Technovia

Good for Elgato

EyeTV does not support broadcast flags or other DRM measures:

"EyeTV doesn't support any broadcast flags or other methods of restricting the use of television programs.

Such methods have been encouraged by the television and movie industry - to prevent recording or sharing certain shows - but they are not required by law. Legislation does vary country by country, but at the present time there are no such restrictions in the locations where EyeTV is available.

Therefore, EyeTV and other Elgato software will ignore any flags or other voluntary DRM methods - if you can watch a program, you can record, edit or share it as you see fit."

Good for Elgato. Broadcast flags are noxious, ineffective, and stupid. A much better way of moving forward for the TV industry would be making content available to buy immediately after transmission - as with music, the only people who will choose to pirate when content is easily and cheaply available for sale are those who couldn't afford it anyway.

(We have a Mac mini set up in the living room, using EyeTV to record shows, which are then archived into iTunes linked to a 1Tb drive. Even though we also have an excellent Humax PVR, we use the EyeTV much more.)

(Via TUAW.)

An iPhone with a keyboard? And some musings on Steve Jobs

newswireless.net .:. News .:. "An iPhone with a keyboard? Never!" Well,…:

"It is an article of Faith, of course, that whatever Steve Jobs does, is Right. And so, since the iPhone currently has no keyboard on it, it must logically follow that it is wrong to have a keyboard, and therefore that Steve Jobs will never produce a version that does have a keyboard.

Fervent fans can therefore see no reason to change the iPhone from its current 'type on the touch screen, or not at all' design. As one of the more zealous remarked when the suggestion was even mentioned: 'The only people who think it needs a keyboard, are people who have never used it.'

Rumours from inside Cupertino suggest that Jobs himself doesn't have this sort of religious hangup about his own work. Reports from inside mobile operators show that whether or not he ever makes it work, he is already trying to make a 'slide-out' keyboard for a corporate version of the iPhone."

Jobs is, of course, well known for insisting that something isn't a viable product, and that no one could possibly want one - right up until the day he launches it. See, for example, his half-decade insistence that the future of the Mac was PowerPC, while he sensibly produced a version which ran on Intel.

(Which reminds me of an example from history, as told to me by one of the former Newton team. Jobs called him and some other Newtoneers into a meeting, in which he held up a Newton. Pointing at it, he said "Apple makes computers. Computer have keyboards. This thing doesn't have a keyboard." And, leaving them to draw the inference out himself, he ended the meeting. Fast forward to today, and Apple makes rather a large chunk of money from computers which have no keyboard. Only now, they're called "iPhone".)

One thing that anyone watching Apple always needs to bare in mind is this: while Jobs is idolised by a cloud of true believers, he is, in fact, capable of performing strategic back-flips faster than almost anyone in the industry. While the true believers laud whatever thing they think is "the one true way", Jobs will drop it like a ragged old hat as soon as he believes it's to Apple's advantage.

Jobs is ruled by only one true belief: Make the best, deepest, most elegant products you can, preferably with the biggest margin you can get away with.

It's one of the reasons why I like him.

Why Andy Ihnatko is a really good writer

Because he comes out with stuff like this:

“Setting up a server is like playing an old Infocom adventure. It’s an endless series of puzzles and even when you think you’ve solved them all…you’re eventually totally screwed because three months ago, you didn’t FEED CHEESE SANDWICH TO DOG.”

…in a blog post. A blog post that NO ONE IS PAYING HIM FOR. Giving away good lines like this is a piece of largesse that other freelance writers would baulk at, trust me.

Technorati Tags: Andy Ihnatko,writing

Uh-oh. More MacBook Pro power problems

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll remember my annoyance and frustration when the Mag"Safe" power supply on my MacBook Pro decided it was going to melt at the plug end.

It appears that the replacement power supply is also having issues - or, even worse, possibly the power supply on the board. About half the time at the moment, when I plug in the MagSafe, it's coming up with the "Not Charging" message above. Given that the battery is currently at 11%, that's an issue - one which is effectively gradually converting my laptop into a desktop.

I can usually get the power to start trickling in, by the simple expedient of wiggling the connector until it starts working. I've cleaned the connectors, so I know it's not that.

But isn't it about time that Apple admitted that this power supply is a triumph of style over proper industrial design? It's a great idea, but it just doesn't work. Being able to kick out the cord and not have the machine crash to the ground is great - but it's not like I actually do that often enough to justify the cost of two power adaptors over two years, and a laptop which can only really be used as a desktop.

Of course, typically, mentally I'm using this as a way of justifying another laptop purchase. "Yeah... I could just use the Pro as a desktop machine, and have a MacBook Air for mobile use... yeah, that would work..."

How green is your Apple?

In December 2006 I wrote a feature for MacUser UK on the environmental impact of computers, and in particular Macs. MacUser doesn't put its features online, so I've decided to put this one up. This is the full, unedited version, so any mistakes are mine rather than MacUser's.Some of the rights for this article belong to Dennis Publishing: please do not republish this article anywhere else.

Everything that we do has some kind of impact on the environment, from breathing through to burning millions of tonnes of crude oil. However, one of the cultural trends of humankind during the 21st Century is a striving to reduce this impact, and preserve our natural environment as much as possible.

Although the detrimental effects of large scale industry like cars has been known and closely followed for decades, a more recent centre of attention has been that icon of the last twenty years, the personal computer. Computer makes have come under attach from environmental campaigners for their manufacturing processes, while computer users have started to wonder whether using a computer – particularly one that's on 24 hours a day, seven days a week – is worth the undoubted effects on the environment.

Apple in particular has been the subject of some dedicated campaigning, in particular from Greenpeace. Over the past year, the veteran environmental group has attacked Apple, claiming it uses hazardous substances in Macs – substances that other manufacturers have abandoned.

But what's the truth about the impact that our addiction to computers has on the environment? Is computing sustainable, or will there one day be a crunch, when we're forced to either slow down our pace of technological change or just abandon computers completely? And where does the responsibility lie: with manufacturers who churn out ever-faster machines that must be replaced every three years, or with consumers greedy for the latest and greatest PC? And, should the environmentally-conscious consumer be choosing something other than Apple if they're looking for the greenest PC?

When will Google Gears arrive for Safari?

If this post is a clue, then hopefully sometime soon:

"Improvements to Gears can be used by developers immediately. Gears is available today on Firefox (for Windows, OS X, and Linux), IE, and IE Mobile. Implementations for more browsers and platforms are in progress."

Why Microsoft lose and Apple wins, part two

There are some very interesting facts about the reaction of Microsoft to Spotlight after its first demo revealed in the comments to a post on Joe Wilcox's AppleWatch blog.

"MSFT has worked on WinFS for more than a decade without success in making it fast, reliable, and easy-to-use enough for release. The Longhorn "reset" in 2004 was in large part the realization that WinFS was still not ready for primetime.

At the June 2004 WWDC, Jobs blew away the MSFT engineers in attendance by demonstrating lightning fast Spotlight searches on Tiger (OSX 10.4). The court-released MSFT emails show how flabbergasted they were, and the imperative of getting the Tiger preview DVDs back to Redmond for reverse engineering. Comments by MSFT's Jim Allchin and Lenn Pryor were priceless.

Here's Pryor:

" You will have to take Vic's disk...I am not giving mine up. ;) Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was f*cking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today."

Here's Allchin:

"Yes. I know. It is hard to take. I don't believe we will have search this fast."

And years later, Microsoft still does not have search this fast - and, from the looks of what Joe is saying, probably won't have it for many years.

So why is Apple so good at this stuff, while Microsoft keeps churning out concepts - like it's latest, "table top computing" - that it never implements properly?

Mac News on FriendFeed

I've created a FriendFeed room devoted to Mac News, reviews, features, and so on. If you're a FriendFeed user, feel free to join (it's a public room) and post anything and everything you find.

How much was Power Computing worth? At today's prices, $7.2 billion

A quick note on the excellent article in Macworld on the clone era:

"The third strike came on September 2, when Apple announced the purchase of Power Computing for $100 million in Apple stock. "

At the time, Apple stock was worth around $5 per share, giving Power's owners roughly two million shares of the company. Factoring in the 2005 stock split, that would now be worth roughly $7.2 billion if they'd held on to it.

Someone, probably Olivetti (which bankrolled Power) got a good deal there. I wonder if they knew it at the time?

Technorati Tags:
Apple, Mac licensing, Power Computing

The consequences of the end of Mac cloning: Apple and Motorola fall out

Back in the era of Mac cloning I was a reporter (and then news editor) on MacUser, which meant that I spent a lot of time talking to Apple, cloners, and miscellaneous manufacturers. Because Britons are incredible gossips, it gave me a pretty interesting perspective on what went on.

We got to see pre-production machines, enjoyed leaks from chip companies which let us know what Apple and the rest were up to long before anyone else, and much more. For a news reporter in the tech industry, it was a very happy time indeed.

That's perhaps why I have a very different perspective on the era from some modern Mac users. I remember, for example, just how popular with Mac fans Power Computing was. Apple was able to do its "fighting back for the Mac ads because it was the only Mac maker attempting to compete with PC companies on performance, at a time when Apple was avoiding the word "speed" like the plague.