Bobbis.net

So, today was Apple announcement day. All new iPods, nothing really impressive there. The real news is the iTunes Store now offers feature length movie downloads, and the Apple set-top box code-named iTV*.

iTunes 7

I have downloaded and installed iTunes 7 along with the new QuickTime. I have to say, the interface is very different. The biggest difference is the new views available for showing your music or videos. The Cover browser is a nice eye-candy way to view your files, and if you don't already have album art, iTunes 7 will now be able to download it, which is nice. The navigation on the left has been organized very well, separating Library, Store, Shared, Playlists, and Devices.

With the new iTunes comes the movie store. Right now there are only Disney owned movies (Disney, Miramax, Touchstone, Pixar) available. The quality is actually pretty good. I downloaded "Pirates of the Caribbean" so I can have something to show off at ClubFest tomorrow. I really would rather have have a cheaper rental offer than buying the content. I can get better quality, more content, and better reliability from purchasing a physical DVD. Having a movie rental operation online makes more sense to a cost vs quality vs value equation for me.

The download is actually pretty smooth. While I was downloading the movie, I was able to pause it, quit iTunes, restart the computer and resume the download as well as start watching the movie while it was still downloading. This made it almost instantaneous to start enjoying the movie after purchasing (that is an even faster purchase to consumption turnaround time than buying the DVD at Wal-Mart) .

iTV

When I learned about iTV, I was hoping that it would be the device I was looking for. However, it won't be out until sometime in the first quarter of 2007, which is still a long ways away. Also, it only does streaming of files from iTunes. As far as I know, it doesn't have its own storage system or ability to record stuff from TV. It is also over-priced for what it does. A player for $300 seem a little excessive. I hope Apple will come to its senses soon and make it more feature complete (Provide a DVR or storage capabilities) and if it doesn't make it cost less. From the way it looks, I'm still going to settle for a Mac mini for my media center device.

Click here to find out what a Retro Encabulator is.

Leave a comment to tell me what you think it is.

I had the opportunity to spend time trying out Crossover Mac. Crossover Mac is a program for Intel based Macs to run Windows applications without having to install Windows. Crossover uses the open-source project WINE to accomplish this. They have an impressive list of compatible applications such as Office 2003, IE 6, IE 7, Quicken, Visio, Half-Life, etc.

The concept is impressive, but I suppose I was expecting a little bit better from what people have been hyping. It is still clearly in the beta stages. The stability of the applications are questionable (since not all of Microsoft's APIs are accounted for) and the overall look and feel of the applications are not that great. I do realize that this is a huge effort trying to emulate the huge library of frameworks available in Windows without using Windows. Though, for any of these programs to be useful to me requires them to be responsive and stable. I can turn to Parallels for better compatibility and a more predictable operation (though it does require a license of Windows which is a drawback).

Crossover still has a long ways to go before I can use it every day. I can't wait for the day I can run Windows applications beside other Mac applications as seamlessly as Mac OS 9 applications ran in OS X with Classic.

It's already the end of the second week of school. I hope the rest of the semester goes by as fast as this. I am very happy so far with my class load (12 credits). It's really kind of cool to get all my classes done in one stretch of time. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class from 8 to noon.

Film is going to be the easiest class this semester, which is now surprise. The format of the class is to watch a movie starting at the beginning of the once-a-week class and then discuss it afterwards. There will be a little bit of work in the class. We have a couple four page papers and a final.

The other classes (Strategic Management, Databases, and Data Mining) seem like they may provide a challenge but are actually interesting. The only complaint I have is that my Data Mining professor is not very organized and I have no clue exactly what we will be doing for the class. So far it has been a lot of discussion about how we want the class time to operate and looking over some research articles that cover content that is way over our heads (we have to learn the stuff before we do anything with it).

Aside from class, the class-time work schedule is going on. I find myself working mostly entire afternoons. There have been a few small fires with the web server lately and we are going to be migrating to a new web server soon which I just finished installing.

I have also been working a lot on Drupal. If you may have noticed, my photos section ended up changing theme. This is a result of me trying to integrate Gallery to Drupal. I'm very close, but still have a few bugs to work out before I open it up. In the mean time, I'm not going to spend the time to change the theme that my old gallery installation decided to take on when I upgraded it.

The apartment has become somewhat livable since moving, but it is still a ways from being done. I wonder if Nick and Maggie have beat us making their apartment presentable yet? As soon as our place gets presentable, I will post pictures.

I hope everyone is having a good start of the semester.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=2&id=37607

There is rumor that it may get picked up by another station or perhaps in a different form (mini series, movie, etc.).

So, school is starting. My schedule can be found under my school link. I only have class two days a week and both Gaila and I have Fridays off form class (but not work).

While organizing myself for the first week of class (figuring out where I need to go when and syncing it with my palm, and looking for course web sites) I decided to login to WebCT to see if there were any course web sites hiding out there. So far, there is one for my Management class, which I hope I will not have to visit often. Just look at it:

Yep, that's right... Blue on Blue! My eyes hurt trying to figure out if there was anything important on the page.

Anyway, I hope people are doing well starting out a new semester.

Well, I'm finally taking the time to post after getting back from San Francisco. This last week was a blast. I learned so many new things about Leopard and OS X technologies. I can't wait to continue learning Cocoa and developing applications. The new Xcode is very nice as are some of the features that are included in Leopard such as Spaces, Time Machine, and other features that weren't demoed at the keynote (honestly I can remember what I learned at the Keynote versus what I learn later at the conference. Colin and I met a guy from Canada who we hung out with most of the week. I forgot to bring my camera on the day we went to the Apple Campus, but Colin got some pictures of that. Since I can't talk much about the week at WWDC, I will continue with the weekend.

Colin got in line to check in for his flight while I went to pick-up Gaila on Friday. Because of the threats and the whole liquids stuff, Colin checked in early and Gaila got the the Des Moines airport way too early. Gaila and I took a nap when we got back to the hotel and went to see a late showing of Superman Returns IMAX 3D at the Metreon.

Saturday we started the day passing the, now empty, Moscone West (where the conference was) to go to the Academy of Science where they had some cool fish and pinguins. Aftwards we hopped on a bus to Golden Gate Park to visit the De Young museum, then headed over to the Golden Gate bridge. At the bridge we walked down to Fort Point and back up to catch the bus back to the hotel.

Sunday we picked up the cable car at Powell and Market and rode it to Fisherman's Warf passing the famous Lombard Street (the really curvy street). From there we took a bus to the Exploratorium then back to the Pier 39 for a boat trip under the Golden Gate bridge and around Alcatraz. We had dinner at a nice place on Pier 39 then went through the Aquarium of the Bay, Ghirardelli Square for some chocolate. We rode the cable cars back and stopped by Cold Stone for a treat before calling it a night.

Monday was a day in the air. Security wasn't as bad as you might think it would have been, there were so many reminders about what not to bring on carry-on since Firday that we knew the drill. Our flight out of O'Hare ended up getting delayed. We didn't leave Chicago until a little after midnight and getting home well after 2 AM. I took Tuesday off from work to recover.

Anyway, I took lots of pictures of the weekend that you can check out.

Correct predictions (Over 50%): Xeon Mac Pro, New Xcode, Spotlight Performance.

Really all these were almost certain to happen, so our predictions really sucked. I give up. I rather just be wowed at the stuff that does get introduced and be surprised instead of being disappointed about some of the things that were rumored and didn't come. However, there are still lots of cool toys in Leopard that have not been disclosed and even the stuff that has been announced and not rumored were pretty good. Now, I can't wait to see what the shipping version Leopard will be like next spring.

Mac Pro

• 2+ GHz Core 2 Duo or Xeon Chips ( 30%/70% )

- turns out to be really reasonable with developer discount :D

MacBook Pro (2nd Generation)

• I put a 50% chance that we'll see a revision of the MacBook Pro's with Core 2 Duo Chips

iPod Video V2

• 15% chance of a iPod revision

iPhone

• I put a 50% shot of seeing a iPhone or apple phone of some sort

Mac OS X Leapord

• Tabbed Finder ( 10% )
• Finder Sporting Unified Look ( 25% )
• Safari spotting Unified Look ( 50% )
• New version of Xcode ( 95% )
• Charts (new app ( 5% ))
• Movies on iTunes ( 75% ) Rental based ( 70% ), Keeps based ( 15% ), Subscription based ( 15% )
• iChat with tabs ( 25% )
• Spotlight 2 performance boost of at least 20-30% ( 70% ) - Not announced, but it is faster IMHO
• Heavily redesigned Finder ( 70% )
• Full screen in Quicktime (regular w/o pro) ( 2% ), Fullscreen is in iTunes, use iTunes for video viewing.
• iCal public framework for integration into other apps ( 2% ) iCal server and planned integration with other collaborative calendars though
• Dashboard widgets natively on the desktop w/o dev hack ( 5% )
• Voip on iChat ( 75% )
• Software Update on other Apple Consumer Apps ( 80% )

- My thoughts were along the lines of iLife and iWork suite or the Final Cut, Apature lineup, not bundled software with OS (Mail, iChat, etc)

You can find my pictures of WWDC and my trip to San Francisco here. I will try to update when I take any pictures.

I'm also very busy here during the conference playing around with all the cool toys. I will eventually return to comment on my predictions. In the mean time, it's time to go play with Leopard on some Mac Pros :D

Pictures of the Mac Pro on display after the keynote