★ Macworld Expo Predictions

★ Macworld Expo Predictions: "

Predictions and advance commentary for tomorrow’s Macworld keynote, some based on consensus rumors, some based on no more than wishful thinking on the part of yours truly. This is all conjecture and tea-leaf-reading (well, mostly), so, please, no wagering.

I keep two questions in mind when evaluating Apple product ideas:

1. Would people buy this immediately?


2. If not, is there a long-term strategic reason for Apple to start selling this now?

If the answer to both questions is ‘no’, then Apple isn’t going to do it. The iPhone is a perfect example of a #1; the Apple TV is a #2.

New Sub-Notebook MacBook: Yes

Apple hasn’t had a small notebook in its line-up since the 12-inch PowerBook G4, which I still see in wide use. If you’re using a portable as a portable, smaller size and lighter weight make a tremendous difference. The demand for a good notebook smaller and lighter than standard MacBooks is strong; I think it’s a sure thing that Apple is set to announce one. (Of course, I said so before last year’s Macworld, too.)

I say the consensus rumors are right: super-thin, no built-in optical drive, widescreen 12-inch display. It will use a hard drive, not flash memory, for storage. (Look no further than the iPod Classic to see how hard drives don’t keep a device from being super-thin).

Rumors are already running strong that it’ll be called MacBook Air. (I like it, not sure though if Nike would.)

Newton-y Tablet Thing: No

I am nearly convinced that this product exists, at least as a project in development. My hunch is that AppleInsider has it spot-on: it’s in development, but not yet ready to launch, and, perhaps, never will if Apple can’t get it right. (Recall Steve Jobs’s statement to Walter Mossberg that he’s as proud of some of the products Apple decided not to ship as he is of the ones they did.) Like the iPhone, it runs ‘OS X’ but not Mac OS X, does not run Mac apps, and will not be called a ‘Mac’.

The big problem with a ‘tablet’ computer of any sort is that 15 years of industry history indicate that people do not want to buy tablet computers. But the iPhone, arguably, is a tablet computer — a sub-tablet, if you will. The key mistake with failed efforts like Microsoft’s Tablet PC (and even Apple’s own Newton) was that these devices attempt to do too much. It’s seen as a feature that Tablet PCs run the full version of Windows. But why force software UI’s designed for traditional hardware form factors upon a totally different device? A successful tablet-like device from Apple, I think, would clearly be designed as a secondary computing device — a satellite attached and synched to a Mac or PC (probably, of course, through iTunes).

There’s still the ‘what would I use it for?’ factor. It seems to me it would need to be something more than just an iPod Touch with a larger screen — if that’s all it is, then what’s the point of buying one instead of a smaller, poctetable, iPod Touch or iPhone? I simply lack the cleverness to imagine what that hook might be — but I can’t imagine Apple releasing such a product without an obvious ‘Oh I gotta buy that’ hook.

Anyway: I do think something like this is in the works, but I don’t think it’s coming out now. I’d love to be wrong.

Ubiquitous Wireless Networking for MacBooks

After using my iPhone for a few months, it started feeling weird that my PowerBook doesn’t have ubiquitous wireless networking: Wi-Fi when available, and seamless, instant switchover to something else when it isn’t. Just what that ‘something else’ is, I don’t know. EVDO? WiMax? A Bluetooth connection to share an iPhone’s EDGE connection? I don’t care. But I’d pay for it.

Ubiquitous networking is certainly the most intriguing thing about Amazon’s Kindle. It just feels crippled that I can’t get a network connection — even a slow one — once I’m outside the range of Wi-Fi.

Wireless Time Machine Backups

Time Machine is very cool; the first backup that qualifies as ‘you don’t have to do anything, it just works’. But currently it only works using a storage device connected via USB or FireWire. Tethered backups are irritating with notebooks — and MacBooks are the fastest-growing segment of Apple’s Mac hardware sales. The problem is that when you want to use your portable away from your desk, it’s a pain to disconnect mounted USB and FireWire drives. You can’t just pulled the plugs — you’ve got to unmount them in the Finder first. And, once you do so, to get Time Machine backups running again, you’ve got to re-tether your storage drive.

Leopard developer seeds all supported network backups to USB drives connected to an AirPort base station. The feature was also demoed at WWDC. It was removed (or, better said, disabled) very late in Leopard’s development, supposedly because of a security problem that was discovered, but I expect the feature to return, perhaps in 10.5.2. It’s a terrific idea, perfect for multi-Mac homes and small offices.

But so why not sell a device as a dedicated product — a big 500 GB or larger hard drive (or array of them) with built-in AirPort networking. No need to attach it to a separate AirPort base station, no temptation to use the device for anything other than one purpose: backing up via Time Machine. Just plug it into a power outlet, run through a simply configuration tool a la AirPort Utility, and it’s ready. When it first appears on your network, your (Leopard-running) Mac could prompt to ask if you’d like to use it for Time Machine, the same way it prompts when you first plug in a new USB or FireWire drive.

iTunes Movie Rentals: Yes

This one seems like such a done deal that it barely qualifies as a rumor. It seems obvious: Unlike with music, there’s been a strong market for movie rentals for as long as there’s been a home video market. Most movies aren’t worth watching more than once. Reports (based on leaks from studio executives) indicate rentals will cost $3-5, and will expire after 24 hours. If true, presumably that means they’ll expire 24 hours after you beginning playing them, not 24 hours after downloading. It’d be nice if the terms were a bit more flexible than that. One of the best things about Netflix, and something which makes it far more appealing than traditional brick-and-mortar Blockbuster-style rentals, is that you can watch movies on your own terms.

A Netflix-style iTunes movie subscription service that lets you keep a certain number of unlocked movies open at the same time would be killer.

Apple TV 2.0: Yes

Jobs has called Apple TV a ‘hobby’ for Apple. I think they have high hopes for it, but calling it a hobby is a practical way to buy time for it. What Apple did with the iPod was start as small and simple as they could — one device, in one configuration, only for the Mac, and all it did was play recorded audio — and then build the platform slowly from there. Things like Windows support, color screens, video playback, and expanding to a range of form factors all came incrementally.

I think that’s the plan with Apple TV. Start simple and humble, and build from there, year after year. One obvious improvement (albeit contingent upon another rumor) would be to allow us to buy (or rent) movies and TV shows directly from the iTunes Store, right from the Apple TV. If the iPhone can do it, the Apple TV should too.

I still think it’d be good business for Apple to sell their own HDTV sets with Apple TV built-in — more money for Apple, one fewer device spewing cables behind the display.

DRM-Free iTunes Plus Music From the Other Major Music Labels: No

I think Apple would love to have this, but it seems pretty clear that the major labels — other than EMI, of course — are convinced that it’s in their interest to withhold DRM-free music from Apple, in the hopes of helping Amazon gain market share.

It actually agree that it’s in the music labels’ interest for Amazon’s music store to succeed. I’m not sure, though, that withholding DRM-free music from Apple is spiting anyone other than iTunes customers. I suspect the vast majority — an overwhelming majority — of iTunes music purchases are made by people who have at best only a vague inkling of what ‘DRM’ is. If there’s any actual logic to it, it’s PR — withholding DRM-free music from Apple makes it easier to paint Apple as a company bent on using iTunes as a competitive cudgel to lock customers in to iPod hardware. Only a hack reporter would buy into that line, given Steve Jobs’s unequivocol ‘Thoughts on Music’ open letter last year.

One thing that would dispel any negative stories on the state of the iTunes empire, of course, would be the long-awaited debut of The Beatles catalog, exclusively at iTunes, perhaps with an on-stage visit from Paul McCartney.

New iPhone Hardware: No, With a Minor Exception

Apple announced the original iPhone a year ago, but they didn’t ship it until six months ago. They’re not going to announce new iPhones six months in advance again. (It was to their advantage last year to cause people to postpone phone purchases until the iPhone appeared; that’s not the case now that the iPhone is on the market.)

If anything, I don’t expect new iPhones to appear until next fall, at the yearly iPod/iTunes pre-holiday season special event, leaving the original iPhone on the market for over a year. Why revise hardware for a product that, by all accounts, is selling remarkably well as-is?

The only exception I could see would be a 16 GB iPhone that’s otherwise unchanged from the current 8 GB model.

iPhone SDK News: No

I can see the upcoming iPhone SDK getting a mention from Jobs on stage, a reminder that it’s coming and that’s it’s going to be great, but Macworld isn’t WWDC, and SDKs don’t make for splashy presentations. If I’m wrong, it’ll be because they have a demo queued up from a third-party developer with early access to the SDK. Actual third-party software (written against the actual official SDK) is demoable. Games, perhaps?

The apparently-leaked 1.1.3 firmware might make for a good demo, what with the jiggly icons and whatnot.

Cinema Displays With Better Resolution, Brighter Screens, and Built-In Cameras: Yes

If I keep predicting it, eventually I’ll be right.

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(Via Daring Fireball.)

Hollywood Embraces Blu-ray…and Format Obsolescence, Too?

Hollywood Embraces Blu-ray…and Format Obsolescence, Too?: "

With news that Universal is planning to sell its movies in Sony’s Blu-ray format, and Paramount sidling in that direction as well, Blu-ray has managed to bring all the Hollywood studios under its own standards banner, rendering its supremacy in the format war against HD-DVD indisputable.

Archos TV Plus announced - Engadget

Archos TV Plus announced - Engadget

iConcertCal - sweet!

iConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city. It is available for both Windows and Mac OS X and supports worldwide searches.

http://www.iconcertcal.com/index.php

That Fire Alarm Is False, But Hey, Speaking Of Fires, You're Fired

That Fire Alarm Is False, But Hey, Speaking Of Fires, You're Fired: "It's always a good Friday when you find out the company you work for is going under. But what can make those days really great is the caring and sensitive manner in which the company lets you know. For instance, in 2003, a British company told its 2,400 employees that the company was shutting and they wouldn't get paid any more via text message. Today, a department store in England gave its 140 employees the news that they're going to be out of a job in two weeks by pulling the fire alarm to clear the store of shoppers and to gather staff in one location -- the point where they're supposed to meet up in case of fire. The administrators brought in to try and salvage the store's broke owners say 'the most efficient and practical method of informing their colleagues of this business development was by using the fire alarm', and they wanted staff to find out from them before word was made public. Efficient and practical, indeed -- not to mention completely crass and obnoxious. Perhaps we can take some solace in the fact that these nice folks didn't actually burn the place down instead."

(Via Techdirt.)

IBM laying off 40%!

"Cringely says that IBM has begun massive layoffs in a quiet manner, starting with 1300 employees, but by the end of the year, the total will rise to at least 100,000 and probably closer to 150,000 employees, nearly 40% of their U.S. workforce. Some people will be temporarily retained as contractors at a fraction of their salary, and eventually, IBM will also dump many of the unprofitable customer contracts worked on by Global Services or outsource the work to Asia. If these people are looking for work, that could seriously drop wages for technical workers in the US since they will have to compete with these people for available jobs."

Best HD Bargain? ‘Rabbit Ears’ Rule

Best HD Bargain? ‘Rabbit Ears’ Rule: "

Which types of HDTV connections provide the best possible HDTV quality — online downloads, cable, satellite or broadcast? You might be surprised to hear that of the four choices, broadcast is often the best and online downloads usually the worst, with cable often better than satellite.

The problem is that HD hardware manufacturers and content distributors are playing a shell game with the numbers. Yes, you may have 1080p capable hardware, but the key measure I focus on for video quality is not resolution but bitrate, and there’s a lot of room to move in that department. So which is the best for HD delivery?

Full-bandwidth transmission of HDTV requires about 19.5Mbps, and optical media such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can provide around 36Mbps. But the reality of transmission, thanks to packet loss and multicasting, is that your HD signal could be anywhere from 7 to 18Mbps, tops, and sometimes even less.

Cable: While the signal in practice tops out at 18Mbps, not every channel provides content in that high a rate. HBO, for instance, specifically delivers content at CableLabs’ recommended 15Mbps so that it’s easy for cable providers to piggyback an 3Mbps Standard Definition (SD) signal alongside it.

Satellite: Satellite is often cheaper and provides the most channels, but you get what you pay for. Industry claims aside, satellite HD is often pejoratively referred to as ‘HD Lite.’ And it’s not always reliable — everything from sun spots to ground interference can reduce your bit rate and introduce ugly artifacts into the picture.

Downloads: iTunes and Apple TV bitrates top out at 5Mbps, even for 720p HD content. And while there are true 19.5Mbps HD movies now available on torrent trackers, they run around 20GB each — and even if your broadband is super-fast, you can’t watch while you download.

Broadcast: This data from Smart Calibrations for average signal bit rate performance for both satellite and terrestrial broadcast in Dallas-Fort Worth provides a striking comparison — a quick scan shows that satellite signals average roughly 2-3Mbps lower bit rate than local networks. While the selection is limited, all it will cost you is the price of an antenna.

Verdict: In general, you’ll get the most bits for your buck, ironically enough, from your local TV station. And until FiOS is a viable option for most, it will probably stay that way. While cable and satellite providers are touting the switch to MPEG-4, variable bitrate encoding and other cures for picture quality, ultimately it all comes down to bandwidth. For more about comparitive HDTV quality, check out the AVS forums.

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(Via NewTeeVee.)

Is Cisco Next with a YouTube Killer?

Is Cisco Next with a YouTube Killer?: "

Now that Microsoft has officially announced plans to host online video, can a similar announcement from Cisco be far behind? Though it’s not part of the video-development competition between Microsoft and Adobe, Cisco does compete with Redmond on a host of other fronts, and has a list of reasons to start a YouTube-like site that make you wonder why the networking giant hasn’t done so already.

And hey, it’s not like Cisco isn’t hip as to how to create a funny online video clip!

OK, maybe they should stick to building routers. So why CiscoTube? It would benefit Cisco in many ways, including:

- Increase overall video bandwidth, creating need for more Cisco routers

- Act as a marketing tool for open-standards TV and Internet gear from Cisco’s consumer division Linksys and business video gear from Cisco itself

- Give Cisco’s service provider partners a safe, secure (and maybe revenue-sharing) partner in the online world whose name isn’t Google

Who would prefer CiscoTube over YouTube? How about:

- Content providers, who could rely on Cisco to use nothing but the best deep-packet inspection technology to keep copyrighted content safe from harm

- Service providers, who might partner with Cisco for extra-cost services, like prioritized video streaming, to consumers or between businesses

- Consumers and corporations, who might want a place to put higher-quality and longer-form videos

It would also help explain some of Cisco’s following moves:

- Its purchase of Tribe.net - adding social networking smarts for a potential consumer video site?

- Its purchase of Arroyo last year — for video on demand and content delivery smarts?

- Its touting of video as the killer app at its December analysts shindig, where it also invited big content players like Disney and NBC to pontificate — buttering up potential partners?

Unlike Microsoft, Cisco usually makes sure it has something working before it makes an announcement, so it’s understandable if the networking giant isn’t quite yet ready to spill the beans. And remember, this is just a rumor — speculation — pure conjecture. We aren’t even going to bother calling Cisco to comment, since we can guess the boilerplate answer about not talking about editorial wild guesses. But anyone want to bet against it happening?

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(Via NewTeeVee.)

April 30, 1945: New Generation U-Boat Too Little, Too Late

April 30, 1945: New Generation U-Boat Too Little, Too Late: "

1945: In the waning days of World War II, U-2511, under Korvettenkapitan Adalbert Schnee, puts to sea from Bergen, Norway. It marks the first and only combat patrol by a Type XXI Elektroboot, the German U-boat that profoundly influenced

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(Via Wired News.)

U.S. Video Startups Raised $682M Last Year

U.S. Video Startups Raised $682M Last Year: "

It amounts to a hill of beans and then some. U.S.-based video startups gathered $682.17 million in venture capital funding in 2006, according to statistics gathered by Dow Jones/VentureOne and emailed to NewTeeVee. The amount was spread across both infrastructure and consumer plays, 74 companies in total. It’s up 95 percent from the $350.05 million that 54 video-related startups raised in 2005.

And already, in the first quarter of 2007, some 19 video software and services companies have raised $210.7 million. Put another way, American video startups raised $1.96 million per day over the past 15 months. And there’s been one exit to write home about: $1.7 billion for YouTube.

The Financial Times spoke with Todd Dagres of Spark Capital, investor in KickApps, Veoh, and Next New Networks, among others, about the recent funding glut. He apparently told them he expected the sector to merit more than $1 billion in venture capital.

Like other financiers and entrepreneurs caught up in this wave, Mr Dagres predicted an eventual round of failures that would see most investors lose money. With many of the start-ups in their early stages and drawing in money, though, the shake-out is unlikely to come this year, he added.

Katie wrote today about the immense amounts of money funding flowing to Chinese online video startups — $120 million since 2004 — with VCs claiming they are starting to be more choosy. Video is clearly hot, though exits are not.

Despite the uncertainty of success, we have little reason to believe that this year’s bar on the graph won’t be even bigger. Don’t call it a B****E!

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(Via NewTeeVee.)

Rf Interference: Feeling Cingular

Rf Interference: Feeling Cingular: "Justin Callaway's Cingular cellphone sent radio interference that destroyed one of his prized speakers, so he made an awesome music video about it.


For those that don't know, some Cingular phones...



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(Via Consumerist.)

Above And Beyond: Publix's "Awesome Response!"

Above And Beyond: Publix's "Awesome Response!": "Red_eye and his wife shop at Publix, but the ATM outside the store seems to break on a weekly basis. He asked Publix to look into the situation:Hello,


My wife and I are loyal Publix shoppers but we...



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(Via Consumerist.)

Illinois: We Want To Cancel With No ETF If Our Phone Breaks 3 Times

Looks like Palm would be in big trouble with carriers....

Illinois: We Want To Cancel With No ETF If Our Phone Breaks 3 Times: "According to the Chicago Tribune, Rep. Susana Mendoza, a Chicago Democrat is fed up with her lemon cell phone. That's why she's sponsoring legislation in Illinois that would :allow the state's 8.5...



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(Via Consumerist.)

irs - Google Search

Well today I decided to automate the updates, so they require less work. I am in the process of creating a DVD with all my photos on it and will make it available for "ordering" when it is done.