iPhone's great step back from iChat

I did watch the iPhone Macworld Keynote last week - here's my chapter-list version of the stream so you can skip through it to the bits you find interesting:


(I'd do the same for the download except 1. Apple obfuscated the url enough that I can't be arsed to packet sniff it out and 2. they still don't have HTTP 1.1 seeking support working right, despite me building and demoing it about 5 years ago).

After watching it, my biggest surprise was how much of a step back it was from the rich interaction that iChat supports. With iChat you get presence info, chat, sending documents and integrated audio-video chat (when the other user's computer and connection supports it). Instead, iPhone had a legacy telco worldview baked in, with calls not conveying any further context (watch the combined demo near the end, where Jobs has to retype Schiller's email when talking to him on the phone). The iPhone has the camera on the wrong side to be a videophone, and Jobs did not mention any ability to make calls over Wifi rather than the Cingular network, or anything about IM (as opposed to SMS).

My hope is that this is just Jobs not mentioning the features that don't demo well yet, but my sidekick's AIM integration is the reason I am so hooked on it; it buffers chats server-side so thatintermittent phone connections on the train don't interrupt conversation flow.

Apple reverses the Osborne effect

Apple has long kept its new product secrets close, wary that details leaking of new hardware will reduce sales of current products, just at the point where they are most profitable. I've written before how this culture spread unnecessarily into Apple's overall culture, and why they have missed a lot of the social media effects because of it. However, something has changed - both with the iTV AppleTV and todays iPhone
announcement, Jobs is trumpeting new hardware months before it's available.

The difference here is that these are new categories for Apple, and the goal is to make customers wait for the Apple product instead of buying an alternative from someone else. By setting the price and broad features now, Jobs forces the competition's shipping product, based on last years technology and manufacturing costs to compete with what he will have in 6 months time. This is something that can only be done from a position of strength, which the iPod success gives him, but it is also a bit of a risk, as the product may disappoint.

I'm reserving judgment on the AppleTV until I see more details of what software it will run, in particular whether it can use Perian to play other video formats, and can use BitTorrent for HD podcasts, but it only having enough CPU oomph for 720p playback seems to be aiming low compared to a lot of existing Apple products, as well as the Xbox 360.

Update: Apple seems to understand the advantages of downloading media for later playback - these two new products both cache video locally in the great iPod tradition. So why on earth is the keynote up as a stream? I'd like to watch it on the train home tonight, so I want to download it, but no. Twits.

Update: Since I wrote this, it has shown up as a podcast on the iTunes store, so I will be able to watch it on the train on Monday. It's not linked from the Apple main page, so you may have missed this too; clearly there are still some internal Apple turf wars over this.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macworld , iPhone, AppleTV , HD, HDTV, Live TV is Dead, video

HDTV disappointments

I spent a chunk of time looking at HDTVs in Best Buy and the Sony shop yesterday, and wasn't impressed. Overall, what I saw on the displays looked full of compression artefacts, with poor colour. Most of them were 720p displays, with the 1080p ones starting about $4,000. It seem there is some buyer's remorse around too, as customers grapple with upconversion and, no doubt, with HDCP's deliberate degradation. It sounds like Pip Coburn's warning in The Change Function - that flat panel TV's are a no-brainer, but HDTV complexity could mess things up with extra perceived pain of adoption - was more accurate than Mark Cuban's 'HDTV beats the net' rant.

I also had a look round the Apple store yesterday, and saw excellent HD quality on a $2000 HD iMac, and a $999 23" Cinema display (not to mention the $2000 30" display which is way beyond 1080p in size). Where did I get the HD content? Over the net - The Harry Potter 5 trailer and Rocketboom's HD edition. The problem of connecting computers to HD screens is a mess, but it is one of the media industries' own creation, as they insisted on a new connector with DRM in the cables. Another friend of mine is working on some interesting new projection systems that may mean that all the computers will need is a white wall to point at.

Technorati Tags: DRM, HD, HDTV, Live TV is Dead, video

Happy New Year...

...to the Line Islands of Kiribati.

Technorati Tags: 2007, New Year

AT&T's bait and switch

Susan Crawford explains the fraudulent concession to neutrality from AT&T in an attempt to get their merger approved before the year-end. The small print excludes their 'IPTV' service from neutrality, which was the point at issue. I have already covered the underlying flaw in their special pleading; what we see is a bizarre coalition of legacy TV and legacy networking to sacrifice the low-latency traffic paths we need for gaming, two-way conversations and other communication servcies for the goal of replicating the 'you have to watch it right now' TV experience we are rejecting in droves now we have a choice.
Update: The FCC approved it anyway, and watered down the neutrality commitment further:

AT&T made a series of voluntary commitments that are enforceable by the Commission and attached as an Appendix. These conditions are voluntary, enforceable commitments by AT&T but are not general statements of Commission policy and do not alter Commission precedent or bind future Commission policy or rules.

Commissioner Adelstein seemed to think there was a new policy here:

Most significantly, the Commission takes a long-awaited and momentous step in this Order by requiring the applicants to maintain neutral network and neutral routing in the provision of their wireline broadband Internet access service. This provision was critical for my support of this merger and will serve as a “5th principle,” ensuring that the combined company does not privilege, degrade, or prioritize the traffic of Internet content, applications or service providers, including their own affiliates. Given the increase in concentration presented by this transaction – particularly set against the backdrop of a market in which telephone and cable operators control nearly 98 percent of the market, with many consumers lacking any meaningful choice of providers – it was critical that the Commission add a principle to address incentives for anti-competitive discrimination. Defining the exact parameters of any neutrality provision is, almost by definition, complex and difficult. The precise contours, scope, and exclusions in this provision reflect compromise and a predictive judgment about how, in the words of Prof. Tim Wu, “to preserve the most attractive features of the Internet as it now exists.” The work is not done, however. It is critical that we remain vigilant and continue to explore comprehensive approaches to this issue; but I expect this significant step will inform the debate in the coming months and years. I appreciate the efforts of the many diverse groups and individuals who have contributed to this effort and, in particular, I want to thank Commissioner Copps for his leadership on this issue and for his commitment to the effort to devise a carefully-crafted condition.

Looks like he got bait and switched too.

Starship Troupers

John Scalzi and Brad DeLong have kicked off a serious debate about the different interpretations of Starship Troopers by Heinlein and Verhoeven. However, I think they are both neglecting the important critical interpretation by Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip .

One reason Torchwood has been disappointing is that it's "Dr Who with shagging" premise isn't really enough to sustain it. Camp and sexist as it was, the original Star Trek did try to grapple with moral and societal dilemmas. A big part of the enormous power of the revived Dr Who series is that the Doctor lives by a moral code and stands by Rose without yielding to his temptations. They have you feeling the unrequited love of Madame de Pompadour and sympathy with a wounded Dalek. Torchwood's aimless bed-hopping is more like Katy Manning posing with a dalek.

Technorati Tags: Dr Who, Starship Troopers, television, Torchwood

James Brown memorialised in video

The death of James Brown yesterday has shown up in a surge of blog interest - he dominates the Technorati popular videos chart today, and is the top search and James Brown is a top tag (and there are lots of videos tagged James Brown too). Kevin Burton's tool is showing some Brown videos too, though he is indexing a smaller pool of bloggers; I'd look at the Megite one too if it were public.

Technorati Tags: blogs, tags, video, YouTube

Video WTF

Whenever digital video engineers gather together, there is a mutual camaraderie based on the woes of supporting the NTSC standard. I suspect with a few drinks in them they'd form a mob and string up whomever came up with the frame rate of 30000/1001 and drop-frame timecode. However, the sins of our video forefathers pale into insignificance compared to what is going on with DRM video in Windows Vista.

Technorati Tags: DRM, microsoft, video

Podcasts by Royal Appointment

Last week at a bloggers gathering in London I was commenting that Private Eye had 3 cartoons about podcasts in, including one about listening to the Queen's podcast on Christmas Day, so clearly the stuff we were doing is becoming mainstream. Then today Dave Winer points out that the Queen does have a podcast. Here's the feed link. It's come a long way since Bloggercon 2003. And even longer since I got to line up the Nagra tape recorders for the recording of the 1988 Queens Speech while I was at the BBC.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, meme, podcasting, Queen

Pachelbel - the backlash begins

Rob Paravonian rants about the ubiquity of Canon in D. That reminded me of Dudley Moore's Beethoven parody using the Colonel Bogey theme. I do love that such things are findable online...
Update: bonus link - Clive Thompson on the joys of guitar wanking on YouTube

Technorati Tags: canon, Pachelbel, video, YouTube

iTunes store - because of, not with

The NYT repeats a familiar incredulity about iTunes store sales but misses the point about Apple. Apple is a hardware company — it makes its money from selling good hardware with good margins. The iTunes Store has always been pretty close to revenue neutral for Apple - the vast bulk of its sales revenue goes through to the Record Labels or TV companies. With Apple absorbing hosting, payment processing and customer support too, I'd be surpised if it makes enough to cover the iPod's advertising budget.
This has an interesting beneficial effect - because Apple cares more about the iPod than the Store, they have embraced Podcasting (equally revenue neutral, and a good way to fill iPods) and kept the iTunes Application's CD-ripping abilities (while its ability to sync to non-Apple mp3 players has withered away). What is becoming clear is that DRM, even Apple's DRM with circumvention built-in, does destroy value for customers. The labels are realising that they inadvertently handed the keys to their music to Apple, and so are moving towards selling non-DRM'd files instead.
Apple's hardware sales model is going to be put to the test with the iTV set-top video playback box due next year. Other companies are bundling such boxes with cable TV, in return for a subscription. BT Vision is trying a different tactic - a set-top PVR that uses free over-the-air TV along with the ability to purchase Video too, but bundled with their broadband internet service.
The question for both of these is how well they will enable the playback of amateur media, which can be indistinguishable from 'bootlegs', as well as video from the big media content the companies have partnerships with.
Watching my boys play videos with their friends the other night, they didn't make hard distinctions between the Harry Potter 5 trailer, silly internet flash animations, Pachelbel's Canon in D played on guitar, and their own home-made videos. All were media to share with each other and talk about.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPod, iTunes, Live TV is Dead, long tail, marksbrothers, video

Petitio Post Mortem

Larry Lessig admits he was wrong about term extension:

If you read the list, you’ll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.

I’m not yet sure how. But I guess I should be a good sport about it, and just confess I was wrong. For if artists can sign petitions after they’ve died, then why can’t they produce new recordings fifty year ago?

Meanwhile, the Open Rights Group is running a Release The Music campaign, with a petition you can sign. There's also one asking for the right to privately copy CDs to iPods.

Are my readers as good at signing petitions as dead musicians?

Technorati Tags: copyright, law, music, Open Rights Group, ORG

How to solve Sudoku

Just login as root and type 'ku'.

Hint for the less geeky.

Explanation for the non-geeky.

How to really solve Sudoku.

Technorati Tags: geeky, Python, sudoku

Gowers' biased rhetoric

The Gowers Review of Intellectual property released a final report today. The Open Rights Group has a good response on the overall impact, but I noticed some rhetorical bias. Paragraph 1.9 of the report says:

1.9 Achieving this balance is made more difficult by the vocabulary used to discuss IP policy and practice. Copyright infringement through unauthorised copying and distribution of music and video across the Internet is likened to stealing by some, and to sharing by others. Those who seek to prevent others from using a patented invention without permission are branded ‘trolls’*. Those who copy and distribute material illegally are called ‘pirates’. And the problem of ‘orphan’ works, which arises where copyright owners are untraceable, perhaps provokes an easy sympathy.

Having made this point though, the rest of the review uses 'piracy' throughout in phrases like 'strengthening enforcement of IP rights, whether through clamping down on piracy or trade in counterfeit goods', and does not mention patent trolling at all. Down in the glossary at the end, the report defines:

Piracy: Unauthorised duplication of goods protected by IP law

By using this rhetorical trick, Gowers continually makes an equivalence between commercial counterfeiting of CDs on a large scale with the copying inherent and necessary in any use of digital media. Gowers also makes some bizarre leaps of logic:

1.4 Ideas are expensive to produce but cheap to copy. The fixed costs of producing knowledge are high. Hollywood blockbusters can costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make[...]

How much knowledge does a Hollywood blockbuster contain, compared to, say, the Wikipedia page on intellectual property? The fixed costs there are remarkably low. The costs of production are continually plummeting, thanks to digital technologies, and that enables commons-based peer production, like Wikipedia. Some of Gowers recommendations are good, but it looks like he didn't engage with Benkler's Wealth of Networks thesis on new kinds of knowledge creation.

*Patent trolling is when a patent is used to prevent innovation by blackmailing companies with a patent, often second-hand. I've written on patent trolls before.

At Internet Identity Workshop

December 4th — 6th, 2006 Internet Identity Workshop— at Computer History Museum

I'm at the Internet Identity Workshop today, talking about Microformats.