New Apple Lust Objects

Something that's more like a satellite computer to your main computer than an independent entity.

http://laptop.org/laptop/

+ xClient.
m.

1.6ghz processor

is this really a problem? The 2GB of RAM will do photoshop, etc.

no wired networking

I have never used the ethernet port on my MacBook in more than a year of travelling/different offices, etc. this is a non-issue for the target market now and it will be even more of a non-issue in 12 months.

mono speaker

who buys a small portable for its built-in speakers?

no line in

that sucks.

no firewire

regrettable, but it's a physically large port. had to go, I suspect. Apple have been quietly shuffling away from FW for a couple of years now.

And I don't like glossy screens, but I suppose that's not "crippled".

i'd prefer a matte screen, but you _very_ quickly stop noticing glossy screens are glossy. Not looking at you here at all (I'm sure you and Ed have your reasons), but I do think a lot of the anti-glossy sentiment is anti-neophyte/anti-PC/anti-marketing snobbery from people who've never used a glossy screen for any length of time. seriously, they're fine.

I still don't like it though.

Now this is something I can get behind: http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/?sr=hotnews

My gripe with the glossy is it makes the laptop less functional, get the wrong light behind you and the screen is harder to see. I was working on my MBP outdoors in the mniddle of 9th Av. last week and although it was difficult to see the screen because of the sun, it was not impossible, I doubt I cul have done that with the glossy. 5 hr battery life. i want to be able to work outdoors. I quite like glossy in some situations. When sony first started soing it it wasa big wow especially on televisions, it just annoys me a little that there is no alternative on laptops.

Stay in Britain. Sunshine not a problem here.

I did work on my MacBook in the back garden a little last summer. Had to sit with the sun in front/to the side, but it was possible. But you're right that you'd have a better shot at seeing the screen with an MBP with bright sun behind you.

A choice is all, I'd much rather watch a movie on the glossy with the curtains closed.

time capsule really looks like the business. you can use it like a normal hard drive too. (any word on whether you can mount it remotely? like a kind of personal idisk?)

i guess they're still selling airport extreme base station as a diskless, non-time-machinable alternative. i wonder how much longer it will live.

btw cozen there are plenty of backup programs that will use your current airport disk as a backup target. there's no real need to use time machine - it's not actually that much better than other stuff.

many questions for me about apple tv. they say you can watch it anywhere - on your ipod, on your hdtv, on your computer. and it's all managed through itunes. what happens when you download an HD movie and want to watch it on your ipod? either alternative seems insane - that it transfers the entire HD movie to your ipod (your ipod would fill up very quickly), or that it does an h.264 transcode of the entire thing (would take forever, non?)

xp, yes, a choice would be nice. I'm sure there are economies of scale at play with the decision not to offer one though, since most people would presumably opt for glossy.

another question - if you transfer a movie you rented to your ipod and started watching it, but then waited, say, 48 hours to sync it with itunes again, how would your itunes know you had started watching it??

you can only watch it on one device at a time, so it disappears on iTunes when you move it to iPod.

better not accidentally hit play while it's on your computer then i guess? otherwise you're locked into 1) only watching it on your computer and 2) watching the whole thing within the next 24 hours?

i've seen on other fora a pretty convincing argument that 24 hours is the exact time window to guarantee frustration, i.e. get home from work , fire up apple tv, start watching something that you have to interrupt for whatever reason, think you'll get back to it tomorrow, and realise that it expires at 7pm rather than midnight. even an extra hour would make a difference.

I think you can still transfer it to another device within the 24 hours, it will just time out on that device when the 24hrs is up.

OTM about 24hrs being frustrating.

i have a question about time capsule and wifi in general...is all that fast enough? How much longer does it take to back up 1TB over wifi then it would firewire?

They say 802.11n is 160 Mbps or faster, not used it so don't know what the real world speed is, firewire is 400Mbps or 800Mbps theoretical and a lot of drives get close to this. Even Apple say your first backup will take 'overnight', subsequent backups are changes only so will be quicker.

thanks tracer, I'll look into those

x-post

can you indefinitely postpone expiry of a rental by transferring and re-transferring between devices then?

no

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-27-hour-day/

Ed if you transfer the movie to your iPod and then don't resync, i still don't see how the iPod will "know" if you've watched it on your HDTV

you can't watch it on the tv if it's on the iPod, it can only be watched in one place at a time

I think it goes or gets locked on the ATV/Mac when you load it onto the iPod.

xpost

ok duh i think you guys already said that already and i just misread it

it's not like i'll be using this much.. i don't think. i never use the itunes music store. of course i once said the same thing about email.

cozen - http://www.propagandaprod.com

Oops, from tuaw.com:

We got an interesting tip from "Jack", who noted that you could affect the time remaining on an iTunes movie rental by altering your system time. I gave it a shot to be sure. It's true, if you're willing to offset the date on your computer until you finally have time to watch that movie, you can get past the 30-day time limit.

It was also noted that if you fast-forward your calendar to the due date of a rental, iTunes will remove the movie from the library but apparently not from your drive. That seems odd to me, but that's the way it works, at least if you switch the date up yourself. And sure, you could get a little creative with a DVR and some streaming output, but the price isn't so bad to me that it warrants the extra effort. My movie-watching habits seem to be in line with Apple's plan: I generally watch a movie once no matter how good it is. Ultimately, it's just a matter of finding the time to do it.

that's always fun. I set my clock back to use a demo version of Quark 7 at times, then I forget to switch it right back, all my emails go to the bottom of people's inbox and the nifty little time-tracking shareware I bought thinks I worked negative 3 months on a job. Great.

I imagine someone will make a hack for this that does some LD_PRELOAD stuff and hooks the time/date system calls in itunes

this rental sounds incredibly frustrating! also, it's about the same price as rental from a physical store, but only valid for one day instead of seven. i wouldn't pay more than a dollar. the new macbook sounds like a step backwards in functionality, too. fail!

How long before someone works out a way to strip the encryption or to intercept the video surface and write it to a file?

From ars technica:

"Pausing a movie on the Apple TV will be synced back to the master iTunes computer, and the saved place will be synced with the movie to a docked iPhone or iPod."

That makes it sound like you can have the same rented movie on more than one device, at the same time.

It was possible to enable DivX on the version 1 of the apple TV firmware. If this is still the case with version 2 I would consider getting one.

I think the key bit there is synced with the movie, ie details move with it.

But my point is that it's not deleted from your hard drive if you transfer to your iPod. So if you don't resync, who's to know?

http://www.manilamac.com/

But my point is that it's not deleted from your hard drive if you transfer to your iPod.
I don't think that's true. Yr clip just means that when you pause it on the AppleTV, it records the time. If you then move it to the iPod, deleting it from the drive, it will remember the pause time.

Oh I see - and since there's no officially supported way of getting stuff back from an iPod onto a computer, that's all she wrote

Well, it seems like you can move the files about manually OK, but iTunes is keeping track of whether they're playable separately: if you move your date way into the future, the files actually stay on disk, but iTunes removes them from your playlist, and they won't open.

bizahh

if i get this it'll be 99% for divx stuff anyway; it shouldn't be too hard to set up a totally automated system with rss feeds, a torrent client, and a few folder actions

that 24 hour thing can be circumvented pretty simply

Apply the design philosophy of the MacBook Air to the Nintendo DS Lite and you have a winner!!

Just traded 1/2 my savings for Mac Pro + 30" display + Logic. So psyched!

anybody who buys a movie via this appletv/itunes system is eating shit and liking it. BOYCOTT

TRY JUST A LITTLE HARDER, STEVE

I have never bought anything from iTMS. I like the packaging of a disc and having a full-quality archival copy around.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/01/19/macbookcommodorecompare.jpg

welcome to yesterday

Sorry, I wasn't working yesterday, CHOAD.

lolz

Shoulda had more to offer last week, Steve:

Apple shares dropped $20.09, or 12.9%, to $135.55. The computer giant disappointed investors by projecting weaker-than-expected second-quarter earnings.

should I keep adding ram or just get a real job, save up and buy a new Mac Pro?

I have the first generation G5 power mac, 1.8Ghz and have 3 gigs of ram. I do lots of photoshop and audio stuff. Things have seemed a bit sluggish lately and for 120 bucks I can add another 2 gigs of RAM. Will that really make a huge difference, or should I save my money for eventually getting a machine with a faster/newer processor?

Does that machine even support more than 4 gigs of RAM? I say save for a new machine dude. You need faster busses/processors.

Yeah, I agree with Jon.