19 posts tagged “apple”

"It puzzles me why the entire technology industry is fascinated with Apple. Granted, it is one of the few companies in Silicon Valley that aren’t really feeling the effects of the bad economy in the states right now, but just over a decade ago, most of the tech industry where ready to write Apple off, sell it off back to the shareholders. Then enter the Redux of Steve Jobs. He turns the company around, brings the iMac to Market and then the iPod. Suddenly Apple is the darling of the tech media, with it’s mysterious events, and hyped products. Granted, Apple does have some amazing products. The new Macbooks look amazing, and the iPod and iPhone have changed the music and mobile phone industries. However, in Apple’s huge amount of About Mindshare and expanding marketshare is twofold. First, Steve Jobs, is by the most Private CEO of any Fortune 500 company. He’s not in the public eye, unless of course, it’s for medical reasons, or he’s giving a keynote. Compared to Microsoft or someone like Redhat, Jobs is very secretive. And I think that’s been his strategy for a long time at Apple. If the competitors don’t see what your doing, they can’t compete with you. That’s why Apple is always 5 steps ahead of the curve when it comes to product development. However, being 5 steps ahead isn’t always a good thing for consumers, and because of the secrecy, Apple rarely, if ever justifies it’s product design decisions. And that is a big deal, because unlike HP, Dell and others, where you might have some expectation of product revision. With Apple’s secrecy, you have no clue. And that, is Apple’s underlying weakness. "

(Via .)

Ah WWDC. It's when all of the Apple Geeks converge on Moscone west for the biggest Apple developer conference of the year. And this year, as expected, His Steveness demoed 10 of the major features in the upcoming release. A lot of it is much needed improvements to things like the Finder as well as a new Unified look which means no more brushed metal in one app and aqua in other. Coverflow has come to the Finder to provide for an easier way to look through files and the like. Looks pretty cool. I'm kinda glad I held off getting a Mac. So when I actually do, I can skip Tiger and go for Leopard. Shiny.......... Anyway, nothing earth shattering, but still fun. Anyway, getting my new Hardware tomorrow. Bonus: Tomorrow's my BIRTHDAY! Yay Hazza!

This is a bit delayed, but yesterday was interesting. Two of my favorite companies, ATI and Apple released new/updated hardware. First was Apple. They came out and updated the processors in it's Macbook line, bumping the low end to 2 Ghz and the mid and high end lines to 2.16 Ghz, matching that of the low end Macbook Pro and the 20 and 24 inch iMacs. That's the good news. Bad news is that you still have the same old Intel GMA 950 inside, which put's a stop to any series gaming on the Macbook. I mean, come on Apple, we really didn't need the processor update, if you really want to make us happy, put a graphics card then there. It doesn't even have to be a good one. Maybe just an X1400 or something, I don't care, just let us use T&L and all those shiny effects.That's no. 1. No. 2 is that ATI/AMD rolled out there high end Direct 10 GPU's yesterday, much to the glee of ATI's fanboy's such as myself. I'm waiting for the midrange HD 2600 to come out to consider my options. I was looking around at the new nvidia 8600 GT that just came out a few weeks ago. All I can say is shiny...... And since nvidia seems to have it's act together better then ATI does, I'm tempted to jump ship and buy the 8600 GT along with a new PSU next month. Ah well, we'll see.  

 So today was Apple's quarterly conference call and by all indications, Apple is still growing. In fact, profits where up 100% from last quarter. And the Mac and iPod are both gaining marketshare. Mac sales  grew by 36% shipping 1.5 million Macs while the iPod gained 24% shipping over 10 million iPods. All I can say is WOW. Apple is growing by leaps and bounds. I predict that this is the begining of the second golden age. The first golden age was in the 1980's when Steve Jobs was in the hot seat and they invented the Macintosh. Things went downhill from there with CEO's like Sculley, Spindler and Amelio took the company on a downward slope. With the return of Steve Jobs, things changed for the better. The iPod solved cashflow problems while OS X gave Apple hope in the OS market after a few embarrasing few years holding onto OS 9. Now Apple's on a roll. The consumer market, after shunning Mac's for years are starting to see that they can actually be decent computers. You can credit Intel and Steve Jobs as well as Jonathon Ive for creating beautiful, fast, functional computers. Now, the Company is better off than it was in it's short history. Aside from a few minor technical glitches, they're on track to increase marketshare. I plan on buying a Mac in the next few years and I plan on convincing my parents to invest in one as well when they buy they're next computer.
Just watch, Apple will outlast Apple, HP, and all of the PC manufacturers.

    Finally! These past few days have been amazing. Warm, sunny, almost July like. It was 19 (Celsius) yesterday and was 20. Much better than a few weeks ago when we had snow. It's bee absouletly beautiful and I'm enjoying every minute of it. It's times like these that I think I should have bought a laptop. Granted, I wouldn't have had the specs that I have in my destkop, but it would have been more convenient in terms of mobility. I also spent some time tonight laying out my long terms goals for the next 5 years. Mostly, it involves making sure that I make deadlines (scholarships and the like) as well putting in place a schedule for purchasing my Macbook and a upgrade cycle. The first phase will be next year with the replacement of the CPU and GPU and possibly some more RAM. This will be followed in late 2008 with the purchase of a Macbook. Finally, in 2009, I will invest in a completely new computer system, weather AMD or Intel, PC or Macintosh, I cannot tell yet. By that time, we should be moving to 6 cores per chip or whatever and software should have caught up. I do not intend to go more than 3 years without upgrading my system, since the technology changes so rapidly. And heck, I might even build my own system. I was a tad chicken this time. Anyway, other than that, my life has been pretty uneventful over the past few weeks, I hope all my friends and neighbours are doing well!

    So after much speculation, and amid much fanfare, EMI announced that today, it would be offering "premium" downloads with double the bit-rate (128 KB to 256 KB) as well as no DRM restrictions. And guess what? It's only .30 more cents. Can you count me in? Heck yes! For .30 cents I'll pay for a DRM free track. And plus all of my EMI music that I currently have can be upgraded to "Premium" status for just .30 cents. Most of the music I listen to is under EMI, although not directly. Capitol Records, Sparrow Records and Tooth and Nail Records are all labels that I listen to, so I will probably spend .30 cents. I just did a calculation and I'll spend about 23 bucks converting all my music to DRM free.
    In other news, apparently the CRTC wants to increase regulation of the internet. It's being pressured by actor unions as well as the copyright industry and such. I have three words for the CRTC: No.Frickin.Way. I can understand how you want to regulate television and radio, however the internet is like neither of those. It's an open network, international. You can't just say "Okay we're going to make these people make Canadian Content x percentage of the stuff on the internet. It doesn't work that way. It's not run by the big media companies. Podcasting as well as Video Podcasting and Vlogging do not (for the most part, recognize the regualtory power of the CRTC. I mean they can try and enforce but, it's like saying that since your not Canadian you have to stop producing your podcast as it does not conform to regulation x. It doesn't work like that anymore. You can read the full article here. I'm all for regulating the airwaves, but not the tubes. The tubes should not be interfered way. No siree Bob. And I don't want "Bandwidth Tax" to fuel "Cultural funding" either. Stop messing with the tubes, people, let them be.   

    If we look back 10 years ago in 1997 it was the beging in of the Rivival of Apple, the introduction of the Pentium II, the release of Windows 98.... Fast forward 10 years, you have Steve Jobs having begun the second golden age of Apple, Linux is more prominent then ever, and the Pentium architecture has been superseded by the new Core Architecture. Windows 98 has been surpassed by Windows ME, 2000 and XP and now where on to Vista. Chips are smaller and faster, computers are prettier (no longer Biege Boxes) etc.
    But my question is this: What will the the world be like in 10 years? Intel promises to have an 80 cores on a chip by 2011, but will the keyboard and mouse survive that long? As we see in the books that predict the future, voice recognition is the medium of choice for the future. But what about going farther? Computers are getting smaller and smaller and biotech is getting more and more advanced? Can you imagine cybernetics? Without any sensory input you can control a computer with your brain. Can you imagine that? You go your giant computer screen and think "Turn On". The computer turns on. You think "Let's check Email" The email client pop's up. Can you imagine that? It's like the Borg. Except not. Now we have computers that go up to a maximim of 3 Ghz. What in 10 years? 20 Ghz? 40 Ghz? A Teraflop? I can see the monikor now "A supercomputer in every home". Robots have become a commodity. They shop for you, clean for you, do all the nasty stuff you don't want to do. Artificial intelligence is now a reality. And that's just in 10 years. What about in 20,30, 40 even 50 years?
    Just my thoughts on the future?

So the iCEO doesn't like DRM after all. A letter posted on Apple.com today speaks volumes more then what's on the page. It tu rn

s out even though Apple uses DRM, Steve Jobs (who is probably one of the most famous music fanatics in the tech industry.) says that if consumers could the "Big 4" (EMI, BMG, Universal and  Warner) to not use DRM on it's content, Apple would embrace it "in a heartbeat". Apparently the only way that the record labels would put the music on iTunes would be to DRM it. At least Apple is a bit sensitive to consumer needs and doesn't DRM it to death (like Microsoft, Real and Sony.) So will Apple get rid of Fairplay? Not likely. Unless the there is a massive revolution in the content industry, Apple is not likely to drop Fairplay. and the entire DRM thing. I don't think Mr. Jobs want to be stuck with no content on one of the major points that made Apple profitable again (iTunes and iPod) I think the only that would allow for a massive change in the DRM schemes is a complete and total consumer rebellion against DRM. Where starting to see the begining of that now with the rejection of Microsoft's Zune device. It might take some time but I believe that sooner rather then later, DRM will go the way of the dodo bird. I'll look back on this later in life when DRM is gone and say "I remember when we had DRM on our music and we could do certain things with our content. I'll be happy when that comes.

 Although this is the month of the year where I have to be working my butt off, January is also an exciting month in the tech world. It's probably the most exciting month of the year, due to both CES and Macworld being held in the same week this year. Steve Jobs is scheduled to give his traditional "Steve-Note" at Macworld at 9:00 A.M. PST (Noon EST). The most likely announcements are a release date for Leopard, a new iPod, an Eight-Core Mac Pro and possibly a "true video iPod". The iPhone was highly anticipated to be released at Macworld, however Apple currently does not have a carrier deal with any major American carriers like Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile and the like. It's unclear if Apple will sell the phone internationally. However it is clear that Apple is on track to release some exciting products this year.
    At CES one of the major annoucments that LG has pre-announced is a dual-format HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player. Now that's news. This goes back to the entire VHS vs Betamax wars of the 1980's. Betamax failed then and, in my opinion, Blu-Ray will fail now. Why? Because the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market, the Playstation 3 costs more than a standard alone HD-DVD Player. A standalone Blu-Ray player, the only one on the market, which is currently made by Samsung, costs twice as much. That's one reason, there are many others, needless to say, I'm a supporter of HD-DVD.
    This is going to be an exciting week. I'll have a post about the announcements at Macworld and the major ones at Macworld.

     Before I left for school this morning, I caught something on Neowin.net. The french parliment, acting on a study conducted by a research firm has decided to switch from Windows XP to Linux in June of next year. Woot! Score one for the open source movement! I think the move is for the better as Linux is much more secure and can be customized to the needs of the individual organization or user. Whereas with Windows you have only a set amount of options that you can use for certain things. And there are only 2 editions, Home and Professional. With Linux there are litterally hundreds if not thousands of versions of Linux, each of them unique. It's like a person. You could attribute a Linux distro to a person because it one is unique in at least one way, much like every person on the earth. I know I'm getting a bit philosophical but eh, if it works.
    Second and last thing: This was mentioned on TWiT today. It's a spec commerical for the iPhone. And unless they guy said it was a fake, you wouldn't know. For those of you who don't know this entire iPhone goes back quite a while to before the turn of the century when Steve Jobs came back to Apple. It's only gained this much attention due to the sucess of both the iPod and the Mac.  Personally, I don't have any real interest in the iPhone, but it looks like a sleek device. Being Canadian, I personally like the Blackberry, but the iPhone does look appealing to me.This is assuming I have money for a Cell phone. I'll try and post later when I get back from play practice.