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The Blu-Ray/HD DVD War: Retail Revolutions

In our last installment of The Blu-Ray/HD DVD War, we discussed how Warner dumping the HD DVD format in favor of Blu-Ray could quickly lead to additional defections from Toshiba's HD DVD camp.

Which occurred, right on cue.

But instead of more studios following Warner as we originally surmised, these defections came in the guise of NetFlix and Best Buy and Wal-Mart, dealing HD DVD a fatal blow to its retail channel.

A surprise, perhaps, but such is the nature of betrayal.

And as such,Toshiba, with no chance to win, sued for peace, and ceded the battlefield to Blu-Ray.

But what triggered this new wave of betrayals?

Apple TV And The Long Tail

In his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson enumerated several key components needed when making online distribution systems work.

One of them is "findability". Or to put it simply, if you can't find it, you can't buy it.

And while the Apple TV's new interface is adequate given the currently limited selection of titles, it's going to need yet another overhaul once Apple adds more content.

It simply won't scale.

Apple TV's Magical Mystery Tour

Is anyone else confused by the movie categorization system on the Apple TV?

I was browsing titles and jumped into Pieces of April to read the description. While there, I noticed a title in the "other people have rented" section called Stage Beauty. Not only did I not recognize the film, but I didn't remember seeing it anywhere else.

Stage Beauty is listed as a drama, but go to Genres > Drama and try to find it. Not listed. Go to Genres > All Movies, however, and it's there.

Weird. And there's more.

Fixing The Air #3: The Ports

As you undoubtedly know, the Air has a single USB port, a single micro-DVI port, and a stereo headphone jack. No ethernet. No FireWire. No ExpressCard/34 slot.

Each with it's own ramifications, problems, and solutions.

And as we saw in Fixing the Air #2, this paucity of ports and the desire to create the "world's thinnest notebook" lead in turn to other design decisions, again each with its own issues.

So let's turn our attention to the Case of the Missing Ports.

How To Watch Rentals More Than Once

It's common knowledge that you can only watch a downloaded rental on your Apple TV once before it goes poof. In fact, it's a major complaint on many blogs.

But last night I noticed that 2010 was still in my rental list, even though I'd downloaded and watched it the night before. So deciding to conduct an experiment, I waited and then hit "Play" a second time with only an hour left in my 24-hour "you've started it, now you have to finish it" cycle.

When I did so, my Apple TV politely asked if I wanted to resume from where I'd left off (the closing credits), or start over from the beginning. I chose to start over. And it did.

Further, it let me continue past the 24-hour deadline to finish the film.

So how do you watch rentals more than once?

Just hit play.

The Apple Ecosystem

A blue-ribbon panel of experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that Apple's iPhone was the best recent advance in mobile telecommunications.

The panel, whose title was It's the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow.

One suggested that operators manipulate users by identifying their "need states", while another said that they need to somehow tap into users' "neural networks" to navigate a mobile phone interface "using touch and pre-touch input."

But in focusing on the phone, and in asking how they can follow Apple's success, telcos and manufacturers are completely missing the big picture.

Apple TV Take Two - Take One

My brand new Apple TV arrived today, in the form of the software update Steve Jobs promised during this year's MacWorld keynote address.

So was it worth the wait? Is renting all it could be?

The answer is a definite... maybe.

Time Machine Now Safe To Use With Aperture

OS X Leopard introduced Time Machine and simple automated backups. A good thing.

However, Leopard had barely been out a week before it was discovered that Time Machine could corrupt an Aperture image database if a backup or restore occurred while Aperture was running. A bad thing.

And that the only fix was not to backup Aperture files. Also a bad thing.

Now, Apple tells us that this issue is resolved in Mac OS X 10.5.2, and that photographers using Aperture 1.5 or 2.0 can now safely use Time Machine to backup their images.

A good thing.

Best Of The Leopard 10.5.2 Update Coverage

As you probably know, Apple released OS X Leopard 10.5.2 on Monday. This update corrects quite a few "known issues", fixes plenty of bugs and internal problems with Leopard, and evens adds some new interface features.

But rather than repeat what's already been said, I thought I'd provide a few links to some of the best coverage and information out there:

• Straight from the horse's mouth:
  About the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update [Apple]
• On the interface changes (with pretty pictures):
  10.5.2 Update Shows Apple Listens To Users [MacWorld]
• Lots of discussion both pro and con:
  Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update Brings Welcome Fixes [Slashdot]
• Professional photographer?
  New Digital Camera RAW Formats Supported [Apple]
• For you Photoshop users:
  Leopard Update Fixes Some Photoshop Problems [iSights]

Enjoy!

Leopard Update Fixes Some Photoshop Problems

According to Senior Photoshop Product Manager John Nack, the 10.5.2 update fixes some of the issues that have been plaguing Photoshop users. Among them:

• Typing values into the options bar in Photoshop (e.g. to set brush size or crop dimension) is no longer problematic.
• Prior to 10.5.2, some Apple apps (Finder, Aperture, iPhoto, Preview) could crash or fail to read some complex XMP metadata, such as Lightroom develop snapshots. That problem has been fixed.

Based on my own testing, I can say that the text entry problems appear to have been fixed.

Unfortunately, I can still consistently trigger the "flickering cursor" issue that prompted my original entry on the subject back in October.

Fixing The Air #2: The SuperDrive

The second most contentious design decision regarding Air relates to the elimination of the internal SuperDrive.

Now, this isn't new in the world of small computers. Many systems in the ultra-portable class have offloaded the CD/DVD drive to an external enclosure, or to a docking station.

So they have an excuse. But what matters here is not that they did so, but how they did so.

And managed to get almost everything wrong in the process.

Free Precious Disk Space With Xslimmer

If you're the proud owner of a MacBook Air, or if you have an older MacBook or iMac and you're running out of disk space, then there's one product you definitely need.

It's called Xslimmer.

It does one thing, and one thing only, and that's slimming down OS X applications so they take up less room on your drive.

And every megabyte you free up is a megabyte you can use for your own documents, photos, and music.

Fixing The Air #1: The Battery

One of the more contentious design decisions that Apple made concerning the Air relates to the non-user replaceable battery.

"True" road warriors, apparently, need to be able to swap out batteries so they can use their computers for at least 15-20 hours at a time. Perfect for those non-stop New York to New Zealand trips we all take so often.

True road warriors also don't seem to carry iPods and iPhones and any of the numerous other devices we mere mortals carry in order to while away the time.

Nope. They positively, absolutely need more notebook power.

So what are the options?

Apple vs NetFlix vs Everyone Else

Existing attempts to provide downloadable "on-demand" services have foundered in the marketplace, suffering from high prices, overly excessive DRM systems, lack of content, and in general, lack of convenience.

Further, most consumers already have access to some form of on-demand service via their existing digital cable/satellite set-top-boxes (STB), making it a three-legged race between competitive offerings.

Or four, if you consider the "pressure" placed on buyers to upgrade to Blu-Ray/HD DVD, or five, if we also toss streaming services like NBC Universal's Hulu into the mix.

So with eveyone attempting to grab market share and with existing competive services already in place, how will relative newcomers like Apple and NetFlix fare? What's their competitive advantage?

Solid State MacBook Airs Arriving

MacBook Airs with the 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD) have begun arriving in the United States.

My personal order was placed online the day of the MacWorld announcement, and after waiting nearly a year (time is relative) I finally received my shipment notice last Friday.

Armed with a Fed Ex tracking number, I watched with some amusement as my future Air-to-be was picked up in Shanghai, spent Saturday night seeing the sights in Anchorage, Alaska (are there any sights to see in Anchorage?), and in due course she landed here in Denver on Sunday. Quite the world traveler.

Then again, that's exactly what she's designed to do.

Adobe Discontinues Stock Photo Service

As of April 1, 2008, the Adobe Stock Photos royalty-free image service will be discontinued. According to Adobe, they made this decision in order to focus their efforts on other areas.

Translation: With iStockPhoto and all of the other inexpensive photo services out there, Adobe's offering simply wasn't competitive, and as such wasn't making enough money for Adobe to make doing it worthwhile. Here's the FAQ.

I, for one, won't miss it, primarily because the stock photo software insisted on creating directories in my Documents folder, regardless of whether I used the service or not. Delete them, and boom, they reappeared like cockroaches the next time you ran any Adobe program.

Talk about bad manners. After all, applications have the Library folder in which to put their trash. The Documents folder is mine. Hands off.

(Are you listening, Microsoft?)

Oh, and if you can't wait until April, uninstallers are available now.

Amazon and Audible and Apple. Oh My!

The acquisition of digital audiobook seller Audible by Amazon.com has sparked a bit of controversy and raised quite a few questions in the last few days.

In particular, will Amazon and Audible continue its relationship with Apple and iTunes? Will Apple see Amazon as a competitor in the digital space, and sever ties on its end? Will Audible drop its proprietary DRM scheme? And is Angie having Brad's love child?

While the answer to the last question is an unqualified "yes" (twins, in fact), the others are more difficult to interpret.

But let's give it a whirl, shall we?