Apple Subscription Plan

Apparently Apple is shopping a $30 month subscription plan to the media networks for content (1, 2).

I think this is a good idea.

Most of the content on the iTunes Movie store is buy-only which is not an attractive proposition since I suspect that most of it will only get watched once (or twice, maybe). The high cost of buying programs is what puts me off buying anything on the store. For example if I want to catch up on the Family Guy on the iTunes Movie store, I would need to buy all the seasons which would cost me between $10 and $30 a season, a show-stopper for me. For that kind of money I am better off going to Netflix but then I have to wait for 2 days. I know you can rent movies and I do once in a while but the selection is pretty thin.

So if I was able to have access to the content on the iTunes Movie store for $30/month and pay per movie rented, that would be an attractive proposition for me.

Attractive in the way cable wasn’t because I would get 70 channels for a basic cable subscription (67 of which I did not watch), and I would need to get premium subscriptions for better quality content, which is why I killed off my cable 4 years ago.

The interesting thing about this plan though is that it moves close to the a-la-carte programming that cable companies fought tooth and nail against time and time again.

Anti-Virus for Mac

Interesting, PC Tools now has anti-virus software for Macs.

I tried it out and the scan came up negative, and I uninstalled the software.

I have not run anti-virus software since the days of Mac OS 9 and may even have dropped it since Mac OS 8.

Still you have to assume that Mac OS X will become a target once the ecosystem is large enough.

New Apple Products and the Inevitable

Apple just announced a new raft of products today. I’ll spare you the me-too and just direct you to the Apple site for details.

Of interest to me is the new mouse which looks very nice, I currently use the wired Mighty Mouse from Apple because it fits my hand nicely and I don’t like the tracking (floating) of the Bluetooth variant. But I will certainly try this new one and see how it goes.

The new remotes are very cute, I will have to try one of those too.

And there is the inevitable. My Airport Express died two weeks ago, on sunday morning at 6:45am. It was out of warranty, so I went and bought myself a new one. And it just figures that Apple would update it two weeks later (today.)

MacResearch Weblog

Can’t think how I missed it, but the MacResearch weblog tracks the use of Macs in research.

Particularly interesting to me is the tutorial on OpenCL (currently there are six parts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

iPhone UI

Some interesting user interface ideas for the iPhone as more and more apps are put onto it. An Exposé Concept video (on MobileCrunch) from a Swedish design house, and a redesign from Bruce Tognazzini.

Both worth looking at.

I don’t have too many apps, but I have grouped them into logical groups and have 5 screens to navigate, going to the home screen is easy, going to the far end is more complicated. All least iTunes allows me to move screens around so that I can put the most useful stuff closer to the home screen.

Apple Tablet

Ok, so we have been getting a zillion rumors about the upcoming Apple Tablet along with a bunch of specs about size, connectivity, whatever.

But the report that Apple was talking to a number of high profile publishers about generating content for this device got me thinking about what it would take to make a device like this successful especially given all the naysayers about tablet computing in general. And yes there have been many failures, but there have been notable successes like the Kindle for example and I hear that the Fujitsu and Toshiba tablets have both been getting some traction in the health care industry.

What made the iPod a success was the music store, this is key. The integrated experience of buying, downloading and playing music is also very important but would be useless a music store with depth to it.

What made the iPhone popular (it is not yet a success) was the app store, again this is key. The iPhone really broke out of it’s niche market once people were able to get applications that were outside Apple’s stable.

The same will be true for the Apple tablet, and I think one of the key features will be the ability to get good content from high profile publishers. The Kindle proves that model to a large degree but it is a single task device and that limits it.

What I would like from a tablet computer is access to the web, weblogs, news, books, music, photos, etc… For me it would be first and foremost a device with which I access and read content on the go, and that makes it different from an iPhone or a laptop for that matter.

Light Peak

I came across Light Peak this morning on Engadget and MacRumors.

To me the really interesting thing is that this has the potential to replace all the connections on the computer, connections to external (and internal) drives, mouse, displays, whatever with a single cable and connector type, which would be really neat. No reason why you should not be able to replace network connections either.

I think this has real potential, can’t wait to see how this develops.

Snow Leopard Bugs

I have run into three really irritating Snow Leopard bugs and one feature change which is only mildly irritating.

The three really irritating bugs are as follows:

• The main display (I have three attached to my computer) will go black for no apparent reason, at least it did until I decided to do a clean install. This is a documented problem and seems to have gone away since I did a clean install but we shall see. If it does start up again I will back down to 10.5.8
• Sometimes the video on the main display will “wobble” when it comes back on after being turned off for a while, not a show stopper because it only lasts 10-15 seconds but still.
• The main display will “forget” its color calibration profile after being off for a certain period of time, this is probably linked with the “wobbly” display bug mentioned above.

Finally the mildly irritating feature change is that Snow Leopard now does not respect the creator code when opening a documents, it only respects the file name extension.

New iPods

Well the new iPod line-up is underwhelming, the shuffle got colors, the nano got new colors, a new finish (meh), a video camera (meh), an FM radio (double meh), I would have preferred more storage, and the touch got, well nothing except for more storage.

iTunes 9

I upgraded to iTunes 9 recently and was initially quite disappointed by the new column based interface before realizing that you could manage which columns were displayed and whether they were displayed on the left hand side or across the top. It did take me three days and reading the MacWorld review to figure it out.