Now me personally, I don’t have either an HD DVD or Blu-ray player, and I don’t plan on ever getting one. Now that HD DVD is dead, all that’s left is Blu-ray — but wait, could there be another competitor on the horizon? Many people have been talking after the death of HD DVD, some saying Blu-ray is not in the clear yet and in fact might not have much of a victory at all. It appears that all these people are pointing at Apple. Apple, the one already covered in blood from the death of many digital download stores and/or media players.

Companies below either closed shop entirely, or discontinued a product:

Yahoo!, Virgin, MTV’s Urge, AOL, MSN, BenQ, Rio, Dell, iRiver, Thomson, Olympus, BuyMusic.com, TowerRecords, Sony’s Connect, Google Video, and Wal-mart.

Now Apple is a company that has created many industry standards; it’s considered by many as the “trend setter.” It’s made the mouse a standard (1981), USB a standard (1998), developed FireWire as a standard (1995, 2000), optical mice a standard (2000), super drives a standard (1988, 2001), the modern laptop design a standard (1991), 16+ million colors (24 bit) on screen a standard (1987), Wi-Fi a standard (1999), etc., etc., etc.

So what I’m getting at is Apple is trying to set a new standard. Steve Jobs has pointed this out many times directly and indirectly. He has pointed out the decline of optical disks and the increase of digital downloads. He shared his vision in which everything could be downloaded digitally. You see Apple wants to get rid of the concept of physical storage devices like the optical disk (not SSD or HDD, of course). Knowing Apple, I could seriously see the fading of optical disks in just a few years, and I could also see Blu-ray not lasting very long.

When Apple makes a change, it takes six months to as much as 10 years, but soon the industry follows its lead.

As BYTE Magazine said back in December, 1994 (link):

“Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry as a massive effort to keep up with Apple.”

“It’s no coincidence that every new version of Windows looks more and more like the Mac.”

“In 1984, critics derided the Mac for its appliance-like simplicity, but it went on to pioneer or popularize almost every innovation in personal computing: the GUI, desktop publishing, built-in networking, plug and play, integrated multimedia, API-based software development, visual programming, hypertext, 24-bit color, the global clipboard, undo, voice control, built-in color calibration, dynamic memory allocation, SCSI, and even 3 1/2-inch floppy drives.”

“Apple’s R&D lab, located in Cupertino, California, is the inspirational R&D center for the entire industry.”

“Apple is pushing ahead with some exciting new technology, and the industry would be much poorer without Apple’s technical leadership.”- this one has to do with the fact that Apple was dying at the time.

I could get more quotes, but I think this one source says it all. Apple is one of the biggest innovators in the industry and when it does something, whether it gets noticed or not, the industry shifts in its direction. So I really can’t see Blu-ray as a standard for very long. Congrats Blu-ray, on the victory, but your life will be short. Apple’s behind you, ready to strike.

New MacBooks and MacBook Pros were released today, the MacBook Pros have the multi-touch gestures like the Air. The new lower end model MacBooks however don’t have this feature (yet).

In addition it appears that all new laptops have 2 gigs of memory standard (still able to go up to 4).

The MacBook Pros’ high-end video card now has 512MB GDDR3 memory (from 256).

Nothing much more is new, but the processing power in the MacBooks which now start at 2.1Ghz and goes to 2.4 (last model went up to 2.2).

Links: store.apple.com, www.apple.com/macbook, www.apple.com/macbookpro

Now before I begin, just to clarify, because I see this mistake many times. Astrology and Astronomy are completely different subjects, Astrology is a false science that uses patterns in the sky to tell your future.

For a long time now, I’ve been telling people that the market share graphs and surveys are false; it seems very few believed me. The reason I said that had to do with the fact of how market share information was gathered. You see, a company like Net Applications has a snippet of code that is put into hundreds of Web sites. The code can tell what computer the visitors are on, and then send that information back to Net Applications.

The bad thing about these types of invisible surveys has to do with the Web sites themselves. From what I’ve learned most of Net Application’s Web sites are on e-commerce sites. At this time there are still many e-commerce sites devoted to Internet Explorer and/or Microsoft. One of which was Wal-mart’s online music store (which is gone now). You see Net Applications doesn’t list the Web sites its code is on, so you don’t know if any Web site is biased toward an OS or works better on a specific browser, or tends to get more of a specific OS because of what they sell.

Well now today I’ve found proof of how unreliable this method is. I found another Web site, which I trust a lot more than New Applications, called w3schools.com (W3 is the consortium that creates the open Internet standards).

Here’s a comparison:

So as you can see, there are some big differences, and actually W3 and Net Applications can’t seem to agree on any of the browsers. Firefox for instance seems to have more than twice the market share on W3’s side compared to Net Application’s.

This statement above can reflect on another similar market share Net Application does — the one that everyone seems to base their facts upon: The Operating System Marketshare. This has the same results as above. W3 actually says that Linux has a market share that is over five times the amount Net Applications says (3.6 > 0.67). So what does this say about Vista? Well, let’s look at Apple’s share. Net Applications says there are roughly 8% of computer users on Macs. Steve Jobs commented a while back that there are 23 million Mac OS X users. Estimating, I believe it is close to 26 million today. So what does that say? In total it appears that there are only about 320 computer users in the entire world. 320! that’s impossible — that’s less than 100 million over the population of the United States, so what about the rest of the world? I remember Microsoft claiming that there are close to a billion computer users out there, but then where did they go? I then did the same thing with W3’s information and got double the users at around 650 million. So who’s right? Are they both wrong? Who knows?

So once again, do listen about who has a larger market share, it’s all just a pseudoscience.

• W3 Browser Statistics

• Net Applications Browser Statistics

As I’ve seen many people post about it, the MacBook Air has a very noticeable price. It starts at $1799 and can reach up to $3098. Most people that complain about it’s price believe it’s a laptop that fits into the same category as a low-end subnotebook, one of which might be the Asus Eee PC. The Eee PC sells under $500, but the fact of the matter is, the MacBook Air is a high-end sub-notebook. These notebooks, like the Sony Vaio VGN-TX, are closer to $2000-$3000.

Why the high prices? Well, they have better specs, materials, and higher manufacturing costs than lower end subnotebooks. What I’ve noticed is that Apple’s starting price of $1799 for their laptop, is very competitive. Most subnotebooks like it range around $2000-$2200, while having lower specifications. Here’s a basic comparison of the MacBook Air and two others in it’s category.:

MacBook Air($1,799):
from store.apple.com
13.3″ Glass screen -Largest
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6Ghz, 4MB L2 Cache - Fastest
80GB ATA Hard Drive - Largest, slower
2GB RAM(667Mhz, 800Mhz FSB) - Largest, fastest
Intel GMA x3100 - Highest
802.11n Wireless - Highest
Bluetooth 2.1-EDR - Highest
Built-in Camera/Mic - Same
Double-layer Super Drive - Lowest
Score: 19

Sony VAIO TZ Series VGN-TZ190N/B($2,699):
from www.bhphotovideo.com
11.1″ Screen - Smaller
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.2Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache - Slower
32GB NAND Hard Drive - Smallest, but Fastest
2GB RAM(533Mhz, 533Mhz FSB) - Highest, but Slowest
Intel GMA 950 - Lowest
802.11n Wireless - Highest
Bluetooth - Highest
Built-in Camera/Mic - Same
Double-layer Super Drive - highest
Score: 14

Fujitsu Lifebook($1,899):
from store.shopfujitsu.com
10.6″ Screen - Smallest
Intel Core Solo 1.2 Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache - Slowest
60GB ATA Hard drive -Highest, but Slowest
1GB RAM(667Mhz, 533Mhz FSB) Smallest, Slower
Intel GMA 950 - Lowest
802.11g Wireless - Lowest
Bluetooth 2.0 - Lowest
Built-in Camera/Mic - Same
Double-Layer Super Drive - highest
Score: 7

As you can see above, comparing the three prices with the specs, I think the MacBook Air is very competitive. It has the largest screen, the fastest processor, the highest amount of RAM(tied with the VAIO), the fastest RAM, and the highest level graphics card. It also is the only one to have a multi-touch track pad. The only downside is the missing optical drive, which is an extra $99 for a USB attached one.

One big thing I noticed from looking at a couple subnotebooks, comparing them to the MacBook Air, is that all most every one followed what Steve Jobs said in his Keynote. All of them had a smaller screen then the MacBook Air, all had a lower-end processor, and almost all of them cost more than the MacBook Air even though they had lowered components. I must take note though, the MacBook Air is roughly one of the heaviest subnotebooks, most range at 2.7 pounds, not 3.0 like Jobs pointed out. Also, I haven’t noticed one with a miniature keyboard, unless I don’t understand Jobs’ definition of one.

Now what about the other version of the MacBook Air, the $3098 one? To get from $1799 to $3098, all that’s added is the 64GB solid state drive and the 1.8Ghz upgrade for the CPU. At first this might sound like a rip off, but i did a little investigation about the price of SDD.

I found a very interesting thing, the average cost of a 64GB SSD card seems to be around $1500. Apple’s is at a price of $999, a very good deal. The most expensive 64GB solid state drive went up to almost $3000, and for 128GB it’s $5000. Remember this is just a drive, not a computer.

In the end, although the MacBook Air is a very expensive computer, in its ultra portable notebook category it’s a premium computer at a very generous price.

Today Apple posted a press release.  It was about a new Member on the board of directors for Apple.  Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon, was added to the board.  Avon is the largest global corporation for women beauty products.  When I first read this, I thought this made no sense.  Then I read on, I found that she is also on the board at GE(General Electronics).  This really caught my eye.  As I’m a person that follows the film and broadcasting industries I know that GE happens to own NBC.

Last year NBC didn’t like Apple’s concept of payment for iTunes.  They wanted to make it more variable and even have some of there shows prices at 2.99-4.99 an episode.  Apple of course threw down this idea and NBC got mad.  Since then NBC has  left iTunes and become some sort of competitor to Apple creating their own system.  They also appear to be partnering with Microsoft, one of Apple’s biggest competitors.

Since Apple now has  Andrea Jung, Apple has some power over NBC.  This could end with NBC coming back to iTunes, a failing attempt to get NBC back, or just a simple coincidence.

Every year since 1985 there has been a Mac only conference called Macworld Expo. Here companies show off their new products, and many keynotes are held. Steve Jobs’ keynote took over in ‘97, after he returned to Apple. Until 2005, there were normally two Macworld Expos, one in the west U.S. and one in the east. Today, only the San Francisco one is held.

Below is a list of rumors and predictions and their probability due to facts and data online:

New iTunes Movie Rental - 99.99%
Update AppleTV (Minor) - 75%

New Sub Notebook - 95%
New docking screen for Sub Notebook - 20% (based on a patent by Apple here)

Update MacBook (New case) - 90%
Update MacBook Pro (Minor) - 99.99%
Update Mac Pro (Minor) - 80% (Apple might wait for NAB)
Update Mac mini (New case) - 60%
Remove Mac mini - 20%
New Mouse (Touch screen features) - 10% (Based on patents by Apple)

Update iPhone (Minor) - 99.99%
Update iPod Touch (Minor) - 30%
Update iPod Classic (Minor) - 10% (Many companies are getting out of sub HDDs)
New Apple PDA - 60% (There have been many signs that Apple is bringing back its PDA line)

I was informed today, sadly, Netscape — or should I say AOL — has given up on its Web browser After 12 long years, Navigator has passed on, and by 2008, support will be removed from it. AOL commented:

“AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported Web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.”

Personally I will never move to Firefox. On OS X, Firefox is really only Safari with memory leaks. Netscape was my second favorite browser, and now it is finally gone. AOL in my opinion is a greedy company that doesn’t seem to understand the market. All you have to look at is its ISP business, which it is closing soon as well.

-Thanks to Kteck for telling me.

I’ve worked with many people switching to the Mac platform, and have seen many questions about Mac compatibility. This gave me an idea for this blog post.

Back in the 80s and early 90s, the Apple platform was huge.  The Macintosh platform, that superseded Apple computers, however did not have a good run in the market.  Macs eventually gain ground, but around when Windows 95 came out, it was bought back down again.

Note: for People that never used an Apple, i.e. Apple II, might be confused.  Apple was not just the name of the Company, but the name of the first genre of computers they made.

Many Mac users or just people that have used a Mac around this time switched to Windows completely, and never came back.  Today many of these people have become loyalist to WIndows, some even bashing Macs.  The only problem with this, is that they are bashing Macs from the 90s, not the current one.  One of which is the whole big thing about a one button mouse.  Over time these types of rumors have spread.  One big thing you must understand, is Mac  OS X is not a new version of MacOS 9, it’s a completely different OS.  If you want to know why, see my other blog post here.

Mice/Keyboards:
One big difference with OS X from MacOS Classic is compatibility.  For instance, in the old Mac OS needed drivers for even the simplest things like Mice and Keyboards.  OS X, released in 2001, has something that removes the need of drivers called the I/O Kit.  The I/O Kit allows you to dynamically hook up any mouse with a variable amount of buttons or a standard keyboard. It is also used to create drivers as well.

PDFs, Images, and Vectors:
Mac OS X, uses a technology called Quartz.  Quartz is a graphics engine that renders and composite 2D images based off of Pixar’s Renderman.  Quartz uses a ver simiar system to PDF, so simlar that PDF’s can be opened natively in the OS itself.  Any program that can load or view an image can also show a PDF.  Final Cut Pro, a video editor can even use PDFs just as if it were an image or video on the timeline.  Besides PDFs, Mac OS X understands many forms of images natively.  It is able to do this because of the Quicktime framework.  On Windows, Quicktime is a player, but in OS X, it’s part of the operating system.  The Quicktime library integrates with the Quartz engine, quicktime reads the data and renders it, quartz adds the final touches like anti-alias and shadows, then it composites everything together.  A few image formats OS X understands natively include:  pict(Legacy), jpg, gif, tiff, png, and bmp.

Video and Audio:
Just like with images, video and audio are done through the quicktime library as well.  OS X can understand everything quicktime, this includes:  Mov, avi, flv, and dv.  It can also understand many types of audio files like:  aiff, mp3, MIDI, aac, and wave.

Drivers:
Mac OS X comes with over 2 gigs of Drivers.  These drivers are for printers, video cards, and other odds and ends.  When installing, you can check a box to not include these, or you can go in deeper and tell the installer what brand of drivers not to install.  The OS also comes with a standard set of frameworks to work with firewire or USB devices like hard drives and  Camcorders.  This allows the old feeling of “It just works”.

Quicktime expansion:
Quicktime uses an open architecture allowing plugins to be added for more formats.  Two plugins that a Mac user should get are Flip4Mac and Perian.  Flip4Mac allows quicktime to read and show Windows media files.  If you pay for it it also allows you to convert videos to the windows media format.  Perian, is a army knife of media formats and is a must have.  I’ve used a media player called VLC to play avi’s and divx’s, but it doesn’t stand up to Perian with the Quicktime player.

Microsoft Application documents:
When OS X first came out, it had many problems with reading files from windows.  Today OS X is very compatible with windows files, and besides that Microsoft’s Office document formats are built right into the OS.  You can even use OS X Leopard’s Quicklook feature to browse through a powerpoint presentation.  TextEdit, the application equivalent to NotePad on OS X, can read and write the old, new, and xml formats of Microsoft Word.  Now I don’t mean, TextEdit or any other application can import and export these, I mean OS X natively understands them.  Actually just to show how compatible OS X is, TextEdit can save and open:  plain Text, RTF, HTML, Web Archive, Open Document text(the open standard), Word 2007, Word 97, and word 2003 XML.  If you get Apple’s iWork, you can even work with more formats.  iWork, is Apple’s equivalent to Microsoft’s Office suite.  It comes with Pages(Word publisher), KeyNote(Presentation), and Numbers(Spread sheets).  iWork is completely compatible with MS Office, but MS Office is not fully compatible with iWork.

UNIX, X11, and POSIX:
Steve Jobs once commented in 2001 when OS X was launched, that the Mac OS is now linux like.  This is not the case anymore,  OS X is now not just linux like, but has the certificate showing it is now full UNIX.  This means OS X is above which linux has not gotten to yet.  Anything that now follows the rules and guidelines of POSIX and uses X11 can run in OS X.  That includes not just UNIX, but Linux and BSD applications as well.  In the past, Linux applications had to be recompiled with a little tweak of the code.  Today, many Linux programs work right away in OS X with out you having to recompile the code. Last time Apple’s OS was POSIX compliant was with A/UX(Apple UNIX).

Networking with others:
OS X works with many different operating systems.  Mac OS X Leopard is one of the only operating systems that seamlessly connects many different system together, including Linux, UNIX, and Windows.  OS X Tiger and down also have good compatibility with other operating systems, but Leopard does it so much more.  To connect to other computers(Macs, Windows, etc), it’s as easy as going into the system preferences, and turning on personal file sharing.  OS X finds all computers on the network whether wired or wireless.  After the computer pops up in the finder just click on it and your in., it’s as easy as opening a folder.  OS X Server, unlike Windows Server, can also manage other computers with other Operating systems.

OSes:
Although it appears many people have forgotten, Apple has always been big on software compatibility.  It was once the only operating system that could read both Mac and Dos applications and documents natively.  Later Apple designed a few computers with motherboards that supported two processors.  With this, you could add an intel chip allowing you to run x86 software on the Mac, this was around 1993-1994.  In 1995,  AIM alliance created a powerpc processor that could understand it’s native code along with x86, SPARC, and 68k.  Apple only used this with one computer which was not very successful.  In 1998,  Apple released Rhapsody 5, based off of OPENStep 4.  Rhapsody was designed as an OS for PPC, x86, and SPARC processors as well as an Add-on to the MacOS, Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  Because of low developer support  Rhapsody for other platforms but the Mac faded after Developer release 2.  Rhapsody in 1999 was renamed OS X server 1.0, and then the aqua interface came out in 2000.  In 2001 Darwin, the open source OS by Apple was finally finished and Rhapsody was put on top of it with the name OS X(Darwin was beta until OS X 10.1.1).  After 10 years or so, Apple has finally made the Mac x86 compatible again, but in a different way.  They have completely switched over to Intel after to many problems with IBM’s power4(PowerPC G5) processor.  This means that any operating system that is built for x86 can now run on a Mac.  There are many ways to run UNIX, Linux, and Windows on a Mac.  You can, for instance, use Parallels or VMware which use native virtualization.  Native virtualization means that an operating system is running inside a parent OS on it’s native platform(CPU).  Native virtualization normally can get up to 98% performance out of the OS.  You can also use Apple’s Boot Camp.  Boot Camp is a partitioner.  It splits your hard drive in to two or more with different partition systems so you can run Mac, Windows, and Linux on the same computer.  Boot Camp also installs the needed drivers to run Windows.  Boot Camp is not a virtualization system so it does not have the features that virtual machines have, but it does let you run Windows or Linux at full speed.   PC Magazine, Computer Magazine, and MacWorld Magazine all claim that a Mac is the best computer to run Windows on(as in performance only).  For open source users, WINE is being ported to OS X Leopard.

This is an article that continues from: Apples and Oranges: A Chronicle of the Computing Industry

Prologue: The Forefathers, Part 2

I hyperlinked many of the words below to other sites for more detailed information, some of these links might go down or the url might change. Sorry if this happens.

When people think of AT&T, they think of a phone company, yet it’s more than this. AT&T is one of the largest developers of the modern computing world. With out them we might still be using vacuum tubes in computers or still have physical film in our cameras.

The story of AT&T starts with the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, and his father-in law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Now you need to understand, Bell did not necessarily invent the telephone from scratch. There were many people that contributed all over the world, like Antonio Meucci with his teletrofono in 1860.

Around 1875, Bell had discovered with his phonautograph invention, a pen that draws shapes by using sound, that sound travels by waves. This meant he could turn sound into electric signals then use the signals to vibrate electromagnets which would create the sound waves. In other words, Bell invented the electric speakers. With the funding from Hubbard he used his theories and concepts to create and patent the telephone. In 1877, he founded Bell Telephone Company along with Hubbard who became the president of it.

In 1879, the company was renamed National Bell Telephone Company, and only a year later was renamed American Bell Telephone Company. To expand the long-distance network, American Bell created a new company: American Telephone and Telegraph or simply AT&T. This was the beginning of a monopoly that would concur the US. In 1899, AT&T bought American Bell, it’s parent company.

The president of AT&T, Theodore Vail, gave his vision of the Phone industry in 1907, “One Policy, One System, Universal Service”. He wanted AT&T to be the only company. The first step was buying out all of the competitors. To build better and more sophisticated products AT&T started to buy patents as well. They, for instance, bought the patents to the Vacuum-tube in 1913. This created disputes with RCA, which had it’s own patents on the Vacuum-tube.

In 1925 AT&T created a new development laboratory commonly called Bell Labs. Two years later AT&T demonstrated the first television, showing that moving images, not just audio, could be turned into data and broadcasted. Later on in 1946, AT&T started a mobile telephone service. This was nothing like cell phones though, and could only handle up to 20 people at once per city.

John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley in 1947, invent the transistor at Bell Labs. This was the fuel to start the modern technological world. All three scientists shared a Noble Prize in 1956 for this invention. In the same year, AT&T agreed with the US Justice Department to restrict activities related to the national telephone system and to continue it’s governmental projects. This was after receiving an antitrust suit.

Two years later in 1958 Bell Labs created the first commercial modem. In 1962, AT&T launched the first satillite dedicated for it’s communications network. A year later they introduced the touchpad phones, replacing the old dial phones(If you even know what these are).

In 1969, two assets were created that are now common to the modern world. One of which is just becoming standard, that being flash as a means to store data. Willard Boyle and George E. Smith were working on two inventions that were combined together. One was a video telephone, the other was bubble memory. Combining the two, Boyle and Smith created something new called a Charged Bubble Device. In the 1970s Bell Labs were able to use CBDs to capture light, and in other words: images. This was the beginning of Charged Coupled Devices or CCDs. Today, CCDs are in almost everything. Every modern camera has a CCD, more professional cameras have three of them. They are also used for telescopes, with out them we wouldn’t be able to see what we see today in space.

The other invention was started in 1969, it was called Unics. Originally in 1964, AT&T, General Electronics, and MiT started work on a new computer operating system called Multics. AT&T how ever dropped out in 1969. Unics originally used a programing language developed at AT&T called B. B was not a very transportable language so the creation of C was made. C was used to rewrite Unics, which was finally finished around 1971. A few years later the spelling was changed to UNIX. UNIX is the most based after OS on the planet. Every modern operating system is based off of it’s design, and just about every operating system uses it’s programming language, C. Mac OS X for instance, uses ObjectiveC, a language on top of C. Windows and others use C++, which was designed on top of C as well.

AT&T at this point was a data network monopoly, and had created UNIX, a proprietary OS. AT&T and IBM are two Giants, that would soon see their downfall. One with the Government, the other with Microsoft.

The last two Giants of the 1970s computer Era were Xerox and HP. Both contributed much to the computing world. Xerox with the concept of the GUI, and HP as the “founder” of Silicon Valley.

continues to, Prologue: The Forefathers, Part 3

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Macbook Pro gold plated:

Gold plated Macbook Pro with diamond encrusted Apple:

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