The Adventures of Systems Boy!
I just got a new (well, actually it's used, but it's new to me) 6x8 Wacom Intuos3 tablet. A friend of mine had one, sans pen, that he was willing to unload for a pittance. Mind you, I'm moving up from a four year old Graphire 4x5, but so far — and I've barely even used it — I love the damn thing. In fact, I'm gonna go make out with it right now.
Mmmm... Tongue...
I must admit, this week's announcement of new Apple products really got me thinking. There was a lot there that I couldn't really conceive of until I finally saw it implemented: online TV distribution, The Digital Hub, and the Video iPod at last. This was almost more of a conceptual and marketing breakthrough than a technological one for Apple, and it's really interesting for me to see how they're starting, gradually, to implement these concepts. I just want to talk fairly briefly about my thoughts on some of the main ideas brought to light last week.
The first thing that struck me is that Apple is the best thing to ever happen to U2. That band is so lucky ol' Steve apparently has a hard-on for them. I mean, does an iPod announcement take place that doesn't prominently feature these has-beens? Has U2 written anything interesting in the last decade? I think the band is getting a lot more out of this deal than Apple at this point. But this is just a snarky aside.
Next, I think Apple has really nailed, or is very close to nailing, the online content delivery thing. They proved themselves with music, and now other media want in. Big time. And Apple is not only happy to provide, but I think they do a hell of a job. In some ways, Apple has become the intermediary in the ever-hostile relationship between producers and consumers. They make all that ugliness pretty, and not just on an aesthetic level. The pricing scheme vs. quality of the downloadable TV shows is about as perfect as I can imagine. I find myself wanting to download shows I've already watched and have on tape, just because I can, and because they're cheap. Seems like a great deal. And if I ever miss an episode of Lost, I'll be checking iTunes long before I ever suffer through the Hell that is BitTorrent. Again, because I can, and because it's cheap. The great thing about a service like this -- the thing that Apple realizes -- is that the point of your two bucks is to bypass the hassle of the free alternative. It's the same reason I buy DVDs instead of stealing them: It's easier and the price is reasonable. Why do people still steal music? I'd argue it's at least partly because it's easier to do so, and the price of music is unreasonable. I mean compare: $1 for a 4 minute song vs. $2 for an hour long show. Someone is getting screwed in the music model. Three guesses who. That's why people steal music so much more readily than video. The downside to all this is the DRM, which I'm pretty sure works just like the DRM for music. I understand the reason for it, but I still think it's a pain in the ass. And, as I've just pointed out, the greater the pain-in-the-ass factor, the greater, in some ways, the motivation to steal. As long as the DRM is less aggravating than the stealing process, there's value added and folks will pay. But someone needs to come up with a better DRM model if they really want people to pay money for stuff they get on TV for free. Other than that, I don't have much to say about it.
The new iMac seems to be the first real, tangible iteration of the "Digital Hub" idea. If I could replace my aging stereo, TV, VCR and DVD players with this one device, I'd plunk down my fourteen hundred clams right now. Alas, the big caveat: no ability to record. You can't record anything from the TV. Again, I understand the reasoning here, but it's a deal killer for me. It's too bad, too, because it looks like they've done a brilliant job with the remote and the Front Row interface. But without the ability to record content, it's just a big, fancy, pretty DVD player. I think this is coming though. I think what we're seeing here is, like I said, the first iteration. Apple likes to seed an idea or a part of an idea before they go for broke. That's what I think they're doing with the iMac and Front Row. Just like they did with the iPod Photo, they're whetting our appetites for more, and giving us a gentle cushion, of sorts, on the future. Letting you envision the logical next step and get ready for it, psychologically.
Finally, the iPod. Not the video iPod; just the iPod (that now does video). Actually, it's important (to me anyway) to note that the iPod only plays video. And apparently, from the lack of firewire capability, that's all it will ever do. I can't say I'm surprised by this, though I'll always long for my own personal vision of what the Video iPod could (should) be (have been). Nevertheless, it is not to be. Still, the new iPod looks cool. It's another well-implemented idea, with much more potential than I would have imagined. Combined with downloadable content at reasonable prices, the iPod becomes a whole new entertainment device: Want to watch a movie with some friends? Download it, put it on your iPod, and head over to their house. Hell, put ten movies, a couple TV shows, and a party mix on your iPod, and you're set for a whole weekend of media fun. As a video teacher, I can see the potential for putting all the videos I use as demos on an iPod, and never again worrying about whether I have this DVD or that for class today. In short, I think video adds a social dimension to the iPod, where before it was quite the opposite. I'd imagine most people will not look at video on the device itself as they travel to and from work. Rather, I imagine they'll plug it in to the TVs of friends and watch movies and shows with other people, but in a much more convenient and portable way then they ever did before. It's a neat idea, and I'm very tempted to get one. That said, the lack of firewire bothers me. I'm a firewire guy. I do a lot of video work, and I need firewire. If I were to get one of these puppies, firewire would be sorely missed. Also, the type of video you can watch on the iPod is very limited. And unfortunately, said video looks like pure ass on a full-sized computer monitor. I don't know how bad it looks on a TV, but, apparently -- and I find this somewhat disappointing -- downloadable video content is only made to be viewed on an iPod. I, again, have a feeling this will change over time, and that we will see quality options for our downloadable video content sometime in the near future. But for now they are seriously limited.
Ah well. The Apple giveth and the Apple taketh away.
I don't own an iPod, and I never have. Almost everyone I know does, but not me. I'm a huge fan of Apple, but more for their computers. Yet, for the first time, I find myself tempted by the latest iPod. (Add video to something and that will tend to happen to me.) This is saying a lot. I think this latest batch of products shows, more than serious technological leaps, real conceptual breakthroughs in terms of the marketing and management of purchasable, viewable, online media, and the relationship between the producers, the consumers and the device. I, for one, am glad Apple is at the helm of this... Is it too soon to say, "revolution?" Yeah, probably.
Other Articles of Interest:
Daring Fireball Article
Subtraction Article
I needed to pull a bunch of video projects from my DVD archives this weekend. These are regular old DV-NTSC Quicktime movies, made from Final Cut Pro. But attempting to copy them from the Finder in Mac OSX 10.4.2, I noticed the estimated copy time seemed inordinately long: 45 minutes for 3.5 GB? I can burn a disc faster than that. Then, about halfway through, the copy operation choked, and I got an error message that said that the copy operation couldn't finish because some of the data couldn't be read.
Then I started scrolling through the files on the DVD, and as I touched them the files started disappearing before my eyes! Folder names also disappeared, but the folders were still there, but no longer navigable. Doing an ls in the Terminal showed everything intact. Copying the files using cp or ditto yielded complete and usable files.
After grabbing my data using the Terminal -- which not only worked, but worked quickly -- I decided to relaunch the Finder, and try copying one of the problematic folders. The folder appeared to copy, but the contents of the folder were incomplete. Only two of the thirteen original movies made it over in the copy. But this time, I received no error message. Then I tried copying individual files from the problem folder on the DVD. Some appeared to copy super-fast, and then just disappeared, while some copied fine, and at apparently normal speed. But the time estimation for some took a while, and for others, barber-poled indefinitely. In fact, the only way to stop the Indefinite-Barber-Pole-of-Death was to relaunch the Finder.
Fucked up.
More tests: I tried another DVD. Copying that data worked perfectly: fast and error-free. I also put the problem DVD in my PowerBook running Panther and tried copying the data. And guess what? Same problem. Better error message though. And no disappearing files and folders.
So clearly, something is wrong with my DVD. But it seems really strange to me that, while a simple issue of cp or ditto works fine, if the Finder encounters the slightest disc error, it just gives up. This raises some questions: If the command-line can handle it, and the Finder can't, what is the Finder doing wrong? Moreover, why doesn't the Finder use cp or ditto? Or something that can handle these sorts of errors? Or, at the very least, why doesn't the error message offer some sort of useful information about what went wrong and how, via Terminal, one might go about extracting the data?
Finally, and I took a look at the DVD surface itself, and I have no idea how this happened, but it was scratched to shit. Looked like a Blockbuster rental. Awful. Anyway, the moral of the story? I don't know, actually. I guess one moral would be, "Take good care of your optical media; it is by no means indestructible." Moral two? If the Finder can't copy it, the command-line, perhaps, can.
It pays to learn some UNIX kids. Without it, I'd be hard screwed.
I don't have an iPod. It's true. Frankly, I don't really have much interest in listening to music anywhere other than the comfort of my own home. When I listen to music, I want to sit there and actually listen to the music, not catch a bus or ride the subway or eat lunch or work out. (Yeah, like I work out.) And I hate earbud-style headphones.
There's been a lot of talk about the idea of a Video iPod for some time. As much as I'm disinclined to listening to music on-the-go, I'm even less interested in watching videos on-the-go. Particularly on a little, tiny, 2.5 inch LCD screen. Somehow I just don't think The Exorcist or 2001: A Space Odyssey would have the same impact, however titilating the idea of carrying around movies in your pocket might seem. And Steve Jobs would seem to agree. And so, for the longest time, the Video iPod has been tabled.
Fine by me.
Not too long ago, however, Apple came out with the iPod Photo. Now the iPod Photo is kind of a neat idea, though I doubt it would appeal to many people. The basic idea is that you can carry around photos and show them on your iPod. But what really takes this to the next level -- and by that I mean the potential of a Video iPod -- is the device's ability display photos on a television. Now we're talking. And I'd posit the theory that that's the real motivation behind the iPod Photo: to get people to wrap their brains around the idea of the iPod as a convergent device, one made to work with other media appliances in the home. Rest assured, if we do see an iPod video device -- and I think it's pretty likely at this point -- it will connect to your TV.
That's right, folks. You heard it here first.
Now to be perfectly honest, while this is a nice idea, I'm still not satisfied. Sure, there's a certain appeal to a bringing an iPod to a friend's house, plugging it in to his TV, and choosing from a list of movies to watch, all from a device that fits in the palm of your hand and operates on batteries. In fact, I like this idea a lot. But it's not a deal maker for me. I'm not sure it's something I want to pay hundreds of dollars for. Lots of folks will, but probably not me.
What will it take? Okay. I will tell you.
In addition to the iPod media player, Apple also makes a audio-video capture device. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's called the iSight. The iSight is a fabulous creature. It's essentially intended as a webcam. Unlike most webcams on the market, however, it captures audio and video via firewire rather than USB, and is therefore capable of producing some pretty decent looking, fairly high quality video. I have one and I love it. It's got a very grainy quality, and a nice saturated color palatte. It also produces deinterlaced video, so it has something of a film quality to my eye, though other things about the video it produces are distincly digital. Say what you will, the look is unique, and I think it's quite beautiful. Unfortunately, the iSight is hobbled out of the box. It's really only made to work with iChat, the video conferencing software made by Apple. You can get third party software, like the excellent BTV Pro, to take full advantage of the iSight, but there's nothing from Apple. Which is too bad, because in my humble opinion, the iSight is capable of so much more.
Enter the Video iPod.
For awhile now, I've envisioned a combination of these two ingenious devices. I've longed for an ultraportable video capture solution, and a Video iPod with iSight capture integration would more than fit the bill, provided, of course, the device allowed for full-frame, high-quality captures (or something close to it). Imagine: you've got your iPod, and you decide you want to capture some nice, decent looking video of you oversized poodle in Central Park. Don't have your video camera? No problem. Just whip out your iSight, plug it into your iPod, click record and go.
Sweet!
So far, Apple has shied away from the iPod as a capture device. Add-ons can be had to record audio to the iPod, but as far as I know, photos could never be captured to the iPod, and nothing in the realm of media aquisition directly to the iPod has ever been produced by Apple. So I really wonder if this is something Apple's even thinking about seriously. I worry that it isn't. But I will say, right here, right now, that if Apple (or anyone, for that matter) were to produce such a device, I would buy one in an instant. In a heartbeat. In a New York minute.
I'll keep this rant brief. I promise.
It's just that I'm getting a little tired of all these white keyboards. I'm not so sure this was such a hot idea. All my G5s have white keyboards. Or at least they did. Sure, the white looks real nice out of the box, but when a school-full of New York art students starts pounding on them on a daily basis, well, they get looking pretty nasty pretty quick. Yuck! I mean, maybe it's good to know how dirty your keyboard really is. Maybe there's some benefit to that. But it's really quite foul to look at.
And I'm not going to clean all thirty of them. I'm not paid nearly enough.
On a related note, my white office keyboard, the one attached to my admin machine, is downright filthy. Having white keys makes this readily apparent. The mystery is the why of it. Each day it is noticably more caked with some kind of gray film on many, but for some strange reason not all, of the keys. I can't figure it. At first I thought I was just a filthy disgusting pig, and, while that may indeed be the case, it's apparently not what's causing the scum-layer buildup on my office keyboard. The proof lies in my home keyboard: same exact keyboard, white, Apple Macintosh G5 stock. And yet, after months of use it remains fresh and -- whistle like the Irish Spring girl -- clean as a whistle.
I've never had to clean it once.
Only thing I can figure here is there's something in the air. There must be some nasty, airborne, dust-pollen-filth ridden cloud that blows in the window and permeates my office, settling on the keys, mixing with the oils from my fingers, turning the most-used keys the most gray, the less-used keys less gray, and everything in between.
It's gross, I tell you.
But the real question out of all this is:
White keyboard. Friend or foe?
You be the judge.
