Despite the fact that Steve Jobs and other Apple execs like to refer to the Apple TV as a “hobby,” that’s always struck me as a rather inaccurate term. A hobby, after all, is something that you pursue out of passionate interest—two words you’d be hard-pressed to use in Apple’s attitude towards the little set-top box. Then again, I suppose referring to it as “a desperate attempt to extend their presence into the living room video market” is a bit wordy.
The Apple TV is, to my mind, Apple’s beachhead in TV-based entertainment. They want consumers to be aware that there is a living room component to the their media strategy, even if it’s not fully developed yet. However, having established that foothold, Apple’s still made only a small effort to expand their presence further. By all accounts, Apple TV Take Two, introduced at Macworld this year, is an improvement on the first iteration, offering movie rentals, a refined interface, and other major features. But what Take Two says to me most importantly, is that Apple TV Take Three is inevitable.
Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer clearly thinks this is the case too, but in his mind, this requires a hardware update.
Apple’s first step should be to throw a disc reader in there and make it a high-end DVD player replacement, something people will still need/use for years, for $199 or less. Then, get a good deal from Sony (SNE) to offer a premium Blu-ray edition for cheap — $399 tops; ideally $299 or less. And now you have a much, much bigger potential market than if Apple TV were just an iTunes player.
I’ve long stood by the idea that Apple envisions the Apple TV as a gateway to the future of television-based entertainment, whereas incorporating a physical media reader would be a concession to the past. But given the apparently low adoption rates of the Apple TV, there is some merit in Frommer’s argument that what the Apple TV needs is a kick in the pants from the outside world.
Continue reading "Apple TV Take Two and call me in the morning"
My not-so-secret shame as a Mac user is my extreme dislike for both iCal and Mail. I just can't use either application for its intended purpose (though admittedly I am horrible at keeping track of my life in general, so I really can't blame iCal for that).
One major gripe I have with iCal is solved with a cool preference pane by the folks at FlexGames called FlexCal. FlexCal makes entering events and to dos as easy as hitting a user-configurable hotkey. The key combo of your choice brings up a quick entry screen (hitting your hotkey again toggles between the event entry form and the to-do entry form): enter your hot date and you're good to go. FlexCal lets you enter a due date as either text or by choosing from a calendar, and it even lets you set a default alarm on all entries. All of this for the low, low price of free.
[via WebWorkerDaily]
This just in from Steve "I just made $1.35 mil" Ballmer: Apple will lose the smartphone "war" just like it lost the OS war: "If you want to reach more than [the leading 30% smartphone share Nokia currently controls], you have to separate the hardware and software in the platform," he said at an event at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, Calif. earlier this week.
In other words, separate the hardware and the software and reap the rewards. Right?
Wrong. Because despite the fact that Microsoft has huge market share, it's clear that Apple is not only more innovative as a company, but also makes more in spite of selling less. Apple's market capitalization ($93+ billion) is a little less than half of Microsoft's ($228+ billion), despite having a small market share in the OS, hardware, and mobile sectors.
As El Jobso put it himself a couple of years ago: "Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's or Mercedes's or Porsche's in the automotive market. What's wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?"
What indeed?
Get ready to party like it’s 1997—AOL has shredded the space-time continuum to bring us AIM for Mac 1.0 Beta 1. If the Wikipedia timeline is correct, that makes this the first version of the AIM client for OS X since 2004, when AOL released version 4.7. Alright, guys, with four years under your belt, this better be good.
In the meantime, most users have jumped ship for the likes of iChat and Adium, and the influence of those clients clearly shows in AIM’s new UI. The real question is whether or not AIM can steal users from those two clients. In order to do so, it’ll need to provide some pretty compelling functionality that can’t be had by the competition. So far, the only thing it offers that the others don’t seems to be integration with AOL Mail, which may draw in some users, but isn’t exactly mass appeal.
Having played around with the app a little bit, I’ve already discovered a couple of missing features that take it out of the running for me: for example, there’s no support for logging into more than one account at a time, nor does it integrate with OS X’s Address Book. This is only be a beta at the moment, of course, but it faces stiff competition: without the mass customization possible with Adium or the slick polish of iChat’s interface, I don’t think AIM’s going to be picking up a lot of users anytime soon.
[via Infinite Loop]
Everybody knows the story of how Steves Jobs and Wozniak founded the iconic computer company that we spend every waking moment thinking about. But how much do you really know about the two Steves? If you’re interested in brushing up on your Steve-ology, then you’re in luck, because they’re certainly a subject of much discussion.
Over at Esquire, Tom Junod has a lengthy, eloquent piece about Steve Jobs, focusing heavily on Steve’s identity—who he is and why he is. From the get go, the piece might seem a little dour—the first line is a forthright “One day, Steve Jobs is going to die.”—but it’s still a worthwhile read if you’re looking to glean insight into the man and myth of the Apple co-founder and CEO.
The BBC’s piece on The Other Steve is perhaps not so entrancingly written, but it’s still interesting for Woz fans, talking frankly about how he wanted to be an engineer and not a boss. As usual, Woz talks about his passions for engineering, gadgetry, and education.
It’s always interesting for me to see how dissimilar these two guys are—and yet without either of them, Apple as we know it wouldn’t exist today. Just goes to show you the kind of perfect storm conditions needed to create something insanely great.
Apple’s stock took a big hit yesterday, dropping to a 52 week low. After so much growth for so long, it may seem strange, but it comes directly after Morgan Stanely and RBC downgraded Apple’s stock due to lowered consumer spending. Less iPods sold means less success.
Kathryn Huberty of Morgan Stanley downgrades in large part because the most growth in computer sales is in the sub $1k laptop product range. Guess what? Apple don’t play there. I’ve said it before, Apple doesn’t want to play there. There’s questionable profit margins and zero customer loyalty.
Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets has a similar recommendation in that he thinks that a lower cost iPhone or iPod could turn things around. In other words, he thinks it’s a good idea to gut their current profit model by lowering the price on a product that’s been halfed already and slashing prices on a product line that starts at a mere $49.
Somehow I’ve got to believe that Steve knows a bit better than these two.
As much as I enjoy cooking, I don’t get a chance to do it as much as I’d like. I’m not sure what technology can do to free up my busy schedule, but it can potentially help out with culinary mechanics. Or, if it can if it’s Acacia Tree Software’s new app, SousChef.
Think of SousChef as a Delicious Library that’s extra delicious, because it’s all about food. Not only does it store a list of recipes searchable by name, category, and ingredient, but you can organize and rate them as well. Plus, being a spiffy computer program, it can easily help you double, triple, or quadruple recipes and store a list of ingredients you always have on hand, so it knows which recipes you can make. Best of all, there’s a fullscreen “cooking” mode, which displays the ingredients and instructions in high-contrast large print, making it easy to follow the instructions from across the room. It’ll even let you control scrolling via a remote or your Mac’s speech recognition capability.
But the real joy of food is sharing it, and SousChef certainly doesn’t fall down in that regard either. Besides pulling recipes from other SousChef users, you can easily mail, print, or blog about your recipes. And SousChef will even let you import recipes that you find on the web, intelligently integrating them into your library. Given all that it can do, the price of $30 seems pretty reasonable, no?
Those guys over at the Google Mac Playground are just having way too much fun with the slides and monkey bars and merry-go-rounds. Now they’ve put together a new app for those that love their geometric images. And really, isn’t that pretty much everybody under the age of seventy?
Top Draw combines the might of CoreImage with the slick dexterity of Quartz to create crazy geometric patterns for you on the fly. Over twenty-five built-in scripts generate a variety of effects that are too snazzy for me to describe. The application itself lets you view and edit the scripts, which are based on the JavaScript language, so you can even create your own cool effects.
For Mac fans, the package comes with a menubar application that lets you immediately apply images generated with Top Draw as your desktop background. You can set up the app to rotate at a set interval, or just give you a new pattern every time you startup or wake from sleep. There’s even a screensaver module that will show you the scripts in action.
As with most of Google’s projects, Top Draw is a free download. That’s “Plasma” on my desktop there—pretty sweet, no?
[via Lifehacker]
