Apple’s New Move into Living Room
Posted on June 28, 2010
A couple of weeks ago Apple introduced a “redesigned” MacMini computer. It’s the unit’s biggest upgrade in five years making it especially attractive as an Internet gateway and media center for televisions.
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A MacMini is a computer typically sold without a monitor. Increasingly it is often mated to an HDTV, just like a DVD player or video game console. As a result, the television becomes a gigantic computer monitor. Users often buy a wireless mouse and keyboard in order to control the MacMini from a convenient viewing distance such as the living room sofa.
The unit includes lightning fast dot-11n WiFi enabling it to connect over a home network to the Internet. Consequently, broadband ISP subscribers get high speed Internet right on their televisions. They can choose to watch conventional TV with a one-button click on their TV remote by selecting, for example, the CATV input. Alternately, they can chose Internet access on the TV with a one-button click on the same remote by selecting the socket where the MacMini is connected. Read more…
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Apple, Occam’s Razor, and Adobe Flash
Posted on April 15, 2010
Phil Leigh
In the 14th century William of Ockham originated a logic principle later known as Occam’s Razor. Boiled down, it concludes that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is usually the valid one. For example, although Ptolemy’s geocentric model predicted planetary locations with reasonable accuracy, it was much more complex than the valid Copernican heliocentric model. By implication the Razor endorsed the Copernican model and even anticipated it by 100 years. Similarly the principle implies that Oswald acted alone, President Harding died of natural causes, and that Special Order 191 was lost through carelessness and not espionage.
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Adobe’s Flash format accounts for about 80% of Web video, including YouTube. The only reason we can watch YouTube on our iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads is because the videos play through a special application. But when we visit websites containing Flash videos and advertisements with such devices, we simply can’t see them unless the hosting websites created special applications enabling them to play. That’s the principal reason a year ago that Inside Digital Media started using the YouTube player to exhibit the videos we record and post at our website. The situation is further complicated by the fact that video podcasts must be in yet another format favored by Apple, because podcasts are downloaded while Flash typically is streamed. Read more…
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YouTube Stretches its Lead
Posted on October 10, 2009
If you want to learn one way that YouTube is extending its competitive lead, even against rivals like Hulu, this video is for you.
If you watched last week’s video podcast as a stream from our website, you may have noticed that we switched to the YouTube player from our previous Flash player. The change reflects the fact that iPhones and iPods will not display native Flash streams. However, given YouTube’s popularity, Apple developed a special application enabling the units to display YouTube Flash videos. Since Apple has sold about 40 – 50 million of the devices, we want to make it as easy as possible for users to watch Inside Digital Media on their iPhones and iPod Touches. Read more…
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