Keynote Breakdown

[bryant]

1. Time Capsule is neat technology; if I hadn't bought external hard drives for our Macs for Time Machine already, I'd want it. It'd be nice to back up the laptops as well. But alas, I have already invested. Still, very cool, very well done. Will it serve as a print server and can you plug more hard drives into it?

2. New iPhone stuff is as per expectation. I like it. It's not mindblowing but it's cool.

3. Apple movie rental is hot. A little expensive on a per-movie basis; unless Blockbuster has gone up in cost, this is pricier. Are the operating expenses higher or lower than storefronts? I'm not sure. Still: hot, and it's in HD. The new Apple TV is a good match at a superb price -- note that it's significantly cheaper than a Blu Ray DVD player.

Amazon Unbox needs to announce HD format very soon.

4. MacBook Air is neat, but I don't need one. If I was still traveling a lot, I would, but I no longer wrestle a laptop every couple of months so the three pounds isn't significant to me. I may buy one the next time I upgrade my laptop. It's not the subcompact handheld notebook I was hoping for, more like the Eee PC, but that's OK. Maybe next year.

Comments

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Ooh... the new AppleTV has Blu Ray? Niiiice. Can't wait to check out the keynote and news when I get home.

[bryant]

No, no. But there are a lot of people who use their DVD players purely for renting movies. And... this is superior for movie rentals, albeit slightly more expensive.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

It's cheaper than NetFlix if you watch 3 movies a month or less on average, and delivery is faster. However, it probably doesn't have the library (and the bench depth) that NetFlix has. It should, however, be able to keep marginal titles "in print" for much longer periods.

[bryant]

Yeah. The catalog size will be interesting. Also, the 30 day span between DVD release and iTunes availability is kind of a painful thing.

Hm. Apple says 1K titles. Netflix does not have 1K HD titles, even if you combine HD DVD and Blu Ray.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

We're watching a lot of not-so-recent movies, so the overall catalog is more important to me than the HD catalog. We're also watching 720p on a 32" screen, so upfiltered SD isn't too bad, either.

[bryant]

Yah, same here. I want this to catch up on the classics I've missed as much as I want it for recent releases.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Oh, too bad. I was hoping for some sort of announcement on that front. I was hoping Sony'd partner with Apple to but blu ray into the boxes as a loss leader to get some market penetration and finally put HD DVD out of it's misery...

[bryant]

Nah. Sony hates Apple; Apple is a major competitor in the entertainment space. That's why Sony is only selling DRM-free music on Amazon -- not on iTunes.

[ckd]

Sony is completely MPD on this and so many other issues; they sell iPod-dock clock radios!

It seems pretty clear that the labels see Amazon as their only hope of getting Apple out of the online music gatekeeper role, and think that giving Amazon the non-DRM deal is the only way to make them strong enough to have a chance to do so. I think they're right about (a) and the jury's still out on whether (b) will do enough.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

It doesn't, actually. There's no hardware upgrade. It plays (some) movies rented from the iTMS in HD (720p) with 5.1 Dolby.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

I've been to the apple web page on Time Capsule...

Print server: yes.
Extra drives: yes.

What I don't know is "can I plug an extra drive into it and use it as a file server?"

[head58.livejournal.com]

Amazon needs to get their act together in the downloads department overall. The tivo compatibility for unbox is nice, but not having HD after this announcement today is going to kill them.

The pathetically limited selection of their mp3 downloads turned me off to them. I keep seeing announcements of major labels hopping on, but when I look I don't find anything by most artists I want there, so i look to yahoo music for my downloads. I think it would have been a much smarter move for Amazon to hold off a few months and launch with a bunch of major labels onboard. As it is, many folks (like myself) will check it out, find their selection wanting, then go elsewhere and not check back in a few months.

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a Two Minute Hate.

[bryant]

You're hating Amazon, so it's OK.

I think they have about a month to get HD out the door before it gets ugly for them. Interestingly, I found a comment from an Amazon engineer in March of last year claiming they'd have something in a couple of months. Soooo yeah.

[gentlyepigrams]

... which is really funny because I've actually bought some moderately obscure stuff from them (frex, a Leeb/Fulber project that released last year). But I guess I don't buy a lot of major new artists, just old fogey stuff from the 80s and new records by artists I already like.

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought about those book drives you got when I read about the Time Capsule. Oh well.

And I was hoping that the MacBook Air would be something even smaller than the Eee PC. Something more like the Sony VAIO micro PC that came out last year. It can handle a full version of Windows, yet is slightly larger than a chunky cell phone

[halfway-back.livejournal.com]

3. Apple movie rental is hot. A little expensive on a per-movie basis; unless Blockbuster has gone up in cost, this is pricier.

I saw that and thought "oh cool".

It may be a higher cost, but once you factor in the time it would take for you to drive, get the movie, stand in line (sometimes), leave, and come back, the cost to rent from Apple is cheaper. At least where I live.

[bryant]

Definitely. It's way worth it for me.

We currently use our TiVo for rentals (from Amazon) from time to time, but... it's not HD.

[halfway-back.livejournal.com]

Although, I was looking through iTunes and the selection was kinda sparse. So, I guess it will come as time goes by.