Will iTV Connect Directly to iTunes Store?

Is it conceivable that, just maybe, Apple hasn't given us the whole story on iTV yet? Sure, it's cool if it's sorta a streaming network hub that connects to your TV so you can play back downloaded videos. That makes it an AirPort Express with video out ports right? (And, presumably, a processor that's needed to do some decoding for H.264 on the fly.)

So why does it have a USB port? For a keyboard and mouse? A printer?

My guess would be external storage -- if it's a wireless hub with a processor, why not allow it to be a home file server, too? It would be handy to let you store images on your iTV and call them up anytime, whether or not your Mac is close by.

Of course, that would also be nice for audio and video, wouldn't it? In essence, whether using internal or external storage, the iTV could easily become an essential home entertainment component, capable of calling up and playing back tons of stored material to the TV -- or to any Mac or PC -- in your household.

Which, if true, leads to another logical extension of the iTV concept -- why couldn't it function as a standalone interface for iTunes Store, enabling you to download music and movies and TV shows for direct display on the connected TV -- and then, if desired, allow you to sync with your Mac or iPod?

Wouldn't that make sense?

In theory, I guess all of those things would be possible with a Mac Mini connected to a TV, although you'd need keyboard and mouse to navigate. But picture a Mac Mini slimmed down enough to run just Front Row, Darwin and a special TV-centric version of the iTunes Store...and you've got a device that enables you to buy last night's Battlestar Galactica for $1.99 and watch it as it streams in on the fly.

And games would be nice, too.

That wouldn't just be an interesting box for Mac users, but it could be a salvo at NetFlix, DVRs and an incredibly smart implementation of the Windows Media Center solution. It'd be a very Apple thing to do, IMHO, as it would be the sort of solution that might sell in the tens of millions of devices, not just the hundreds of thousands. Translation: Sony would be jealous, and I often wonder if that's Steve Jobs' primary passion.

Or am I dreamin'?

Apple Ships 1.61 Million Macs

As you've no doubt seen, Apple shipped a record number of Macs in its fourth quarter, which, aside from the education buying season, is often a slow one for Mac sales. By all accounts, the move to Intel processors is the deciding factor, with other reports showing that increasing numbers of buyers are considering Macs because they have Intel chips and, thus, a perceived compatibility with the rest of the personal computing world. The demand is driven by notebook sales, which hit 1 million in that quarter with a U.S. market share estimated at 12 percent...and there's no particular suggestion that notebook sales are slowing going into the holiday season. (I'm gonna get me one, for instance.)

Black is Beautiful?

I've decided that I'm in the market for a new Mac of some sort...the PowerBook G4 1GHz 12-inch model that I have right now has been servicable, but I'm starting to notice the slowdowns a bit more prominently. Plus, I've got a new book to start working on that will require a cross-platform approach -- meaning screenshots in both Windows and Mac OS X -- so an Intel-based Mac would be darned handy.

As I've pretty much used a Mac laptop as my main computer for the past 10 years or so, that's the direction I'm looking. The budget is tight, though, so while I occasionally find myself glancing over the MacBook Pro offerings, most of my eBay/Apple Store window shopping is for a regular ol' MacBook. I only look at models that offer 1GB of RAM or more...I've seen that Intel processor running with only 512MB, and it ain't pretty. And I'd love a slightly used model that already has Parallels and Windows XP installed so that someone else takes the hit from M$.

But something about this is bothering me. In spite of my keen eye for a scam, I keep gravitating back to the black MacBook model. Not that I don't like the white version -- although I am a little concerned about the discoloration on some models that seem to have gotten relatively little use. (And, yes, I've already got enough white iBooks floating around the office to make them seem passe.) It's just that I...like...the black MacBook. There's a certain way in which the Apple logo just gleams from the matte black finish that seems very retro future. And I chide myself constantly for even thinking of paying an extra $200 not only for the mere image of the thing, but also because...well...PCs are black! I mean, most laptops for a long time have been black. How is it that Jobs and Co. manage to make it seem so cool?

I generally pride myself on being outside the reality distortion field -- after all, I'm far enough away from California that it's tough enough for it to reach anyway. And yet, here I am, looking for the perfect deal...just the right used price on eBay that makes it seem OK to take the plunge. If I can only pay $150 extra for the privilege of having a Mac that is the color of 90% of all laptops in the world...then...just maybe...I deserve it! {sigh}

iTV = Console Gaming?

Businessweek asks the burning question as to whether Apple's recently pre-announced iTV could be a trojan horse designed to get Apple into the living room so that it can take over the gaming console world. The question: "Could Apple Become Games Console King?" The answer: "Sure, but probably not." While iTV may in fact be the answer to a alot of questions, those answers are in Steve Jobs continuing to figure out how to make more and more download-for-dollars content available over broadband to American consumers. That's clearly where they're spending their time.

It's conceivable, of course, that Apple would offer gaming downloads from the iTunes Store that could play on the iTV -- and I certainly hope they turn the iTV in a family/home server for files and home folders as well as for multimedia. But it seems unlikely that the iTV would be engineered to kill other gaming boxes...not when the real trick is going to be pushing high speed data through the thing and decompressing data feeds into video streams. Those are core competencies for Apple, whereas, as of right now, gaming APIs and high-end graphics card support isn't.

Of course, they might be working all that stuff in secret, but why jump into a cut-throat market like console gaming when there are entire pioneer markets waiting for an easy, reliable, downloadable movie solution?

Google CEO on Apple's Board Means...What?

Apple announced today that Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was joining the board of directors. GigaOM suggests that the move is something of an informal alliance between the two companies, which could spell headaches for Microsoft. One interesting observation is the idea that Google is getting close to releasing a suite of office tools online, including the already-beta Google Spreadsheets and the upcoming Writely transition from a standalone tool to part of the Google suite. Apple is anything if not interested in something that can keep the Microsoft Office albatross from around it's neck, and the death of its own AppleWorks suite a while back suggests that a lower-end office solution might be something it would bargain for. Google would be an interesting partner in another respect...the anemic 2.0 offerings of .Mac, once a shining light of Web application offers. An alliance between Google tools and .Mac could breathe a little life into that offering. In exchange, Google and Apple could be working up something on the partnership front to take advantage of synergies between Google initiatives and iTunes.

Or, Dr. Schmidt might just be a cool cat in Jobs' eyes, and he invited him on the board so that he could say, whoa, I'm on the Apple board. Hey, look...there's Al Gore.

Core Duo 2 MacBooks Announced

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about Apple moving to an Intel-based architecture is the names of the processors; I suppose I'd grown used to the idea of a PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5 being a simple moniker for processors based on generational technology shifts. In any case, it's now important to content with the news that the move to Core 2 Duo processors for a number of PC notebook manufacturers affects Apple's competitiveness in the overall notebook market, where Apple has recently seen a strong uptick in sales. Is it a net positive or net negative that Apple's offerings can now be compared directly to Windows offerings -- as MacRumors notes, it may be time for Apple to ramp up its development and update cycle to match Intel's penchant for releasing newer, faster processors much more quickly than Motorola/IBM did with PowerPC processors.

How Big Should Apple's 'Niche' Be?

A recent story at MacNN quotes anaylst Carmi Levy as saying that Apple will "always be a niche player."

Well, duh.

The move to an Intel-based architecture and the availability of Boot Camp and other solutions for running Windows on new Macs might grow that niche somewhat within corporations, particularly where employees or creative departments who insist on Macs can get a break from IT because the IT folks feel the hardware is more familiar. But Levy feels that the Mac will never eclipse Window's hegemony, which he's right about, except that, in some ways the Mac has a hegemony over Windows PCs that probably won't be supplanted anytime soon, and which Apple can exploit to grow into a "niche" player that also happens to be a household name.

I remember the dark days of the Apple's smallest market shares, circa 1997, when Apple was having trouble getting even CompUSA to sell the machines at retail. At that time, Mac fans would make comparisons to BMW or Porsche, saying that the Mac may not have much market share, but it's a premium brand -- a niche. Looking back, it may not have been a large enough niche to survive without some solid innovation and some marketing magic, so it was fortunate for the company that Steve Jobs and the Next OS came along when they did.

Fast forward to today. In my little piece of the world, Macs are everywhere. I work in newspaper publishing on daily basis and dabble in filmmaking. In the Jackson Free Press offices, the PCs are redheaded stepchildren -- we even do our accounting, invoicing and publication management using a combination of MYOB accounting software and a special (and not inexpensive) FileMaker Pro application written specifically for weekly newspapers. And that's in addition to the obvious InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator machines that we have for design and production.

Last winter I spent a few months working in the production office on a feature film shoot -- and, again, Macs reigned on the crew...and not 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 -- but 20-to-1. Everyone had a Mac, whether they used it primarily to do their jobs -- many of them working with film industry databases or templates -- or if they used them mostly for hanging out after the shooting day was over, watching DVDs or synching with their iPods.

And I'm not talking about filmmaking and publishing in San Francisco or LA, either. All of this is taking place in Mississippi. I'm surrounding by Macs.

The flip side, though is the notion that if Macs reach, say, 10 percent of the market (at least in the U.S., where Apple's notebook market share is already 12%) then it's a pretty decent niche, right? After all, in the oft overused automotive metaphor, 10 percent is analagous not to BMW or Porsche, but to Honda, which has 10.2 percent of the U.S. market. Macs and PCs, on some levels, are becoming more and more like automobiles -- evolving such that they represent less dramatically different ways of doing the same things. Indeed, with the switch to Intel processors, Apple is competing more directly with the high-end of PC manufacturers, turning in impressive numbers and well-crafted machines using largely the same components.

All the "niche" really needs to do, then, is remain large enough to be profitable for developers and compelling for users. And, for many die-hard Mac users, we wouldn't mind seeing the Mac market stay small enough that the bulk of malware and spyware is written for that other platform. Mac OS X is something to be proud of -- a lot of open source geeky goodness with a strong GUI and plenty of high-dollar apps -- and keeping it thriving and healthy is something that a lot of Mac fans would love to see. We also like the idea of clever freeware apps and Mac-only versions of open source projects (like the Camino and Shiira Web browsers or the OpenOffice/Gimp-class of Unix apps) which requires a certain share of the market to maintain developer interest.

Where I think Apple could see some long-term growth is in small offices...particularly if they could solve a problem that my small office has -- the need for an affordable, robust file server. The Xserve is nice, but it's overkill...leaving me with the option of either buying an Ethernet-based network hard drive (a little pricey for as little as it does) or running a regular Mac with Mac OS X's File Sharing enabled (which is what I do). With an Xserve mini or some similar solution, Apple could open up some small offices to the Mac platform by offering the advantages of less time spent troubleshooting, Windows compatibility via BootCamp or Parallels, user-friendly options for higher-end server functions and integrate some of the stuff that Apple is famous for -- sharing iTunes music, printers and other devices with tech based largely on Apple's ZeroConf implementation, Bonjour.

They could roll that same thinking into a "home server" that would provide a lot of the same benefits to homes that have multiple Macs in them, going so far as to allow for Open Directory access, so that when users logs into any Mac in that home or office, they see their own home folder and personal documents.

But even without a small office/home server solution, as long as Apple can crank out powerful machines with a good overall cost-of-ownership, developers remain interested in the platform, malware authors remain less interested in try to exploit it and a lot of the "cool kids" keep buying Macs, then it probably won't be hard to decide to stick with the Honda of personal computers.

No, MacTel Will *Help* Mac Gaming

I wrote about MacTel Killing Mac Gaming a few weeks ago, then I came across Cider a technology designed to quickly port to the Intel-based Mac games written for Windows API. So, it appears I may have been mistaken...assuming developers decide to take advantage of tools such as Cider and not just fail to release Mac versions, expect Mac gamers to own Windows as well. After all, Windows is an expensive add-on, although I wouldn't be surprised if big-time Mac gamers have a copy of Windows in their gaming toolbelt anyway.

MacTel Is Gonna Kill Mac Gaming, Right?

I guess it seems obvious...putting an Intel chip in a Mac and allowing it to dual-boot into Windows will kill Mac gaming, despite some see-sawing from game developers. I know that from experience -- in particular, the experience I had playing the game Goldeneye: 007 a few years back.

I remember when the game first came out for Mac and I was surprised at the announcement, because it seemed to me that I'd already played the game. Then it hit me -- it was a time when I was writing a few cross-platform Internet books and I had both a PC and a Mac on my desk at once. When that happens, I tend to do more gaming -- blowing off steam when I'm trying to rip through chapters of a book -- and I'd actually gone to CompUSA and bought myself a copy of Goldeneye for PC. (Usually I just download demos and play a level or two...around that same time I remember playing the first 60 seconds of Starsky and Hutch over and over again.)

So when the announcement came around, it was an odd feeling for a 15-year Mac/snob/veteran -- it was exactly the feeling that PC gamer/snob/types must get all the time when they see a big-time Mac game release. "Been there, played that."

I imagine a few companies will continue to offer some Mac games -- particularly card games and 2D shooters that can be played in a Mac window when you're supposed to be working, but it seems like it'll be a hard sell to get companies to continue to port high-end games -- those with movie ties-ins, serious Doom-style action and so on -- to the Mac OS when the alternative is to simply release the Windows version and tell Mac gamers that the cost is a copy of Windows XP Home or whatnot. Even dual-booting wouldn't be that painful for gaming, although it may not be necessary with Parallels and similar solutions that allow Windows and Mac OS X to run side-by-side.

Yeah, there are still a lot of G4 and G5-based Macs out there, so maybe it'll be a viable market for 6 months or so. But on the cutting edge of gaming, the ports...in my guestimation...are history.

I Know It's Dorky, But...

I imagine I've got the same basic fetish for the movie "Back to the Future" as does the guy who runs Delorean Mac Mini, although I must not have as advanced of a case. (Check it out...he's mounted a Mac Mini in his Delorean, which he uses to project a wide-screen DVD version of "Back to the Future" onto the inside of the car's hood at car shows. Talk about having time on your hands.)

I remember visiting the "old" Universal Studios (back all they had was the tour and some stunt shows...AND WE LIKED IT, YOU DERNED WHIPPERSNAPPER), where I actually got to be near a Back to the Future Delorean picture car. (My little brother was more intrigued sitting in K.I.T.T., but sometimes there's no accounting for taste.)

What's worse, though, is that I'll admit that every once in a while I endulge in some eBay surfing in the fantasy pursuit of putting an actual Delorean in my actual driveway. (I'm always a little surprised at how relatively inexpensive they are.) I generally come to the conclusion that actually owning and driving one would, ultimately, be too dorky. I mean...it's got rear louvers for crispen glover's sake.

But, then again, maybe 25 years is long enough (ouch...it's been that long) and the Delorean is moving into the classic status. After all, from certain angles...hmm...nah...I probably couldn't pull it off.

Used Mac mini = nice price?

I've decided I'm in the market for a MacTel Mini if only because I'm going to need to be writing about that Intel processor in the near future. Not thrilled with the prices in the Apple Store, I decided to surf eBay a bit; of course, I'll probably convince myself that I have to go with the more expensive Intel Duo Core model because of the performance issues I've experienced with Intel Single Core processors. I have a feeling that the Single Core Mini is one of those transitional machines that Apple will quietly disown in a few more months.

But, meanwhile, I realized what I could get if I wasn't Intel focused; how about a *very* serviceable G4 machine for $320, including a SuperDrive. Yowza.

And why not? The G4 system seems faster than the Intel Single Core, particularly with older, non-Universal applications. And, those older Minis have better graphics subsystems and they use less RAM for day-to-day tasks. If you don't need a MacTel Mini to run Windows -- and you've got keyboards and monitors hanging out, like I do -- then you might just have quite a bargain machine in one of those used G4 Minis.

Cooler Than Camino?

Just stumbled across Shiira, a Mac-only Web browser that uses the same Web Kit engine as Safari, but offers some fun extra features. First of all, it's written in Cocoa and it's a Universal Binary -- might be a welcome addition to your browsing arsenal if you've got a MacTel machine. Shiira is designed for heavy-duty browsing, with a number of features (such as "Bookmark All Tabs") that work well for surfers who tend to open a lot of windows and tabs and switch among them. Shirra also uses a sidebar/drawer interface element for History, Bookmarks, Page Holder (haven't seen that one in a while) and RSS feeds. The Google box can be changed to search all sorts of engines, including MacUpdate...all in all it's a very interesting package that seems to have been lovingly crafted. I'll let you know if I end up making the switch...or if I stick with Camino (currently running 1.0a1 and hardly a hiccup).

Does .Mac Need to Go '2.0?'

GigaOm is recommending updates to .Mac to make it Web 2.0-compliant, so to speak, including some interactivity for iCal calendars, a better Webmail interface and faster iDisk service.

I agree...I use iDisk only for occasional backups at this point, where at one time I thought it would be useful for file sharing in my office. Too slow...we got a dedicated FTP service. I use my .Mac e-mail account almost exclusively by POP downloading it to Apple Mail -- not only is the Webmail interface clunky, but Apple doesn't give me enough storage space (and I pay for *extra*) to use Apple Mail as my main account. And I use Apple Mail all the time to reply from different e-mail accounts from which I receive e-mail, etc -- something that Gmail, for one, can handle online. I'm a little wary of Gmail (I still bristle at the idea of storing my whole e-mail existence on Google servers), but I'm leaning more and more toward it, if only because Google offers the most elegant solution I've seen so far for Webmail via my Blackberry.

Apple might take a page from Google and Yahoo! and notice that people seem to be spending more time in their browser, accessing e-mail, reminders, calendars, address books -- even office apps. (To see Google's strategy in action, just stop by Google Spreadsheets and Writely, which Google recently bought...warning: not Safari-friendly.)

I noticed the other day when I was stopped by the Apple section at CompUSA that it seems MacBooks and Mac minis no longer ship with AppleWorks...maybe it's time for Apple to put an AppleWorks Web edition online?

eMac Gone, Replaced By Low-End iMac

PC Magazine is reporting that Apple has announced that the eMac is no more, marking the end of the CRT era for Apple. Instead, Apple is making a special edition of the iMac available to Educational customers for $899. The lower-cost model uses the same GMA 950 graphics system used in the Mac mini, which shares main system RAM for its graphical needs. It also has only an 80GB hard drive (standard iMacs have a 160GB drive) and instead of the 8x SuperDrive standard on other models, this iMac has only a 24x CD-R/DVD playback combo drive. The new iMac does retain the standard 17-inch LCD display, along with the built-in iSight camera and other perks of the latest iMac models.

The new low-cost iMac shows up in the educational Apple Store only, not the regular store, which still lists the lowest cost iMac at $1299. No doubt the low-end iMac will be available on eBay, etc., in a short period of time.

eWeeks Reports Tiger Fixes to Networking

It's about time. We've got a Tiger-based file-sharing network in the Jackson Free Press office (not running Mac OS X Server, just a dedicated machine with File Sharing turned on), and that gives us some headaches at times. I've been thinking for a while now that Mac OS X should be mature enough that the networking works a little better than it does...we've been at this close to seven years, right? Anyhow, the eWeek report says that Mac OS X 10.4.7 -- which should be available in both PowerPC and Intel flavors via Software Update as you read this -- addresses some long-standing issues such as problems that InDesign and Quark have when accessing files over a network. (Can I get an 'Amen'?) Plus, fewer dropped connections, some improvements in AirPort networking and it sounds like some tweaks to QuickTime.

New Netscape.com = Digg.com Plus

AOL, owners of Netscape.com, have approved a retool of the portal that will have a Digg.com look-and-feel, but cover a broader range of topics than the tech-focused Digg. (Although Digg itself announced it was broadening a bit just last week.) The new Netscape is in public beta right now, just reaching 1,000 members as I'm typing. Users enter small blog-like entries to interesting news stories, which can then be voted on by the community. Those with the most votes hit the home page. Jason Calacanis, who sold AOL Weblogs.com, Inc. a while back, is running the new Netscape and says he'll have a team of bloggers who follow the most popular stories with interviews and on-the-street reporting.

Clever Tweak Alters Mail

While I'm not blessed with my own, personal widescreen Apple monitor (toiling away as I do on as 12-inch PowerBook G4), I have always thought that the Mail interface isn't fully utilized on wider screens. Some enterprising Mac nerds have cobbled together a plug-in for Mail that rearranges the interface so that a full top-to-bottom list of e-mail can be viewed and the preview pane, now on the right side of the Mail Viewer window, can display nearly a full page of text.

http://harnly.net/software/letterbox.html

(Now if only the damn Paste and Match Style command actually worked.)

ubuntu: Linux for Newbies

I just spent half a day looking at different Linux options and then settling on one -- the back story is that I'm trying to set up a server in my office, and I thought it'd be fun to make it an NFS server. I'm starting to have my doubts about exactly how much "fun" that is...I might just blow all this off and let people in the office log into the server using Personal File Sharing...but, it was a diverting use of a Saturday afternoon.

And, one of the definite "finds" during this quest is ubuntu, a PPC Linux distribution that couldn't have been easier to get set up and running. You download a single CD volume, burn it (using Disk Utility so that it's an ISO standard CD) and then start up the Mac where you're going to install Linux with the "c" key held down. From there, you configure the installation and let it do some heavy installation and downloading.

Of course, it helps if you have the luxury of installing onto a freshly formatted hard disk, as you'd otherwise have to deal with creating partitions and restoring a great deal of Mac data from backup. For my "server," I'd just installed a 160GB drive in a Power Mac G4 tower, so I was set for the installation.

Anyway, the ubutu installation was a snap, it loaded an attractive, well configured version of the Gnome desktop manager and even installed OpenOffice applications and Evolution, an Entourage/Outlook clone. If feels a little like running the BeOS of yore -- quick, a little weird (compared to a Mac) but self-enclosed and functional, including a built-in application manager (for getting ubutu compatible apps, like the blogger.com app I'm using for this entry) and an update manager for the system.

Overall, a fun and painless entry point for Linux, including access to some great free applications. Now, if I can get the NFS sharing to work...

Mac Mini Intel - Waaaaay Slow?

I had my first hands-on experience with a Mac Mini Core Solo with 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive -- in other words, the low-end of today's modern Mac Mini. And I've got to say, it was extremely underwhelming performance-wise. Most disconcerting to me were some slow startups of applications -- Microsoft Word is a bad culprit, although neither Safari or Mail seemed to fly -- and I saw some bizarrely slow window re-draws when switching between various apps. Photoshop took *forever* to get started up, although it draws and paints fine once launched. (I didn't do anything high-end.)

I say this because in the same client's office (I'm their "Mac guy") we have a Mac Mini G4 1.25GHz machine that very nicely drives an Apple 23-inch display, happily running Quark 7 and a host of other apps. I had to pry it open with a crowbar to get the RAM in it...it may have a full Gig, if memory serves, which could account for some of the difference...but, still, that Mac Mini is a perfectly serviceable machine for office work.

Perhaps this is to be expected as the Mac OS and its applications once again goes through a processor-bridging period, but I'm curious since I haven't had much personal experience with Intel-chip machines -- is everyone living with some *bad* slowdowns and sluggish experiences on Intel-based Macs? Or are MacBooks and iMacs better than Mac Minis?

update: Over at Barefeats I came across a Mac Mini shootout that might explain some of what I was seeing -- it sounds like the graphics subsystem is pretty poor on the new Mini, including the fact that it uses system RAM (sometimes upwards of 80MB), which makes 512MB kinda anemic. Sigh.

Cool Site: BlueRectangle

Got old books you'd like to sell for a little money? BlueRectangle offers to buy them from you (at what looks to be an extremely low price, of course) and they pay the postage. It's an interesting way to get rid of a stack or two of books...assuming they want to buy your books. (I won't mention how some of my older computer book titles fared. Ahem.)

http://www.bluerectangle.com/

Does Steve Jobs Want to Run Disney?

Speculation from C-Net's Charles Cooper:

If Disney falters, will Jobs be able to resist the temptation to meddle? If Iger fails to deliver, would Disney's board be able to ignore the presence of a superstar CEO waiting in the wings (not to mention one who will become Disney's largest shareholder)?

In some new era of technology-entertainment-delivery, could Disney ultimately buy Apple with Jobs at the helm? How convergent can convergence go?