Murchison's Musings

Adobe. Welcome to the monopoly club

2007-04-06T00:28:00.001-07:00

I don't hate a lot of things in life but once thing I despise is stagnation in computing. Over the years I've seen graphic editing and image creation tools stagnate. Sure Adobe has grown and prospered and delivered some good upgrades. I cannot really fault Adobe for their success. It was hard earned. I remember a time when there was a bit of excitement about a thing called Desktop Publishing and photo darkroom style editing on the computer. Both Apple and Adobe made their ascension to power in this era. Apple was constantly fighting it out with the X86 PCs running Windows and Adobe was facing challenges from Macromind/Macromedia and Live Picture.

Live Picture was truly high end software back in the days. It excelled at working with large files with speed that Photoshop couldn't match. It was around $5000 dollars back in the day but it had visions of usurping the King at that time which was Adobe Photoshop. Live Picture corp lowered their pricing and sales picked up. It quickly became clear though that while Live Picture was great for some files it couldn't match the flexibility of tools that Photoshop offered overall. I knew things were over when Live Picture dropped the price to $395 for the image editor and started flogging web graphic tools.

Macromedia was also making moves as well. They had a product called xRes that also worked on large files. xRes had an interface that was more like Photoshop and many thought they'd be able to mount an effective challenge but Macromedia and the team developing xRes seem to have differing opinions about the project. It was scuttled around version 3.

After these two valiant competitors were vanquished Adobe's might grew. The challengers of during that era were small. You had Linux based Gimp and NeXT based TIFFany that showed promise but didn't have the momentum and platform potential to mount a serious challenge.

Today Photoshop is still one of Adobe's crown jewels. They expend millions in resources to improve it and with the acquisition of longtime nemesis Macromedia who else is really there to fight? Therein is the problem in my humble opinion. I love an Adobe that has a competitor on their tale. This company can tend to be lazy sometimes without the right motivation (Adobe was rumored to be ambivalent about upgrading their video editing program on the Mac back in the day. They also are rumored to have turned down a request by Steve Jobs to create an iLife type of app). I do worry that now they are the 1600lb Gorilla of Graphics we will see innovation slow down. CS3 looks like a winner but it's mighty expensive. You can utilize Stone Works for some graphic apps but you won't find the breadth of applications that Adobe has at its disposal. Andrew Stone is but one talented programmer against hundreds.

My hope is that the only company that can afford to deliver a product solid enough to gain traction decides to hop into the ring. Apple Inc. I know what you're saying, "why would Apple want to compete with Adobe?". I don't look at it as Apple competing with Adobe but rather Apple providing a image editor/creation application that gives us a different perspective on the task as Live Picture/xRes did in the past. One could say that Apple is sneaking their way into this arena with Aperture. There was much discussion concerning if Apple was positioning Aperture to be a Photoshop replacement. I think today the answer is pretty clear. Aperture is an outstanding tool for enthusiast photog. At it's core it forms a test bed for graphic technologies that could indeed be purposed for image editing/creation. As a video production fan I realize the power that Adobe has with Photoshop. It can be easily and powerfully used in a video editing workflow to edit frames of video. Apple not having a video editing tool that is close is a limiting factor. My hope is that Apple does not try to duplicate the breadth of applications Adobe controls but rather deliver a nice Photoshop competitor that is Mac only so that all modern API are used. Even if Apple crafted out a %10 market-share in image editing/creation they'd be little more than a small nuisance to Adobe.

I find it distinctly odd that Microsoft has an Expressions Studio line of graphic software which is truthfully a bit beyond their core competency over the years. If Microsoft can deliver a small suite of Applications ..I feel Apple is well within their right and duty to do the same. Especially given they have forgotten more about graphic apps and needs than Microsoft knows. What I'd like to see of course is a nice lean application that really focuses on the bread and butter tasks. Photoshop is like Microsoft Word. It does everything. Some of us don't need everything. We need speed and efficiency and of course quality. I'd love to see a very compact and speedy engine. I'd like to see Core Image at the "core". All edits should be non-destructive unless you deem otherwise. I want a nice plugin architecture and robust Automator/Applescript support. Allow it to work with still images and video with equal prowess. Apple has the core technologies to make this happen. Core Image, Core Video, OpenGL 2.x (in Leopard) Quicktime. They could really develop something fantastic. The thing that worries me is that there seems to be no "thought provoking " product in the pipeline. We are all learning the Adobe way to graphics but that leaves little room for thinking outside of Adobe's parameters. Once you close your mind to other opportunities innovation shrinks or at least the potential does. Apple or someone please realize this and develop the next Killer product. Many of us...enough of us will support you.

Watch out Sonos Apple may be coming to eat your lunch

2007-04-05T13:19:00.001-07:00

For those that don't know Sonos is company that makes a very cool product that looks like something Apple would make. They make a whole house audio distribution product that uses wireless technology. They come in bundles that you can add to. So for instance the Z80 bundle ($999) contains two small Z80 ZonePlayer which accept the streaming music and deliver to your amplified speakers. The Z100 is a ZonePlayer that does the same thing but includes a built in amplifier so you simply attach speakers and is available in bundle form for $1199. You can play the same song in up to 32 user created zones or your can stream different songs to different zones using the Sonos Controller which resembles an iPod with a 3.5 inch screen and circular navigation and button controls.

The neat thing is that you can hook a CD up to one of the ZonePlayer and have its audio streamed throughout the home. It supports many of your popular internet music services like Audible and Rhapsody. The reviews of the Sonos system are absolutely glowing. If you've thought about how cool the rich and famous have it with their grandiose homes with audio piping into every room well your turn is here for $999 to start. That buys you a Sonos Controller and two Z80.

Now with that out of the way it's time to get to the topic at hand. Apple. As good as the Sonos system is I believe Apple is doing a clever end around and will be attacking this market. Note that the Sonos system is audio only and every device in a Sonos chain is more expensive than an Apple TV. The hint that Apple has given us clear. The Apple TV could have used a more simple and cheap design. It did not have to use OS X for or even contain a GPU (as all the video codec supported would work using the included CPU only including drawing the Quartz Frontrow interface.

The Apple TV seems a bit over-engineered for the purposes that it is marketed for today. I believe that that Apple will evolve the product in a couple of vital ways.

1. They will eventually upgrade the Frontrow/Backrow software to support zones. You will be able to to listen or watch media anywhere you set a zone up. Even better in the media you watch will easily follow you to other zones. Want to pick up watching that episode of Heroes to the bedroom ..simply switch the zone and the Apple TV will begin to buffer only what is left on the bedroom zone Apple TV. Right now Apple have fooled everyone into thinking that the Apple TV only accepts streams but it has the design infrastructure to send out streams as well.

2. Notice how the Apple TV does not have a LCD interface.? The TV must be on to navigate the music lists or queue up movies or photos. This is really gaffe in UI design similar to the frustrations DVD Audio owners faced with TV menus. I don't think Apple plans to keep the status quo going. By adding an "Apple TV Controller" Apple could enable control of 1 to many Apple TV without the need for the TV to be on. Even better they could utilize Multi Touch and offer Universal remote capabilities in addition to controlling music/movie/Photo distribution to the zones.

3. The Apple TV will offer a full web browsing experience. This should usher in iTunes purchases, streaming internet radio and many other web tools. Now that the Apple TV is a peer computer on the network capable of streaming data as well as receiving it the ability to access online content becomes even more important.

I fully expect Apple TV to grow into a billion dollar product-line. Apple is deftly starting small yet clearly showing they have the Apple TV architecture to grow the product in new ways. Apple has to be thinking that they way to success is not selling one Apple TV to one family. It's selling multiple Apple TV to a family along with more accessories. Once a home distribution network is setup the Apple TV in essence becomes your onramp. What type of partnerships could Apple work out here. Tivo support? Does Apple need to create a DVR when a your current DVR content can simply be streamed throughout your network?

If Jim Dalrymple's family is already fighting over the Apple TV then clearly there's a need for multiple units. Developing a cohesive system becomes even more vital to Apple because their goal is have half of all songs on iTunes be DRM free within a year I believe. Apple is in a prime position to move forward and push the Digital Lifestyle into the networked age. Color me shocked if Apple doesn't move into this realm within 18 months.

The Apple TV

2007-03-27T17:48:00.001-07:00

I must admit that the success of the Apple TV has taken even me by surprise. Even before the unit shipped I noticed quite a groundswell of negativity. I understand many of the reservations that some have. The Apple TV won't play every codec known to mankind (without help) but it seems to be able to play many out of the box without a little work. I plan to get one primarily because I want to have a centralized store of music and videos and photos. If I could consolidate everything to one large multi-terabyte NAS device with easy access from my "client" software I'd be happy with that. My hope is that Apple will eventually allow this somehow. That all your media reside in one area (appropriately backed up via Time Machine of course) yet each client software like iTunes/iPhoto manage the metadata at the client level as well. Then the Apple TV could just be pointed at this media server most of the time and if you wanted to stream some data that wasn't on the media server you'd of course have that option as well.

I think the Apple TV is presenting more value via extensibility. It took less than 24 hours to find out that the Apple TV drive could be removed and the Quicktime partition accessed to add Perian a program that enables Quicktime to playback more codec. Upgrading the hard drive is proving even easier. The 40GB hard drive is going to be fine for many but the larger your hard drive is the more local content you can stuff on the Apple TV. I guess this defeats my aforementioned Media Server concept as the Apple TV would in essence become your server. We'll see how that pans out in the future.

Eventually I see Apple offering 720p HD downloads which will improve the picture quality of the offered movies greatly. It has been confirmed that the Apple TV is in fact running a flavor of OS X so I expect evolution to happen in this area as well. Who knows there might be a Apple TV running Leopard in the near future. Time will tell.

Here's a site where you can track some of the "hacks" to improve your Apple TV. The appropriately named Apple TV Hacker ran by Mike Curtis. The program that allows you to run more codec in Quicktime is Perian.

Future Mac apps may become Leopard Only quickly

2007-03-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

I've always enjoyed tracking unreleased Apple Operating Systems. I am certainly looking forward to Apple's forthcoming OS X 10.5 Leopard release. One surprise that I have come across is that many Apple Developers are considering making their next release "Leopard" only. I was fortunate enough to take advantage of MacHeist bundle which included the very interesting Delicious Library and Textmate. Both very popular applications in the MacWorld. Both developers have decided to make the impending 2.0 versions of their applications Leopard only.

Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster says this in their blog:

Delicious Library 2 is indeed being written. This should not cause you concern if you are thinking of buying Delicious Library 1. First off, because there will be an upgrade price available (sorry, but it won't be free -- we've already provided five or six free upgrades to Delicious Library 1 with major, major functionality, which is why we're at version 1.63 now). Secondly, we're still quite a ways out on actually shipping Delicious Library 2 -- it's going to ship on Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" only, and we honestly don't know when Leopard is even going to ship. And, meanwhile, we're trying to write our software for an unfinished OS, which is like trying to perform an appendectomy on a patient who is awake and actively slapping your hands away.

They don't exactly go into the reasons why they are supporting Leopard only but I think Allan Odgaard the developer of Textmate makes it quite clear on his blog:

First of all, 2.0 is a free upgrade, so I won’t miss out on any upgrade fees from people that want to stay on Panther or Tiger.

Secondly, roughly 90% of my users are early adopters and have in all likelihood upgraded to Leopard within a few months of its release, so by keeping compatibility with older operating systems I am catering to less than 10% of my users.

Thirdly, it has a significant cost to stay backwards compatible, this price is paid in the form of:

Time spent debugging (and sometimes making workarounds for) issues only present on the older OS version.
Time spent implementing stuff that Apple offers for free on the new version of the OS.
Not being able to make use of features only present on latest version of the OS when it’s too impractical to conditionally make use of them.
Code complexity, because it needs to do different things on different versions of the OS.
Is eliminating those costs worth a 10% drop in sales? You bet they are! The reason why I have kept Panther compatibility for this long has nothing to do with additional sales and all to do with me just not liking to cut people off.

But by requiring Leopard I get all the Tiger stuff I have reluctantly ignored, all the new Leopard APIs which I look forward to use. I can render text with the faster CoreText which hopefully is free of the various ATSUI rendering bugs (like ignoring your drawn bold/italic font variant unless you flush your font cache regularly, or not doing proper anti-alias on bright text with a dark background), etc.

There is also Objective-C 2.0 with garbage collection, I don’t think anyone realizes how much work it is to manually unbind stuff from nibs when disposing them to avoid retain cycles (and thus memory leaks). There is a new Interface Builder with some much desired improvements — both of these things will require my stuff to run on Leopard, should I embrace them.

I happen to agree very much with his ideology and have highlighted what I believe to be his most salient parts. As a Mac user my computer is more than "just" a tool. I love the ethos of Macintosh users and developers. There is an art to this platform that attracts millions of people and I find that many users will indeed upgrade their OS once they feel "safe" that things will work. With each new version of OS X Apple adds more improvements that simply cannot be back ported to prior versions. As Mac users and application lovers should we settle for backwards compatibility and the limitations that it imposes on current software design or do we pledge ourselves to remaining as current as feasible and improving our computing lifestyle with each new OS X version? I frankly hope that more developers decide to move to Leopard only applications and embrace the new API that Apple has created. I will certainly be moving to Leopard as soon as possible for reasons I'll highlight in other post.

Viva la Revolutione! Sony announces a sub $200...

2005-05-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Viva la Revolutione!

Sony announces a sub $2000 HDV camcorder for consumers the HDR-HC1. They also announced another prosumer model the HVR-A1U with features that videographers require like XLR audio Input/Output.

What's interesting is that Sony has been a big manufacturer of CCD but these new cameras use CMOS sensors. My guess is that a 4:3 sensor large enough to crop to 16x9 is likely cheaper to manufacture with a CMOS process than CCD.

This should really bring HD recording to the masses. As of now Apple's lineup of digital video editing tools all support HDV. There is good support on Windows based editing apps as well. While I'd love to see 3 dedicated sensors to RGB I'll take the increase in resolution that HDV offers.

With HD-DVD and Blu-Ray looming I see HD taking of rather quickly. HDTV sets are becoming quite affordable and playback of HD files on computers is already here with Quicktime 7 (coming for PC soon) playing back the hot new h.264 codec that will be in both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players.

I am a little shocked that Sony beat JVC to lower cost consumer models. JVC being the progenitor of the HDV format should have hit the consumer market first IMO. Perhaps they have something in the works for release later this year. If they could hit $1495 MSRP that would be great.

Looks like my JVC MiniDV camera will be my first and last SD camera...that feels great to say.

New Game Consoles

2005-05-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

I must say I'm very impressed by the new Games Consoles. My fav so far is the Playstation 3 followed by the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution. I may have to own all three but we'll see. Nice to see them morph into devices that do more than just play games. More later.

Should Apple buy Tivo?

2005-03-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

Tivo Tivo Tivo
It's not necessarily that Apple has to buy Tivo to get into the market. We know Apple has to enter this space and offer a DVR solution. They've even called DVR capability a "commodity item" . However Tivo as a company has a weakness in that if a DVR is a commodity then you have to make your money elsewhere.

So what has Tivo done? Started packing their UI with adds and selling their customers usage patterns on the backend. Not too good. It's obvious that they cannot survive with Comcast and TW offering lowcost DVR options as a monthly rental for less than half the Tivo sub cost.

If Apple were to purchase Tivo this is what I see happen.

Tivo's contract with Directv lasts until 2007. I wouldn't expect to see Apple make many changes other than beef up Mac support for Tivo2go and Home Media Option.

The fun would start up late 2006 when we'd finally see and expansion to the lineup. Here's how Apple might work it out.

Basic Unit -

$199 This unit would be for the basic consumer that wants DVR service. It would require that you get a .mac account for the Guide at $5 per month or you could opt for the .mac+ service at $8 per month which would include all the services that the current .mac includes like storage space, email, sync features etc. You would be able to listen to your iTunes store music on all devices.

Mid Unit -

$299- This unit would contain a larger HD and built in wireless capability. You would have the ability to link to your own personal audio and video files on your computer as well as photographs.

Power Unit -
$499- This would the the unit for AV aficionados. Large 300+GB hard drives. Built in DVD Burner. Firewire ports for adding more external hard drives. This unit would be based on the Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell processor. It would have an OLED screen built in so that the tag data from the music tracks or annotations added to pictures would be displayed without the need to pipe them through to the TV.

The basic features of these units would be. A standard width casing. USB 2.0 on all units. Firewire on the top unit. The top two units would playback your files on your home network. Ethernet would be included on all models. HDMI connectors and analog connectors would be on the back. SPDIF audio as well. Wireless standard on top two models 802.11n. The top unit would allow for better encoded video due to the Cell processors power. CableCARDS standard on top two models.

Software -
The software would look similar to Tivo's UI and contain all the great features like Wishlist and Season Pass however you would have new areas of the software(depending on model) the beefier units would have pages for managing your own files, broadband internet files and cable content. Support for stores would be built right in. The units would launch with Netflix download support, Amazon.com CD/DVD store access and of coure Apple's very own iTMS. Each page would be branded. Eventually the store API would be opened up to other companies who want to pay the license fees associated.

The beauty of this setup is that Apple doesn't buy Tivo to "simply" become yet another company with a DVR. They would beef up this strategy so tha they are supporting iTunes Music Store, your own personal files and broadband content all in one device with one remote (bluetooth on top two models). Consumers won't buy into "just" a DVR but they will buy into something that manages "all" their media. Apple can either create this on their own from scratch or build off of the start that Tivo has created. Sign me up for the $500 model!

Do you get sick of the Tech Press at times?

2005-01-25T17:19:00.000-08:00

I'll keep the scope narrow here. I'm mainly talking about some of the Press response to the iPod. Apple is certainly in an enviable position right now. As numero uno in the digital media genre they have a large and bright bullseye sitting squarely on their back. When you are sitting in rarified air on your pedastal everyone wants to knock you off and assume your position. This "frenzy" regarding the iPod has led to some very interesting tech reports. Mind you it seems like not a day can go by without someone launching their FUD campaign against Apple. Let's look at some recent posts however.

Mike Goodman from the Yankee Group seems to think that Apple is missing an opportunity of such dire importance that it could threaten their very lead. Perhaps. He seems to base his assertions on Apple's "lack of interest" in subscription model. We are told that the subscripton model is "gaining popularity" yet we have no press release to quantify this. Like many articles from the people who are supposed to "Analyze" we are left with a dearth of actual info. Every Apple press release is met with FUD but never any hardcore evidence showing that the subscription model is gaining any ground whatsoever.

Goodman insists that there were technological barriers present which led to two distinct forms of downloads. We'll yes if your tech barrier is DRM. Consumers don't seem to enthused about DRM but they remain enthused about music. Goodman says that he expects Apple's marketshare to drop down to about 50-60 percent if they do not employ a subscription based service. This is fair to me. I think over time Apple's marketshare will likely hit that naturally. However, the market will be so large in a few years that 50-60 percent will represent probably 3x the amount of hardware and software revenue they get today. Either way this funnels to one company and is not spread amongst a bunch of bit players.

I don't think "tethered" downloads will be as popular as these pundits state. While we all want access to as much music as possible tethered downloads will require people to purchase new devices that handle Janus (Microsoft's portable players DRM). That can be daunting if compared to an open and thriving iPod market that is growing. The inability to back up files and make copies is being severely underplayed by those who would benefit from "rent a music" schemes.

Janus has to prove a lot to consumers before it becomes the world beater that analysts are predicting. The iPod has been such a runaway hit journalists and analysts are falling over themselves to out FUD(Fear Uncertainty Doubt) Apple's position. It's been this way since the beginning. No one wants to hear nothing but good news, people thrive on a little drama. It'll be interesting to see just how well subscriptions do. Especially after that monthly fee lapses and people see their music go "poof".

Ever wished for a spreadsheet that wasn't a pain to use?

2004-09-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

Enter Quantrix.
If you view the Flash Tour you will begin to wonder why Microsoft with its many many billions has not gotten Excel to do these things. The demo shows the creation of a spreadsheet that models data with 4 formulas that would require over 200 Excel formulas. Isn't it about time we computer users actually got a little Return on Investment ourselves in the form of great software? I'm just a bit miffed that Apple hasn't gone where Quantrix has. Innovative shell casings are nice but I know plenty of accountants who'd sign over portions of their paychecks to have a spreadsheet that is intuitive. Where are you Apple? As for Quantrix best of luck to you. Check them out below

Quantrix - Tools for Professional Financial Modeling: "Quantrix goes beyond spreadsheets

Some compelling reasons why you should consider Quantrix Modeler as your professional modeling tool of choice."

Sony announces new HDV High Definition Camcorder

2004-09-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

Sony has just announced their new HDR-FX1 HDV Camcorder. This is the first HDV based camcorder that records in 1080i resolution. The first HDV camcorder was from JVC and only recorded to a maximum of 720p lines. The "p" stands for Progressive and the "i" stands for "Interlaced". Progressive renders the whole picture at once while interlacing paints half of the picture in one pass and the other half in a second pass quickly enough to fool your eyes into thinking you're seeing one whole picture.

This Sony also stands out as the first HDV camera to have 3 CCD, which is very important for color fidelity, and native 16x9 support. The Canon XL2 can also be considered native 16x9 because it masks the CCD in a unique way that satisfies 4x3 and 16x9 sources.

The Sony HDV also has a 250k pixel LCD screen that is placed near the front of the camera in the line of sight from the color viewfinder. It should be nice for low and high shots. I'm pretty enthused about this camera. Apple has already stated they will support HDV(which is really just MPEG2) in a future Final Cut Pro natively. High Definition recording and 3CCDs is going to be huge for the prosumer. There should be a Pro model out probably next year some time with more Pro features like XLR audio and even more manual controls but right now the HDR-FX1 will be available Mid Oct and ready for use.

Apple Announces new iMac G5..it's small

2004-09-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

At the Apple Expo in Paris France Apple announced the new long awaited upgrade to the venerable iMac line. Coming in a milky white plastic case and resting on an aluminum base this is a striking computer even before you take into account the 2" depth. There is a slot loading drive in the upper right hand side of the case that contains either a Combo drive or Superdrive(4x). The Monitor sizes are 17" and 20" both are widescreen and look to be bright and sharp from the few pics floating around. A full complement of ports are arranged vertically down the back left side. I won't bore you with the detail check out the iMac page for the technical details.

I think the interesting points are these. The iMac is aimed squarely at consumer. Apple has always taken the risky proposition of appealing to consumers who are tired of bulky computers and the iMac G5 is further evolution towards that ideology. Will it be successful? I believe so, the $1299 entry model has a great quality 17" LCD display. I think that display size is mandatory the previous 15" LCD was too small for the price. I also think that the size will be irresistable for many. The iMac isn't overly flashy...it looks like a monitor sitting on your desk. Minimalist design to the maximum. Power, with a G5 1.8Ghz running on a 600Mhz Front Side Bus the iMac is going to take a leap forward in processing power. I have actually heard the words "slow" and "anemic" used to describe this processor and I'm amazed. We have yet to realize the full potential of the G5 CPU. A majority of code at there is still compiled to run best on the G4. I expect the G5s only to get faster as apps are recompiled to take advantage of the newer G5s.

Mounting options are new as well. The iMac supports VESA a standardized mounting technology. Now you will be able to use jointed arms to attach your iMac to your desk. Think of the iMac G4 kneck on steroids. In fact Apple sells the Ergotron right on the site. Other models like the Marathon Pixarm can hold more than the Ergotron's 18lbs limit. I don't think it's too hard to see the near future. Bluetooth will eventually get replaced with a faster wireless peripheral technology. The typical consumer computer will shrink to barely larger than the display and will be mounted on walls or articulating arms replete with wireless acessories. Total motion..total connection, total convenience. In fact Apple applied for a patent for a double jointed arm(thanks Mudbug). Could they be marketing their own articulated arm by MWSF?

All in all the iMac G5 looks to be a winner. I'm going to purchase the next revision after saving my hard earned dinero. Sure I'd love the graphics card to be faster but in gaming I'm a bit more interested in the nextgen consoles that computer gaming right now. The iMac looks to be a very nice blend.

Would you pay for an Internet Browser?

2004-08-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

You know, despite the infamous "Browser Wars" between Netscape and Internet Explorer, the Browser landscape is quite abundant. That is somewhat of a suprise to me as I expected it to become a two pony race and stay that way. Unfortunately I do not have a Mac that can run Apple's Safari some I'm a not a good source of information on that product. I'm pleased though to see this schism developing though. The "Free" Browsers versus the "Pay" Browsers. I've heard many a computer user exclaim "I would never pay for a browser" but I'm beginning to wonder if that is truly the case. I tend to think that people would pay for a Browser as long as it handled the basics well and added valuable features that are non-existant or poorly done in the free offerings.
For instance I recently became a little annoyed with the shortcomings of the nice Firefox Browser. I found it to be fast but a little rough around the edges. I'm now trying Opera which is available on many platforms. Opera and Omniweb are two commerical Browsers. Opera runs for free with banner ads. Omniweb is available for a limited trial.
Just what can these Browsers do that would make the wallets open and the cash register sing? Well my initial thoughts on Opera lead me to believe that this version 7.5 isn't worth the $29.95 asking price but by version 8 it may just reach that desirable goal. I've grown particularly fond of the stability of Opera. Compared to Firefox it just seems more fluid when switching tabs while another tab is loading as if each tab was threaded better. The Panel contains icons for Mail, Notes, Transfers, History, Links and others down the left side. These auto update depending on the site you have front facing. The "Links" icon is nice as it will give you a simple list of all the links on a given page. The Notes can be handy as well. You can highlight text on any webpage and right click(PC) and save automatically to a note or take text from any note and insert into the page. Not too groundbreaking but it could come in handy at times. The integrated Mail client doesn't suck and even offers easy RSS setup/subscription. I prefer its search facility from the Panel. In stead of just searching Google you are presented with a search form and then a collection of bars that will search various sites. Want to search Google and then Amazon and then 6 other sites? Just click the appropriate site icon bar and your search commences.
I haven't used Omniweb but I believe it could become my standard Browser on my next Mac purchase if they continue to add features. Omniweb's Workspaces feature looks very nice as well as Site Preferences and Saved Browser Sessions. Not too shabby. Although it's not to everyones liking but it would be interesting to see Omniweb perhaps offer an advanced UI option where it would seamlessles integrate with Addressbook, Mail and perhaps even iPhoto for saving web photos. I think the Browser is simply moving on to another phase and I look forward to seeing how the commerical Browsers compete against the free Browsers.

Apple's prowess in Sotfware Design

2004-08-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've recently read some reviews on Motion Apple's new motion graphics application for video. Normally a program written from the ground up can tend to be a little sparse in UI. We all know Apple's OSX is progressing nicely but I'm particularly impressed with what they've done with some of their recent new apps or upgrades.

DVD Studio Pro- Apple really has done a great UI job with this app. It's not only gorgeous but highly functional. They only complaints I've read are about sluggishness on some systems. Everyone from Pros to Novice are able to get up to speed with this application quickly. Great job.

Apple Remote Desktop 2.0- Nice clean use of brushed metal UI and Aqua. They've wrapped up a nice group of features and this app shows a lot of promise. Some initial bugs being reported but I'm sure they'll be fixed soon.

Motion- This apps UI is impressive. I read a very comprehensive review from Peter Wiggins from Creative Cow and I learned a lot. Motion is not a toy..it goes pretty deep once you start using the layering and timeline functions. Keyframing is always available when you need it. Most people seem to say that whatever they need just happens to be right there meaning the developers brainstormed a lot about what the users next step would be. Kudos Apple. By version 3 I predict Motion overtakes After Effects. Sorry Adobe but if you don't do a total overhaul of AE you won't stand a chance.

Logic 7- This is not a shipping product yet and all I have are 7 pics of the Beta to go off of but it seems like Logic 7 will be the next app to see a much improved UI. Apple Loops will be integrated very nicely and I'm sure there will be plenty of other touches that musicians love. I cannot wait for this product.

Apple is definitely on a roll. They have really done a good job on their Pro apps. Now I see the apps coming closer and integrating in very cool ways. This is one of the reasons why I so desperately want an Apple Office. I'm salivating about what Apple would bring to the table in this genre. Open Office and the like are nice MS Office clones but we don't want that do we? Don't we want to see Apple's take on the integrated suite? Imagine the graphics powers they could extend to creating fancy spreadsheets.

I'd love to see more software. I don’t' always agree with the people that hate seeing Apple create software. Every market that Apple devotes resources to creates a Halo Effect that increases opportunities for other developers. Final Cut Pro killed Adobe Premiere on the platform but Premiere never created a "Cottage Industry" devoted to it. Final Cut Pro has.

I'd love to see Apple apply their design talents on a nice simple 3D program aimed at video Pros. Like the Soundtrack of 3D or something. If they could utilize Motion's procedural behaviors within a 3D app for animation they'd be looking at a hit.

I love Apple software. I want more.

Apple buy Tivo before it is too late!

2004-08-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

Apple should buy Tivo…NOW!

Tivo now has the “beleaguered” title and the death knells are coming fast and furious. I have always admired Tivo rabid fans. They remind me much of my fellow Mac users. I think this is one of the reasons why I believe Apple should acquire Tivo. Sounds crazy but in reality it is not. Apple is quickly becoming a player in Audio and Video Production. They have the #1 legal download service and portable player. Purchasing Tivo allows them to fast track into the hot DVR (Digital Video Recorder) market. Here’s how.

Tivo

Tivo is a great system with the best User Interface hands down. They have a great name and 1.6 million rabid users. What’s the catch? They are small and the large cable operators are encroaching fast into their area. Tivo’s have weaknesses as well. They must sell their hardware at a loss to entice users. This means all of their profit comes from either selling a lifetime service to their guide data or paying a monthly fee of $12.95. This means that if you stop paying the monthly fee you have a useless paperweight. The lifetime service is the better deal but now that $299 Tivo is now $549

Apple to the rescue

How can Apple parlay an acquisition of Tivo into something profitable when Tivo is having problems profiting? By taking Tivo and building upon it. If Tivo wasn’t totally useless without the monthly or lifetime fees it wouldn’t have to sell at a loss to. This is the first thing Apple would fix. After the acquisition Apple would keep things similar for a year or so while they revamped the Tivo system. The UI would remain relatively the same but instead of using Linux to run the Tivo Apple would replace it with a new Quicktime capable of running Set Top Box (STB). This opens up a whole new world for Tivo. Now “any” file that plays in Quicktime now plays on the Tivo. Just that easy the Tivo now supports iLife. Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store now play along with your Garageband tunes. iPhoto files are supported and of course even your own iMovie creations. PC files would work of course because of Quicktime. So now we have rid the Tivo of its most glaring weakness, obsolescence. But how would Apple handle the subscriptions? . Mac

. Mac is Apple’s answer to dealing with the guide data. Currently Apple charges Mac customers $99 a year to subscribe. This gets them a mac.com email address, web space and other sync features. Apple would create .Mac for Tivo. This would give them the guide data and even some website space and if they are Mac users they would get the Mac specific features available to that platform. This would be $120 year or the Lifetime amount of $250 would still apply with no web space.

Future

Ok so now we know what Apple can do how will they make money? Well Apple will give Tivo the financial backing they need to withstand and persevere against the large cable operators rolling out substandard DVR for cheap. Apple would gain 1.6 million new .Mac users bringing the total to 2 million users. Apple now has inroads into broadcast recording. This is huge because now that the FCC has mandated that Cable Cards must be offered from the large cable operators the door has been opened for Tivo to get on more TV sets. Cable Cards are being built into TVs and STB so that an encrypted HDTV signal can be decoded “without” the need for the cable operators own STB. What do you lose by not going with the operators STB? Not much really: you lose some of the video on demand features but I think many of us know that Apple will have a say in that someday as well as Netflix and Blockbuster. Cable Cards will allow the next Tivo to access all your favorite paid channels and record them in glorious HDTV. No more crazy hookups either.

This deal would simply make too much sense. Apple has the infrastructure setup to parlay this into something big. iPods and Tivo capable multimedia STB from Apple could be a huge hit.

Antares Dual Core 970(G5) coming?

2004-07-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

Thinksecret and Apple Nova both have interesting information on "Antares" aka 970MP. Antares is a Dual Core(DC) version of the IBM 970 CPU which powers the Apple Powermac G5. The current CPUs run at up to 2.5Ghz but each processor is Single Core requiring two CPU sockets and two distinct Front Side Bus connections to the memory controller. Apple moving to DC 970MP systems would allow them to offer a system with the same power that they utilize today but using only one CPU socket and one FSB connection to the memory controller. The cost savings would have to be rather signifant as the motherboard complexity goes down. This also opens the door for very high end systems based on 2 sockets running 970MP in each socket. That would give you a 4 CPU system for not much more complexity than what we have today.

This is very exciting to me because it means within 2 years we are likely to see DC systems available in consumer Macs like the iMac. High end systems will have 4 cores total running and believe me I know plenty of Final Cut Pro users or even Emagic Logic users who would welcome the extra two processors for processing CPU hungry plugins or encoding video.

What this could also mean is that the POWER5 derivative(the current 970 is a POWER4 derivative) might not hit until 2006. If we must wait that long I'm sure the wait would be worth it. It may even be fabricated on a smaller 65nm process.

The march in computing is moving on at the same quick pace. Rather than a fight to clock the CPU as high as possible we are simply scaling horizontally now adding more cores. I think this is smart since our modern operating systems allow us to multitask more efficiently. Thanks for reading.

New idea for iLife 5

2004-07-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

I love Apples iLife concept. Bundle digital lifestyle apps together in a nice integrated fashion. I think this is a very powerful concept and one that entices people to be more creative. There is life beyond cranking out boring word processing documents or creating boring presentations. Audio and video surround us everyday via TV and AM/FM radio. iTunes in particular has become the crown jewel of iLife. It is the gateway to the iTunes Music Store. Being that it's so popular there should be some additional protections put in place IMO.

I think Apple has the perfect chance to take a step forward and take advantage of the security advantage that OSX has. I think the next iLife component should be a mini version of Apple Remote Desktop . This would come along with the come along with the iLife Family Pack. Apple Remote Desktop is very cool because it allows you to monitor the screens on multiple networked computers. It allows software distribution as well. The iLife version would be of course scaled back to support 5 clients total and there would be hooks into "iTunes 5" that would allow the "Master" to control the iTunes display of "Explicit" content on iTMS. Parents would then utilize this feature to make sure that their children aren't listening to inapproprate songs. A log would be available as well to make sure unsavory websites were not being visited as well. As a parent myself of a child that is not of computer using age I can easily see where I will have to protect my child from making the mistake of accessing an adult site like whitehouse.com versus whitehouse.gov. Security from external virus and worms is no less important to parents as the security from adult content forcing its way into your computing life. Apple could make some significant usability strides here by making a security component to iLife.

MPAA offensive on movie piracy

2004-07-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

If you haven't noticed yet the MPAA just launched an offensive on movie piracy. The attack was swift and precise perfect in its calculation. It is now the MPAAs turn to whine about piracy. No doubt they have watched the RIAA go through growing pains while taking copious notes on what not to do. Here is a sampling of links with choice quotes.

Guide to Home Theater

The Motion Picture Association of America has issued a strident warning that "a growing global epidemic" of Internet movie piracy is harming the motion picture industry. Citing a survey of 3600 Internet users in 8 countries conducted by online research company OTX, the MPAA reported that one in four Internet users (24%) has downloaded a movie and that 17% of those who had done soreported lowered attendance of theatrical films or purchases of licensed DVDs or videotapes.

These are rather obtuse numbers and fairly meaningless coming from a paltry 3600 users who bothered to fill out the survey. As for lowered movie attendance you have to find it odd that the MPAA regards movie going as some birthright bestowed upon them. Quite honestly I've stopped purchasing so many DVDs when I discovered Netflix was a better way. However the MPAA will soon find that theater going drops even more due to non-piracy related issues. Hollywood has come out with some real stinkers lately. How excited were you to go see Van Helsing after reading the glorious reviews. I'm a fan of Home Theater and I love to hang out at the AVS Forums and I can tell you that with confidence that today’s movie experience can easily be surpassed at home. With front projector systems and high quality DVD players rivaling the average movie theater, what incentive do these people have to hop in the car, find parking, wait in line and pay $40 a pound for popcorn have? To add insult to injury you are now a captive audience to be bombarded with Coca Cola advertisements followed by endless movie trailers.

The MPAA hasn't figured out the as the quality of equipment improves at home so does the experience. The expectations for theaters are much higher than before. We expect to see good movie content on large screens with a great picture and sound. What we get is Hollywood fluff like Troy and Van Helsing played back on sub par screens. Matinee prices are creeping past $6 a ticket killing the incentive to go see a movie that you are on the fence about.

as proof of downloading impact on the industry, the MPAA cited a 4% drop-off in ticket sales.

Again this is blaming the consumer for not wanting to put up with poor movies. This is taken right from the RIAA handbook. If ticket sales are so bad them pray tell why 10 out of the top twenty grossing domestic movies were released within the last 4 years? Movies goers are still going but the garbage Hollywood is shoveling is getting to be a bit too much. Expect to hear more whining from the MPAA about piracy and attempts to add new DRM features to DVD. Expect to see more brain dead Hollywood trash pushed your way. Until we stop supporting this dreck with our hard earned money our desires for quality will constantly be undermined. Thanks again.

Canon announces new XL2 Camcorder

2004-07-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

Canon has announced the new XL2 camcorder, Here are the specs. I was mildly surprised that Canon did not go with the HDV format but it actually makes sense. The XL Series claim to fame is the ability to use removable XL Lens for the cam. This flexibility is great but the previous XL1 and XL1s were starting to get a little "long in the tooth". The quality of the DV captured on a XL1s was beneath that of the AG-DVX100A

which offered 410k pixel resolution compared to the XL1s' 270k it's easy to see why the Canon lost. But looking at the same link prior you will see the XL2 offers a nice healthy 680k pixel resolution which it carves up to support 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios yet still keep a nice pixel count. A tradeoff but one that doesn't harm the quality harshly or hamper flexibility. Such a cam is far beyond my price range but it is nice to see some good prosumer stuff that is cheaper than a new car.

Back to HDV. HDV is a format developed by JVC (Japan Victor Company). It uses MPEG Transport Stream to record video at two bitrates. 19.4Mbps and a max( I believe) of 25Mbps. Incidentally the 19.4 stream is equal to what many broadcasters are using for ATSC High Definition broadcasts. Great! So why didn't Canon use it then? Well, that's anyone’s guess but it's likely that Canon didn't want to strand those using XL1s with a bunch of lenses and accessories that wouldn't work with a totally new design. Also DV is far easier to edit than the MPEG2 TS that HDV cams record in. The reason why is because the DV codec uses Intraframe compression. Each individual frame has compression applied within it. MPEG2 uses Interframe compression, which means the compression is applied over a sequence of frames and varies depending on content(i.e. movement etc). Intraframe compression allows the editing software to access individual frames for precise editing and application of effects. Intraframe codecs are generally used in editing. Interframe compression is primarily a delivery codec. It is more efficient in compression because it applies across a series of frames apply the most efficient compression to minimize size. The problem comes when you want to edit these types of codecs and your editing software has to approximate the frame you are looking for to start the edit.

I'm sure I have the basics down here but I'm open to any new knowledge on this subject. I'm excited for what HDV will do for high quality video capture. I'm just a little miffed that I can't have my cake and eat it too when it comes to efficient editing of this high rez HDV footage.

Canon has stated the XL2 will be their last high end Standard Def cam. So I expect that they will have an HDV model no later than NAB 2005( April 2005). Until then I'll be keen on seeing the battle between the Panny and the Canon in reviews. Thanks for reading.

Coming soon the Super Operating Systems. Tiger & Longhorn

2004-07-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

I am far too much of a newbie to be able to look at the new OS coming from both Apple and Microsoft to be of any help technically. But I do believe I can see potential and I have to like what I see from both. Apple will deliver OSX 10.4 also known as Tiger some time in 2005. I find it rather comical that many people have downloaded the Preview Release(PR) given to the developers who attended the World Wide Developers Conference June 28th of this year and can't make any sense of it. That's because the PR contains only the necessary functions for "developers" to test the new API and plan their development strategies. If you download Tiger and expect to see a bunch of new life changing features you will sorely be disappointed. Looking deeper at Tiger we see that Apple has remained true to its core competency, which is graphics. Of particular note Core Image and Core Video API allow for image and video processing to happen on the local GPU graphics card at real time speeds. These same effects today would sap precious CPU computing power so this benefits users in 2 ways. It pushes this processing to the GPU, which is much faster than the CPU at processing these effects and at the same time frees up the CPU to focus on other areas.

This is very similar to the speed boost computer gaming received when games were able to utililize the newest graphics card that contained Transform & Lighting on the card itself rather than burden the CPU with this task. Games instantly became faster and quality improved greatly. Look for Core Image and Video to do the same. I've seen Apple's new Motion apps aimed at adding motion graphics to video. It's an amazing app. Rather than make adjustments and view the effect in a small preview window, in Motion your application window "is" the preview window and you simply work in real time or close to it as you build your project. Productivity should skyrocket anytime you can do complex or creative tasks in real time. I predict in 2 years the shift to real time processing will be so swift and complete that we all will quickly forget the "old days" when even iMovie had to render transitions. That's a good thing.

Spotlight is another great technology that on the surface looks rather pedestrian.Some Mac users today don't understand what's so special about Spotlight when we've been indexing in Mac OS for years. Rather than give you a diatribe I'll point you to the excellent John Gruber article that explains the wonder that is Spotlight. Searching is a learned behavior, I frequently have heard people say they wouldn't use Spotlight. This is because people have been told for years that searching was going to improve and quite frankly is has not. The Internet makes robust search tools paramount today. I'm not talking about Google but rather the ability to download insane amounts of data to your hard drive. 5 years ago broadband didn't have the penetration it does today. Places like Korea and Japan have insane broadband penetration and speeds( up to 20Mbps dl). Clearly the robustness of local search tools is important as hard drives store more data. Lacie just announced a 1.6 Terabyte Big Disk Extreme yes someone will fill this drive up and woe to he/she who has poor organizational skills. Spotlight and its metadata search methods coupled with google's popularity will change the way the average person retrieves information from their computer. This is much welcomed.

Longhorn- As a Mac fan I'm supposed to hate Microsoft even though their campus is literally 20 minutes from my front door. To be honest I have two homebuilt PCs and two older Macs. Windows XP is quite honestly not a bad OS. It's rather bland in many areas but it is far more stable than the junk we called Win98 and more flexible than Win 2000 (IMO of course. I run both). I have never been overly impressed with any Windows OS but that might change. Although they are only "concept" video I am impressed with the scope of Longhorn. Watching these Longhorn Videos was an eye opener. Microsoft's strategy seems to be clearer today than the first initial hype of .net. Their "4 Pillars" foundation of Longhorn seems to be well thought out and extensible as well as technically impressive in many areas (WinFS, Indigo). Where Apple has flexed its muscles in graphics in Tiger, Microsoft seems to be flexing their muscles within the context of business tools and workflow. Both OS seem to be moving away from a developer paradigm where every app was beholden mainly to itself, to a new model where apps share data and link seamlessly between each other guided by the OS framework. This ideology should really positively impact how consumers utilize the OS. While as a developer it should allow applications to focus more on their own respective specialties rather than duplicate core functionality that now reside in the OS.

Admittedly I'm just taking my first new "baby steps" in learning development and OS architecture. I'm sure I'll know far more in 2 years but for now I'm extremely positive about the direction of computing in general. Thanks for reading. HM

The next Apple iMac

2004-07-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Well now that the infamous "iMac shortage" is upon is there is renewed discussion about the next iMac and what features is may contain. Unfortunately I believe that many are setting themselves up for future disappointment. The iMac LCD in its current form is a very cool computer but it just lacked that special something to be a huge hit like its forbearer. People marveled at its lamp like shape and gawked at its sharp and bright LCD. However after first reflection the weakness began to show. The graphics were barely adequate by industry standards at the time of launch and it wasn't the fire breather that the original iMac was in relation to the Powermac lineup( I think the original iMac was within 30Mhz or so of the Powermacs at the time of launch). Thus the iMac sales took off then them promptly slid in sales over the following quarters. What must Apple do to reinvigorate this once proud lineup?

I believe they must make the iMac a two-piece system. Consumers are a bit more computer savvy now making the benefits of an All-in-one computer a bit superfluous today. What I propose is that Apple creates a base that is distinctly not a minitower and then connects a standard DVI 17" widescreen LCD display. The DVI connection would be behind a shroud so that it looks like an integral part of the iMac3 base but a few screws would allow easy access to the actual connector. Apple would utilize a similar connector that is used on the new DVI Cinema Displays. What are the advantages of such a setup? Well it calms the fears of the buying public that a failure of the monitor or CPU means a destruction of the whole computer. It allows for future upgrade possibilities. And for Apple it allows them to reap the financial rewards of revenue generated by a monitor sale, which they crave. Yes people would ask Apple to ship a "headless" version but Apple would not do that because they realize that headless requests are made by those people who either have a current monitor they wish to use or wish to shop around for the cheapest price on a 3rd party monitor. Apple creating a two-piece system can therefore meet users halfway. If a person purchases a iMac3 but does not wish to utilize the monitor all is not lost because that monitor supports the industry standard DVI connector and thus can be sold to almost anyone with a DVI connector on his or her computer. Considering Apples design smarts and cachet, I wouldn't be surprised if you could fetch quite a nice price on eBay for these monitors if push came to shove.

Next pricing. Forget a $999 iMac. The eMac is solid at that price point and it would make no sense for Apple to create that competition. Therefore I think we'll see something akin to this:

PowerPC G5 1.6Ghz
17" Widescreen LCD with built in speakers.
256MB RAM/120GB HD
AGP 8X upgradeable graphics(Base 128MB)
Digital I/O, 10/100/1000
8X DVD-R burner

$1599

PowerPC G5 1.4Ghz
15" LCD with built in speakers
256MB RAM/ 80GB HD
AGP 8x upgradeable graphic(Base 64MB)
Digital I/O, 10/100/1000
8X DVD Burner

$1299

Again a two piece design so that you have flexibility in placement or you can swap out the LCD someday. Nice coverage between eMac at $799 and $999 segueing to iMac3 15" at $1299 and 17" at $1599. Now these systems would get peoples attention.

Well that was easy.

2004-07-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

Well this Blogging thing just may take off. I've always loved to hear myself ramble.