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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Apple music/TV announcement today

A

Austin Glass

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So in about 3 hours (10am PST) we're set to get the new info on whatever Apple's going to be doing.

Rumors speculate they're shipping a new generation of iPod Touch, Nano, and AppleTV. Also, we may or may not be getting $.99 Fox and ABC TV show rentals.

Thoughts? Would any of you rent these shows for $.99? Do you think this means Fox and ABC would pull their shows from Hulu (or maybe Hulu would charge for them)?

I'm anxious to hear the news. Hopefully AppleTV isn't a dud this time. I always saw potential there, but the cost to features ratio was lacking. I'm not looking forward to the next generation of iPod Touch. I have been trying to sell mine, and I'm almost positive the value is about to go down quite a bit.

The event will be streamed (viewable on Snow Leopard and iOS devices) using a new HTTP Live Streaming from www.apple.com.

(Most of my "sources" come from http://www.macrumors.com/)
 
I'm sure we'll see new iTouch and other iPod models. If not today, then really soon, they're a given. The new iTouch is a no-brainer with the new iPhone4 form factor and the holiday shopping season about to pounce on us. And none of those deserve a media event in themselves, even by Apple's standards. Oh, and don't forget iOS4 for iPad...

I'm really expecting the new AppleTV and some major changes to how we rent/buy music and video through iTunes. I wouldn't be surprised if we see the announcement for Apple's media cloud services and capabilities.

As for renting TV shows for $0.99.... No thanks. We can currently BUY most for $0.99 to $1.99, why would I want to pay that for a 1-time viewing? The biggest problem with movie rentals and purchases through iTunes is the pricing. To buy a movie through iTunes, we currently pay as much or more for the HD version as we would for a Blu-Ray disc. Almost always, I can buy the Blu-Ray disc cheaper via Amazon if I pre-order or at my local Wal-Mart. And even though they're priced hight through iTunes, the quality is inferior to Blu-Ray, often even inferior to quality DVD releases, and we're locked into playing them only on Apple devices or via iTunes software.

Anyway, I guess we'll see what they have come up with now, but I'm not overly excited for it. What would really excite me more is if they would open up iTunes media access to independent filmmakers so we can market our own films via iTunes and set our own pricing. Much like we can with what we develop for the app store. Have an approval process and some decent guidelines so it doesn't just turn into a pay version of YouTube.
 
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Jeff,

I share your aversions to Apple's online media pricing as well, although I do use it at times. However, I think its important to realize that the average consumer may not - WRT to quality, most folks are perfectly fine with SD, and HD movies on iTunes can be quite good - good enough for the average buyer. WRT to pricing, Apple has one thing worth paying for - convenience. Apple TV gives one a very easy, well presented way to rent or buy all of these things in ONE place from your couch. And it will at least play on your Apple portable, laptop, etc - other devices like Vudu, etc don't get it right - the interfaces are clumsy, the libraries are not homogenized, and the media is still largely only usable on that box. In that respect, Apple TV is pretty attractive - for non geeks.
 
Agreed on the convenience point and compared to other services like Vudu. I think a lot of people, including myself, are hoping that once Apple establishes their new cluster center and cloud abilities, that we'll be able to also approach iTunes from a subscription point of view. If Apple could offer iTunes movies and TV shows on a monthly subscription basis as Netflix does, but with their current online library, they could dominate that market.

As for the AppleTV as it exists now, I preferred the older interface to the new one, which I also find to be a bit clunky. I've been using AppleTV since it came out. Sadly, I mostly use it to serve up all my kids' DVDs that I've ripped into iTunes so they can have there stuff in one easy place that little ones can navigate. But now they're getting older, my daughter is 7 and runs the TV better than my wife. And unlike my wife, she actually cares about video and sound quality. She hates macroblocking and other compression anomalies as much as I do...
 
Rumours suggest Apple TV will be the first product using AMD Fusion. Look forward to the announcement.
 
Worth mentioning:

Jobs just announced HDR photo update available today for iOS4.


EDIT: Available next week
 
I hear Pro Apps crickets a chirpin'...
 
I would say the most significant announcement today was PING. If Apple had intended for it to be a music-based social network only in the long term, they would have used a different name. Watch out Facebook, the strongest, and still-fastest growing media and technology brand in the world has you in their sights and already has over 130 million users.

-michael zaletel
 
Oh, I'm just bitchin.' I love my AppleTV- I feel it's always been underrated and a delightful little product. This new one looks killer!
 
Paul Lee said:
I hear Pro Apps crickets a chirpin'...
Click to expand...

It's their annual fall media event. They have never announced anything "pro" at this event... It's just a heads up for holiday shoppers, IMO.

The new nano looks kinda cool, but it seems they killed the video playback and integrated camera, not that I cared about the camera part. Sooo... meh. I'm glad they went back to buttons on the Shuffle -- last year's shuffle sucked with the buttons on the headphone wire. Apple earbuds don't work for me, and few others made anything compatible.

Hopefully existing AppleTV boxes will get a software update so we can use Netflix and other new features too. New AppleTV looks like a winner, but I'm still thinking their movie rental prices are a bit expensive.

iTouch... Yep, exactly what we all figured it would be.

AirPlay -- about damn time.

And Apple, you're missing one really important product to complete all this. We need an iTunes home server!!! We need multi-user iTunes/iPhoto libraries instead of the dodgy work-arounds we have now.
 
Jeff,

From Ars: "We confirmed with an Apple spokesperson that the maximum HD resolution of the Apple TV is 720p, consistent with recent rumors. Additionally, there will be no software update to bring the new features to older Apple TVs. Older Apple TVs will continue to work as they have been working up to this point, and they will continue to be able to purchase movies and TV shows even though the new Apple TV is rental-only.
 
Anson Fogel said:
...the maximum HD resolution of the Apple TV is 720p...

...there will be no software update to bring the new features to older Apple TVs...
Click to expand...

Here are two statements we would not see if Jim had a controlling interest in Apple. :laugh:
 
OK, that's good to know.

I kinda figured the old AppleTV wouldn't get the update when seeing the new one runs on the A4 CPU, which probably means its running iOS but with an interface to match the existing aTV.

It seems the only features it's missing are AirPlay and Netflix. I use Roku for Netflix anyway. Not that I would dump my old AppleTV... I've got over 200 DVDs stored on the thing and it's in my basement patched in where every TV in the house can watch it. Poor man's DVD server, LOL.
 
Why oh why is Apple going with a netflix "app". Apple should have gone Palm Pre/Windows Mobile 7 on this thing and gone with a hub based approach.

There's that little button for "Rent for $4.99" right next to it should be the Netflix Logo when available... oh right that's why.

It's sad that they put profit before user experience in this instance. It would have made for a much better user experience to aggregate the various video services and provide an extremely easy way to browse "Movies" not movie services.

If it is for the sake of profit it's a bad one at that. I often troll the Netflix Instant listings because they're free. If I was just browsing every movie and Apple's $4.99 offerings were mixed in I would be more tempted to choose one of those. Of course in such a scenario you would need to be able to view "only Netflix" or "only iTunes".
 
Amazon has started selling the same TV-shows Apple will let you rent through the Apple TV for the same price...
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
And Apple, you're missing one really important product to complete all this. We need an iTunes home server!!! We need multi-user iTunes/iPhoto libraries instead of the dodgy work-arounds we have now.
Click to expand...

I'm demoing tech I've been working on to Apple that facilitates this (and is rock solid, no config, no setup, impossible (mathematically) to screw it up and not notice, or not be able to recover -- again, it just works). With any luck they'll buy it and use it for iTunes.
 
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