DISQUS

I've been using Candybar for years. It keeps getting better and better with every version, too.

I agree, this is better, but still meh. It's at least funnier than the first one. But isn't this a bit long for a commercial? Are they cutting this down for prime time, or are they buying entire commercial blocks for it?

I still wonder why Microsoft is running brand awareness ads. Seems pretty silly to me. They should at least be tying these into Vista somehow. Maybe they hope that if people think Bill Gates is a nice guy, they'll stop thinking of Microsoft as the ultimate evil empire. That could work, I guess.

It kills me whenever Apple adds new features in the wrong products for me. I'd kill to have the Genius feature on the Apple TV and on my iPod Classic, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen, at least not on the Classic.

Genius would be perfect in my car, where I could just pick one song and let the iPod figure out my mood from there. But it's useless within 4, 8, or even 32 GB memory constraints. My library is over 60 GB, and that's just for music.

I wouldn't even mind if they gave Genius to just the new Classic, and not last year's. I'd sell my current 160 GB Classic and get the 120 GB, even though I'd be taking a slight hit on the storage. Especially if they put the black scroll wheel on the silver Classic, which looks so cool on the new nano.

It would also be great to have Genius on my Apple TV, which is hooked up to my enormous Terabyte Media drive. I have even more music there, and for a party, it would be great to select one song and let the shuffling be directed in the same vein, rather than completely randomly across the many different types of music in my library. Sure, I could create playlists for this kind of thing, but they need to be manually updated, maintained, etc.

Wow. I really can't figure it out, either. Are they trying once again to do something Apple would do, really, really poorly?

The ad seems centered around brand awareness, not even product awareness. Are there actually people on the planet who don't know what Microsoft is? I thought they were trying to promote Vista. You'd think there'd be at least a mention of something Vista related in there somewhere.

I assume this ad was done by a major ad firm. And I also assume they got paid close to what Seinfeld got for this. Talk about a multi-million dollar waste. Bill could have saved some more kids in Africa with that money. Seriously.

For me, the real tragedy of this movie is that they keep forcing references to all the best lines from Get Shorty. Rather than coming up with anything new that's funny, the movie just regurgitates, and and result isn't funny at all.

For those who haven't seen it, Get Shorty, the original story of Chili Palmer, is one of the best mob comedies ever made. Go rent it now.

Watching this movie just made me wish I were watching Get Shorty for the thousandth time instead. It's inferior in every way imaginable. Talk about a sequel that never should have been made. This one is as bad as City Slickers 2. And that says a lot. Believe me.

I almost hope there is no MacBook Pro upgrade, as I'm not quite ready to spend the money on a new model, but it does seem to be that time. I think the outer case is definitely due for an overhaul; while I agree there won't be any touchscreen or other crazy features, I do expect the pro notebooks to finally get a new look, more akin to the MacBook Air (dark, inset keyboard, larger trackpad, maybe slightly thinner at the edges, etc.) It's been several years, after all, since the pro portables have been updated in the looks department (since the G4 days, in fact), and consolidating into one keyboard style across the line of notebooks would save money. The MacBook Pros are the only Macs left without the new separated-key style keyboards, after, all.

Oh, come on. It wasn't quite that bad. Okay, maybe it was. But I didn't feel like it was a waste of $0.99.

Once again I find myself agreeing with you. Yours and my hesitation bodes well for Apple and other download services. If your feelings on the matter are typical for most users (and I suspect they are) then Blu Ray will have another year of slow adoption despite having no real competition. That should give download companies more time to improve their libraries of both rentals and purchases.

How many Blu Ray titles are currently available? Last I heard it was only 350 or so. Apple already has a hundred HD titles, and will probably have two hundred by year's end. If we finally get some improved infrastructure with more bandwidth (FiOS, or whatever) downloads could really kill Blu Ray before it ever really gets off the ground.

I've already jumped on an iPhone, but I agree that a 32 GB 3G will be enough to make me jump again. The 16GB option didn't do much for me, since I don't really use my iPhone as my primary iPod, anyway. Just for the occasional video on a flight, since the screen is so much better than on my Classic.

I'm not positive that Apple will put 32 GB into the first 3G iPhone, though. Seems like that would bump the price up a little too much and cannibalize Touch sales a bit much, too. I expect a 64GB Touch by the Holiday shopping season, though, so maybe a 32 GB iPhone would fit in there. Who knows? Either way, Apple's going to get more of my money before year's end, as always.

Oh, and don't try to cancel a gym membership or close a bank account. Both of those usually require certified letters. Insane.

Ever try to close a credit card account? Can't be done online. You need to talk to a person, so that they can spend a half hour trying to talk you out of it. I had one person actually suggest that I should keep the credit line open, just in case I ended up with some sort of debilitating injury and needed to pay unexpected medical bills. Was that a veiled threat? Or was he just wishing harm on me for canceling? Yikes. No wonder the average American has 9 credit card accounts. It's too hard to close the ones you no longer want.

I was surprised earlier this week when I cancelled my Netflix account. Surprised because it was so easy, that is. For starters, the "cancel my account" button was easy to find on my account page, where it belongs. Sure, they offered me a few "are you sure?" screens, and made one attempt to get me to just downgrade to a cheaper plan, but ultimately, it was easy to brush past that and actually cancel.

They give you 30 days to return whatever movies you still have out. They keep your queue set up for one year, just in case you change your mind. End of story. It's actually a good option if you just want to set your account on hold for a few months, if you're going to be traveling, etc.

I think some of these other companies could take a lesson from that. Sure, I'm no longer giving Netflix my money, but like you said, at least we parted without leaving a sour taste in my mouth, which makes me far more likely to consider returning.

"On Amazon, the same album is a dollar cheaper, at $8.91. Individual songs are $.99. Amazon also eschews DRM and offers a high bit rate MP3. There’s no digital booklet. So Amazon’s version of the same album was essentially on par with iTunes, and since it’s MP3 with no DRM it would be playable in iTunes and on an iPod."

I see what you mean by "on par" with iTunes, considering that you don't get the digital booklet on Amazon. But I actually find the booklet to be worth that extra dollar and then some. I also find AAC to be a superior codec to MP3, but that's a long argument for another day.

Having said all that, I, too, think that Amazon has finally set up a store that at least competes with iTunes and even bests it in some cases. This will keep Apple honest in the long run, so I'm glad both stores exist. You lose a little in convenience having to move your downloads over to the iTunes and then to the iPod, but overall, Amazon has put together a great music store.

My issue is with the variable pricing model. If iTunes were to fall apart, leaving only Amazon with no competition, I suspect there would be far fewer $8.91 albums and far more $14.00 and up albums in a matter of months. This is the sticking point between Universal/NBC and Apple right now. The labels want to control the pricing, which historically has always led to higher, not lower, prices.

So the bottom line is that I want both iTunes and Amazon to continue to succeed. That's the best way to keep the innovation happening and the prices down.

Ahh. Another thing to keep in mind: If you use the Apple TV setting in Handbrake, your files will look as good as they can on the Apple TV, but they won't be transferable to an iPod. If you want maximum portability, use the iPod Hi-Res preset; that way, it'll still look great on the Apple TV, but it will also be portable for all your travel needs. Otherwise, you'll have to convert individual files again next time you want to take some movies or shows on a trip (which takes several hours for each file).

I've been experimenting lately with the settings to see if I can eek a bit more bitrate out of Handbrake while still getting compatibility across devices. But the iPod Hi-res settings are the place to start.

Oops. Just saw your little plug for Lostify. Does basically what Parsley does. I'll have to try that out.

Trust me, it's worth it to use something like that all the time, rather than adding metadata in iTunes.

By the way, I usually name my files as I'm ripping them in Handbrake. Makes it easier to find them in iTunes after the import. By default, iTunes will give each file a name equivalent to its name in the Finder.

And don't forget to use the Queue feature in Handbrake. Set up an entire disk worth of episodes and go to bed. Or better yet, use something like Mac The Ripper to rip multiple DVDs into raw digital files, and then Queue it all up in Handbrake and let it run for a day or so. I've done entire seasons in one big go that way.

A tip about the TV/Movie/Music Video drop down list for TV show files: Unlike almost every other metadata you add in iTunes, that particular one (for some unknown reason) doesn't get embedded into the file itself, but only into your iTunes Library file. This is a problem if you ever have to move that file to another iTunes library, or if you move all your files to a newer, larger capacity hard drive (as I did recently). Suddenly, all of my TV shows (several seasons of several of them) were changed back to movies, and I was facing changing each file one by one (because, for yet another strange reason, iTunes won't let you edit that particular piece of data on multiple files at once) back to a TV show. Huge pain in the butt.

I managed to find a little freeware program called "Parsley is Atomically Delicious" (weird name, I know) that will write that TV Show metadata into any MP4 file for you, just as it is with purchased iTunes files. So in the future, if you import that file into another iTunes library (which you will end up doing eventually, believe me), it will remain a TV show. It's a pretty kludgy little app, but trust me, it's worth it. If you do it one show at a time, it will be far less painful than spending three days doing hundreds of TV show files later.

Why Handbrake doesn't offer to embed that data for you at the time of encoding is beyond me. That would be my top feature request.

If you think about it, you really don't want a power button on the Apple TV. Turning it off would mean needing to reboot every time you came back to watch something. People watching TV aren't accustomed to waiting two minutes or so before they can start watching.

Also, a powered off Apple TV wouldn't sync as seamlessly. So if your computer is upstairs, say, and you bought something on iTunes to watch later, you would download it to the computer, but it wouldn't sync until you went downstairs and turned the Apple TV back on. Once again, you're waiting for something that you're used to doing instantly.

So sleep mode makes a lot more sense than an on/off switch. I wouldn't worry about the heat or the power consumption. Mine has been on for almost a year without any issues or noticable power cost increase.

I LOVE Summer Glau (Firefly, baby); admittedly, I'd have no interest in this show whatsoever if she weren't in it. But I did download the free pilot to see what it was all about. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet, though. Your assessment seems about spot on with my expectations. I'll let you know if those expectations are met after having seen it.

I've never liked the John Connor character. In every one of the movies, he seemed pretty lame to me. Terminator has always been about Sarah, which is where I think this show gets it right and the third movie got it wrong.

I agree that the whole thing feels a bit too limiting. I didn't know about the one-way, one-time only transfer from computer to iPod. That kinda sucks, if you want to start a movie on the iPod, say during a flight, but then decide to finish it on your computer.

Question: If you rent a movie but don't start watching (giving you 30 days to start) and then push that movie to the iPod, does it start the 24-hour thing right then and there? Or does that start when you start watching it on the iPod? How does the iPod know to start the clock without an Internet connection? If you don't sync your iPod for another thirty days, does the movie refuse to play?

Not being able to transfer between the Apple TV and iPods or computers is even worse. You have to decide from the get-go where you want to watch, which is very un-Apple.

Another huge confusion is figuring out which movies are only rentable, which ones are rentable or purchaseable, and which ones are only for purchase. Way too confusing for the average user. Apple should at least create a rental section of the iTunes Store, so you at least know which ones can be rented without clicking them all one by one.

I also found a few movies which were both for rent and sale, but only the rent price showed up. Next to the "buy" button was blank. Mystery price? Very odd.

I suspect Apple will figure most of these these things out soon, and hopefully talk the studios down from the overbearing restrictions eventually.

The Apple TV software update is supposed to arrive in two weeks, by the way. For the person who asked earlier.

I'm not shocked about the price on the Air, either. The components speak for themselves. They had to lobby Intel to make a special version of the Core 2 Duo. They had to design and produce a unique system on a board that is tiny, and can't be used for any other computer. It's much like the round motherboard on the Flower-pot iMacs of old. Cool, but costly.

Bottom line: you always pay a premium for portability. Period. There really is no way around that.

For those talking about dimensions on the MacBook Air, I encourage you to take a look at it in person. It is noticeably smaller and lighter than a Macbook. The reduction in weight and thickness will make a difference to a lot of people when carrying it in a backpack. It's not EXACTLY the same dimensions, in any case.

This coming from someone who is happy to tote a 17" MacBook Pro everywhere I go. Still, it's smaller than you think, and it's smaller without compromising screen real estate or full-sized keys. That's pretty essential. I think Apple would make a large Newton-like touch-screen device running the iPhone interface before they'd make a smaller keyboard or screen on a laptop.

Regarding the $20 iPod Touch situation: The software update giving you all the new features found on the iPhone is actually free on the iPod Touch. It's the extra 5 apps that are $20. You can do one without the other. While I think those apps should have been on the Touch in the first place, that is slightly better than many are making it sound.

I'm not thinking WiMax, but "There's something in the air" could refer to the ultra portable (and maybe even the whole MacBook Pro lineup) getting some sort of ubiquitous Web access. Maybe a combination of WiFi and 3G, so that you'd almost always be able to connect on the road. It would be truly remarkable if that 3G access were free, like it is on the Kindle. Combine that with Back to My Mac, and suddenly not having a hard drive wouldn't be so bad. Leave the big files at home. Sync PDA/type data automatically and wirelessly with your home computer in the background. Stream everything else.

Or maybe Apple will just be giving all its iPhone and portable Mac customers free access to all of AT&Ts WiFi spots. That would be nice, too.

Or maybe it's something completely different. I do love how those banners tend to spark all the last-minute crazy rumors every year.

You can also set up just about any email program to get IMAP GMail too, now. They quietly added that option a while ago. Makes my life a lot easier, since I check on both my laptop and my iPhone.

Note: On the iPhone, you have to set it up as a generic IMAP account, not a Google account, since the Google presets are set to POP only. (At the time of iPhone's release, POP was the only option.) A future iPhone firmware update should fix that problem.

Intersting point. I still think your data is more secure on a Google server than it is on your own hard drive. At least Google has redundant backup systems going at all times. Sure, I have Tume Machine. But in the event of a fire or Earthquake, I'm far more likely to lose my own data. Both my laptop and my backup drive could get swallowed in an instant.

Now with Facebook, or some of the other newer, less proven companies, I definitely wouldn't feel safe. But I do think Google, at least, isn't going anywhere. And its in their best financial interest to keep my data accessible as often as possible.

Still, I keep local copies of anything that's on the web as well. Can't hurt, right?

Well put. I thought this rumor was dead six months ago. Why does everyone think that Apple is going to repeat an exact pattern with every one of its products? The iPod nano made sense. People wanted a smaller iPod they could use for jogging, yet still have a screen. And 4 GB was enough storage for most people. Plus, there was a such thing as a Flash-based portable music player market that Apple had yet to really tackle.

The iPhone is already Flash-based, and it's already small enough to compete with any similarly featured phone, and then some. So why would Apple make a smaller one just for the sake of making a smaller one?

Wow. I'm surprised you bought into this Forrester Analyst nonsense. Everyone else picked up the story, too, and as a result, Apple is down more than $5 today. Ahh. Where to start?

First of all, Apple never stated anything about selling 1 million Apple TVs. That was James McQuivey's number. This is the same idiot who claimed that iTunes Music sales were down last year when they had grown geometrically. Why does anyone listen to anything this guy has to say?

So, no, we don't know if Apple TV sales failed to meet Apple's forecasts. For all we know, they exceeded them.

Second, the two big requests I hear time and time again for Apple TV (HD-DVD/Blu Ray Support and DVR capability) wouldn't help sales much at all. How do I know that? Because these products already exist, and they're selling even more poorly than Apple TV is.

Cable companies all but killed the TiVo by offering free alternatives. Most cable boxes already do PVR. Why would Apple want to compete with free alternatives, all the while tying its fate in with that of the cable operators? It's much better off marketing the Apple TV as an ALTERNATIVE to cable TV. Drop cable altogether, buy the three or four shows you actually watch, and have money left over to buy a few movies. And never watch a commercial again. Doesn't work for everyone, but it would work for me, and quite a few others.

Now rentals on iTunes is a valid point, and I'm very confident that issue will be resolved soon. But keep in mind what the Apple TV is for: It's a hardware device that delivers iTunes content to your television. Nothing more. Think of it as a non-portable iPod. Why do we want that? Because watching movies on a computer screen is just not natural. We want to watch our TV shows and movies in the living room. Apple TV does that, and it does it better than any other device can.

Adding DVR and/or DVD support (HD or not) blurs the focus of Apple TV's mission. It's the equivalent of adding an FM radio to an iPod. Sounds like a good idea in theory, but it only takes away from Apple's iTunes dominance. Apple would much rather people got their content from iTunes. That's what's going to bring the other studios on board. It's also what's going to drive NBC back with its tail between its legs. Anyone else notice that NBC has already signed up with a few other "alternative" video download providers? Is that enough proof that Hula is already failing? It's just a matter of time before the iTunes revenue is missed enough to cause someone to get fired over there.

Speaking of dominance, what James McQuivey at Forrester and just about everyone else fail to mention in their AppleTV bashing articles is that Apple has a greater market share of video downloads than it does music downloads. In other words, Apple OWNS Internet video right now (to the tune of 90% market share). And none of its competitors are even close. Microsoft doesn't even show up on the list.

And yet the story is that "only" 400,000 Apple TVs get sold. As if anyone else were selling more. And as if that number were even accurate. (Judging by McQuivey's track record, I have no reason to believe that number wasn't pulled directly out of his ass.)

Keep in mind, Apple TV serves a much smaller market, but at the same time, it dominates within that market. And the market will grow significantly over the next two years, as people are forced to buy HD TVs. By that time AppleTV will be an established brand, and people will just walk on down to their local Apple retail store (40 more being opened this coming year) and pick one up like they do now with iPods, without a thought to any alternatives that might exist.

This is the direction that video will inevitably go. It's all a bit premature, but there's almost no question that in ten years just about all video will be in downloadable form. Why do you think all those writers are still on strike?

But don't believe me. Read this article, and his others on the AppleTV. Daniel articulates the argument far better than I can. You'll get a much better picture of what's actually going on with the Apple TV.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/12/11/apple-...