Thanks, Bill!
January 06, 2010, 1:48pm Comments and Permalink
ephemer.us
Sean Fitzroy's blog of Internet awesomeness.
ephemerus |iˈfem(ə)rəs|
existing for only a day, daily
Late Latin, derived from the Greek ephemeros, ἐφήμερος (for a day ('ephemeral'); diurnal)
Steve Jobs in Boston - 1997 Macworld
From Fortune’s CEO of the Decade story. Can anyone tell what road that is? Boylston near Hynes, maybe?
November 10, 2009, 11:50am Comments and Permalink
Smoking section?
Is it me, or does the Logan 9/11 memorial resemble a “designated airport smoking area” crossed with an Apple Store?
September 11, 2009, 11:28pm Comments and Permalink
NYT: Phone Users Love the Device, but Hate Its Slowness
AT&T has an awesome looking “command center” for a company that can’t seem to roll out MMS messaging on time.
September 03, 2009, 11:14am Comments and Permalink
(via gradontripp)
Want to stalk your ex? There’s an app for that.
Reblogged from Grumblr.
August 29, 2009, 6:04pm Comments and Permalink
This kid shot his own video for a Black Eyed Peas song at the Apple Store. Reminds me of Spike Jones. I love it. Too bad nobody started dancing behind him.
boom boom pow (via BoingBoing)
August 17, 2009, 1:41pm Comments and Permalink
iPhone HD Video Downloads over WiFi and 3G: Why Now? And What Took So Long?
Some quick notes on why I think the new iPhone will have HD video downloading over both WiFi and 3G, and will probably shoot 720p video too.
Video Downloads to iPhones and iPods Over WiFi
There’s most likely some renegotiation required with content owners for Apple / iTunes to do delivery to mobile devices. Apple is all about a consistent user experience and wants its entire video library available from day one. Fortunately, content owners are now realizing how little they’re making from Netflix and Hulu streaming (I heard that the “Crawford” documentary only made around $1100 from Hulu). This realization should speed negotiations along — particularly for rentals, which some content owners seem to have been reluctant to allow.
Video Downloads to iPhones Over 3G
Apple has intentionally made WiFi video downloads a not-very-closely-gaurded secret. Apple then leveraged the resulting speculation to negotiate downloads over 3G with AT&T, who simply wants a cut of the 3G sales. Exactly how much is what’s being negotiated, specifically, Apple doesn’t want to be forced to raise prices for mobile downloads and potentially held out to illustrate to AT&T that consumers will simply use a ton of bandwidth streaming exactly the same content from other video services, from which AT&T will get no cut. Probably the same strategy Apple used when negotiating music sales over 3G.
In response AT&T is semi-publicly discussing the idea of capped rate plans. I’m guessing that AT&T will then exclude the bandwidth used for iTunes music and movie downloads from the capped rate plan limits in exchange for Apple cutting them in for a larger percentage of those sales.
Why Not Sooner?
The iPhone already syncs plays iTunes TV shows and movie rentals and sales. The over-the-air downloading and reverse-sync infrastructure is already there, so why not do this a year ago? Simply, most current iPhones don’t have 1 - 2GB free to download a single movie, let alone multiple movies and TV shows. Apple wants movie downloads to partially drive adoption of larger capacity iPhones so they’re waiting until the larger capacity 32GB iPhone is available.
HD From the Get Go
Apple wants to offer 720p HD downloads to the iPhone out of the gate — especially since Microsoft already announced this feature for the Zune. Like the Zune, this will also require a separate iPhone HD Dock to playback HD to a TV.
A Better HD Solution
Apple’s current two-file HD download system is an inelegant wasteful hack, and while some companies might be okay with that, Apple isn’t.
Apple wants to offer a single video download file (especially on the space-limited iPhones and iPod Touches) for HD content. The current HD + SD two file approach is kludgey. Going forward (and assuming you have the *new* iPhone), you buy SD, you get SD, you buy HD you get HD.
If you have an older iPhone, maybe you can only buy SD on the phone. You buy HD on your computer, you now have the option to download an SD file for older iPods/iPhones, or maybe iTunes just downloads the SD version automatically if (and only if) you try to sync an HD purchase or rental to an older iPod or iPod.
FYI: H.264 is meant to be resolution / complexity-scaleable using the same high-res file. So depending on Apple’s decoding method, it shouldn’t use any more processor power to playback an HD file scaled down to fit the iPhone screen
The Name
The think Apple might go with “iPhone HD” (despite the fact that Microsoft named the new “Zune HD” similarly). “iPhone Video” could work but sounds dated since the “iPod Video” was years ago and the iPhone already has a better implementation of those video features.
If it’s “iPhone HD” it’s be a safe bet that the new camera will shoot 720p video as well.
We’ll soon find out!
June 08, 2009, 12:45pm Comments and Permalink
I don’t always agree with Seth, but I almost always agree with John Gruber agreeing with Seth. Apple is a premium brand, not a luxury brand. In technology, premium scales, luxury doesn’t.
May 18, 2009, 5:12pm Comments and Permalink
