Apple takes back the copycat title
Summary: Apple cultists are gushing over Steve Jobs' latest Apple announcements. Browsing your music collection by album cover? A box that connects your home theater to your networked PC and plays music and movies? Someone better tell Steve it's all been done before, and better.
Apparently, every copy of Mac OS X comes with a Cognitive Dissonance add-in. This feature allows Mac cultists to loudly accuse Microsoft of ripping off features when it's convenient, and to blindly miss the ripoffs that go the other way.
Case in point: Yesterday's far-from-earthshattering Apple announcements.
Over at the Cult of Mac blog, Leander Kahney gushes over Apple's new Cover Flow interface, which allows you to browse your music collection using pictures of album covers.
Just as it's easy to see quickly what the jukebox has to offer, it's now easy to see what's been hiding in your ever-growing digital music collection.
As Jobs mentioned twice during his Tuesday presentation, a visual navigation scheme makes a big music collection much more accessible.
"It's a wonderful way to rediscover your music library," he said.
Huh. Anyone who owns a copy of Windows XP Media Center Edition or is using the Windows Vista beta doesn't need to rediscover anything. Browsing by album cover has been part of the Media Center interface for four years. (See the Vista version for yourself here and here and here.) In fact, Media Center PCs support TV tuners that allow you to browse recorded TV using thumbnails as well.
And then there's iTV, which my colleague David Berlind is all ga-ga about.
iTV will have integrated wireless networking, USB, wired Ethernet, an High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), and the standard component video and analog audio interfaces that any consumer video product is expected to have. Somewhat reminiscent of the the way Sonos' gear works with music, iTV can apparently take "delivery" of its content (eg: an iTMS purchased song) from an iTunes-enabled PC via the wired or wireless network and its FrontRow-esque 3D user interface can be controlled with a remote control (so, iTV is sort of a set-top box on steroids).
The iTV doesn't appear to have a tuner (not that it needs one). In my home setup, provided I wanted to use it, I'd just connect the iTV to the receiver (more like a networking hub these days given all the sources connected to it) at the heart of my home entertainment setup in my family room. Or, you can connect it directly to a big flat panel.
So, let me get this straight. I can pay $300 for a device that allows me to play content from a computer located elsewhere in the house. Cool! It's about time someone invented a "media extender" like this.
Oh. Wait. Microsoft already did. I have three Media Center extenders in this house, two first-generation models and an Xbox 360. On any of these extenders, I can play my entire music collection (browsing it by album cover) through my home theater system using a wired or wireless connection to my Media Center computer. But unlike Apple's device (which won't be available until January 2007) the Xbox 360 also streams live or recorded TV and downloaded high-definition content. It plays games and DVDs in full 5.1 surround sound. And in January, when Vista ships, I'll be able to get a CableCARD-equipped Media Center that will stream HDTV programs over the network to my Xbox 360 with no extra charges.
So, will someone please tell me why I want to replace my Xbox 360 with an Apple-branded device that only plays tunes from one music store, allows me to pay $15 for a movie encoded at 640 by 480 that looks like crap on my widescreen HDTV, and is unable to record or stream TV programming?
It must take a lot of Kool-Aid to understand what a great deal that is.
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Talkback
Dim history
That particular capability isn't new at Apple, so I'm presuming that there's something else not mentioned. That, or Steve was running low on red meat for the crowd. I wouldn't want to bet either way.
[1] i.e. unique graphics for individual files, not just for types.
It's not file browsing
The old iPod interface is a file browser. This is completely different.
They don't use files?
I'm [i]really[/i] impressed by their technology if they don't store the tunes in files.
Or did you mean that this is a user interface for accessing the library, much as the various picture album systems organize photographs? In which case the same applies -- the "multiple views of same data" stuff is old hat.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see the big guys doing it. However, less-prominent sources have been doing this kind of thing for quite a while, if with less polish.
The tunes are stored in files
Everything in Media Center is stored in a database that contains file names and metadata. You browse through database views and do searches and ultimately select a group of tunes or build a playlist. If you want to torture the definition, you could call that a file browser. But several of the views are using information that isn't in the files (global star ratings, playback frequency, etc.). And many of the views (by artist, by album, by genre) are not available in any file browser that I'm aware of.
I Guess You have never used Konqueror?
Or the various ioslaves it includes.
Thumbnails, CDDB, Integration between other apps KsCD or Amarok or Kaffiene or what ever you Like...
Why would you, you only report on Windows? not tech
In the living room?
You know, like we're talking about with the Apple announcement and the extenders they're copying.
One additional thought
No big deal.
Gee..
For Just over 4 years now have been using things like LinuxVDR, MythTv, VLC etc and getting Sat & HD and be able to view stream record from multiple sources to any computer or modified settop, Like an Xbox. And play games and Have Net access, etc, etc
Yes MS Invents everything...
Is that Not MS Repackages everything
You shouldn't have went there.
I was watching TV on Windows in 1998
Try 1993 on the Mac baby!
Care to rethink that whole copycat statement?
Ha ha ha
Gee. Wonder why it never took off?
TV's and Computers
functionality with a computer, I for one will be quick to conceed
that point to you as well.
A TV is passive technology. It's firmly ingrained in our culture
and it's form and presence in the living room has not been
swayed by the presence of TV tuners in computers, nor will it.
Turning a computer into a TV isn't not something Apple has
done because it presumes to lobotimize an active technology.
It's currently easy and you can add it to any Mac, this is as it
should be, it's an option. This isn't the point.
iTV is different from a tuner, it champions, ownership, the
covetous impulse, the collection and it's cultivation. It's a series
of choices that reflect personal taste and indeed personality. It is
fundamentally different than a pipe for push media. Apple won't
try to compete with Microsoft in the area of onboard tuners.
They won't have to, that's what TV is for. While Microsoft battles
for control of he living room with cable companies and loses,
Apple will be doing the same end run they have with all the
iTunes initiatives, and providing a digital product that makes
sense, and is not already provided more effectively in another
manner. Feature drift is your big mistake, not your advantage.
With iTunes at 88% market share, those of you who have been
proponents of the market share argument, might begin to
understand the wrong criteria for making decisions had been
chosen. Keep laughing.
Yes, and your point is?
And if you would stop drinking the Kool-Aid for a day of two and actually look at Media Center you would see that it does everything iTV promises to do. Only better. You don't need a TV tuner, and in fact most Media Center PCs don't have one today. But anyone who buys an MCE box can add that capability easily.
PS: I'm going to bookmark this post for the day when Apple announces its TiVo/Media Center ripoff complete with TV tuner. I fully expect you to eloquently find a way to praise it to the heavens and contradict everything you've written here.
Like I said, cognitive dissonance.
Media Center
Tell me again about cognitive dissonance.
You must have an explaination as to why Media Center running
natively on it's platform with 95% market share, fails to compete
with Apple which owns 88% of content distribution across
platforms. Have we all drunk the Kool-Aid?
I'll type very slowly, Harry
So I don't need a Mac to form a preliminary opinion about these products.
All I need is a desire to listen to and watch digital media in whatever way makes the most sense to me.
Thanks
free download. I needed to have purchased a media center
computer to dismiss your accusation of my cognitive
dissonance.
So the cultists are not iPod users or iTunes users. The cultists
are Mac users. Most pointedly, Mac users with cognitive
dissonance? I and my Media Center stand on guard, repentant of
my cognitive failings, clutching my Vista coupon in hand, ready
for the radiance that will usher in this new age of computing,
and mock the derivative OSX. I'm clear on this now and I thank
you so much for typing slow.
the media center has been RESOUNDINGLY rejected by the public...
as well as much as Sony and MS would like the gaming system to be the center of the digital world... the public is still scratching their heads over that one.. is doen't make sense to them
Media Center PC's have not been rejected ....
With Windows Vista you will be able to get a PC from an OEM with an integrated digital cable tuner that will replace the set top box from the cable company. If your a DirecTV subscriber you can have DirecTV come out and install a Digital Satellite tuner that replaces their set top box.
What this all means is you will have in one box a complete media experience in High Definition with 6.1 surround sound. You can listen to your music, record TV, watch DVDs, author your own content, browse you Email, purchase and download new content and the list goes on.
and it will sit in your office... with iTunes installed...
the only people who have these MC PCs hooked up to their "home theaters" are poor students in 1 bedroom appartments who whatch TV on their monitors... get real.. no one is using these MC PCs as intended.. if they were no one would be using iPod who wants to manage their media in two places iTunes folders and where every you store it on a MC.. MC is a failure