Next from Apple

A funny commentary on the looks of the two democrats that are running for President, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.

“With Obama’s site, all the features and elements are seamlessly integrated, just like the experience of using a program on a Macintosh computer,” said Alice Twemlow, chairwoman of the M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts (who is a Mac user).

Clearly, Obamas site looks much better. Jason Santa Maria makes some interesting remarks though, later in the article, and suggests that the busier look of Hillary’s site, although not so pretty, might talk louder and be more noticed.

She will be the next president though, trust me on that.

Appleinsider says Apple will start shipping products with Blu-Ray:

In a report issued to clients early Thursday morning, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu cited sources who say the Cupertino-based Mac maker, which already occupies a seat on the Blu-ray consortium, is set to begin shipping some of its computers with support for the next-generation DVD format.

Maybe they made a deal? Sony is said to join in on Apple’s movie rental scheme, and in return Apple backs Sony’s Blu-Ray format?

Popular Mechanics has a story about a modular MacBook Plus. I’ve been toying with a similar idea myself, only I think they will rather make a big iPod Touch, with everything inside the screen and a slide-out keyboard at the bottom. Then again, that would be very sensitive to scratches, unless they managed to make non-scratchable glass. Why not? Stuff the thing with 3-4 Flash memory slots and make one embedded to host the OS. Also add the expanding out-popping port dock they recently got a patent for. And they really need to do something about those heat emitting batteries. If anything needs a breakthrough it’s the battery.

The Boy Genius Report has a story on Apple launching a record label together with Jay-Z. Sure, that would be cool, but I don’t think it fits Apple’s business model. They don’t produce content, they make stuff that others produce content on. If they do something new with Jay-Z, it might be some sort of enhancement on the distribution model they now have, where they buy from existing record labels. Imagine if they started their own now, do you think the other record labels would keep selling their music in iTunes? I just don’t see how that could work.

Apple keeps adding more studios to iTunes. They seem to be thinking that it’s best to get the stuff from the producers.

The economics in the tv & movie industries are quite complicated. Someone has a good idea for a script, someone else writes in, again someone else pulls a crew together, one person directs, etc. Lots of people are always involved. And someone has to pay for the project up front.

Distribution is what brings the money back. And distribution is very hard to do well since the market is so incredibly competed. So you need muscle. The guys with muscle can pay for the production and gets a very good cut (if not all) from the distribution sales.

Networks make some shows themselves, but usually they buy them from smaller production companies. At least the ideas for the shows. Then they can cash in.

When people started to watch tv shows and movies over the internet, a shift was beginning to show in the marketplace. Digital distribution is much much cheaper, it’s global, and you need to be big. If people know you have the biggest store, they will come to you.

And that’s where Apple comes in. They could be the new major distributor of movies. First they befriended the networks and big movie studios that owned and sold all the blockbuster productions. But in the end, they are going to compete with these guys. What Apple really wants is get the rights to sell the productions as cheap as possible, so it’s becoming time to go directly to the production outfits. Of course, among these are also the current big networks and studios, so they are welcome too. NBC realized what was going down, they saw the future coming, so they left iTunes (maybe wanting a bigger cut, who knows, but clearly not getting it). Fox, both a network and a big studio, thought it best to be friends with everybody at the moment, so they stayed on in iTunes but also joined Hulu.com, NBCs new online distribution hub. Fox doesn’t stand to loose as much as NBC if people would increasingly get their content from the web instead of watching TV, since they produce more content themselves that they can sell through iTunes. Sure, NBC has a few hit shows now, but in a few years things might look different.

We’ll see how it goes. Some people don’t give Hulu.com a chance of surviving even a year, even if it’s well executed and good looking. But Apple badly needs the content. They might have to make a compromise. And it is not a farfetched idea that they could become a very dangerous competitor to the TV networks in the future.

Maybe the whining is a good sign?

PCmag isn’t so happy about Leopard. ZDnet comments.

Maybe it’s true then that Apple is gaining marketshare, and now they just need to work harder. Let’s see if that happens. Apple for sure knew about at least some of the bugs in advance and still went ahead and released Leopard. They must have calculated that it would cost more to delay the release than to fix it later. Put another way, they must have calculated that loss of shine on their fine brand would suffer more if Leopard was delayed than if it contained annoying bugs. Either way, they just didn’t have the time or the resources to get it right with version x.0.

Obviously that sucks. No one likes a system that doesn’t work. And we are all counting on Apple to not just have the good guy image, but to be the good guy. Is that unrealistic?

Still, I find that most of PCMags ranting is just a matter of taste. So who cares that the guy is annoyed with rounded menubar corners. He’s just piling personal taste on top of a bug report there, as far as I’m concerned. He is entitled to his opininon, but it’s hardly a flaw in Leopard. Apple is all about the details, and I personally happen to like the rounded corners. It’s a fun change, that’s all, and in Lion or whatever the next OS X 10.6 is called, they are going to change again. I just don’t see the point in whining about little details like that, just give the guys at Apple some creative freedom. Besides, these are things that keep developing with time. You just can’t invent too much of the future today. Apple makes it as nice as they can, and next year they can do it even better. Or go back to a previous version, only a bit different. It’s an iteration process, no doubt.

Take a look at Windows 95 or Mac OS 9, and you’ll be only glad they both kept developing.

But if you want to make a big fuss about such things, go ahead. The bugs though, they should be crushed ASAP. So keep blogging about that. And one more thing, let users comment on your writing, makes your more believable!

Movie rentals are a step closer. Says WSJ:

In an effort to jump-start the market for online movies, News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox and Apple Inc. are preparing to announce a deal in which Fox movies would be available for rent digitally through Apple’s iTunes Store, according to people familiar with the matter.

This is good. To buy movies is not as interesting as buying and owning music. Not many movies I watch twice, I can say that.

What’s also interesting in the article (you need a subscription to read that part) is that Fox will start including an iPod version of the movie with DVDs they sell. They will use Apple’s FairPlay DRM to encode the files.

Update: Sony, Paramount and Warner Brothers are also said to be joining.

As many have pointed out lately, Apple TV is a strange product. Some have called it the most disappointing product others the second worst gadget of the year 2007. It looks great, works great (not broken), but what is it really for? I get a fairly strong feeling that what it’s for has yet to materialize - in the sense that it’s something that was supposed to arrive, and that might be here soon. If everything goes according to plan…

There isn’t much bad you can say about Apple’s performance these days, and it’s probably nice as a journalist to be able to pick at something. And obviously the Apple TV isn’t of much use as it stands today. But we have to assume, based on Apple’s recent track record, that they didn’t intend to leave the Apple TV as it is.

So what is going on here?
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m of course referring to Macworld and El Jobso’s keynote on the 15th of January. It’s unusually late in the month, but that just gives us some more time to salivate and throw out some ideas about what they might be launching.

I’ll be back soon with the definitive future list for Apple. (Hey, you have to believe in what you do, right?)

This is a riot. How do you protect your iPod from being stolen?

The geek world holds it’s breath everytime Apple is about to release new goodies unto the world. And then waits impatiently until the next leaks and blurbs appear. That’s what we love about Apple: they are worth waiting for.

But in the meantime we can dream, scheme and try to see where they are heading next. While there are plenty of rumor sites out there, they are all based on intentional (or nefarious) leaks from inside Apple and it’s partners. As I’ve said before, not this site.

We suggest that you can see plenty from what Apple has already shown us. They are a clever bunch, but they test a lot. Every new product you see from them is tested in one way or another on existing products.

Add a few educated guesses derived from where the tech world is going in general and mix in what you think today’s products are missing, and you have a roadmap.

Chime in with stuff you can see!