Category Archives: Apple

Apple, hype, iPhone, iPod touch, techno enthusiasts, techno lust

Techno Lust

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Yes, I tend to be overly enthusiastic. Granted, I know exactly nothing about it yet. Sure, I’ve been influenced by the years of rumours. Not to mention the iPhone hype.

But I still feel like I really need one of these.

Apple – iPod touch

Really, I do.

I’m much less of a gadget freak people think I am. I just need several devices to do what I do. And this could be it.

Much more so than an iPhone. I don’t need an iPhone. I need an iPod touch. I need a WiFi enabled music player based on the iPod. I know why but I don’t need to justify myself. I’m just being honest.

Apple, iPhone, speech recognition, voice, wishful thinking, wishlists

iPhone Wishlist

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Yeah, everybody’s been talking about the iPhone. It’s last week’s story but it can still generate a fair bit of coverage. People are already thinking about the next models.

Apple has most of the technology to build what would be my dream handheld device but the iPhone isn’t it. Yet.

My wishful thinking for what could in fact be the coolest handheld ever. Of course, the device should have the most often discussed features which the iPhone currently misses (Flash, MMS, chat…). But I’m going much further, here.

  • Good quality audio recording (as with the recording add-ons for the iPod 5G).
  • Disk space (say, 80GB).
  • VoIP support (Skype or other, but as compatible as possible).
  • Video camera which can face the user (for videoconference).
  • Full voice interface: speech recognition and text-to-speech for dialing, commands, and text.
  • Handwriting recognition.
  • Stylus support.
  • Data transfer over Bluetooth.
  • TextEdit.
  • Adaptive technology for word recognition.
  • Not tied to cellular provider contract.
  • UMA Cell-to-WiFi (unlicensed mobile access).
  • GPS.
  • iLife support.
  • Sync with Mac OS X and Windows.
  • Truly international cellular coverage.
  • Outliner.
  • iWork support.
  • Disk mode.
  • Multilingual support.
  • Use as home account on Mac OS X “host.”
  • FrontRow
  • USB and Bluetooth printing.
  • Battery packs with standard batteries.

The key point here isn’t that the iPhone should be a mix between an iPod and a MacBook. I’m mostly thinking about the fact that the “Personal” part of the “PC” and “PDA” concepts has not come to fruition yet. Sure, your PC account has your preferences and some personal data. Your PDA contains your contacts and to-do lists. But you still end up with personal data in different places. Hence the need for Web apps. As we all know, web apps are quite useful but there’s still room for standalone applications, especially on a handheld. It wouldn’t take much for the iPhone to be the ideal tool to serve as a “universal home” where a user can edit and output files. To a musician or podcaster, it could become the ideal portable studio.

But where the logical step needs to be taken is in “personalization.” Apparently, the iPhone’s predictive keyboard doesn’t even learn from the user’s input. Since the iPhone is meant to be used by a single individual, it seems quite strange that it does not, minimally, adapt to typed input. Yet with a device already containing a headset it seems to me that speech technologies could be ideal. Full-text continuous speech recognition already exists and what it requires is exactly what the iPhone could provide: adaptation to a user’s voice and speech patterns. Though it may be awkward for people to use a voice interface in public, cellphones have created a whole group of people who seem to be talking to themselves. 😉

Though very different from speech recognition, text-to-speech could integrate really well with a voice-driven device. Sharing the same “dictionaries” across all applications on the same device, the TTS and SR features could be trained very specifically to a given user. While screens have been important on computers for quite a while, voice-activated computers have been prominent in science-fiction for probably as long. The most common tasks done on computers (writing messages, making appointments, entering data, querying databases…) could all be done quite effectively through a voice interface. And the iPhone could easily serve as a voice interface for other computers.

Yes, I’m nightdreaming. It’s a good way to get some rest.

Apple, iPod, iTunes

Speculating on iTunes Subscription

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Yet another Apple rumour, this time about iTunes allowing some type of subscription model:

Media Biz Apple changes its iTune? «

In this case, the comments to the blog entry are, dare I say, more insightful than the entry itself. Movie subscriptions would make more sense than music subscriptions because people are used to rent movies.

OTOH, a WiFi-enabled device which could play any music in  the iTunes catalogue could be interesting in a context of DRM-free music tracks.

Yes, there is a logic to this. If you can buy DRM-free tracks, renting DRMed music can make sense as an advanced music discovery service (complete “excerpts”). Especially if you’re provided with a way to share the DRMed music with people who subscribe to the same service. And use a WiFi connection to get music directly on the device.

In fact, an iTunes version of the Ruckus model could work really well. “If you want to keep this track, as a higher quality, DRM-free file, you can buy it directly.”  And Apple can bring together ideas from Last.fm, Pandora.com, eMusic, Calabash Music, Microsoft’s Zune, Ruckus, the new Napster, the new Bittorrent, and even MySpace.

It probably won’t happen. But if it does, it could be cool.

The “buffet,” “à la carte,” and “table d’hôte” systems can coexist.

Now, I’m getting hungry.

Apple, computers, mac, mac os x, Tech

PC Tip#1: Get RAM

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I admit: I am a User. A Mac User.

Oh, not that I use a Mac right now. But I’ll probably remain a Mac User all my life.

“Hello, my name is Alex and I’m a Macaholic.”

One year after being forced to switch to an entry-level Windows XP desktop computer, I still have withdrawal symptoms from my days as a full-time Mac User. I get goosebumps while thinking of the possibilities afforded users of Mac OS X. I occasionally get my fix of Mac goodness by spending time on my wife’s 2001 iBook (Dual USB). And, basically, I think like someone who spent the last ten years on a variety of Macintosh models (Mac Plus, iBook, SE/30, Mac IIvx…).

With this addiction, it might be unsurprising that it took me so long to do what any Windows user would have done while buying a computer: getting more RAM.

I finally did exactly that, when I got my first paycheck for the semester. Got a 512MB DIMM a couple of weeks ago and it transformed my PC-using life from a nightmare into something comfortably dull and uninteresting. Not bad for an $80 purchase:

CompuSmart.com – Product Information – eXtreme Memory Upgrades DDR PC2700 512MB

What took me so long? Well, when I went from running Mac OS X 10.3 on a 2001 laptop with a G3 at 500MHz, 384MB, and very little free disk space to running XPSP2 on a 2006 desktop with a Sempron at 2GHz, 512MB, and quite a bit of free disk space, I assumed the new machine would run at least as fast as the old one. When it failed to do so (I would get unbelievably slow response with only Firefox and iTunes as the main apps opened), I started blaming myself more than the lack of RAM. I had noticed a similar lack of performance on some Windows machines in offices in which I had worked in the past. Though I did notice that my pagefile was growing frequently and that many issues I had seemed to be related to memory, I still thought that the fault was in my pattern of use. “Maybe running a browser and a media player at the same time isn’t a common thing to do, in the Windows world.” Oh, it wasn’t an actual reflection. But it’s a set of uneasy impressions I had.  And because I didn’t have much money for RAM (and the machine didn’t cost me much in the first place), I wasn’t particularly interested in buying a DIMM just to make sure the machine is working properly.

Then my friend Alain came over, right after I had installed Office 2007. For some reason, my machine was even slower than it had ever been in the past. Extremely frustrating. Alain, a former Mac User, tried to help me investigate the problem. We did talk about RAM but we focused on defragmentation and such. Nothing really made a difference, at the time, but I gained some hope in making the machine somewhat useable.

When I bought the DIMM, the difference was immediately noticeable. In every single process. My machine is no speed demon (that’s really not what I wanted anyway) but it’s not making me want to yell every time I use it. At this point, using a few apps at the same time is almost as efficient as using the same number and type of apps on my previous iBook.

So I now have a full 1GB of RAM on my emachine H3070 and it’s performing semi-appropriately when I have two or three apps open at the same time. My life improved drastically. 🙂

amateurs, Apple, iPhone, WiFi

Apple Video Conference Phone???

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I’m probably reading way too much into this. So I’m just speculating on rumours. But the implications could be huge. Apple’s main site currently has a teaser “The First 30 Years Were Just the Beginning,” in preparation for MacWorld San Francisco. What if the big announcement on Tuesday was more than a mere iPod-based phone. What if this were about a true camera phone, one which could be used for video-enabled chat?Two ideas from PiperJaffray’s Gene Munster, republished by Apple rumour site AppleInsider:AppleInsider | Apple seen launching new iPod, iTV and iPhone at Macworld

6. iSight camera, 4GB or 8GB storage on the iPhone (7 out of 10). Recent rumors point to an initial release of two iPhone models: a 4GB version for $249 and an 8GB model for $449. Both models are rumored to feature two separate batteries in the handset, one for the phone and one for the music player. Also, Apple has successfully branded the iSight cameras on the MacBook and MacBook Pro portables and it is likely that they will eventually extend the brand to the iPhone line. With music, photos, and video from iTunes, the iPhone will be a media-rich device and an iSight camera would add to the eco-system of media/communications on the device.

10. iPhone to feature ‘iChat Mobile’ video and instant messaging (2 out of 10). Again, we believe that the iPhone will be a media-centric communications device and messaging features would work nicely with such an ecosystem. While it is unlikely that the first iPhone will feature video conferencing, this is certainly a feature the company could add to future models, including a possible smartphone model.

The second part is, according to Munster, very unlikely. But how cool would it be?Quite cool indeed. Revolutionary, almost. Just think about the impact picture phones, coupled with Flickr and YouTube, has had on the world in the recent past. The move toward citizen journalism, user-created content, the YouYear…And the technology is largely there. Apart from ubiquitous WiFi to make it practical, of course, but that’s almost a detail for the world in which Apple visionaries tend to live. As for battery life and other technical issues, it shouldn’t be so much of a matter if the rumoured specs for the phone (with two batteries) are to be believed.What is more likely to prevent Apple from coming out with such a device is the fact that Apple has strong ties with “content companies,” especially in movies and music. Surely, these people would have a hard time getting past the idea that these are mostly meant to be bootlegging tools (as if bootlegging was the main intention of most people, at this point). So, even if Apple does come out with a mobile iChat AV on Tuesday, it surely will be somehow crippled so that people can’t use it during shows by commercially established artists (independent artists and “up and coming” artists already know the value of fan recordings and would find ways to promote them). In the end, even artists might benefit as people would use the devices to do cool video mashups (using Apple’s iMovie and other iLife apps, of course) but, in the meantime, Apple will still play it cozy for “content companies” and media conglomerates.Ah, well…

Apple, Blogger (Blogspot), cellphones, DRM, Facebook, Google, iPod, Moodle, predictions, smartphones, Web 2.0, WordPress, YouTube

Web 2.1 or Internet 7.0?

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Speaking of Web technologies getting together to create tomorrow’s Web. It’s all about puzzles.

It’s really not that hard to visualize the completed picture of a Web 2.1 puzzle merging most of the advantages from the main Web 2.0 players: Facebook meets YouTube, Wikipedia meets WordPress, PodShow meets Digg, Flickr meets SecondLife… Smaller players like Moodle and GarageBand are likely to have a huge impact in the long run, but the first steps have more to do with the biggest pieces of the puzzle.

In fact, if I were to take a bet on the near future of the user-driven Web, I’d say Google is the one institution with most of the important pieces of the puzzle. Google owns YouTube, JotSpot, MeasureMap, Writely, SketchUp, Blogger, etc. They have also developed important services and features like Gmail and Google Maps. In many ways, their management seems clueful enough. Their “do no evil” stance has helped them maintain much of the goodwill toward them on the part of geeks. They understand the value of the Web. And they have a fair amount of money on hand.

Because of all of this, Google is, IMHO, the most likely group to solve the puzzle of redesigning the Web. To pull it off, though, they might need to get their act together in terms of organizing their different services and features.

On the other hand, there’s an off-Web puzzle that might be more important. Internet 7.0 needs not be Web 3.0 and the Web may become less important in terms of digital life. Though I don’t own a cell phone myself, a lot of people are surely betting on cell phones for the future of digital life. AFAIK, there are more cell phone users than Internet users in the world and cell phones generate quite a bit of revenue to a lot of people. The connection between cell phones and the Net goes beyond moblogging, VoIP, IM, and music downloads. It’s not hard to envision a setup combining the advantages of a smartphone (à la Tréo or Blackberry) with those of a media device like the Apple iPod, Creative Zen, or Microsoft Zune. Sure, there’s the matter of the form factor difference between smartphones and portable media players. But the device could easily have two parts. The important thing here is not to have a single device doing everything but having a way to integrate all of these features together, without the use of a laptop or desktop computer.

There are other pieces to that second puzzle: MVNOs, voice navigation, flash memory, portable games, Linux, P2P, mesh networks, media outlets, DRM-freedom, etc. And it’s difficult to tell who has the most of those pieces. Sony would be a good bet but they have messed up on too many occasions recently to be trusted with such a thing as a digital life vision. Apple fans like myself would hope that the computer company has a good chance at shaking things up with its rumored phone, but it’s hard to tell if they are willing to listen to consumers instead of WIPO member corporations.

It’s also difficult to predict which scenario is likely to happen first, if both scenarios will merge, if we will instead see a Web 2.0 burst, etc.

Puzzling.

Apple, cluetrain, content, iTunes, media

Disney Getting the Clue?

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Disney Sells Films Through iTunes Store: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

“Clearly customers are saying to us they want content in multiple ways,” Iger said.

That’s a start. Still too “content”-based, and used to talk about yet another DRM system, but it’s clearly more “cluefull” than what the RIAA has been saying.

That may be because Disney understands that

selling shows online has not cannibalized sales of DVDs, nor has it hurt traditional TV viewing.

And it does seem like Apple’s iTunes/iPod/FairPlay strategy is working.

advocacy, Apple, cluetrain, DRM, iTunes, podcasting, soapbox, Web 2.0

The Big Zune Debacle

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The device isn’t out yet but it’s generating a lot of negative reaction.

Partly based on this:

Zune Insider Blog: Answers to (some) of Your Zune Questions

“I made a song. I own it. How come, when I wirelessly send it to a girl I want to impress, the song has 3 days/3 plays?” Good question. There currently isn’t a way to sniff out what you are sending, so we wrap it all up in DRM. We can’t tell if you are sending a song from a known band or your own home recording so we default to the safety of encoding. And besides, she’ll come see you three days later.

Not to blame Cesar Menendez (Robert Scoble might have done the same thing), but the answer itself really shows that there is something missing in Microsoft’s understanding of music.

This post provoked a number of comments on the same blog and elsewhere:

Medialoper » Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM

Boing Boing: Microsoft Zune will violate Creative Commons licenses

 Buzz Out Loud 314 Shownotes

As a more recent post answers several questions without even paying lip-service to the issue of Digital Rights Management, Microsoft gives the impression that it’s suddenly stonewalling:

Zune Insider Blog: Introducing, and Some More Q’s Answered
Having suffered from the over-restrictive DRM of Sony’s MiniDisc recorders, I think that DRM is one of the main reasons a device might succeed or fail in the consumer marketplace. The MiniDisc had the potential to be the ideal device for those who involve themselves in music (musicians, musickers, music lovers, music researchers…). But even music you recorded yourself was tagged as restricted and required a very expensive “professional” device to transfer digitally to another device, such a computer. Sony changed this only very recently and only for recordings made with current recorders.

In the Zune case, the wireless capabilities have been dreamed of years ago. As a musician, a researcher, and a lecturer, I would be delighted to be able to distribute my own content wirelessly. Just imagine: you record your own lecture, then you transfer it wirelessly to your students. Elegant, selective, seamless, intelligent, efficient. Lecturecasts at their finest. But if that content is to be crippled with an incredibly awkward DRM system, I would much rather use the much less efficient method of posting the audio file to a central server (possibly controlled), give instructions on how to retrieve the file, and wait until the next lecture to hear the complaints.

Of course, even if the Zune did not apply over-zealous DRM on my own content, I would still have to post the file. And one (who probably never taught) might think that the three days or three times restriction is perfectly reasonable for this use. But in terms of putting a product on the marketplace, one must get more insight than this.

It just shows that people at Microsoft sees their users as mere consumers of “content” and big media companies as “owners of content.” Yet the trend now is for “user-generated content,” “social networking,” “viral marketing,” and personal interactions through electronic devices.

Despite all of its flaws, the DRM on the iTunes Store (formerly iTunes Music Store) has imposed itself as a decent enough solution for a lot of people.

Apple, consumerism, consumption, content, creativity, cult of personality, Digital Life, digital lifestyle, humanism, hype, intellectual property, iPod, iTunes, market economy, marketing, mass media, media, mediascape, movies, music, music scenes, performance, popular culture, product and process, professionals, social change, social networks, standardization, Tech, technology, trendiness

They Dropped The Other Shoe

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[Disclaimer: I’m not necessarily an Apple fanboy but I have been an enthusiastic Mac user since 1987 and have owned several Apple products, from an iPod to a QuickTake camera. I also think that technology is having a big impact on arts, media, and entertainment.]

Just watched Apple’s "Showtime" Special Event. Didn’t really read or even listen to anything much about it yet. During that event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced new versions of all the iPod models, a new version of iTunes, and the addition of movies to the iTunes store. In addition, Jobs gave a sneak peak of an upcoming box to link iTunes with televisions and stereo systems.

People are likely to have been disappointed by the announcements. They’re probably saying that Steve Jobs’s famous "Reality Distortion Field" isn’t working, or that he lost his "mojo." They might even wonder about his health. Again…

Not that the new products are really boring, but there tend to be high expectations surrounding Apple announcements. This one is no different as people expected wireless capabilities on iPods and recording capabilities on the new "media centre" box, which was in fact part of the expected new products from Apple.

But this event is significant in another way. Through it, Apple explained their strategy, revealed a number of years ago as the Digital Hub. What some have called "convergence," quite a few years ago. Nothing really new. It’s just coming into full focus.

Though we may never know how much of it unfolded as planned, Apple’s media/tech strategy may appear rather prescient in retrospect. IIRC, it started in 1996, during Gil Amelio’s tenure. Or, more probably, in 1997 during the switch between Amelio and Jobs. Even by, say, 1999, that strategy was still considered a bold move. That was before the first iPod which, itself, was before iTunes, the iTunes Music Store, and most other current media-centric technologies at Apple. It was also at a time when user-generated content was relatively unimportant. In other ways, that was during the "Web 1.0" Internet bubble, before the "Web 2.0" craze for blogs, podcasts, and "social networking."

Apple isn’t the only corporation involved in the changes in the convergence between technology and the world of "content" (arts, media, entertainment). But it has played a key role. Whatever his success as a CEO, Steve Jobs has influenced the direction of change and, to an extent, shape a part of digital life to his own liking. While he’s clearly not clueless, his vision of the link between "content" and technology is quite specific. It does integrate user-generated content of "varying degrees of professionalism" (which he joked about during his presentation) but it gives precedence to the "content industry" (involving such powerful groups and lobbies as WIPO, NAB, MPAA, RIAA, etc.). Jobs’s position at Pixar makes him a part of that industry. Which is quite different from what arts and expressive culture can be.

Jobs invites musicians on stage with him (John Mayer, Wynton Marsalis, John Legend). He respects musicians and he might even appreciate their work. But his view of their work is that they produce content to consumed. For Jobs, music tracks, audiobooks, television episodes, movies, and music videos are all "contents" to be enjoyed by consumers. Now, the consumer can enjoy content "anywhere" as Apple is "in your den, in your living-room, in your car, and in your pocket." But what about public spaces? Concert halls, churches, coffee shops, parks, public libraries, classrooms, etc.? Oh! Apple can be there too! Yeah, of course. But those are not part of the primary vision. In Apple’s view, consumers all have their own iTunes accounts, media libraries, preferences, and content-consuming habits. A nuclear family may count as a unit to a certain extent (as Bob Iger pointed out in his "cameo appearance" during Jobs’s event). But the default mode is private consumption.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Even the coolest things online are often based on the same model. It’s just that it’s not the only way to do things. Music, for instance, can be performed in public. In fact, it can be a collaborative process. The performers themselves need not be professionals. There’s no need for an audience, even. And there’s no need to see it as "intellectual property." Music is not a product. It’s a process by which human beings organize sound.

Ah, well…

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Apple, Québec

Kino and Apple

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Just realized that the Kino movement had developed
a collaboration with Apple through the “Off-Courts” festival in Trouville-sur-mer, Normandy. There’s even a podcast!
Members of the Kino movement produce short films (in French, «courts métrages» or «courts») which they present in fairly informal contexts. Unfortunately, haven’t had the chance to go to a Kino event myself (but did play a small part in a Kino film done by a friend). Kino’s philosophy can be summarized thus: do it well, from scratch; do better with little means; do it now. Simple and powerful. Kind of a grassroots version of Dogma 95. With more laughs.
Apple’s involvement makes sense. Several Kinoite producers were already using Apple products a few years ago and Apple’s movie production offerings have been improving since then. Apple also tends to get involved in this type of creative projects in different contexts. And the Kino movement can surely benefit from some of Apple’s resources. Apple also collaborate with the Wapikoni mobile. Both Kino and Wapikoni also collaborate with NFB’s Silence, on court!. In parallel, there’s also Danny Lennon’s Prends ça court! events which recently presented a series of Swiss shorts during the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. To weave the entangled web further, some of these events and movements seem to be connected, however loosely, with the Cinémathèque québécoise and possibly the INIS sound and image institute. Some feature films have been developed in direct or indirect connection with Kino, INIS, or other groups. Coupled with the presence of Avid’s Softimage and links to video game development, Montreal is certainly a cool place to work in audio-visual creation. Of course, Montreal is also the site of the Fantasia festival. Which all relates back to the dynamism of Quebec culture.

Biased? Me? Never!
😉