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TECHNOLOGY
Thin Is In at Macworld
Brian Braiker 1/15/2008 12:00:00 AM
Steve Jobs didn't introduce anything as revolutionary as the iPhone at Macworld on Tuesday, but he did manage to make a few announcements that are guaranteed to alter the landscape in at least two different markets: movie rentals and laptops. The two major announcements at the annual event were the introduction of iTunes Movie Rentals, a new feature of the iTunes Store, and the unveiling of the MacBook Air, which Jobs is calling "the world's thinnest notebook." "It just goes to show that even when Apple doesn't announce a tsunami of a product, it still makes waves," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at JupiterResearch.
TECHNOLOGY
Can Apple Outdo the iPhone?
Brian Braiker 1/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
With an underwhelming Consumer Electronics Show receding in the tech universe's rearview mirror, the focus has turned to the upcoming Macworld. Steve Jobs has a lot to live up to after last year's performance, when he introduced the iPhone, forever altering the smartphone landscape. Jobs isn't expected to announce anything quite so groundbreaking, but there's still plenty of speculation about what he'll be unveiling on Tuesday. Here's the buzz:Movie Rentals on iTunesCan Apple transform how we watch movies the way it changed how we listen to music? BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple, which already sells first-run Disney movies through its online store, is hammering out rental agreements with Disney as well as with Warner Bros., Lion's Gate and Paramount. One potential sticking point has been pricing. The recording industry hates the 99 cents per song standard, and it appears unlikely that the film industry will go along with a similar flat pricing structure—they want flexibility. Exact details of how the rental system would work are scarce, but it seems likely that the rented movie would live on your hard drive for a predetermined amount of time (24 hours or a week) and then disappear.
ASIA
Repression 2.0
Adam B. Kushner
In the latest twist on Internet repression, governments don't just censor, they scare. Last week, for example, the Chinese government broadcast a text message to cell-phone users in Lhasa, Tibet, where Beijing has cracked down on protests in recent weeks. The message demanded that users "obey the law" and "follow the rules," and no protester could have mistaken the meaning, or the messenger. If the government also managed to terrify even quiet, apolitical citizens, Chinese and Tibetan—well, so be it. Repression 2.0 is not a precise technology.
Croal: End the Disc-O Madness!
N’Gai Croal
The Darwinian battle for the next generation of DVDs ended last month, as Toshiba admitted defeat and aborted its HD-DVD format, leaving Blu-ray technology the sole survivor. But few were heard rejoicing, other than a handful of manufacturers and movie studios. In fact, how many of you know—or care—what Blu-ray and HD-DVD are? As of January, a survey commissioned by the Blu-ray Disc Association found that 80 percent of consumers were aware of the new high-definition format, up from just 26 percent at the end of 2006. But apart from my most technophilic friends, colleagues and peers, I rarely hear anyone discussing it. I'm far more likely to hear people talking about renting DVDs from Netflix, downloading movies via iTunes, streaming television shows from network Web sites, watching YouTube clips on their iPhones or acquiring video files through other means of dubious legality.
BUSINESS
A Fight To The Death
Benjamin Sutherland
It should be a colossal success story for television. A new generation of high-definition DVDs hold more than five times the data of conventional DVDs, offering crisper images, richer colors and room left over for features such as movie-related games. Last year sales of hi-def discs amounted to only 10 million, compared with 900 million conventional DVDs. What's been standing in the way of a potentially huge market, the conventional wisdom holds, is the format war between Blu-ray, backed by Sony and other firms, and Toshiba's HD DVD.
THE INTERNET
Like A Super Hero
Barrett Sheridan
Clad in a comfy black t shirt and jeans, Blaise Aguera y Arcas stood onstage at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in Monterey, California, early last year in front of a projection screen that ran the height of an entire wall. On the screen was a tapestry of hundreds of high-quality digital documents and photos; one image, a scan of an ancient map of the world, had more data than most hard drives. Ordinarily, interacting with—and making sense of—such huge amounts of data would be tedious, if not impossible. Anyone who's tried to work with a 10-megapixel photo on a laptop screen knows this. But the new program Aguera y Arcas was demoing, dubbed Seadragon, made every transition seamless and lightning fast. The audience saw the patchwork quilt of images become a single shot of the façade of Notre Dame cathedral—and in another instant, a close-up of a gargoyle's tooth.