iPod's victims: first CDs, now DVDs?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, iTunes

Fortune's Brian Caulfield suggests that Blockbuster and Netflix should be very concerned about Apple's rumored move into digital movie rentals. He suggests that history has proven the iPod to be a very disruptive device. Just look at CD sales, says Mr. Cauflied, their decline over the last several years certainly proves that people want their media in a digital form and they are willing to turn to Apple for it.

While I agree that Blockbuster and Netflix should be worried, I don't think Apple will be driving physical DVD rental stores out of business anytime soon. The one advantage that Blockbuster has is bandwidth. Movies, if you want them to look good on large screens, take up a lot of space. That means whether you're streaming them or downloading them you need a pretty fat pipe to have an enjoyable experiences. Compare this with the rather small files that most songs, in MP3 format, create and you can see how the music business was greatly impacted by digital distribution whether it be legally via iTunes, or when the floodgates really opened during the freewheeling days of Napster (I was an undergrad during that time, and I can tell you that I saw many a computer running Napster. I, of course, never downloaded anything because I didn't actually own a computer in college). Theoretically it could take less time to drive to a Blockbuster and rent a DVD than it would to download the movie. This will become less of a problem, and digital rentals more popular, when broadband speeds make downloading multi-gigabyte files take a matter of moments (in some areas this is already true).

Clearly digital movie distribution, both rental and for purchasing, is the future, but sadly I think this future is still a few years off from supplanting those shiny disks we all know and love.

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MacCamp

Filed under: Macworld, Other Events

Macworld Expo 2008 is fast approaching (it takes place in San Francisco from Jan. 14th to the 18th) and people's social and conference calendars are filling up. If you don't get a chance to cram enough Mac talk in during the conference itself why not stick around for a Mac centered BarCamp called MacCamp?

BarCamp, in case you aren't familiar with the term, is a type of 'user generated' conference. There is no set schedule, no set speakers. Attendees make up the schedule as the event goes along, creating sessions that they want to participate in and attend. MacCamp is a two day event starting around 6pm on Friday, January 18th. The schedule isn't set, but you can see who will be coming at its Upcoming page (sadly I fly back to Philly Friday afternoon) and check out more on its wiki page.

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A brief introduction

Filed under: TUAW Business

Greetings, TUAW fans. My name is Brett Terpstra and I'm excited to introduce myself as a new member of the TUAW blogging team. It's conceivable that my name may sound familiar to some of you, but entirely possible that I'm just a fresh, new face.

I'm a 29 year old Art Director, referred to by friends as a "supergeek", and I'm looking forward to bringing some new ideas to a great blog.

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Apple posts iTunes tutorials

Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, Video, Internet Tools, iTunes, Apple

It is a safe bet that many people received iPods this holiday season (I know a bunch of TUAW readers did), and a few of those people might be new to the whole iPod/iTunes combo. Apple has recently posted a number of video tutorials that cover iPod and iTunes basics. Now, if you're somewhat familiar with iTunes/iPods you won't learn much from these tutorials, but your Aunt Dora who is rocking her first iPod ever will find these videos very helpful (and you'll look like the good niece or nephew because you helped her with her new techno-bauble. Everybody wins!).

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RIP Netscape Navigator (1994 - 2008)

Filed under: Internet, Apple History

Soon, Netscape Navigator - the first highly successful graphical web browser (yeah, yeah, I know Mosaic came before Netscape, but I don't remember seeing Mosaic floppy-disks bundled with my PC World and Macworld magazines in 1995, at least not under the name "Mosaic") - will be nothing more than a footnote in Internet history. Let's take a moment of silence for the big N. OK, that was long enough.

AOL, the parent company of this blog and Netscape, has announced that they will cease support for the current version of Netscape as of February 1, 2008. Netscape, which at its peak in the mid-1990s held 80% of the web browser marketshare, and was a player in Browser Wars 1.0.

Long before Apple released Safari in 2003, Netscape was a pretty familiar application to scores of Mac users. Even after Apple started shipping Internet Explorer for Mac with OS 8.1 and enabling it as the default browser, Netscape Navigator was still included, and at least in my experience, often preferred over IE for Mac. The very first web browser I ever used was Netscape Navigator 1.something on a Power Mac 6200 (which some say was the worst Mac ever) way back in 1995. Although other browsers were available at the time, Netscape was the first to be cross platform (and perform the same across platforms - which was an important distinction).

Shortly before AOL bought Netscape in 1998, the code base of Netscape Communicator 4 was released under an open-source license. This project, which was called Mozilla, eventually resulted into what we now know as Firefox (note that the Mozilla team basically rewrote the code for what became the basis of the Mozilla suite, later forked as Firefox, from the ground up, as the Communicator code was too much of a mess).

Although Netscape is gone, a theme is available for the current version of Firefox to make it look like Netscape 9. No word on when a theme like the image below will become available.

Netscape Navigator 2 for classic Mac OS

Thanks C.K. Sample III

[via Download Squad]

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Pogue: Visual Voicemail 'feature of the year'

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone

There is no doubt that the iPhone is innovative (heck, even ComputerWorld thinks so), and there is also no doubt that David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist, is a big fan of Apple's products. It should come as a surprise to no one, then, that Pogue has included the iPhone on his list of the most important new features in tech of 2007 (the 'Pogies,' as he calls them). Note that this list highlights breakthrough features, and not innovative devices as such.

Visual Voicemail, one of the iPhone's signature features, was given the nod as the best new feature of 2007. I can't argue with Pogue on this one, Visual Voicemail has really helped me out (and I don't even get that much voicemail. I'm a sad, unpopular man).

What features in Apple's products do you think are the most innovative this year? Personally, I think Quick Look in Leopard is truly a marvel of technology.

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NYT: 'More than one studio to offer iRentals at Macworld'

Filed under: Macworld, iTS, Rumors, Apple, Apple TV

Whilst the blogosphere is known for its seemingly endless attempts at Apple rumour one-upping, the New York Times has joined the fray, not only re-iterating the Financial Times' earlier statement that Twentieth Century Fox will be on-stage for the Stevenote but also adding "more than one studio [will] appear onstage at the company's Macworld exhibition .... to endorse a new Apple movie rental service."

When the news broke of Fox being first to sign up to iTunes movie rentals, we're certain that more than a few folks were surprised at the news: if only because it wasn't Disney (and of course Pixar) who were leading the Apple movie bandwagon forward again.

[Via Engadget]

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ComputerWorld crowns iPhone as 2nd most innovative product of 2007

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone

ComputerWorld has created another end of the year list: the 25 most innovative products of 2007. An Apple product isn't on the top of the list, that place goes to Google Gears, but the iPhone does clock in at the number 2 spot which isn't too shabby. The biggest innovation, according to CW, is the touch screen display. I'm going to disagree with that, because I've used devices before the iPhone that had touch screens and they weren't as much fun, or as easy to use, as the iPhone. The real innovation of the iPhone is that the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The software and hardware work together to make using this device a pleasure. Here's hoping that in a few years other handset makers will figure out what Apple has done with the iPhone and emulate it, of course by then Apple will be on the 3 or 4th revision of the iPhone. The mind boggles as to what that future iPhone will do.

Oh, and ComputerWorld, how about innovating a little bit with your website and not splitting up a relatively short article into 5 separate webpages? That'd be awesome.

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Dell's new 15-inch laptop leaks -- in Australia!

Dells new Inspiron 1525 has surfaced in Australia. (Credit: Dell)

The sweet spot in Dell's current catalog of laptops has always been the excellent 14-inch Inspiron 1420 model, matched only by the snazzy XPS line -- the 13-inch M1330 and 15-inch M1530. Somewhere in there, Dell's basic Inspiron 15-inch -- long the bread and butter of the company's consumer laptops, got lost in the shuffle.

Now comes word from down under that Dell's Australian Web site is offering a successor to the current Inspiron 1520, in the form of the Inspiron 1525 (originality in naming has never been Dell's strong suit), which seems to be a slightly slimmer version of the 1520.

According to the Aussies, this model will ship (down there at least) on January 9, 2008, and so far pre-order configuration options are slim -- the only CPU right now is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7250, with X3100 graphics and all the usual Inspiron color combinations (Espresso Brown, Spring Green, etc.)

The 1525 starts at $1399 in Australian dollars, which is about $1,200 to you and me. We wouldn't be surprised to see an American release sometime soon, but for now, this is Australia-only.

British iPhone users love their data

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Apple Financial, Steve Jobs, Apple, iPhone

Insanely Great Mac has the breakdown on a meeting between O2 (purveyors of the iPhone in Britain) and Mr. Jobs from the UK's Financial Times, and it seems iPhone users across the pond can't get enough data. Over 60% of iPhone users use over 25mb/month of data, while only 1.8% of non-iPhone users on O2 go over that mark. That's a lot of data downloading.

It's probably not a surprise, then, that about 60% of iPhone buyers are also new to O2, which, in my estimation, means that people who switched for the iPhone also switched from a non-data cellphone, and are making up for the difference. We talked on the Talkcast a little while ago about how the iPhone isn't necessarily stealing the "business smartphone" audience away from brands like Blackberry-- it's actually attracting new smartphone users completely. And there are a lot of them-- O2 is looking to sell 200,000 iPhones in Britain by the end of January, and they say that despite Apple's cut of the profits, they're making money on every one.

Finally, we get almost-but-not-quite-final confirmation that the 3G iPhone is due next year, and that O2 will very likely carry it. Which isn't really a surprise-- seems like things are going pretty well for O2 and Apple in GB, and so it's hard to see either one of them breaking up a good thing.

[Via Macbytes.com]

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DockStar adds RSS and To Do support

Filed under: Software

Mail.app users who are all about information overload rejoice: DockStar has been updated to alert you about even more unread content in Mail. That's right, the little utility that transforms your Dock, Dashboard, and Menubar into a command center for all things Mail.app related now actually handles alerts for everything that Mail.app offers up in Leopard. I am speaking, of course, of both To Dos and RSS feeds. Now you'll never have to guess how far behind you are.

This update also includes an additional badge shape and numerous bug fixes and Leopard tweaks. DockStar costs $9.95.

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