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Netflix's Big Gamble
This morning, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings took what may possibly be the biggest gamble of his life. Netflix has been a successful company for over a decade, starting as a DVD-rental-by-mail service since 1998. Ten years later, they started offering streaming of movies and TV shows over the Internet, no longer requiring the DVD-by-mail. In the last six months or so, some Internet statistics companies (which are a bit spurious) claimed that as much as 40% of prime-time Internet traffic was Netflix Instant traffic. Netflix was a force to be reckoned with, but the last couple months, they've been struggling with that status and may be losing their footing.
Recently, many casual Netflix customers have been threatening to cancel their service due to Netflix's termination of their contract with Starz. Starz was providing access to a limited amount of new-release movies on Instant, but it was a drop in the bucket of the streaming content. But those of us who like quality in movie presentation were nonplussed with the Starz contract, as most of the content was not in HD and sometimes in a full-screen presentation instead of the original widescreen. Personally, I believe the cancellation of the Starz Play deal was a great move for Netflix because it allowed Netflix to spend that money to make deals directly with the studios.
The next big move was Netflix's announcement a couple months ago that September would bring two different feature sets to the service. Streaming, which started as a free bonus for DVD customers just over 3 years ago, was now to cost $7.99. If you wanted to keep the DVD service as well, that was an additional $7.99. From a business point of view, I think this made sense to some extent. As Hastings says, each of these products has their own business model and set of costs. But, while I was happy to pay $7.99 in August, I'm not happy to pay $15.98 in September. The Instant service has drastically increased in value to me with the inclusion of many more great TV shows and some movies, but to suddenly pay twice as much for Netflix service is a hard pill to swallow. And while there are days and days of content I want to watch on Instant, there's no way to watch that movie that I just recently missed while it was in theaters if I cancel the DVD-by-mail service. Long-time Netflix customers either have to choose to pay the big bucks or cancel one half of their services. This would have been easily mitigated by offering a discount of $3 or so when both services were included. And, honestly, when I got an e-mail from Netflix (which is much like this post from their official blog) this morning apologizing, I was expecting that kind of discount. But what we got was much more confusing.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings apologized not for the price hikes, but he apologized for not really telling us why the price hikes were happening. Funnily enough, that was not something I thought he needed to apologize for. I already explained why the pricing was separated; the services are really two separate products and should be treated as such. I was on board with that. In fact, just a few days ago I canceled the streaming service because I was worried I'd spend all winder watching every episode of Star Trek and getting nothing productive done while online. No, the real reason the price hikes were apparently happening was much more puzzling.
As Hastings mentions in his blog post, he firmly believes that streaming movies and TV shows to your home via the Internet is the future. I believe he's right. Once the Internet is fast enough to deliver high-quality content to the masses on a just-in-time basis, the movie disc will disappear. (While the technology to deliver content this fast exists, it seems that most of the developed world is still years away from achieving this.) Also, as Hastings says, for five years, he has feared that he'd miss that point. He doesn't want Netflix to become the next AOL or Borders, where the business model died and they went down with it. For years I've heard him talk about this and thought he was on the right track, but today it has become apparent that Hastings is no longer healthily fearful of the future, he's foolishly obsessed with it.
The fact is, Hastings's Netflix is far from missing the trend. In reality, Netflix has done most of the work to make the trend happen. Before Netflix Instant appeared, almost no one was streaming movies online. YouTube had only been around for a couple years. Heck, Hulu had just started a year before. Netflix brought streaming video from a thing the computer nerds might do to millions of American households in the span of a couple years. Their streaming service is still built into thousands of different TVs, Blu-Ray players, and Internet-connected boxes and phones besides your computer, more than any other competitor. Without Netflix, Blockbuster would still be going strong and we'd still be going there every week to get the next disc of 30 Rock for a week. There would maybe not even be a streaming video market.
This morning, Hastings announced that the reason the pricing was changing was because the Netflix DVD service was being spun off into a subsidiary called Qwikster. Apparently it wasn't enough to have two separate products, but each product had to be under it's own brand and company in the name of bringing "simplicity for our members". (Speaking of which, I think many companies would like to have just two products -- many companies Netflix's size have hundreds of products.) For gamers, there was the addition of disc-by-mail game rentals via the new Qwikster product announced, so at least some customers may find a silver lining. But for the majority of Netflix users, it seems like the only result is more confusion and pain.
Netflix and Qwikster, for those who really enjoy movies, are not two separate products, they are two parts of the same whole. If I find a movie I want to watch, I add it to my Netflix Queue. It's my "what I want to watch" list. It's been great that Netflix says, for now, "Instead of waiting for you to get to this in your queue, you could watch it right now via Instant." But, as described now, a subscriber to both Netflix and Qwikster would have two separate queues with no interaction. If Qwikster offers a similar developer API to what Netflix offers, I"m sure someone will write an app to sync the queues, but it will inherently not work as well as a first-party solution. Two separate services do not provide as comprehensive a solution for their most devoted customer, I believe.
One unified company also seemed to be a good place to negotiate with studios. A streaming-only Netflix service is entirely dependent on the whims of the major studios. If the major studios pulled all their content off of streaming, Netflix wouldn't have much content to speak of. Netflix does give the studios substantial money for the rights to stream their content, but it's not as substantial per viewer as the studios selling it on iTunes or Amazon or via DVD or Blu-Ray. It's much less. Many content properties are worth more than the earnings the studios get from Netflix, and if they want to make more per viewer, they can cut Netflix off. In short, if the studios want to shut Netflix Instant down, they definitely can now because Qwikster is no longer a built-in bargaining chip. That doesn't seem like a better spot to be in to me.
In the long term, I think it makes sense to relegate Qwikster to a separate service, company and brand. Qwikster may thrive for a number of years, but it is a dog that has seen its day and will not grow. Netflix is where the exciting stuff is. But I think that Reed Hastings has, overcome with fear, split them off a couple years too soon. Even he admits in the blog: "It is possible we are moving too fast – it is hard to say." He's right, it is hard to say. I think the next few years will be tough for Netflix and its subsidiaries to regain the momentum that it has lost in the last couple months, but they may be able to keep the car running. Or, we may be witnessing Netflix flying through the air, about to crash into a concrete wall. Only time will tell.
The App Store Problem
Starting with the iPhone and it's brethren the iPod touch and the iPad, Apple only allows you to download and purchase apps via their App Store, which requires approval from Apple to sell them. In the last year, Apple has also made it an option to buy apps for Mac OS X through their sanctioned App Store as well. This has some inherent benefits, most notably a level of security and a trust party to collect payment as well as an easy way to get updates to apps. But, in the end, there's still many shortcomings in the App Store model.
For example, take my recent purchase, the Reeder app. Over the last couple years, I'd tried out a couple apps, such as NetNewsWire, which used the Google Reader API to provide an app interface to reading your Google Reader subscriptions. (I've been a longtime Google Reader user and have been happy using the great web interface for reading RSS subscriptions both at home and one the go.) NetNewsWire, being free, seemed pretty full-featured, but there were a couple things that it didn't do, like not giving a way to mark an item as Unread in case I started reading and found I couldn't read it right now. Reeder's short list of features on the App Store on their website included that feature, so I was intrigued.
With the App Store, there's no way to try out the app. For the iPhone, the app is $2.99. Reeder for Mac has been heavily featured in related areas of the Mac App Store, which usually means it's a quality (or at least popular) product, but the desktop app is $9.99. In the era before the App Store, if this app existed, it would probably have a free trial for a week or two. Then, you'd have to purchase a license key from a sketchy website and hope that it worked to validate the product.
If there was a free trial, I would have found that besides the good looks that show up in the screenshots, there's also a plethora of customization options to customize the reading experience. You can customize the main text size, update the color scheme, and share posts with almost every service imaginable from Evernote to Delicious to Instapaper (and more). The iPhone app also seems to sync all your items to a local cache (including images), so that you can read your posts when you've got no internet connection. The features are all I wanted and the price isn't bad.
How did I find all this out without a free trial? I looked at the Reeder app a couple times over the last month or two but I didn't buy it. It was only this past week when tech podcaster Tom Merritt listed it as a "pick" when guest hosting on This Week in Google that I decided to take the $2.99 jump for the iPhone app. If it wasn't good enough, I was going to be out $3, but I figured it was a decent gamble. After 15 minutes of using the iPhone app and browsing through the extensive Preference panel for the app, I immediately purchased the Reeder for Mac app because I figured if the iPhone app was this good, it'd make my on-computer reading experience much better, which was definitely true.
Still, to make the App Store really beneficial, I think there should be a couple things to be done. First, Apple should give developers a way to allow users to try the app for free, if the developer chooses to do so. This would cut down on the number of negative reviews for an app because users didn't do their research and thought the app did something completely different than it actually does. Second, every app should have an extensive website that documents every feature of the app. Some videos of the app in action could be helpful too. A half-dozen screenshots and a dozen bullets in a "features" list don't give us an idea of what an app really does.
In the end, the Apple Mac/iOS App Store is a benefit to most users. But in streamlining the purchasing experience for the mainstream it has lost much of the details that more discerning buyers have expected and required for years.
Why I Don't Want An iPad 2
Yes, the iPad 2 is not for me. The iPad may be the future of mainstream computing, but at this time, it's not for me. More on that in a minute, though. First, here's the skinny on the new iPad 2, announced by Apple yesterday in San Francisco by Steve Jobs and his snappy presentation crew.
The iPad 2 is the same price but definitely packs some new features. The amount of storage space is the same as the previous iPad but it is 33% thinner, has both a front and rear camera, and still has 10 hours of battery life. Apple claims the hardware of the iPad 2 is an "all-new design", but that seems to be complete hyperbole -- the design is improved a lot over the original iPad, but it still looks much like the same device. Never content to keep it just as fast as the last model, Apple is also introducing an A5 mobile chipset with the iPad 2 that they claim is twice as fast as the previous A4 chip and boasts that graphics rendering performance is 9x faster. Early reports from journalists say that it is noticeably snappier.
Also, some improvements to existing iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices are going to be included iOS 4.3, including better JavaScript rendering in Safari, some minor tweaks to the AirPlay functionality (although I've been unable to tell exactly what is new from their descriptions), an option to how the switch on the iPad functions, and the ability to use your iPhone 4 as a Wi-Fi hot spot (if your cell carrier lets you do so). One minor feature I'm excited about in iOS 4.3, though, is iTunes Home Sharing, which allows you to stream music and video on your computer's iTunes across your wireless network to your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch. Thus, you don't have to sync everything to your device, at least not when you're near your computer. Both the iOS 4.3 update and the iPad 2 will be available on Friday, March 11th.
Ohh, one more feature for the nerdier folks in the audience: Apple will now sell a $39 dongle that will give you an HDMI output that mirrors the iPad/iPhone's screen on your TV. They talk about this being for schools and such, but I'm thinking it's mostly so that companies and TV talk shows can demo iOS programs on screens without jail breaking their device. (Because, of course, the obvious jail breaking can make Apple look stupid.)
It's clear that the iPad is taking off more than anyone, including Apple, expected it to. Apple announced that in the 9 months it was available during 2010, it sold 15 million units. That's nearly twice what the most bullish predictions were just one year ago before the original iPad came out. And there's no wonder: it takes the ability to use a computer and makes it dead simple. There's no figuring out how to use a touchpad or a mouse. There's no "What folder did I put that file in?" moments. It's just simple to browse the web, play a game or watch a video. In the 11 months it's been available, it's been adopted in record numbers by younger kids and senior citizens who have never touched a computer before and they "get it" a lot easier than older technologies. Most likely, computers of the future are going to be something like the iPad.
But, at this time, the iPad is not for me. I'm not down on Apple; I have two Macs, an iPod, and an AirPort Express. My iPhone 4 is rarely more than a couple feet from me; I think it's the perfect size for watching videos and browsing Twitter and the web on the go.
One of my Macs is a MacBook Pro. Yes, it's a bit bigger than the iPad 2. It's also a bit more expensive. But it allows me to do much more. My livelihood is programming websites and the built-in keyboard helps out with that. I can install thousands more apps on my MacBook, including ones that allow me to browse and modify files to my heart's content. I can even install Windows if I want to for gaming or more business-oriented applications.
But personally, the MacBook Pro is much more of the right form factor. I have bad eyesight from birth, such that I'm barely above legally blind. I can read and see things just fine, but I have to get 8x (or something like that) closer than most people. When most people enjoy their laptop computer or iPad sitting on their lap on the couch, I cannot enjoy that. If I am forced to use it in that position, I either wear out my arms holding it up to eye level or destroy my back scrunching by body together to get my face down to the screen. Not at all comfortable or ergonomic.
For me, the optimal working and even media consumption pose is seated on my ball at my desk with the laptop elevated on a stand at eye level. I even sit there to watch TV, although I might watch TV on a couch if I had a really big TV. If I anticipate wanting more than my iPhone on the go, I will carry my backpack with my laptop and a more portable stand. On the off chance that I was on a flight or longer bus trip on my own, it would be kinda cool to watch videos on the iPad's bigger screen, but I do neither of those enough to warrant such an expensive purchase.
To sum up, I think the iPad is truly revolutionary and may be the future of computing. Maybe I'm being a bit slow to catch on to these trends, but I don't currently see the iPad as a viable option in my experience. I should maybe try one more thing with my iPhone 4, though: there's some settings that can be changed to make the iPhone/iPad usable for blind people. Maybe one of those days I'll try to turn some of those things on and see if that helps me at all.
What To Do With Thanksgiving?
Penny: So, what are you guys doing?
Howard: Celebrating Columbus Day.
Leonard: We’re watching Goonies, Gremlins and Young Sherlock Holmes. They were all written by Chris Columbus.
Penny: Okay. What do you watch on Thanksgiving?
Sheldon: The parade.
- The Big Bang Theory, Season 3 Episode 4, "The Pirate Solution"
Every year, to celebrate Thanksgiving, my parents have had the whole family and a bunch of relatives and friends over for socializing, turkey, and stuff(ing). It's always great to see family, play cards with my grandparents, share a meal and give thanks. However, this coming Thanksgiving weekend my parents will be out of town, so I'm currently without a plan this Thanksgiving. What I can't decide is if I want to do something for Thanksgiving and, if so, what I want to do.
When I say that I would "do nothing" for Thanksgiving, that would be that I'm doing nothing socially. I like long weekends such as this because I can spend hours and hours on my personal hobbies such as inReview.net. These websites are my way of playing with new technologies and my hobbies, but I struggle with doing them day-to-day because I find it works better if I have open-ended time of at least a couple hours to work hard on it, otherwise you spend an hour or two getting up to speed and figuring out what needs work and then you're done. Also, I get a little tired of doing web architecture/programming after 8 hours of doing it for work and so it's hard to spend my weeknights doing it. Spending Thanksgiving working on programming stuff may be a bit anti-social, but it's just this year and at least it's semi-productive.
Since friends have found out that I have no plans for Thanksgiving and a number of them have invited me to their family celebration. However, I'm not sure I'll be that comfortable with that either. I've always gone to my family's celebration, and although I do know a number of these families a bunch, it seems like it could be pretty awkward to be the non-family member at a family tradition. I'm probably over-thinking this, but I guess I'm not too sure if I'm that comfortable with it.
The other problem with attending Thanksgiving celebrations is that I think it's going to be boring. One of my friends invited me to his family's event, but after talking for a bit he said that the main event is drinking beer and watching football most of the day. Although I enjoy some good beer and the engaging commercials that play during football (and not during the shows I like), I get REALLY BORED watching football in no time flat. Although a bit of football is watched at my parents' house on Thanksgiving, I spend most of the time playing cards or chatting with aunts, uncles and cousins upstairs while the TV is on downstairs. So I'm not even sure if I want to go to Thanksgiving.
So what do you think? Should I go find some turkey at a friend's house? Just keep working on the hobbies and just make myself a nice dinner? Am I anti-social? Am I not crazy? Am I asking too many questions?
Free E-Book: Robin Parrish's Relentless
One of the artists I enjoy supporting is novelist (and entertainment news writer) Robin Parrish. I'd talked about his books in the past. And right now, his first book, Relentless, is available for free in the Amazon Kindle Store. Although his later work is better, it's a great beginning, and did I mention it's FREE? You can read Kindle E-Books on an Amazon Kindle as well as iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, your Mac or PC, or various other smart phones. So get some free reading in!
Apple's iPod Refresh & iTunes Ping
As usual, every fall Apple debuts a new line of iPods to wow the kids and parents into getting new iPods. And, of course, this year was no exception. On Wednesday, September 1st, Steve Jobs and many from the Apple crew showed the press their latest products at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, CA. And as expected, the iPods were updated with cooler, newer features and a couple other new products were announced as well.
One thing that was a bit more off the normal was that, the night before the event, Apple announced that they would be live streaming the video of the event to people around the world. At first, I immediately declared Apple crazy for endeavoring to do this because they stopped live streaming these types of events years ago because they couldn't handle the demand for millions of people trying to view the stream at the same time. However, before the event started, I found out that Apple had cleverly limited the persons who could view the live stream to Mac owners with the latest version of Mac OS X and iPhones and iPads. There are still millions upon millions who could watch this if they wanted, but it's definitely much less people than anyone who has a computer and may want to watch it. For example, I was at work where I use a PC so I could only stream the video over my iPhone. In the end, the streaming did work surprisingly well and did pretty well of keeping up even as I walked from WiFi to 3G and back during my lunch break. (It wasn't perfect, though; a couple times I had to restart the stream or the bandwidth cut so low that it went to audio-only.) It was still a pretty impressive demo of what Apple can do with QuickTime and some really fast, well-equipped servers and it was nice to see the actual video live instead of just reading a bunch of blogs that were posting text and images live.
After a couple bits about the sales numbers, some beautiful new Apple Stores and a number of minor updates to iPhone and iPad software, Steve Jobs got down to announcing the latest new iPod products. First up was the iPod shuffle. The last iPod shuffle had no buttons on the device and only a couple controls on the headphones. The new iPod shuffle has the basic play/pause, next/previous and volume buttons in a familiar circular format on one side and a clip much like an earlier iPod shuffle, but it also features the audio-based controls of the last shuffle as well. It's a bit smaller than the earlier shuffles with the control buttons and has more storage and starts at only $49. This is the basic low-end product with a great basic feature set.
This time around, the iPod nano is not much bigger than the iPod shuffle but it forfeits some of the features of the previous iPod nanos. Gone is the ability to play videos and the camera to take photos and videos with your iPod nano. The new nano sports a small form factor with a clip on the back and a 1.5-inch screen that is controlled by touch just like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Despite being small, this bright, detailed full-color display easily lets you browse your music and playlists. Also, the iPod nano includes other minor features, including volume buttons, a built-in FM tuner that can pause and rewind up to 15 minutes of the radio, Nike+ integration, Genius mixes and customizable menus. It doesn't have all the old features of the old iPod nano, but it has some great new features and is the smallest iPod nano yet. This device starts at $149 for 8GB of music and may be the hot new stocking stuffer this Christmas (at least that's what they say; I definitely don't get $150 gifts in my stocking and that's fine).
The biggest, best device of the iPod touch, of course, and it got a nice update today as well. As Steve Jobs said, the iPod touch is like an iPhone without the phone part or a contract to pay a phone company a bunch of money. And thus, the new iPod touch includes the majority of the features of the iPhone 4. The beautiful Retina Display is there to display video in resolutions close to 720p. Also, the back camera will shoot photos and video up to 720p as well, although the camera doesn't seem to be as good of quality as the camera in the iPhone 4. And on the front side of the iPod touch there's also a low-resolution video camera so you can use the iPod touch for FaceTime, Apple's new video chat standard. Steve Jobs also remarked that the iPod touch sells more units than the Nintendo and Playstation portable devices combined and touted the touch as a big gaming platform. (In that vein, Apple will be releasing next week an app to iPhone and iPod touch called "GameCenter" that promotes playing multiplayer online games with your friends and manages game points and achievements as well.) And, of course, it runs the majority of the thousands of apps made for the iPhone, which makes it a powerful computer in the palm of your hand. The iPod touch is easily better than ever and starts at $229 for 8 GB and goes up to $399 for 64 GB.
There is one more iPod that was not mentioned at all in the presentation: the iPod classic. This old-style iPod has all the look and basic audio and video playback functions of the iPods of yesteryear and a 160 GB hard drive to allow the music collectors such as myself the ability to take their whole library on the go. I do look forward to the day when I can replace the iPod classic with a 128 GB iPod touch or iPhone, but until then, this works great for bringing all my media on the go and will continue to be sold for the foreseeable future to fill that purpose.
The other major announcement was the announcement of the release of iTunes 10. The tenth version of the long-running free music and media software features a slightly new look that some say make it look more friendly to touch-based computing and may point to the future of Macs including some touch-based screens but most just say it looks unlike anything else on the Mac or PC and therefore just looks out of place. (The icon was also changed and just looks generic and cartoon-ish.) The only other feature is a new social network centered around music and music purchasing called "Ping". Basically, it adds a bit of Facebook to the iTunes Music Store, as users can create a profile and feature music they like to friends. Their friends or followers can view a feed of iTunes music purchases as well as items in the store they've marked as "Liked". Friends can post comments on the posts and, of course, it's easy to buy the music featured in Ping since the entire social network is inside the store itself. With this and other features, Ping is a social network with a small set of features but will most likely become rather big rather quickly due to the fact that it's built into the iTunes music player software used by 160 million people around the world. For example, in just about 24 hours since the Ping service was widely available, 121,000+ Ping users are now following Lady GaGa's posts and activity on the service.
Actually, Lady GaGa brings me to the current major shortcomings of Ping that need to be overcome ASAP. Katy Perry, U2, Muse and a couple dozen other bands from major labels join GaGa as the "artists" on Ping and they can post photos and videos from tours. However, it seems no other artists or bands know how they can create an artist profile. Due to this, initial users of the system are finding it very limited because they really cannot find artists they like to follow on Ping. And as far as I can find, there is no documentation that explains how artists or labels can get artist pages that they can post to. With a system like Ping that is being adopted so quickly, artists immediately need a way to get involved and if Apple does not fix this shortly, people are going to be quickly bored with Ping. I expect this should be fixed in the next couple days because Apple usually fixes a problem of this caliber pretty quickly. That is, unless they are just doing Ping to cater to the major labels and they decide to only give the majors access -- that would be terrible.
The final announcement from the Apple event was the 2nd generation of the Apple TV. The new Apple TV is a rounded black box that is not much bigger than a hockey puck and brings all kinds of Internet and Apple-related content to your HDTV. With the new Apple TV (or your computer), you can now rent some TV shows in HD for as little as 99 cents per episode (currently only if the show runs on ABC or FOX; hopefully more networks later). The Apple TV includes no hard drive storage and instead relies on streaming data from the Internet or another computer on the home network. In fact, the announced an expansion to the AirTunes feature that lets you stream audio to another set of speakers in the house such that it's now called AirPlay and in November you will be able to stream videos or audio from your iPad or iPhone to the Apple TV display as well. And, like every other Internet-connected device that plugs into your TV today, it connects to Netflix to stream video from there as well (if you are a Netflix subscriber). One minor difference is that Apple got this version of Netflix to run with an Apple TV-style look to it and Steve Jobs calls it "the best interface for Netflix." Oh yeah, and the Apple TV is now priced at only $99, which may be low enough of a price for people to want to get one this Christmas.
Overall, this Apple event had some big announcements, but none of them really blew me away or surprised me that much. None of these am I planning on buying anytime in the future, at least not for myself. On the other hand, the September event is never really the place for the ground-breaking new products; it's just to show off the mass-market electronics for everyone, not the next big thing in computing and media. As long as Apple's still going, though, we can expect more ground-breaking new products in the New Year.
Hulu Plus: The Networks Still Don't Get It
Earlier today, Hulu.com announced Hulu Plus. For those who don't know what Hulu is, it is a company that allows users to stream TV shows to their computer over the Internet the day after a show is broadcast. The TV programs are only on Hulu for a couple of weeks on average. The company was started jointly by NBC Universal and Fox TV, although ABC and other companies now have a stake in it as well. The networks have made it clear in the past that they did not want Hulu content on your TV; it was meant only for watching at your desk on your computer. That is, until today.
Hulu Plus has two parts. First, instead of just being able to watch the most recent couple episodes, the entire archive of the show's current season (and maybe past seasons) would be available with a Hulu Plus account. Also, many older network shows would have every episode produced available for streaming, including old shows such as Ally McBeal, The X-Files and some Saturday Night Live.
Second, Hulu Plus allows you more ways to watch these programs. Along with the Hulu Plus announcement they released a Hulu Plus iPhone/iPad app. Also, Hulu Plus is available via a software update on Internet-enabled Samsung TVs and Blu-Ray players. Also, in the coming months, they have announced streaming to Sony and Vizio players/TVs. And finally, the content is available up to 720p HD on these devices as well as other streaming devices in the coming months.
Hulu Plus is going to cost $9.99/month. Sounds great? Hardly! Paying the $10 does not get rid of ads. It might get you less ads; but mostly it gives you more content to watch. However, for as little as $8.99/month, you can get much of this same content on Netflix streaming (as well as rent a DVD or two). OK, Hulu will exclusively have newer episodes than Netflix because Netflix doesn't get them until on or after the season is released on DVD, but even then Netflix doesn't have ads at all. I guess some people may pay the $10 for the content, but I don't think many will.
What shouldn't be happening? Using the iPhone/iPad app and watching it on your Samsung player is only available to Hulu Plus members. What?? That's right, Hulu has an iPhone/iPod app, but you can't use it unless you pay for Hulu Plus. This makes NO sense!! Sure, list the content that they can't access and try to charge them the $10 if they want to watch it, but making a subscription to watch Hulu videos on your iPhone is just ridiculous. Right now, you can watch hundreds of episodes of shows on your computer for free, but you can't watch these shows on iPhone/iPad or Samsung.
My guess is that the smart folks at Hulu get it; they would love to show us all the content whenever possible. However, because of their ownership by the networks and the content being tightly controlled by the networks, their hands are tied. What the networks seems to be trying to do is still make it easiest to watch the show on your TV; if you miss the show, then watch it on Hulu later. News flash, Hulu: Most of the people I know never watch live TV, and half of them don't even own a TV. One reason they want to make you watch TV is because they show advertisements on TV within the content and that's still where they make the most of their revenue. They need to figure out that they should be in the same business with Hulu: selling ads. They can sell more targeted ads to viewers on Hulu and they could still run 3-4 engaging ads per commercial break and most would still watch. Also, make the content (with the ads) available to anyone who wants to watch it on their TV or iPhone. People who don't want to tune in every Thursday at 9/8c can watch on Friday on their Blu-Ray player or iPad and the networks still get their money, even if they don't get the bragging rights that they own Thursday night.
The television networks are delaying the realization that they do not control the thoughts of America. The movie Network documented that era thirty-four years ago. People have more to tune into than ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. They have the Internet. They have a happy hour with friends. They have a movie to watch. If tools like Hulu aren't expanded to reach more people and more places, the networks are going to quickly find that they have no audience any more.
So, Apple iPhone 4...
OK, so it seems that this blog is all about Apple these days. Hopefully one of these days I'll get some other subjects. But hey, I know some of you like to hear my thoughts.
First, here's the details. It's called the iPhone 4. It's not the iPhone 4G because it doesn't have 4th generation data network services. It's got a new look, with glass covering both the front and the back. There's a steel band around the sides, which makes up antennae for WiFi and cellular networks, which will hopefully increase the reception of signals on the phone. There's a second microphone on the top of the phone which will help for the audio of the phone by canceling out background noise. Also, the phone has a gyroscope in the phone in addition to the accelerometer and compass for superior six-axis movement. This could supply more responsiveness in games and the so-called "augmented reality" apps.
The iPhone 4 features the same A4 processor as the iPad, which means it will be nice and snappy. Also, the display is still the same size but features 4x the pixels of the old 3GS. Apple has called this Retina Display because at a normal viewing distance the human eye cannot detect the pixels on the screen. This definitely is a new and interesting move for Apple; no consumer electronics device has ever boasted a screen this detailed. The word from the journalists who have seen this is that you have to see the display to believe the detail.
Last year the iPhone 3GS debuted with a decent camera. The iPhone 4 sports a 5-megapixel camera with a small LED next to it to use as a flash or even continuous lighting on video recordings. The camera can record 720p 30fps video. They even announced a $4.99 iMovie app that allows you to easily edit clips together, overlay music and titles, and a bunch more. I doubt I'd ever use that, but it's pretty cool.
A low-resolution camera is also included on the front above the display. It seems that you can take photos and even video with that camera as well. But Apple also introduced a new featured called FaceTime, which allows you to call up an iPhone 4 user and move the call to a Wi-Fi video call. It's that thing that futurists and sci-fi writers have been saying for decades--people holding up their phone and talking with another person while staring at them. Apple was pushing this for most of the last decade with iChat on their Macs, and now it's on the phone. However, right now it will be on iPhone 4 devices. Apple said they are making it an "open standard", but it's very unclear what that means at this point. For example, Skype wanted to say they'd work with the FaceTime protocol but then they backed off on that statement. Apple made some emotional pleas for the usage of FaceTime with a husband watching his baby's first steps over the phone and some deaf persons communicating via sign language. Unfortunately, FaceTime does not work over the 3G network, only wireless networking at this point. It may be a cool, new, exciting thing that everyone will be using someday, but I think it's got a long way to go before that.
Of course, the new iPhone 4 includes all the features of the iPhone OS 4 that they previewed a couple months ago. Oh yeah, and it's no longer called "iPhone OS", it's now "iOS" because it's not just iPhones and iPod Touches anymore. One new addition to iOS 4 that I like is multitasking also includes shortcuts to the music player control for the program that is currently playing music. Also, this music control screen includes a button to lock the orientation, which is great for when you're trying to read your phone while laying down and making sure the iPhone doesn't try to switch layouts.
So what's the cost? The iPhone 4 starts at $199 for a 16GB model and goes up to $299 for 32GB. The old iPhone 3GS at 8GB is now available for $99. Anyone whose 2-year AT&T contract expires before the end of the year is eligible for an iPhone upgrade with an $18 upgrade fee. Otherwise, if you want to start a new contract or not have a contract, you will have to pay hundreds of dollars more. Apple's iPhone 4 will be available in stores and shipped to your door on June 24th with pre-orders starting this Tuesday, June 15th. Apple iOS 4 will be available for download for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touches on June 21st as well. Of course, the iPhone 4 will be available almost everywhere around the world by the end of the year at various prices and plans.
So what do I think? I'm probably going to be getting one within the next month. I do want to see how the iOS 4 performs on my iPhone 3G on June 21st. However, the 3G has a much slower processor and will not be able to do the multi-tasking features that newer phones will be able to use. When I got the phone almost two years ago (and even last year), I didn't really care about the camera. But after a couple years of use, there's enough times I want to casually take a photo or two and the 1-megapixel camera on my 3G doesn't really count. This 5-megapixel camera will be nice for off-the-cuff concert photos and reviews of locations via Twitter and may be actually enough to use in family photo collections and such, so that will be a bonus as well. In short, the iPhone 3GS these days is a bit slow and I wouldn't mind getting a new one, and since it seems I can do so for a fairly small price (and a new two-year contract), I'll probably make it happen.
Thoughts on iPad and iPhone
This past week has been a big one for Apple, everyone's favorite/love-to-hate electronics/computer company. Two weeks ago, iPad apps and reviews started showing up, then Saturday brought the iPad to thousands of Americans (for a $500+ fee). Then, last Thursday, Steve Jobs and other Apple executives gave developers and press a peek at the fancy new features coming to iPhones and iPod Touches this summer. (Of course, there's no word on if there will be a newer, cooler iPhone this summer, but most likely there will be.) It seems to me that the future of Apple's touch-based devices is bright; it features a brand new device and some much-needed updates to currently available devices.
First up, we have the iPad. After seeing it in person, I can confirm that it is, in fact, mostly just an iPod Touch with a large screen. On the other hand, it's easily the most compelling tablet device to date despite a decade of Microsoft trying to get people to run Windows with their finger or a stylus. The big difference? Apple and the thousands of developers who have already released iPad apps have created these programs to use the user's fingers for inputting data. Windows has always been built for a screen, a mouse and a keyboard, but the iPad is made for you to swipe your finger across the screen and press the big buttons. It's also a very bright, glossy screen that seems to make anything on the device pop. E-mail and web browsing are a breeze, given that you don't want to write a very long post on the keyboard that pops up onscreen. (On the other hand, you can use any Bluetooth wireless keyboard if you'd like to type more and can't hack it with onscreen keys.) Of course, it's also great for watching movies or reading books as well.
Since the iPad hit stores, there have also been some great new iPad-specific applications released to the enjoyment of the world. Although Hulu hasn't yet released an app to watch all their TV shows, ABC.com has released a beautiful app to watch all their TV shows. For those who have a Netflix subscription with Instant Streaming capability, you can watch anything they offer over streaming and it looks great as well. One of my favorite apps to play around with a bit was any one of a couple of air hockey apps where two people could move their finger around the screen to control their virtual air hockey paddle and move the virtual puck into the other player's goal. And finally, bordering on the insane (or at least the "I spent $1,000+ to do what I could've for $15"), there's a cool version of Scrabble for iPad where you can use your iPhones as your personal letter rack and then flick them off the iPhone screen and they will show up on the iPad ready to place them. As usual with new technology, some are useful and some are just cool, eye-catching demos that people will most likely never use.
In my opinion, it's a great device. However, as fun as it would be for me to have one, there's no way I can justify the $500+ price tag. I'm not saying it's too expensive, it's just that I have very little use for the iPad in my life. I carry a smartphone device and need a computer to do more substantial work on, and anything I can see using an iPad for I can do just as well on one of these other devices. (Don't worry, Apple, both my laptop and phone are also Apple devices, so you're not losing out that much.) It's still early days in such technology, though. I can see a potential future where most of us are using iPad-like devices instead of laptop computers in ten years, but considering that this device has been out for just over a week, it's hard to say if that will come true or how the technology will mature.
Many are saying, and I agree for the most part, that the iPad does work pretty well as a simple, intuitive, stripped-down computer. If all you want is to browse web sites, read e-mails and write the occasional short reply, then this may be a computer replacement that won't have the confusing, crashing issues of a regular computer. It will be limiting to most computer users if it is used as a replacement, though. (One other downside: although you don't need to sync it to a computer to use the device regularly, for some reason the iPad requires you to sync it to a computer before you can do anything with it.)
So about the forthcoming updates to the iPhone. Hooray! With the iPhone 4.0 update, users will be able to run third-party applications in the background. Well, that is... mostly. Apple knows that running a number of full applications on a small device like an iPhone is a quick way to drain the battery, so they've been resistant to doing it for a number of years. Their current solution, at least as they present it, disallows developers from running their entire application in the background, but Apple has permitted certain services to run in the background. From their preview on Thursday, it's not completely clear exactly what they will allow and what they will not allow, but thankfully, many of the applications that the majority of users want to use in the background were there to show off working prototypes of using these new features. (To clarify, Apple's built-in applications have been multitasking since the release of the first iPhone but developers from other companies were not allowed to access these functions.)
The first big feature request is to listen to streaming audio just like the iPod functionality; the audio will continue to stream and play in the background while using other applications or browsing the web or e-mail. The company Apple chose to demo this was Pandora, the personalized online streaming service. The streaming worked great and there was even the ability to control Pandora while the phone is on its lock screen. Seems like just what iPhone users such as myself wanted, even though I recently found that you currently can load an mp3 audio stream into Mobile Safari and it will also stream while other programs are running.
The next demo was an impressive one from the folks at Skype. The features that Skype was able to now access made Skype nearly as powerful as the regular phone. Skype is able to maintain an online connection and even receive calls while the phone is running other applications or in its locked, standby state. If it's as good as Apple and Skype are saying, you could use a recent model iPod Touch as a Wi-Fi Skype phone for a lot less than a cell phone's fees. As Apple explains it, this multitasking is not full multitasking because the full Skype program is not allowed to run in the background, but it's definitely enough to do the things users really want.
The last couple features available for running in the background are, first, location awareness. Programs such as Foursquare and Gowalla could keep track of location history and allow you to check in after the fact. Of course, Apple's first priority is battery life over function, so they say that these programs would only get access to cell phone location and not the battery-hogging, more detailed GPS location services. Secondly, the ability to continue tasks in the background. In the example mentioned, the Flickr app could finish uploading your photos in the background while other apps are running. It's not clear if you have to trigger these background activities before leaving the app or, for example, popular Twitter apps could periodically download new Twitter updates like the built-in e-mail app does. One video demo that surfaced online did verify that you can kill background apps if you wish, but it seems that any app you leave will stay in the list of apps that could be running some of the limited multitasking processes.
The apps that are the base of the iPhone also get new features with iPhone 4.0. The e-mail application will now have a global inbox; if you have more than one e-mail account, the e-mails can be viewed on one screen just like in desktop apps. Also, the e-mail now can organize by thread, which was probably the original killer e-mail feature of Gmail when it debuted six years ago. Many people have pages and pages of apps on their home screens, but thanks to the new ability to put apps into folders, better and more organization can be gained without all that horizontal swiping through screens. And, finally, some of the flagship features of iPad will be included in iPhone 4.0, such as the ability to read iBooks from Apple's bookstore and connect to other devices such as Bluetooth keyboards. There are also other small features that we haven't even heard about yet but will likely be welcome additions to the iPhone OS this summer. Of course, a number of features that Apple were excited to tout were better tools for corporate IT personnel to manage their iPhone users as well.
Apple's other major announcements for iPhone 4.0 are mostly new platforms for even more growth on the iPhone/iPod Touch market. The first was GameCenter, a programmer API and gaming network. This further cements these devices as a legitimate gaming platform and will give users a consistent user account, friends list, and high scores. The screenshots showed the ability to see what games your friends are currently playing/watching as well as the ability to view high scores and get achievements for progress in games.
The other major business market for Apple is now called iAds, which is an advertising network that Apple controls for iPhone/iPod Touch devices. Apple is definitely pushing to make their iAds content more interactive and engaging as well as not make you leave the app which featured the ad. Apple said that Apple gets 40% of the ad cost and the developers of the apps that host ads get 60%, which may seem a lot, but considering they're providing the infrastructure and probably detailed tracking, it's a fair amount. (Remember that Google does the same thing with its ad programs but refuses to disclose what percentage they take off the top.)
The major bad news? Unless you bought your iPhone or iPod Touch in the last 9 months, you will not get every feature in iPhone 4.0. Apple was not specific on these feature degradations, but they did say that only iPhone models marked 3GS (note the "S") or new iPod Touches released after September 2009 will be the only ones to receive the multitasking. Apple claims that the older phones cannot run these features, and I think that more likely it is just that the older devices don't have the RAM and/or the processing power to run these features well. In other words, Apple could allow users to do these things, but they're probably right that these older phones would be too slow for comfortable use with these new features. In my experience, my iPhone, which I got about 18 months ago, was nice and fast on the iPhone 2.0 that it was released for, but once the iPhone 3.0 OS was available, my device definitely was a bit more full-featured but also a bunch more sluggish. Also, the 3GS is notably faster, so many of the more demanding apps available today run slowly or even crash on my iPhone 3G.
What does this iPhone update mean for me? I'll probably get a new iPhone sometime this fall after my two-year contract is up. Most likely, there will be a speedy new iPhone that runs lightning fast before that time comes. When I bought my iPhone 3G 18 months ago, there was no phone that was half as useful and cool. These days, the iPhone 3GS is on the same plane or maybe even a bit behind phones that run Google's Android OS. But with the promise of iPhone 4.0, Apple keeps up with the competition and, with some potential new phone models this summer, they can even stay ahead of the curve. Now I'm just hoping for one with 128GB of flash memory on it so I can even hold all my music and podcasts in one device!
Apple's New iPad: A Bigger iPod touch
Yesterday morning Apple Inc. went ahead and showed the world their newest gadget, the iPad. In pretty much every way, it is just an oversize iPod touch, but Apple hopes you will think it's much more than that.
Steve Jobs is quoted as saying that the iPad is "a revolutionary device" and is "magical". Where's the magic? Well, it's thin. A half inch thin with nicely tapered edges on the back to make it look even thinner. The back cover is a nicely-curved piece of aluminum and the front is a beautiful 9.7 piece of glass with an LCD screen behind it. The screen is bright has great viewing angles but they still pack 10 hours of battery usage (and weeks of standby) into the guts behind the screen. And, if you do go to the Apple Store and try one out in a couple months, you will most likely enjoy touching the screen and watching a video on it. But I don't think it's magical or that everyone need save up their pennies to get the $499 device.
On the stage that they presented it, Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller demoed the new Apple iPad while sitting in a cushy living-room style chair. And that's just what Apple hopes you'll think you need. I carry my iPhone when on the go. When I need to get serious work done, I go into my room and work on my laptop computer. But although my laptop is portable and I could bring it into the living room for hanging out or personal entertainment, Apple would rather see me keep this lying about the living room. I guess I wouldn't mind, but I'm actually plenty comfortable watching videos and doing pretty much everything on my MacBook Pro or iPhone, thank you. There will be the millions of Apple fans who will get one and maybe the rich who want another unique computer will get one, but it's not yet apparent why I'd want an iPad if I've got the rest of the Apple family covering my needs.
As per usual, Apple has taken their popular, built-in iPhone apps and made them even more impressive. With about 5x more screen real estate, the ability to browse through e-mail, contacts, calendar, photos and videos is even better looking and there's much more room for ancillary features and buttons all over the screen. And, of course, web browsing is really smooth and slick-looking. Apple has also re-built their iWork suite for the iPad, building entirely new and intuitive ways to enter text and manipulate documents. 
One of the standouts in this area is the input pads replacing the virtual keyboard: one that is a number pad, one that includes more of the common functions, and one that makes it really easy to input dates. Also, there's simple and beautiful interfaces for moving around slides in Keynote and text in Pages. While these iWork apps are not as full-featured as the Mac OS X counterparts, most of the features of its bigger brother are retained, as opposed to the iPhone and iPod touch, where users can currently only view these documents. The iPod functionality looks more like iTunes in its browsing and playback functionality as well, thanks to the bigger screen.
One of the main features of the iPod touch and iPhone is the myriads of apps that are available for free and for pay on the iTunes App Store, and the Apple iPad piggybacks on that very well. Any iPod touch/iPhone app will run in a fifth of the screen area just as it is on the iPad's smaller family members, but you can also quadruple the size to get a more full-screen feel to your old apps. Even more exciting, though, is the great new ideas that developers will be coming up with over the coming months for the iPad. At the event, The New York Times showed a beautiful app that displays the paper's content in a way that resembles paper really well but also gives much more control over to the user in that they can change the columns, text sizing, and easily flip through sections without ever losing that newspaper feel. No word of this yet, but I hope that an easy way to browse my favorite print magazines in full color comes out of this.
Gameloft and EA showed off games that use the bigger screen, touchscreen area and the new Apple A4 processor to show better graphics, but also to add more display bells and whistles such as maps and gauges as well as more controls, some of which can even be moved around the screen to wherever the user preferred to have them. Also, MLB.com showed an updated version of their popular app that got me excited for April's season opener: the Gameday screen on the Apple iPad has pretty much every statistic that MLB collects available on screen or with one swipe of the finger. Also, they showed full screen live games and the ability to pull up lots of those statistics right on top of the live video in transparent overlays. That will sell the iPad to those who want more than their transistor radios to follow baseball, I think.
The major problems with the Apple iPad are almost exactly the same as the iPhone: Apple is too controlling to make it a very useful device. Developers such as EA, The New York Times, and MLB.com have been able to create cool apps. But, as I said months ago, there are many ideas developers have for apps for iPad/iPhone, but they are not sure if Apple will let them sell it because it may compete with something Apple is building or one of Apple's partners has created. Also, especially with a more powerful machine such as the iPad, Apple needs to be allowing the iPad to run more than one program at once. Yeah, only allowing one program to run makes the iPad seem faster, but all we'd really like to do is play Pandora (or some similar live streaming audio) in the background while browsing a site or working on a document. Apple, in my opinion, needs to get these types of things fixed and figured out before real success will be seen among power users.
On the other hand, the reason Apple loves this closed platform they've built is because they control all of it and get a couple cents for every transaction made with their device. There are other downsides, as well. It's not a great movie device because the screen is square and not widescreen so over a third of the screen will be black bars when viewing movies and video podcasts. The base product has WiFi including the speedy 802.11n, but another $130 (and then $30/month) is required to get 3G cell phone data access and GPS capabilities, so it is not cheap to use this out of your house where you have the WiFi. Also, there are a number of features of the Apple iPad that require fairly regular syncing with iTunes in order to be useful. In a related note, there's no way to use the iPhone or iPad as a USB hard drive and it is unclear as to how you get your iWork documents on the iPad, especially now that the iPad has (up to) 64GB of storage.
Even though I see no need for an iPad in my living room and in the living room of most people, there are some applications that may be perfect for the iPad. One thing that Apple announced was the new iBook store. In the iBook store, users of the iPad can purchase bestselling books that include full-color photos and even videos and users can change the font size and even the typeface of the book on the fly. This may be a preferred view for those who currently enjoy the Amazon Kindle, and there's talk of the iBook store selling textbooks and therefore it may be popular to give to students instead of carrying around piles of textbooks. Persons who are on the road and manipulate geographic data will enjoy applications that use the big screen for maps and built-in GPS and compass data. Medical applications may find the iPad useful, although some expect that the lack of the ability to write on the iPad to be a downside. Another interesting application will likely be for artists, as some have been using the iPod touch and a program called "Brushes" to make professional artwork and the brilliant 9.7-inch display will no doubt bring in more creative opportunities.
Overall, the Apple iPad is a fairly impressive device looking for a market. Only time will tell what that market is and how successful it will be.