phone for you with a simple double click.
Since GrandCentral is currently in a limited beta, we don’t have any more invites to hand out right now. So those of you without a GrandCentral number don’t get to play just yet, but please reserve your number now to get in on the action as soon as more invites become available.
Vocito is available here for download. It works on Tiger and Leopard, is both PowerPC and Intel native, and is fully open sourced. There is a discussion group at vocito-discuss on Google Groups, and an FAQ. If you need help using Vocito, check out our ever growing documentation page at VocitoHelp. If you can’t find what you are looking for, please post to vocito-discuss and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
According to BGR’s non-insured Walmart ninjas, the iPhone isn’t just going to Costco after Christmas, it is going to Mr. Walton’s lil’ franchise. The move is likely to clear out excess holiday inventories and is expected to drop the price to $149, just like at Cosco.
Digitimes is this morning reporting that the early 2009 iMacs will have a little exxtra umph under the hood. In the form of new Intel Quad core 65W chips.
Intel is planning to launch three 65W low-power desktop CPUs targeting small form factor (SFF) PCs and all-in-one PCs in the middle of January next year, according to sources at PC vendors.
Intel will launch the Core 2 Quad Q8200s (2.33GHz/4MB L2), Core 2 Quad Q9400s (2.66GHz/6MB L2) and Core 2 Quad Q9550s (2.83GHz/12MB L2) with prices at US$245, US$320 and US$369, respectively in thousand-unit tray quantities. These CPUs will have the same specifications as standard CPUs with the same model number, but will see their TDP drop from 95W to 65W.
PC vendors including Apple, Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell have already decided to launch products based on these CPUs, while Asustek Computer is still evaluating doing so.
Something else to consider: Apple could release a Psystar-killing everyman “Mac” based on these chips. Yeah, we know, unlikely.
Oh, and that black iMac..it is just something we found out there on the internets to get your brain going :D
There’s been a lot of noise around the Web on Flash coming to the iPhone. While some folks are in the "never going to happen" camp, there is some precedent for belief that it will someday be in the iPhone platform. For instance, take this patent application from Apple (image to the right) that includes both Flash and Windows Media players.
To say that Apple is going to forgo Flash altogether is probably untrue. To say that they are taking a wait (and wait, aaaand wait) and see approach is probably closer to accurate. I’m sure Apple would like to have more control over the Flash player as it currently goes against the App Store’s provisions and would need to be in the more natively "blessed" area of the iPhone development world. Perhaps a specially "disabled version" of Flash that allows what Apple deems worthy (less CPU, less ad spam, more AIR apps) could satisfy both parties.
Flash may never happen on the iPhone, it is true. But it isn’t like Apple isn’t hedging its bets. Much like having an Intel version of OSX going for all of those PowerPC years, there is probably a Flash version of the iPhone running around Cupertino right now. Apple may one day let it out of prototype and into the real world. Until then, there is always VNC or Citrix.
If you live in the US or Canada, like it or not, your English pretty much sounds the same to the outside world…and the Google iPhone application. Those outside this area have been having less success with the Google iPhone voice recognition application it seems … at least that’s what some of our commenters have said.
Is this your experience out there? What could Google do to fix this? Perhaps they could use the location information in the app to determine what accent to use?
The downside of that is that you’ll have Americans doing their best Monty Python accents when using iPhones in London and you’ll have Brits sounding like surfers in New York…not that we aren’t anyway.
We were actually looking for the clip where Clark was trying to use his pocket translator to decipher what the British hotelier was saying. If anyone can find this, leave it in the comments and we’ll update :D
OK, not very Apple focussed but still entertaining… http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml
It looks like Snow Leopard might be coming a bit earlier than expected if slides from Apple’s Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies, Jordan Hubbard are to be believed. The presentation was given at LISA ’08 last week in San Diego.
Originally planned for "about a year" from WWDC 2008 (July), the change of schedule would be a significant bump in expections from people outside of Apple. While Q1 extends to the end of March, this could also indicate that we’ll see new Snow Leopard introductions at Macworld 2009 in January. Perhaps even new devices using the new, optimized code?
The new release schedule would also mark a shortening of the development process which had been widening over the past few releases, though Snow Leopard may be considered a somewhat smaller update due to its lack of feature additions.
We should caution that this is only one person’s presentation slide and could be factually incorrect, though he is certainly a person who would be in the know.
So, yeah we should be over this one by now but something that really bothered us when we reported on MacBook Air sightings in September of 2007 was that our source had seen black versions of the MacBook Air. We were really excited about this possibility and were let down when the Airs were released in only silver at Macworld 2008.
Turns out there were some black MacBook Airs “floating” around Cupertino. But for whatever reason, they never made it to the assembly line.
A MacRumors forum member reports on a prototype that made it out to the real world a few years after it, or one of its brethren, were spotted by our spy. It is good to know that there was some more truth to that one, even over a year later.
Oh yeah…the screen to the edges?…disregard that part :P
Like it or not, Apple is going glossy.
(we’ve heard this directive comes from the tip top)
First it was the MacBooks, then the Aluminum iMac, and now the MacBook Pros (old 17 inch notwithstanding). Today, the Cinema Displays are falling. Apple just EOL’ed the 23 inch (matte) display in favor of the 24-inch DisplayPort (glossy) beauty that will be shipping later this month. It isn’t a huge stretch that the 20 inch and 30 inch displays will likely follow at Macworld 2009. You soon won’t be able to buy a non-glossy screen from Apple in portable or desktop or iPod/iPhone form.
That’s not to say, your options aren’t open. First of all, why buy a 24 inch Cinema display when for $400 more you can get a full 24-inch iMac for a few hundred bucks more – ($1299 at times)? Not only that, but solid (yes they aren’t Apple LED, save it) matte 24-inch displays are are coming in around $300 from Dell, Samsung and other vendors. You can literally buy three 24 inch displays for the cost of an Apple display. LED, not OLED mind you. If you don’t have one of the new Unibodies, you don’t really have a choice, do you? If you want a 24 inch monitor, you have to look elsewhere.
I like Apple but there is no way I can justify this…especially when I…hate…glossy. What do you think?
News is trickling in that the new DisplayPort has a little surprise for unibody MacBook users: High Definition Content Protection (HDCP). Apparently the Apple TV also includes this feature. Technically it works across DisplayPort, Digital Visual Interface (DVI), High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Gigabit Video Interface (GVIF), or Unified Display Interface (UDI) connections so any machines can be governed by this technology.
The technology is meant to block playing on unauthorized displays but it is hard to see how this is supposed to prevent piracy. This is undoubtedly motivated by the studios trying to keep a hold of their content, not by Apple. (don’t like? share)
The problem is that VGA isn’t one of the technologies that this supports and an Ars reader was projecting using this far from dead technology. The result? He can’t play a movie he has purchased that is covered by FairPlay.
So all of you with VGA displays are assed out on iTunes content? We’ll see how Apple responds to this "situation". In the meantime, there is always…
Yahoo’s stock today jumped on the news that Jerry Yang would be stepping down as CEO. Not just a blip either…it jumped almost 20%…to the tune of $2 billion in market value. Not a great sign of confidence in his abilities to run the company…or sell it off to Microsoft in pieces (as it were).
Contrast this with Steve Jobs. A fake news report comes out that he’s had a heart attack and the stock drops by 20%. Even losing a few pounds seems to hurt the stock.
Is one person at a company enough to shift the value that much? If so, a good CEO is actually worth the outrageous money they make.
Honestly, this is a sad moment for Yahoos even if the stock holders are happy. Yahoo, as we know it, will likely cease to exist as we know it. In the long term, we’ll probably be worse off than before as Web users for his departure…have your say?
What’s the big deal? Google’s Voice recognition (iTunes link) which is finally live doesn’t understand every word we speak? Sure it works fairly quicky and acurately for people over the age of five. I am amazed at how good it works for me and my wife. But what about the two month old demographic? When will they be served? Age discrimination isn’t funny people.
By the way Google came up with "n" which according to Oprah means he’s hungry. Scary.
I’ve been biting my tongue on the new Unibody MacBook’s trackpad’s inability to tell when I am clicking. Sometimes, no matter how hard I push it doesn’t register a click. Well, today may be my lucky day. Apple released the trackpad firmware update. Oh, and a Quicktime H.264 for iChat update as well. Restarting…now… (Updated: Yummy results below)
Yep, it worked as advertised. Now I am waiting for the glarey screen update..
According to Digitimes, the iPhone will be in Taiwan for the holidays.
Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), on November 14, announced it has obtained exclusive sales rights for the iPhone 3G in the Taiwan market, with launch tentatively slated for December 2008.
However, CHT did not release any further details about prices and the exact date of launch due to a non-disclosure agreement with Apple.
Gray-market iPhone 3Gs imported privately mainly from New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US have been available for sale in Taiwan for a while, with prices ranging from NT$22,000-24,900 (US$667-755) for an 8GB model and NT$23,680-28,500 for a 16GB one.
When will mainland China and its 1.4 Billion consumers see the iPhone? It’s a bit ironic that the people who make the iPhone aren’t able to enjoy its shiny goodness.
This weekend, ARM announced that Ubuntu was going to be ported to the Cortex class processors. Good news for Linux ARM fans but not that special since there have been videos of Ubuntu running on TI OMAP processors for awhile.
This morning, ARM and Adobe jointly announced that full Flash 10 was ceritfied to run on ARM 11 Chips (like in the iPhone) at over 200Mhz including Windows Mobile devices. We think someone is trying to tell Apple that Flash could be on the iPhone if they really wanted it there.
Well that isn’t the only news coming out this week. I had a chance to speak to Bob Morris at ARM who has much more exciting news for us later this week. Until then, have a look at a 800MHz ARM Cortex going up against a 800MHz Intel Atom. When you consider the power usage on ARM Cortex is an order of magnatude less than Intel, you might see where we are going…remember why Apple moved to Intel?
"I can just remove Tony…Boom!"
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlT-ih2g_Mc&w=425&h=344]
Also note that Phil get moved to the top of Stevo’s Favorites list?…hmmm…
For those of you running small businesses, Egnyte’s cloud file server and backup is a great product. We use it at work for distributing files to clients and keeping global files easy to access. We also backup a few OSX servers using the service. It is great all around. We haven’t had an outage in the 6 months we’ve been customers. I could go on and on..
Last month, however, Egnyte got really Apple friendly by releasing an iPhone web client. We can now browse our file servers while on the road with an iPhone. This is actually a great feature if you just need a quick look at a document or image. The iPhone thinks Egnyte’s servers are web servers and if you download a .doc file, it uses the iPhone’s Quicklook to look at the file. This works with all of the iPhone’s Quicklook abilities including PDFs, XLS and PPTs.
But this is where it gets interesting…
Our Egnyte file server also house MP4 movies for clients. Some almost a gig in size. Also, we have more than a few audio files saved as MP3s. Surely these won’t play on the iPhone over an AT&T 3G connection?
Actually for once, I have to give it to AT&T. I was able to stream a client presentation that was saved in MP4 format while on the road. It of course looked and sounded great on the iPhone and it is available whenever I want. It is an amazing feeling to have secure access to all of your company’s files from the palm of your hand – at all times.
If you haven’t checked out Egnyte yet, do yourself the favor. They have a free 15 day trial of use and if you are a small company or individual considering buying or upgrading a file server, you will be hard pressed to find a better solution. Oh, and did we tell you they are extremely Mac and iPhone friendly?
Seems to be some confusion on the ol’ Apple discussion forums:
Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!
Best Answer so far from Cutthru:
Its a glitch, but only happens if the pic is sufficiently raunchy.
Can anyone else help her out?
Update: TechCrunk has talked to some Googlers who tell them that Apple originally said it was going live on Friday then moved the day to Monday. They also harsh on Apple plenty.
Our worst fears realized? The Google speech recognition app hasn’t hit the iPhone yet after being touted yesterday. "So what?" you say? "Give Apple a few days to look at it" you say?
More bad news. Google has taken the video down from Youtube. It is also removed from its Website. Is this just us being paranoid or has Apple slapped Google for releasing the video prior to release?…or perhaps Google was pressuring Apple to release the update by leaking the video and information to the New York Times?
We really hope this is just a blip…but just in case…Can someone call Eric Schmidt to clear this all up?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYLTiecN-EE