Daily Deals: New nano, touch and Apple TV
Written by Ed Sutherland | Source: http://www.cultofmac.com
on September 2nd, 2010 with no comments.
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Why the New Apple TV Isn’t Something I’ll Be Watching
So is Apple TV still only a hobby for Jobs and company? Because if it isn’t, then I’m missing something from yesterday’s presentation when the new iteration of Apple’s set-top device was unveiled. The new Apple TV is smaller, cheaper and sexier, I’ll grant it that, but what else does it really have going for it?
Let’s start with rental only. That’s right, you can only rent content from the Apple TV, not purchase it. It makes sense given the device’s lack of onboard storage, but does it make sense for a buying public that’s only just now moving past the point of physical media ownership? All of a sudden, not only do you not have a disc you own when you pay for content, you also don’t even have a file. Instead you get a window of opportunity.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like archiving my material and I like to have it available whenever I want to review it, or just revisit a favorite scene to make sure I remember it correctly. True, as Steve Jobs said in the presentation, I’ll be able to rent it multiple times for cheaper than I’d be able to buy it, but then I can’t lend it to friends and family, pass it on to my kids or view it again 50 years down the road when its gone out of print.
Putting aside the tyranny of streaming-only, at least you can access your media on your computer, where it is comfortably stored, right? Well, only if you’ve adhered to Apple’s way of doing media, and haven’t strayed to any of the other terrific and much more popular video formats out there. Apple TV remains closed, and as a result, any machine running Boxee hooked up to my TV remains a better option, even considering the price differential for the original purchase.
Speaking of price, let’s look at that $99 tag Jobs dangled in our salivating faces. It’s almost an impulse buy at that point, and I know a few people who indulged that impulse. But you know what else is a good price? $10 for a fancy razor with replaceable heads. Those heads will cost you $40 for a four-pack, sure, but that’s later. Apple isn’t going to make most (if any) of its money on the Apple TV itself (though without much onboard storage, it’s cheap enough to build), but on the gobs of media you’re almost forced to purchase from them as a result.
The inclusion of Netflix is one of the few genuinely impressive things about the new Apple TV. It means that people who already have a subscription don’t need to go in for Apple’s pricier rental options, and the implementation looks pretty impressive as compared to its counterparts on other platforms.
But even if you exclusively use the Netflix option, which means being behind in terms of release dates on TV and movies, you’ll end up paying much more for the hardware than you probably would if you opted for a media PC (or Mac mini, even) purchase and just depended on free streaming from network websites. Occasionally you’d still run up against content you have to pay for, but you can own it, and you options for sourcing that could equate to a much better per purchase price.
In general, I’m willing to deal with Apple’s closed systems and devices because of the trade-offs I get in terms of quality. But third-party apps and desktop software make it possible for me to still use Apple hardware with my own content, regardless of format and point of origin. That’s not likely going to be the case with the Apple TV, and until it is, it won’t find a place in my living room, regardless of cost and cosmetics.
Written by Darrell Etherington | Source: http://theappleblog.com
on September 2nd, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple TV and Commentary and Hardware and Problems and Update.
iPhone 4 Coffee Table Gets You Better Reception Than iPod Table?
Choices, choices. The latest in Apple-related furniture is a custom made iPhone 4 table. Details on it are scant (OK, it seems the Internets aren’t yielding much of anything other than the photo), but it is a slick piece of design that wouldn’t look out of place in many a living room. In terms of [...]
Written by Nicole Martinelli | Source: http://www.cultofmac.com
on September 2nd, 2010 with no comments.
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Twitter App Updated for iPad
Until now, the state of Twitter on the iPad hasn’t been great. There were a few pretty good apps (I’ve been using Tweetdeck), but the field needed a champion. Enter the official Twitter for iPad app.
Early this morning, Twitter for iOS was updated as a universal app, bringing a new iPad-specific format to the existing iPhone one. Loren Birchter, the man behind the Twitter app, and Twitter itself has long heralded its arrival. So is it worth the wait?
Well, Twitter definitely has the right idea with this app at first glance. Unlike some other third-party clients I could mention, Twitter for iPad takes full advantage of the iPad’s generous screen space, and does so creatively. You won’t find the same sort of columns that Tweetdeck uses, but you will find a modular, multi-pane layout that pushes new content to the right allowing you to navigate through threads of tweets without losing the thread of where you’ve come from and how exactly you got there.
You can also use two nifty new multitouch gestures. Pinching a tweet will show you the user profile of the person who tweeted it, and pulling down with two fingers will open up a view of the entire conversation related to that tweet, if there is one. Video plays inline, or you can expand it to take up the whole screen. It also continues to load in the background if you want to keep navigating through your stream or open panes.
In terms of the differences between landscape and profile view, there really aren’t any, other than getting to see more of your history in landscape, and more of your timeline in portrait. Users of the OS X Tweetie desktop app will recognize the left-most account overview column, and it works equally well on this platform for switching between multiple Twitter profiles.
So, while some power-users might still prefer Tweetdeck’s columns, Twitter’s iPad app is a much better choice for the rest of us. It’s clean, simple, but powerful when it needs to be, and I’ve yet to run into any bugs. Plus, it’s free. This is by far the best Twitter app out there for the iPad platform.
Users who haven’t yet updated to iOS 4 on their iPhone devices might want to hold out updating for now, though, as many negative reviews in the App Store indicate that the new version crashes on iOS versions 3.1.3 and earlier.
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Written by Darrell Etherington | Source: http://theappleblog.com
on September 2nd, 2010 with no comments.
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Walkman Outsells iPods in Japan, Can Wristwatch Nano Change That?
Sales of Sony’s MP3 Walkman briefly outsold iPods in Japan again, but that was before the iPod Nano “wristwatch” hit the scene. This small victory also happened at the same time last year in Japan, during the not-so-retailing frenzied month of August. Survey results from Tokyo-based BCN (Google translated version here) show that 2010 August [...]
Written by Nicole Martinelli | Source: http://www.cultofmac.com
on September 2nd, 2010 with no comments.
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