Snow Leopard!

Well Stitch, I already ordered my copy. I know, I know - I'm an Apple nut who can't wait for anything. I admit it! I can't wait, and it's only $30 with free shipping. Not too shabby! Are you going to get the Snow Leopard? If you wait, I could give you a users perspective after I play with it!

Is Apple becoming too arrogant?

Steve Jobs has always had the "my way, or the highway" attitude when it comes to Apple and Apple products. When the second coming of Jobs occurred, he started with a mellower tone. He started to work well with others, yet still demand excellence. Of course he had a few, "I know best" moves which flopped, such as the Cube. But all and all, Jobs was more flexible.

Now come the iPhone, and it looks like Apple is back at the heavy handedness. Especially by not allowing competing products on the iPhone. The Apps store is both a cure and a curse. Sure you have a store of tons of Apps in the palm of your hand. But they had to filter through Apple. Now others are revolting. I read that there is a way to get Apps for the iPhone which is not the Apps store.

I always thought that if Apple was on top they would not have the heavy hand like Microsoft. But I hate to say it but they appear to have the same affliction.


Apple Arrogance

My AppleTV review (so far)

Well, I have had the AppleTV for about 2 months now. I am somewhat pleased and somewhat disappointed. First of all the downloading of movies and playing them is flawless. The price of a movie is pricey at $3.99 for DVD quality and $4.99 for HD quality. So I am sticking with Netflix for most movies. But is nice to have the "on demand" option available. It is true the selection choice is limited. I love streaming iTunes to the stereo and TV. It uses AirTunes feature and once again is seemless. I have a USB video recorder for my PC to record HD over the air TV. It plays well on the PC, but the format is unrecognized by AppleTV.
Then comes Boxee. A very good hack for the AppleTV which allows searching your own network for shared files and allowing playing of almost any format on the TV. One problem is that Boxee is not as efficient as the native AppleTV so your video is jittery. It is a work in progress and gets better with each update. My favorite feature of Boxee is Pandora.com. Boxee has applications modules which people write to access content online. The Pandora one is an online radio site which learns your tastes. You rate thumbs up or down and it learns. You can have many stations and the graphics are very professional. It also has access to Hulu.com video. But the feed is jerky and playback is unwatchable. At first I thought it was because of the slow AppleTV processor. But the downloaded movies from Apple work great with high resolution. Hulu is a joint venture of a bunch of TV networks, but they don't understand computers well enough. It is jumpy on my PC too.
Another application is Joost. It hasn't died yet. Their network is setup to get bits of the show from many different sources. This makes playback much better. But at times the resolution fades to keep smooth playback. Plus there is too much crap programming to wade through to find the good stuff. My son likes watching "Transformers" cartoons. They have almost the entire season in order. But there is no parental filters, so can be dangerous for kids.
Installing Boxee was a breeze. You create an image file by downloading a simple script file. Then transfer it to a thumb drive. Shutdown AppleTV. Plug thumbdrive in AppleTV USB port. Reboot. And now it is installed. It uses the AppleTV menu system too so it looks very clean. Updates are done from the AppleTV too.
One beef that I have is that Apple does not move the AppleTV software forward too fast. The Boxee people claim that Apple has been accepting of having Boxee on AppleTV and does not break it with updates. Just in case Boxee will block Apple updates so you have to request them yourself. The Apple updates are so rare anyway though.