The Mac rumor world is unusually silent on this eve of MacWorld San Fransisco 2004. Maybe too quiet. Live stream of the keynote will be found here. 12:00 pm eastern time tomorrow.
The stream is up. Just shots of the crowd. I am comforted to see thousands of people more over the edge than I am. At least it's a reasonable hour on the east coast.
60,000 people watching over the web.
I didn't know that Word, Excel, and Powerpoint were all available on for the Mac *before* they were available on Windows (circa 1984.)
G5 Xserve. Still 1U. Single and Dual processors. ECC memory. Shipping in February.
New Xserve RAID. 3U. 3.5 TB of storage. SFP connection built in. At the top end it is $3 per Gigabyte.
The top spender on the iTunes music store has spent $29,500 dollars! No details though. Could this actually be an individual?
Pepsi is going to give away 100 million free songs from the iTunes music store starting Feb 1st (super bowl ad.)
Supposedly iPhoto isn't going to suck anymore if you have more than like 10 pictures.
(Jobs is scrolling efortlessly through a 25,000 picture library. I wonder what machine that is on!?)
Damn, my stream is crapping out.
I think he's demo'ing the new music making app GarageBand, but I can't be sure because I am only getting about every 10th word. C'mon Akamai!
Ok, my fault, someone else in the office was using all the bandwidth.
Still on GarageBand. Music composition program. Looks like an easy way to make loop based music. Unfortunately I missed most of the demo. Probably a bit of a niche application.
Who was the musician demoing that?
iPods. Entry level 10 gig goes to 15 for same price ($299.) 20 and 40 gig stay the same.
iPod mini. Flash memory (not hard drive) based MP3 player.
4 gigs of storage! 0.5 inches thick. The size of a business card. $249. Really cool looking.
(What's the storage used? How could it be so cheap? 4 gigs of CF or SD would be way more than that...)
Comes in colors. Shipping February.
That's it. No big surprises. Nice show though. Is there a CEO better at public speaking than Steve Jobs?
Maybe the miniPods are hard drive based?
From apple.com/ipod/specs.html:
Technical Specifications
Capacity
4GB, 15GB, 20GB or 40GB hard disk drive(1)
I was a big fan of Word on the Mac in the mid-eighties while some of my colleages were using (struggling with) LaTeX on sneaker-netted proto-Dell PCs. If Jobs had been willing to support Taiwanese Mac clones at that time the computer landscape would be radically different today. He could have owned the office desktop market -- at least the OS part of that market. And now we all know what owning the OS is all about.
But he would have had to sacrifice total control of the whole widget (hardware and software) and consequently give up on his personal vision. Instead he built the machine he wanted and made a couple billion. I doubt he envies Gate's unartistic dominance in any way.
Perhaps share holders feel different of course.
And what about the consumers, and 3rd party application vendors? The market dominance by Microsoft isn't good for them. Apple may have great products, but they're a niche player. I'd prefer to see two strong players, each with 30+ % market share duking it out. That would be better for everyone ... except Gates.
I agree. It would be better. I don't think Jobs will ever license the OS though. And they won't ever make a cheap enough machine to get that sort of market share.
Maybe they can get to 7%.
I wonder how much that would matter.
The best hope to weaken the monopoly is for Apple to take a larger bite out of the desktop (esp. for targeted applications), and for Linux to take a significant bite out of servers/embedded apps.
For general business/office use, MS continues to build on the Office franchise. This isn't just a market barrier, it's a market fortress. But there are lots of desktop/laptop users who aren't big into Powerpoint, Excel, Visio, Project, etc., etc. The graphics, video, film and similar applications spaces are a good home base for Apple, but they need to spread out from there if they really want to make MS feel some pain.
For example, If I was Jobs I'd push very hard for new platform independent video players (Quicktime based on H.264/MPEG-4 part 10 baseline profile?) and Mac-specific authoring tools.
For server/embedded apps, MS has a huge advantage with their suite of development tools. But the unit price of the OS kills them for many of these apps. At some point they may try to coopt the Linux movement.
The traditional unix server suppliers (e.g. Sun) are as dead as DEC and Wang. They just don't know it yet.
What is the "part 10 baseline profile" part? Latest Quicktime is based on H.264/MPEG-4 I thought. I'm always interested in getting an actual experts opinion. :-)
I agree with the Apple/Linux desktop/server strategy, except how can Apple compete outside of the wealthy niche they already have when their cheapest machine is $799? That's twice as much as a super cheap Wintel.
But I don't really think Apple should go after that market. There's no money there. Isn't it like telling BMW they need to make a super cheap car to compete with Hyundai? They'd get more market share if they did, sure, but I'll bet they are more happy with their bigger margins (even with less sales.) And maybe also with the aura of quality that comes with a higher price tag (some of which is deserved because they don't have to cut so many corners like they would if they were trying to make a $400 machine.)
Agreed that Sun is dead.
Actually BMW does have a branding strategy for the low end - the Mini. Well, it's not very low end, but it's a value market rather than a premium market. If they had pulled off the Rover merger, they could have had a bigger footprint in the value market, and perhaps even a presence in the economy market. Daimler-Benz may have better luck with the Chrysler purchase.
A multi-tier branding strategy is more difficult in the computer market, but Dell has done pretty well in creating distinct approaches for home/office/server markets.
The computer market will see ongoing price erosion, because the HW is finally winning the HW vs. SW race. They ought to get ahead of the curve and drive their volumes with a lower margin product line. (Red Delicious?)
Regarding Quicktime, as of September the party line was Qucktime supports MPEG-4 part 2 (either SP or ASP, I forget which), and they couldn't comment on future products which may or may not be based on MPEG-4 part 10 (AVC). Has that changed?
MPEG-4 part 2 is slightly better than MPEG 1 or 2. MPEG-4 part 10 AVC (aka H.264) offers much greater compression efficiency at the cost of much more computation.
You know way more, obviously, about this stuff, but I think Apple got this into Quicktime 6.3 this summer (Quicktime 6.4 is out now.) QuickTime 6.3 supports the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard, including Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) audio, MPEG-4 and H.263 video, 3G Text (TX3G) and native .3gp file format support, and delivers a foundation for creation, delivery and playback of rich multimedia content over wireless networks. [Jun 06 2003]
As for the other thread about commodity hardware, I just don't feel Apple should do it. Dell has done well, as you point out, except their R&D budget approaches zero! They don't create anything (do they?) They just integrate whatever standards are out there at the lowest possible cost. They are Wallmart. Can you name one technology Dell has brought to market (besides excellent Just In Time inventory control?) Apple, on the other hand, can't compete for those thin margins because they put so much into R&D. Apple actually creates stuff. Chipsets. Firewire. Rendez-Vous. They innovate, and this takes money, which means they need to be in a market segment with some margins so they can recoup those costs.
That's my story at least. But sure, I'd buy a low cost Mac if they made one. I was the proud owner of a Power Computing clone a few years ago when they did that experiment.
Interesting note that Jobs did not discuss during his quick intro of the new xServe: IBM has successfully taken the G5 to 90 nanometers. The PowerPC G5 is fabricated in IBM’s new $3 billion, state-of-the-art facility in East Fishkill, New York. To get electronics so small requires miniaturization breakthroughs, and IBM’s dedication to scientific research has made these advances possible. With industry-leading build, assembly, and test technology, IBM uses a 90-nanometer process to produce the PowerPC G5..... The G5s in PowerMacs have been 130-nanometer process. This is very good news for Apple if IBM has already made this leap.
ITU and MPEG are the two groups responsible for most "open" compression standards, and they tend to collaborate. ITU generates H.xxx standards, and ISO/MPEG creates MPEG-x standards.
ITU H.263 and MPEG-4 part 2 both date from the mid-ninties and offer roughly 25% improvement over MPEG-2. For a SW codec, such as Quicktime, it was worth the effort to switch. For HW-based systems, such as satellite TV, the improvement did not warrant an equipment swap away from MPEG-2.
H.264 is a whole new thing. Conceptually it's similar to previous standards, but there significant improvements to just about every aspect of the compression process. MPEG liked it so much that they jumped on the bandwagon with ITU's new work. In a confusing move they called it MPEG-4 part 10 rather than say, MPEG-5 or MPEG-8.
H.264 is about 2-3 times better than the previous generation of compression standards. And the improvement applies across the board, from cell-phone sized images to HD. This is a big deal. But H.264 requires much more computation on both the encode and decode.
Meanwhile, MS is launching MP9, which is based on cherry picking ideas from H.264. It doesn't provide as much compression efficiency, but it's simpler to decode. "H.264 minus minus" might be a good nickname.
I'm suggesting that Apple seize the initiative and should push forward strongly with H.264 for Quicktime. Initially it may be suitable for only low resolution video, due to the client side processing demands, but over time as computers get faster, H.264 can move it up to higher and higher resolution.
On the Apple/Dell thread, yes Dell is much more of a marketing organization than an R&D organization. But a huge part of the market for computers is "trailing edge" users. To grow their market share, Apple may want to apply a Dell-like business model to a low end product line. Of course, the trick is to avoid cannibalizing the high-margin product lines.
D'oh. I was reading H.263 and H.264 as the same thing! Shows how much I know. Thanks for the insights.
"...the trick is to avoid cannibalizing the high-margin product lines." Exactly. Very hard problem. This is what happened when they did the clone test a few years ago (Motorolla, Umax, and PowerComputing all had MacOS machines which were made cheaply and sold for a little less than Apple's products.)
Bill Gates is pushing seamless computing, including PCs, networks, pod-things, game consoles, etc. Windows Media Vision HD is one of the elements of this. I'm not sure what he means by this, but I assume it's just a different name for Windows Media Video 9, a key element of Windows Media Player 9.
Meanwhile Apple is licensing the iPod to HP.
Doc Searles turns his rose colored glasses on the Mac world: What Apple's doing with "i" apps like GarageBand isn't about the computer industry; it's about the entertainment industry. That industry lately has become vigilant about threats from its customers, which it still thinks of as consumers. Instead it should be watching how Apple transforms those consumers into producers. Because the next challenge will be finding ways to turn those producers into partners. The old gig is up. They'll never be just "consumers" again.
did you read the todd rundgren screed on ethel?
Nice words. I believe it all, of course, but I'm already a loon. And I believe what Doc is saying about Apple too - that they are trying to turn the tide by providing the tools to turn couch potato consumers into media creators, in effect doing an end run around the large copyright holders. This is one reason I love Apple. But I think the percentage of people who want to do this is probably similar in size to Todd Rundgren's fan base. Sort of a niche thing, in other words.
The Doc Searles and Rundgren pieces relate to notions I've had floating around in my head lately, nice to have them (thoughts) anchored and articulated. To view the electronics customer as producer rather than consumer (victim) seems much more accurate (with the exception perhaps of televison sets.)
But I get the sense it's more than just a fringe thing, look at how many kids want to be producers of music or films or books, look at the web. Aren't people making and publishing stuff more now than ever before? I'm sure the comparison has already been made but I think the copyright infringement issue is becoming analagous to "The War on Terror." Call them Cold (medium) Warriors.
And Jobs as head of Disney, do you think that's likely?
Jobs will not be head of Disney. (Disney buying Apple is a classic rumor in the Mac world. It never comes true, but every year someone is once again sure that it will. I guess this is just an elaboration of that where Jobs actually takes over, the way he did when Apple bought his company Next.)
I hope you are right about the rest of it Steve. I don't think I really know any younger kids to even judge what the hell is going on out there. I certainly hope they are doing something other than watching TV, since that seems really bad these days. And the tools are certainly there. I remember making Hi-8 videotape movies in highschool with my friends - no editing - and I just imagine what we could have done if we had been able to use iMovie. No doubt Garageband will be similar for a whole generation of musicians.
Now that organ comes with a "rhythm genie" that puts a whole band in your living room. Add bass, marimbas, a cha cha beat--yeah! (That's right, Edna!) Just kidding, I'll probably end up getting garageband to add music to my burgeoning animation catalog (after I learn how to rip mp3s).
ripping from vinyl?
|
- jim 1-05-2004 5:58 pm
The stream is up. Just shots of the crowd. I am comforted to see thousands of people more over the edge than I am. At least it's a reasonable hour on the east coast.
- jim 1-06-2004 7:58 pm
60,000 people watching over the web.
- jim 1-06-2004 8:06 pm
I didn't know that Word, Excel, and Powerpoint were all available on for the Mac *before* they were available on Windows (circa 1984.)
- jim 1-06-2004 8:22 pm
G5 Xserve. Still 1U. Single and Dual processors. ECC memory. Shipping in February.
New Xserve RAID. 3U. 3.5 TB of storage. SFP connection built in. At the top end it is $3 per Gigabyte.
- jim 1-06-2004 8:41 pm
The top spender on the iTunes music store has spent $29,500 dollars! No details though. Could this actually be an individual?
- jim 1-06-2004 8:44 pm
Pepsi is going to give away 100 million free songs from the iTunes music store starting Feb 1st (super bowl ad.)
- jim 1-06-2004 8:50 pm
Supposedly iPhoto isn't going to suck anymore if you have more than like 10 pictures.
(Jobs is scrolling efortlessly through a 25,000 picture library. I wonder what machine that is on!?)
- jim 1-06-2004 8:53 pm
Damn, my stream is crapping out.
- jim 1-06-2004 9:13 pm
I think he's demo'ing the new music making app GarageBand, but I can't be sure because I am only getting about every 10th word. C'mon Akamai!
Ok, my fault, someone else in the office was using all the bandwidth.
Still on GarageBand. Music composition program. Looks like an easy way to make loop based music. Unfortunately I missed most of the demo. Probably a bit of a niche application.
- jim 1-06-2004 9:29 pm
Who was the musician demoing that?
- jim 1-06-2004 9:37 pm
iPods. Entry level 10 gig goes to 15 for same price ($299.) 20 and 40 gig stay the same.
- jim 1-06-2004 9:55 pm
iPod mini. Flash memory (not hard drive) based MP3 player.
4 gigs of storage! 0.5 inches thick. The size of a business card. $249. Really cool looking.
(What's the storage used? How could it be so cheap? 4 gigs of CF or SD would be way more than that...)
Comes in colors. Shipping February.
- jim 1-06-2004 10:03 pm
That's it. No big surprises. Nice show though. Is there a CEO better at public speaking than Steve Jobs?
- jim 1-06-2004 10:06 pm
Maybe the miniPods are hard drive based?
From apple.com/ipod/specs.html:
Technical Specifications
Capacity
4GB, 15GB, 20GB or 40GB hard disk drive(1)
- jim 1-06-2004 11:28 pm
I was a big fan of Word on the Mac in the mid-eighties while some of my colleages were using (struggling with) LaTeX on sneaker-netted proto-Dell PCs. If Jobs had been willing to support Taiwanese Mac clones at that time the computer landscape would be radically different today. He could have owned the office desktop market -- at least the OS part of that market. And now we all know what owning the OS is all about.
- mark 1-07-2004 2:39 am
But he would have had to sacrifice total control of the whole widget (hardware and software) and consequently give up on his personal vision. Instead he built the machine he wanted and made a couple billion. I doubt he envies Gate's unartistic dominance in any way.
- jim 1-07-2004 2:52 am
Perhaps share holders feel different of course.
- jim 1-07-2004 2:53 am
And what about the consumers, and 3rd party application vendors? The market dominance by Microsoft isn't good for them. Apple may have great products, but they're a niche player. I'd prefer to see two strong players, each with 30+ % market share duking it out. That would be better for everyone ... except Gates.
- mark 1-07-2004 3:45 am
I agree. It would be better. I don't think Jobs will ever license the OS though. And they won't ever make a cheap enough machine to get that sort of market share.
Maybe they can get to 7%.
I wonder how much that would matter.
- jim 1-07-2004 3:53 am
The best hope to weaken the monopoly is for Apple to take a larger bite out of the desktop (esp. for targeted applications), and for Linux to take a significant bite out of servers/embedded apps.
For general business/office use, MS continues to build on the Office franchise. This isn't just a market barrier, it's a market fortress. But there are lots of desktop/laptop users who aren't big into Powerpoint, Excel, Visio, Project, etc., etc. The graphics, video, film and similar applications spaces are a good home base for Apple, but they need to spread out from there if they really want to make MS feel some pain.
For example, If I was Jobs I'd push very hard for new platform independent video players (Quicktime based on H.264/MPEG-4 part 10 baseline profile?) and Mac-specific authoring tools.
For server/embedded apps, MS has a huge advantage with their suite of development tools. But the unit price of the OS kills them for many of these apps. At some point they may try to coopt the Linux movement.
The traditional unix server suppliers (e.g. Sun) are as dead as DEC and Wang. They just don't know it yet.
- mark 1-07-2004 4:11 am
What is the "part 10 baseline profile" part? Latest Quicktime is based on H.264/MPEG-4 I thought. I'm always interested in getting an actual experts opinion. :-)
I agree with the Apple/Linux desktop/server strategy, except how can Apple compete outside of the wealthy niche they already have when their cheapest machine is $799? That's twice as much as a super cheap Wintel.
But I don't really think Apple should go after that market. There's no money there. Isn't it like telling BMW they need to make a super cheap car to compete with Hyundai? They'd get more market share if they did, sure, but I'll bet they are more happy with their bigger margins (even with less sales.) And maybe also with the aura of quality that comes with a higher price tag (some of which is deserved because they don't have to cut so many corners like they would if they were trying to make a $400 machine.)
Agreed that Sun is dead.
- jim 1-07-2004 4:31 am
Actually BMW does have a branding strategy for the low end - the Mini. Well, it's not very low end, but it's a value market rather than a premium market. If they had pulled off the Rover merger, they could have had a bigger footprint in the value market, and perhaps even a presence in the economy market. Daimler-Benz may have better luck with the Chrysler purchase.
A multi-tier branding strategy is more difficult in the computer market, but Dell has done pretty well in creating distinct approaches for home/office/server markets.
The computer market will see ongoing price erosion, because the HW is finally winning the HW vs. SW race. They ought to get ahead of the curve and drive their volumes with a lower margin product line. (Red Delicious?)
Regarding Quicktime, as of September the party line was Qucktime supports MPEG-4 part 2 (either SP or ASP, I forget which), and they couldn't comment on future products which may or may not be based on MPEG-4 part 10 (AVC). Has that changed?
MPEG-4 part 2 is slightly better than MPEG 1 or 2. MPEG-4 part 10 AVC (aka H.264) offers much greater compression efficiency at the cost of much more computation.
- mark 1-07-2004 6:28 am
You know way more, obviously, about this stuff, but I think Apple got this into Quicktime 6.3 this summer (Quicktime 6.4 is out now.)
As for the other thread about commodity hardware, I just don't feel Apple should do it. Dell has done well, as you point out, except their R&D budget approaches zero! They don't create anything (do they?) They just integrate whatever standards are out there at the lowest possible cost. They are Wallmart. Can you name one technology Dell has brought to market (besides excellent Just In Time inventory control?) Apple, on the other hand, can't compete for those thin margins because they put so much into R&D. Apple actually creates stuff. Chipsets. Firewire. Rendez-Vous. They innovate, and this takes money, which means they need to be in a market segment with some margins so they can recoup those costs.
That's my story at least. But sure, I'd buy a low cost Mac if they made one. I was the proud owner of a Power Computing clone a few years ago when they did that experiment.
- jim 1-07-2004 6:50 pm
Interesting note that Jobs did not discuss during his quick intro of the new xServe: IBM has successfully taken the G5 to 90 nanometers.
The G5s in PowerMacs have been 130-nanometer process. This is very good news for Apple if IBM has already made this leap.- jim 1-07-2004 7:07 pm
ITU and MPEG are the two groups responsible for most "open" compression standards, and they tend to collaborate. ITU generates H.xxx standards, and ISO/MPEG creates MPEG-x standards.
ITU H.263 and MPEG-4 part 2 both date from the mid-ninties and offer roughly 25% improvement over MPEG-2. For a SW codec, such as Quicktime, it was worth the effort to switch. For HW-based systems, such as satellite TV, the improvement did not warrant an equipment swap away from MPEG-2.
H.264 is a whole new thing. Conceptually it's similar to previous standards, but there significant improvements to just about every aspect of the compression process. MPEG liked it so much that they jumped on the bandwagon with ITU's new work. In a confusing move they called it MPEG-4 part 10 rather than say, MPEG-5 or MPEG-8.
H.264 is about 2-3 times better than the previous generation of compression standards. And the improvement applies across the board, from cell-phone sized images to HD. This is a big deal. But H.264 requires much more computation on both the encode and decode.
Meanwhile, MS is launching MP9, which is based on cherry picking ideas from H.264. It doesn't provide as much compression efficiency, but it's simpler to decode. "H.264 minus minus" might be a good nickname.
I'm suggesting that Apple seize the initiative and should push forward strongly with H.264 for Quicktime. Initially it may be suitable for only low resolution video, due to the client side processing demands, but over time as computers get faster, H.264 can move it up to higher and higher resolution.
On the Apple/Dell thread, yes Dell is much more of a marketing organization than an R&D organization. But a huge part of the market for computers is "trailing edge" users. To grow their market share, Apple may want to apply a Dell-like business model to a low end product line. Of course, the trick is to avoid cannibalizing the high-margin product lines.
- mark 1-07-2004 8:53 pm
D'oh. I was reading H.263 and H.264 as the same thing! Shows how much I know. Thanks for the insights.
"...the trick is to avoid cannibalizing the high-margin product lines." Exactly. Very hard problem. This is what happened when they did the clone test a few years ago (Motorolla, Umax, and PowerComputing all had MacOS machines which were made cheaply and sold for a little less than Apple's products.)
- jim 1-07-2004 9:07 pm
Bill Gates is pushing seamless computing, including PCs, networks, pod-things, game consoles, etc. Windows Media Vision HD is one of the elements of this. I'm not sure what he means by this, but I assume it's just a different name for Windows Media Video 9, a key element of Windows Media Player 9.
Meanwhile Apple is licensing the iPod to HP.
- mark 1-09-2004 12:56 am
Doc Searles turns his rose colored glasses on the Mac world:
- jim 1-10-2004 6:47 pm
did you read the todd rundgren screed on ethel?
- dave 1-10-2004 7:16 pm
Nice words. I believe it all, of course, but I'm already a loon. And I believe what Doc is saying about Apple too - that they are trying to turn the tide by providing the tools to turn couch potato consumers into media creators, in effect doing an end run around the large copyright holders. This is one reason I love Apple. But I think the percentage of people who want to do this is probably similar in size to Todd Rundgren's fan base. Sort of a niche thing, in other words.
- jim 1-10-2004 7:28 pm
The Doc Searles and Rundgren pieces relate to notions I've had floating around in my head lately, nice to have them (thoughts) anchored and articulated. To view the electronics customer as producer rather than consumer (victim) seems much more accurate (with the exception perhaps of televison sets.)
But I get the sense it's more than just a fringe thing, look at how many kids want to be producers of music or films or books, look at the web. Aren't people making and publishing stuff more now than ever before? I'm sure the comparison has already been made but I think the copyright infringement issue is becoming analagous to "The War on Terror." Call them Cold (medium) Warriors.
- steve 1-12-2004 4:15 pm
And Jobs as head of Disney, do you think that's likely?
- steve 1-12-2004 4:15 pm
Jobs will not be head of Disney. (Disney buying Apple is a classic rumor in the Mac world. It never comes true, but every year someone is once again sure that it will. I guess this is just an elaboration of that where Jobs actually takes over, the way he did when Apple bought his company Next.)
I hope you are right about the rest of it Steve. I don't think I really know any younger kids to even judge what the hell is going on out there. I certainly hope they are doing something other than watching TV, since that seems really bad these days. And the tools are certainly there. I remember making Hi-8 videotape movies in highschool with my friends - no editing - and I just imagine what we could have done if we had been able to use iMovie. No doubt Garageband will be similar for a whole generation of musicians.
- jim 1-12-2004 5:46 pm
Now that organ comes with a "rhythm genie" that puts a whole band in your living room. Add bass, marimbas, a cha cha beat--yeah! (That's right, Edna!) Just kidding, I'll probably end up getting garageband to add music to my burgeoning animation catalog (after I learn how to rip mp3s).
- tom moody 1-12-2004 6:02 pm
ripping from vinyl?
- steve 1-13-2004 6:09 am