With all this talk about the iPhone SDK being released, I’m getting a little interested in learning how to program Objective-C with Cocoa. I haven’t really done any application programming except for what I’ve had to do in my classes a few years ago, and I can’t really think of anything in particular I’d like to make off the top of my head… I just am interested in learning it for kicks. The iFund has nothing to do with it. Ok, maybe a little something to do with it. But like I said, I’ve got no ideas off the top of my head.
At the very least it’s not a bad skill to have knowledge of.
I get my 2007 bonus in two weeks (yeah, we get our bonus for the previous year in the last paycheck in February), and I’ve got my eyes on a new computer; one of those nifty Mac Pros would be awesome for me to do my photo editing, especially since my current computer (a 15″ PowerBook G4) is getting on in computer-years and barely runs Aperture any more. It’s at the low low low end of the system requirements and even then it barely works for photo-editing.
Unfortunately, it seems that the graphics card that I want for the Mac Pro would make the whole order take a week or two for it to actually arrive. I talked with one of the guys at the Apple store today and he said that they usually have a few in stock, but if I wanted it there then I’d be sold the stock machine (complete with stock graphics card) and the additional card would be an add-on that they’d put in for me, so I’d end up with two graphics cards instead of just replacing the original one with the new one. Same with the other bits and pieces like the hard drive. I’d be able to run four monitors instead of just two. That’s crazy, but it’d beat having to wait for my computer to arrive in the mail, especially if it wouldn’t cost much for the graphics card I’d want.
Apple now has a personal shopper program, so I requested one for next payday. I figure that I’ll see how much that paycheck will be, configure a list of the things that I need for my setup and the things that’d be nice to have, and take it in to the store after work to see what they can do. Basically get a one-on-one session where I can give them a list of the things that I want, tell them my budget, and pull a Tim Gunn:
One of the big announcements at Tuesday’s Macworld Expo keynote was that people could now rent movies through iTunes, and if you have an Apple TV you could rent movies directly through there as well. $2.99 for older movies, $3.99 for new releases, and $1.00 more for each if you want it in high definition. Pretty neat, right? Some folks don’t think so, with gripes about the viewing period (you have 30 days to start watching, but once you start the movie you’ve got only 24 hours to finish it) and the format choices (a vocal minority wishes that Apple had chosen a more detailed hi-def format, like 1080p or even 1080i instead of 720p). Neither of those would really prevent me from using it, but I was interested in how renting high-definition content would pan out.
John at daringfireball.net went through a few of the differences between the old iTunes terms of service and the new ones. Most of the changes are just slight language differences to accommodate being able to rent movies short-term instead of purchasing outright. But there’s some language in there to say that if you want to download HD-quality movies, you can only download those movies directly to an Apple TV, and you can only watch them on the Apple TV: you can’t download them to your computer, and if you download them to your Apple TV you still can’t transfer them over your network to your computer. He and his readers speculate that it’s because of piracy concerns from the movie studios:
A few smart DF readers have emailed to suggest it’s about piracy concerns — the studios may want to limit the high-def movies to the Apple TV because it has the HDCP DRM-enabled output.
While that may be a possibility, I’ve got another theory — by saying you can only rent HD movies with an Apple TV, the company is ensuring that the equipment will be able to handle the processing power needed to play back high-definition content. Take this real-life example:
I’ve got a PowerBook G4, 1.25 GHz. It’s about 4 years old now. When I try to play HD movie trailers, my computer doesn’t play them very well, if at all. I wanted to try to rent a HD movie just to see how well my computer would be able to handle it, but I couldn’t find any HD movies in the iTunes store and couldn’t figure out why. Once I read that excerpt from the iTunes terms of service it all became clear to me — it’s to prevent people from using computers that may not be able to play back HD content. Just imagine how people would react to that if they were able to download and couldn’t play back:
I was watching a movie, on my PC… and suddenly it went “bleepbleepbleepbleep”. It’s kind of… a bummer.
See, let’s say that I was able to download a HD-quality movie to my laptop — how would Apple know that my computer didn’t have enough processing power to play the file properly? And even if my computer could, then how would my iPod (with even more limited ability) be able to handle the playback requirements? If you were able to download a high-definition movie on your computer then you’d certainly expect that your equipment would be able to handle the load, but Apple has no idea what kind of equipment you have. The only way they can ensure that you’d be able to play the movie and have it Just Work is by limiting the HD-quality video to the Apple TV. Non-HD video can be played by pretty much any computer, the iPod and the Apple TV as well, so it makes sense that this format isn’t limited to only one type of device.
It’s a shame, really, since it’d be pretty neat to watch a high-def movie with one of those Cinema Displays, but I guess a line had to be drawn somewhere.
There’s been some speculation leading up to today that Apple is going to be releasing an extremely thin and lightweight laptop called “MacBook Air” or “AirBook” or something similar. I wonder what it’s going to be?
Now if they only hurry up and tell us how much our bonuses for 2007 will be at work… I’m ready for an upgrade!
March 8, 2008 · No Comments