But that’s all behind me now!

I’ve always loved being involved with helping products and companies grow, and at Code 42 I get that in abundance. Being immersed in the creative process again has helped to clear some cobwebs and brought me back to thinking about this book I’m supposedly writing. Further, thanks to some prodding from a few esteemed friends, my confidence is returning and I’m starting to feel like I can get back to work on it.

This feeling is not without counterpoints. Given Steve Job’s poor health, I don’t want to be seen as engaging in the rumor-mongering and uninformed speculation that has become so commonplace. My intention for the book was always to make it about my personal journey from admiring Apple from afar to being unexpectedly in the middle of the action, and continuing on to my more recent adventures. I didn’t want to write a book just about Apple or just about Steve Jobs. (I never felt I had enough ‘hard data’ about either to fill an entire book in any case.) And the closer we get to a world without Steve Jobs, the less interested I am in sensationalizing any part of my related experiences. And all along, I wondered if my meager writing skills are up to the task of describing how Steve or Apple do their respective magic.*

Which brings me to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything: will I ever finish this damn book?

The answer is a most-definite probably.

*a good friend, who happens to be a writer, pointed out that entire -good- books have been created by basically padding a one paragraph story. He humbly suggested that maybe I was demanding a bit too much journalistic rigor for a project that doesn’t require it.

All the possible scenarios have already been morbidly analyzed by every news organization, analyst and blogger on earth, so I won’t bother.

All I’ll say is this…

I hope Steve bundles his lovely family into that Gulfstream and jets away to their most favorite place in the world to fully enjoy whatever time they have left together. And not think about Apple for one second.

www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic

So out of character for Steve and Apple to provide explanations like this, when they are usually so tight-lipped. I find it refreshing.

Here’s the dirt:

Protect DVD-Video – A slap in the face for PC and Media Center owners

If your device is Plays for Sure compliant it may work…

May work…the mind boggles at the way Microsoft gives their products names which embody the exact opposite of what the thing does. Play for Sure, Windows Genuine Advantage, Windows Defender…doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

PS
Unbox looks to me to be another ill-conceived and half-hearted effort by the big studios to get people to pay higher prices for lower quality and less flexibility. Oh ya, give me some of that please.

My view is simple: the movie studios are seeking to drastically curtail or even eliminate the concept of fair use. They are doing this by pressuring the hardware companies into implementing DRM technology which is much more rigid and secure than any that has come before. AACS is the primary DRM technology, and it is downright nasty. Even worse the studios will retain control over how and where you can play your movies even after they have your money. Check out the HD Boycott page for much more information, and just say no. I know we all want better image quality, but this is not a good way to get it.

This is the first time I can think of where Apple has responded so directly and swiftly to a rumor without using their lawyers. I know a lot of Aperture’s early adopters were very concerned about what these rumors meant to their investment. Kudos to Kirk Paulson and his team (especially Joe Schorr) for putting the customer first. I’m sure it involved some interesting meetings at Apple to get approval for such non-standard external communications.*

Aperture Update Released
Also today Apple released Aperture version 1.1.1, to address some nastiness that happened with the 1.1 release. It looks like they brought in the ‘A’ team to work in this one…in spite of being only a ‘.0.1′ release, it delivers noticeable speed and quality improvements along with the bugs fixes.

I’m very happy to say that this update finally tips the scale on Aperture (at least for me) from being useless to being somewhat useful. I can hardly wait to see what they’ll do for version 1.5.

*One of these days I’ll have to write a chapter about a couple acquisitions I was involved with that posed some similar ‘interesting’ customer communcations challenges.

The records companies argued that they should be able to charge more for the ‘hottest’ songs, with the old crap remaining at 99¢. While I’m not opposed to variable pricing, I’ve always felt that 99¢ is the upper limit. I think the older, less popular stuff should sell for less; sometimes considerably less. But that’s just me.

*See Hollywood Accounting.

The movies will be available through Movielink and CinemaNow, both owned or controlled by groups of movie studios, who are offering their idea of generous usage terms:

• no transferring to portable devices
• no burning to standard DVDs
• no Mac support
• no extra features
• lower quality*
• no nothing except watching it on your Windows computer

*The movies are encoded in Windows Media format, and are about one gigabyte in size. For those who don’t know, movies on DVD are typically about 4-6 GBs. So not only are the movies more expensive and less flexible, they are lower quality too.

How yummy.

I don’t know why I am even surprised by this stuff anymore. It simply continues the efforts of the movie studios and record companies to deliver less and charge more.

Here’s a bit more info at The Motley Fool

UPDATE – Bitrates, resolution, and prices

I did a little investigating and came up with this data about the compression used on these downloadable movies. Using ‘Corpse Bride’ for comparision, since I happen to own the DVD, I found that the version sold by Movielink is 740 MB. If I extract just the main feature from the DVD (which is all you get with the download) its size is 4.15 GB. This works out to bitrates of 1.28 mbps for Movielink and 7.19 mbps for the DVD. Even granting that Windows Media encoding is more efficient than the MPEG-2 used on DVDs, the download will definitely be lower quality.

Unfortunately I can’t find any mention of the resolution used for the Movielink files, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are standard 720 x 480. (I’m not about to give them twenty five bucks to find out.)

Of course, some people won’t care that the movie is of lower quality, but many will care that the DVD sells for $16.96 at Amazon, while the download from Movielink is $24.99.