Now that the iPhone hype is finally winding down (I think) it feels like a good time to reflect on where the product got it’s start.
Remember the iPod? They still make those non-phone versions of the iPhone.
And here is the first ad for the iPod from back in the day:
Recently Apple sent out a newsletter to videocasters explaining how to optimize their videos for the Apple TV. A lot of it was pretty basic stuff but one section in particular caught my eye. Apple suggests only encoding for the highest resolution iPod and says that’s good enough for Apple TV. I don’t think so, and frankly I think Apple needs to overhaul their device support for online video.
The thought process behind Apple’s suggestion is very sound. If a videocaster creates two versions of the same video, one for iPods and one for Apple TV, they they split the users up between the two formats. Rather than having one format with 5000 users you end up with two feeds of 2500 users each. Apple likes to feature popular videocasts on the front of the iTunes store’s Podcasting section and if you only have 2500 viewers then you may have to double your viewership just to get mentioned (these are made up numbers for the sake of my example). Getting promoted on other sites will be harder too since it will look like your videos are less popular than they really are. The second problem is that some users, like myself, have both the iPod and Apple TV. Which feed should I subscribe to? Having multiple feeds can be confusing to end-users, waters down the popularity of the videos themselves and becomes much harder to manage. This is all true.
iPod video is only 1/2 the lines of resolution that the highest quality Apple TV video can be played at, assuming 16:9 content. On the iPod we’re looking at 640×360 videos while on the Apple TV we can have 1280×720 video. You can imagine how much worse a 360 line video looks than a 720 line video being that 360 is under DVD quality and edging on VHS quality. This makes Apple’s solution less than ideal. As a content creator I not only want to make it easy for my end-users to get the videos, but I also want to show off my material in the highest quality possible.
The solution to this problem is not the responsibility of the videocaster. Apple needs to step up and change the way video is done across all devices so that they match, or they need to change how iTunes deals with video.
Lets first try changing all devices. Apple should update the iPod to include the same hardware h.264 decoder that the Apple TV has. Now an iPod can have 1280×720 playback of video which would allow us to discontinue our iPod feed and go straight to a 720p feed. The same video that plays on a video iPod would play on an Apple TV. The other advantage of this is that now my iPod is HD ready so with an iPod to HDMI adapter cable I should be able to plug directly in to my HDTV and get audio and video in 720p. The disadvantage of this is that 720p is not the holy grail of online video. 1080p is pretty clearly where the iPod and Apple TV need to be. How does Apple deal with this in the future? Update the iPod and Apple TV hardware to support 1080p? What about all the users of the old hardware that only have 720p support? Do we end up with two feeds again? I’m not sure this is the most ideal solution, but it’s better than having devices with different resolutions completely.
The second option Apple has is to change the way that iTunes works with video. Right now Technology Evangelist is working with about six different video feeds: 480p (iPod), 720p (Apple TV), 1080p, 3G phone, PSP and Zune. Imagine being able to drop everything but the 1080p video feed and have iTunes compress the video on-the-fly to the format that it needs. One feed from Technology Evangelist could drive any portable media player that works with iTunes, any media extender that works with iTunes and any local computer playback would be in the highest quality possible. The problem here is recompression time. Right now all iTunes has to do is move the file from your computer to the device you want to play it on. In this new model not only will iTunes have to move the file, but it will have to recompress it as well. The recompression can take ages. That’s where Cringely’s idea of hardware h.264 encoders in every Macintosh comes into play. Offload the h.264 onto a hardware chip so it can recompress the video in real-time or faster. Take that 1080p file and create an optimized iPod, Apple TV and computer playback version and we end up with a very powerful solution. We’re left with a distribution problem of online video being 1080p, but that’s for another article. What about Windows users, what do they do in this scenario?
Maybe there’s a better way to do RSS feeds? No idea, but I do know that what we have right now is broken and someone like Apple needs to step up and fix it.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper ran a story on the front page of startribune.com with the following headline and excerpt:
“An armed robber stole an iPod from an Asian-languages and literature senior from the University of Minnesota a week ago, the Minnesota Daily is reporting.”
Which made me wonder: Is a stolen iPod news worthy of a front page story? And what’s with the “Asian-languages and literature” mention? How does the victim’s major make any difference.
So I clicked.
Paragraph two:
“The robber was likely in for a surprise: Everything in the iPod was in Japanese, the student, Jasmine Egli, told the newspaper.”
Oooooh. So that’s the catch. Boy, is that robber going to be in for a surprise. Whatever will they do with an iPod full of content they almost certainly don’t want. That’s worth about as much as an iPod without any songs on it.
It’s a fun local story based on the police blotter from the University of Minnesota. Nothing wrong with that.
My gripe has to do with the first two links in this blog post. Notice how I linked to the article on the Star Tribune AND to the Minnesota Daily? In my opinion, this provides value to you, my reader, by making it easy for you to read more about this story if it interest you. The Star Tribune cites the MN Daily as the source of the story but didn’t link back to their source.
I see a trend evolving where news junkies read commentary on news stories FIRST, then go back to the original source if they’re looking for more about the story. It’s a more consumer friendly way to digest the news since you can easily find more information on stories that interest you. However, that doesn’t have to be the end result.
One of the first newspaper sites to understand this trend and try to reverse it is the Washington Post, who added a “Who’s Blogging” feature that provides links to commentary from the blogosphere alongside the original news stories. This show comes from a story today by Howard Kurtz about Tim Russert testifying at Scooter Libby’s trial:
I believe tools like this make the Washington Post more valuable news source.
The level of interest in news stories will vary from scanning of a headline to wanting to read every word that’s been written on the subject. And that interest varies from reader to reader and story to story. Newspapers that enable a full spectrum of depth options (aka. links) serve their readers best.
After a few days with the relatives, I’ve had a chance to reset my tech-centric self with a good dose of real-world tech use. There were no conversations about RSS, the intricacies of Google’s search algorithm, blog platforms, Web 2.0 business models, JavaScript, or PHP. However, there were plenty of tech-related conversations. Here are a ten that come to mind:
2. Explaining the value of upgrading beyond 512MB RAM for a college student’s computer. Well worth it, and the RAM is on the way.
3. Discussing the photo quality of small digital cameras. I’ve been impressed with my new Canon SD 600.
4. Explaining Net Neutrality after seeing the misinformation commercial I wrote about last week running on Comcast cable.
5. Explaining the benefits of PCs vs. Macs for a college student in a band. Sticking with the PC for now, but will probably buy a Mac next.
6. Showing someone how iMovie works after showing her a video I made for Christmas. It’s on her Mac but she hasn’t tried it yet.
7. Showing someone my Flickr photos. Realizing that Flickr’s interface is painfully hard to use by people with less than 10,000 hours of touch pad or mouse experience.
8. Explaining the difference between RAM and a hard drive.
9. Receiving a dead iPod as a non-gift giveaway because the hard drive stopped spinning.
10. Showing someone how to navigate their very first iPod.
How about you? What sort of tech questions or conversations do you encounter while visiting friends and family that differ from your everyday life?
Julio Ojeda-Zapata of Your Tech Weblog recently wrote about custom earbuds (called iBuds) available from Starkey in Minnesota and Westone Laboratories in Colorado:
I’ve heard from quite a few people that the default iPod earbuds don’t fit their ears. I’m sure Apple does what they can do design the most universal earbud they can, including a recent redesign to do just that, but clearly they won’t be able to satisfy everyone.
Have you tried these? Let’s hear about them.
I’d also love to hear from someone who managed to surprise their loved one with a set of these. How did you manage to covertly capture custom molds?
Recent Comments