"Steve is a visionary"

I don't know that Steve is a visionary so much as his cult of robot users just eventually buy into whatever he is peddling just because it has the Apple logo on it. One thing is certain, he is an arrogant jerk and I have personal experience with him that led me to that conclusion.

"You get OK quality with 1 Mbps streaming, very good quality at 3 Mbps, and maximum quality at 5 Mbps."

Nonsense. It looks marginally acceptable but nowhere near the quality of a Blu-ray disc encoded using h.264 at 30 Mbps.

"(cable internet) lines are shared by up to 500 households"

That was a desperate sales ploy on the part of the DSL marketing folks that was a half truth at best. Yes, cable internet users are on nodes but so are DSL users. With cable, the nodes are in the neighborhoods and with DSL they are at the telephone company central office. I have Comcast cable Internet here in the middle of Albuquerque and I never get less that 20 Mbps sustained (not the enhanced burst speed using Powerboost which is even higher) and often 25 Mbps sustained depending on the server from which I am downloading.

"Umm, you need to watch Netflix streaming over a 5 Mbps connection"

That is one of the issues involved. How many people have 5 Mbps services? And that still doesn't match Bluray on a reasonable system.

his cult of robot users just eventually buy into whatever he is peddling just because it has the Apple logo on it

You don't have much respect for different opinions...

[Netflix gets] maximum quality at 5 Mbps.

I said Netflix achieves its maximum at 5 Mbps (because that is as high as its bit rate adaptation will go).

Of course Blu-Ray can provide a higher quality under optimal circumstances (better transfer than many BDs in stores, large 1080P screen, discerning viewer, etc.)

"(Cable internet) lines are shared by up to 500 households"

I got those numbers from cable company engineers at a professional conference, where they also explained that whenever they hit 500 subscribers on one line, they split it up on 4 lines of 125 each, and let those grow to 500 each before splitting them up, and so on.

That means what I have also had confirmed from several colleagues in L.A. who have cable modems at home, that when the kids come home from school, or every home on the block is doing downloads or watching movies, things get very slow for a while.

Naturally things can be expected to be a bit less busy where the towns are less crowded.

With DSL, each subscriber is unaffected by their neighbors' surfing, because they each have a separate line.

You're making a point that the "nodes" as you call them (really routers/DSLAMs) are the limiting factor for the subscriber speeds, but this is not correct.

The COs have enough Tier 1 access bandwidth to feed a lot of DSLAMs that feed non-shared connections to subscribers.

The cable company "nodes" on the other hand have local choke points of single typ. 25/50/100 Mbps fiber connections being shared by up to 500 subscribers.

With a bit of luck, you'll get higher bandwidth from cable than you get from current DSL connections for most people, but then you also have to deal with the cable company instead of the phone company, which to me is worse by some margin, even if they are in a joint race to the bottom for customer service.

I have Comcast cable Internet here in the middle of Albuquerque and I never get less that 20 Mbps sustained (not the enhanced burst speed using Powerboost which is even higher) and often 25 Mbps sustained depending on the server from which I am downloading.

Good for you!

I hope we can some day see this all across America, although I'd rather see widespread 100 Mbps like they have in Korea, Sweden, Japan, and many other countries.

It has been suggested that the reason we're steam punks here in the U.S. when it comes to internet access is that the population density is so low.

Well, the population density in Sweden for example is also very low, with a population equal to that of L.A. spread across a country the size of California. Still, years ago they put inexpensive high speed internet fiber in ditches to summer homes on small islands off the coasts even.

The difference seems to be that they have working competition (and they privatized both the postal service and the railroads too).

How many people have 5 Mbps services?

According to John Cline, practically everybody.


And that still doesn't match Bluray on a reasonable system.

I didn't say it did, in absolute terms.

What I said was that few people would enjoy the 5Mbps streaming any less than a BD disc.

There will always be a minority of people who are not satisfied with good enough, and they are able to discern differences in good food, good wines, good craft ales, BMWs, and certain computers for those with aesthetic sensibilities, etc.

I have had many visitors at my home whose jaws dropped when they saw the quality of my free OTA HD broadcast signals and compared that to what they were getting at their homes via significantly recompressed HDTV channels at great expense.

"I've been using Toast for many years, simply because it is the best burning program (and it can do much more than that). Very popular for reasons that have nothing to do with BD."

Go have a look around on some of the more public sites. About the only time Toast is mentioned (which is pretty much all the time now) is when a Mac user needs to burn a BD.

I suggest to you that either your "visionary" is dead wrong.... or you're spinning of your opinion into fact (as you normally do when it comes to Apple) is dead wrong.

The way I see it.... Apple is a Gadget Company, through and through. The various softwares that Apple puts forth are there to support the gadgets that are produced.... not the other way around. BD however is not Apple's gadget and this is why it is not supported. Same reason things like Dolby Digital, and mpeg2 are not directly supported. (I suppose Steve doesn't see Dolby Digital taking off either right ;)


So, please allow me to do the same as you, and that is to simply transcode MY opinion into fact;

Steve doesn't give a bat's behind about BD, or mpeg2, or AC3, or anything else of that nature merely because he's too interested in producing ipod's and ipad's. That's his bag... which has NOTHING to do with whether BD will or will not take off.

On a more personal note;
Your rather godly view of Steve and Apple really does get quite thick, obtuse, and tiring after a while.

You see a contradiction where most others don't see one.

Steve doesn't believe in BD, so he exercises his right as "CEO of the Decade" (Fortune Magazine), "Best-Performing CEO" (Harvard Business Review), and "World’s Most Respected CEO" (Barrons) to steer his company development resources elsewhere. That's all. You want to deprive him of his right to make corporate decisions? Don't be too hard on the poor guy, he is the lowest paid employee in the company ($1.00/year).

As for Toast, you gotta be kidding. "Toast has been the standard for burning and ease of use for over 10 years." Did BD exist 10 years ago?

You are of course entitled to your opinion that Apple is primarily a gadget company, presumably because they reinvented the portable music player market (iPod) and the online music purchase market for it to become #1 in that area, and they created the most advanced smartphone (iPhone), and most recently created a $499.95 tablet computer (iPad) that is too new to see if it will be successful. The iPad is under threat from the JooJoo (Wired: "$500.00 JooJoo Tablet Is a Real Piece of DooDoo") and the upcoming HP $549.00 tablet (smaller screen, less resolution and 5 hour battery life instead of 10+, possibly due to running Win7 which is a great desktop OS but doesn't have the right architecture for this kind of portable device).

I'm not sure what you mean by "Dolby Digital, and mpeg2 are not directly supported." Are you thinking that you can't play DVDs on a Mac, you can't render to MPEG-2, and you can't get full Dolby Digital surround out of the 3.5mm optical jack that has been on all Mac notebooks for the last decade or so, without spending any money on extras? There is of course no problem with that.

I certainly don't have "a godly view of Steve and Apple." Imagine if people had been complaining during WWII about General Patton being too demanding, and suggesting that he was treated like a god. If that had happened, this forum would be in German today.

Well, actually it did happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton"Near the end of the Sicilian campaign, Patton jeopardized his career by slapping a soldier."[/link]

I suspect Steve is as much of a demanding taskmaster as Patton was, and I'm sure many high level employees have been trembling in fear of getting chewed out by him.

And I'm sure those same employees are very proud of what they were able to accomplish, so there are two sides to that coin.

I spent 12 years working for a guy like that, a boss who could never bring himself to praise an employee ever. But we did the impossible, over and over again, and I can handle getting criticized, even the occasional fair criticism (happened once in 2002 and again in 2006 :O).

As for computers, it is a bit odd at first that people are so tribal. In the automotive world it is generally accepted that people like different cars, but that is not the case here.

Computer brand user battles are very aggressive, more like "Chargers vs. Bulls" in "sports teams from your area vs. those from my area." Nobody seems to care which team does best, it's all about "ownership of the teams from my area," as long as they win of course, otherwise they're outcasts: "We won!!!!!!" or "They lost!!!!!"

I think the ideal is to be able to go beyond that, and just shake your head silently when someone cheers the team from the other school or the other city or whatever.

It's a big country and there is room for more than one viewpoint. Our nation was founded on that idea.

This should be taught in the schools.

[Oh, wait, never mind.]

There is a big difference between knowledge and understanding, and that's the biggest challenge I have as a teacher. I teach people with education levels ranging from "left school after 8th grade" to PhD, and have not found any correlation between education level and understanding.

If anything, I found many PhDs got themselves entangled in knowledge, which hampered their understanding because they "couldn't see the forest for all the trees."

As for having a variety of opinions, let's remember that our forefathers fought bloody wars for their right to have different opinions. Variety is good, as it leads to many pleasant surprises, while conformity leads to stagnation.

I have seen many companies go under because they refused to look at what the competition was doing.

Microsoft doesn't do that. Their product management said publicly that they were inspired by OS X when creating Windows 7, and their upcoming (end of 2010 or early 2011) Windows Phone 7 (no more "Series") will provide apps only through a Microsoft-controlled app store, won't have copy/paste, and won't play Flash. So they're definitely on top of what else has been going on in their markets.

"Steve doesn't believe in BD,"
No. Steve doesn't care about Blu Ray and there is a difference.... and if you truly believe he gets payed $1/year then I got a bridge to sell ya.



"As for Toast, you gotta be kidding. "Toast has been the standard for burning and ease of use for over 10 years." Did BD exist 10 years ago?"
What the heck does Toast being around for 10 years have to do with BD??? What I have said is that there is an increased interest in Toast since it about the only way a mac user can burn Blu Ray.

"I'm not sure what you mean by "Dolby Digital, and mpeg2 are not directly supported."
Right... so let's see you open and edit say.... a avchd file with 5.1 sound in FCP, FCE....or what ever else. Oh that's right... maybe Steve doesn't believe in avchd? He doesn't think it's going to take off right ;)

"I certainly don't have "a godly view of Steve and Apple." "
Baloney. And yes... please spare me the history lesson on Patton... I'm well aware.

"If anything, I found many PhDs got themselves entangled in knowledge, which hampered their understanding because they "couldn't see the forest for all the trees."
And your point to this rather egotistical tangent is........?????

Steve doesn't care about Blu Ray and there is a difference.

Do you have a source for that?

And why would you even care about whether he doesn't believe in BD or he just doesn't care about it?
Either way, he's got the same right as everyone else to bet on what he believes in and to ignore the rest.

And if BD suddenly starts creating nationwide traffic jams of people on their way to the record stores and big box outlets, he can point to several 3rd party tools for authoring and burning and say, "Use these, but if you want to make BDs with DVD features, be prepared to take out a hefty 2nd mortgage to pay for up-front licenses and $60,000 authoring tools.


...maybe Steve doesn't believe in avchd?

I don't know, but it is one of only 3 supported formats in Final Cut Express.


...knowledge, which hampered their understanding because they "couldn't see the forest for all the trees."

My point is that people acquire knowledge about the values that this country was founded upon, but they don't understand the meaning of them.

They hear the beautiful words and memorize them, but they don't take the time to reflect and understand what they really mean.

There are some good examples of this above.

IMHO it is OK if not everybody agrees on what's the best sports team. Or the best car. Or the best restaurant. Or whatever.

Live and let live. It's also referred to as "Freedom," another much touted but little-understood concept.

"That's all. You want to deprive him of his right to make corporate decisions? Don't be too hard on the poor guy, he is the lowest paid employee in the company ($1.00/year)." do your homework, besides the "old" backdating of stock options that put the average joe in jail...... check out he's "benefits" and bonuses. And most mags love him recently because he's one of few CEOs spending big money on big ads and spreads around a lot of money in PR and to marketing firms. ( this is ok, because it is business) But it is doubtful this spending will create enough political muscle to muscle the courts to not rule against him in the tele patents cases. "CEO of the Decade" will become the "Patent Thief of the Decade" :-)

backdating of stock options that put the average joe in jail

Does average joe get stock options?

Contrary to popular belief, backdating isn't even illegal. It is explicitly allowed.

The regulations of it are however complex enough that dozens of CEOs of the largest companies in the U.S. have struggled to understand the rules, and the courts agreed with them that the regulations of certain ways to issue stock options were not well defined and basically unenforceable.


Ditto for patents. In tech today, it is nearly impossible to create anything new without getting unwittingly entangled in some idiot patent that should never have been issued in the first place.

Didn't a guy in Oz last year get a patent on "the wheel?"

And here in the U.S., we have patents on buying something online with one click instead of several, per-channel alpha compositing (Apple got that one 18 years ago, but provided it to the SVG standard), GIF files, LZW compression, multi-touch, etc.

Why software parents are bad is a good read, for example this piece:

Had Dan Bricklin, the creator of VisiCalc, the spreadsheet that gave people a reason to buy a personal computer, obtained a patent covering the program in 1979, Microsoft would not have been able to bring out Excel until 1999. Nor would Word or PowerPoint have appeared if the companies that had brought out predecessors obtained patent protection for their programs.

This is also a great read about how foreign companies are using the unique American patent system against U.S. companies, and how the processing delays caused by a stream of less than competent bureaucrats combine with the U.S. decision to publish patents only after they have been granted creates an intolerable situation for any high-tech company these days, with "submarine patents" popping up as long as 40 years after they were filed. That level of delay is caused by intentional subversion of the system, using "pro se" filing where the applicant can keep making minor fixes to defective patent applications while keeping ownership no matter how much time passes until the patent becomes known to the world, and the inventor can then hit the large companies that have by then invented it themselves, making them food for patent trolls.

And the situation leads to companies spending precious resources on filing defensive patents for everything they do...

Acacia’s 5,132,992 covers "the sending and receiving of streaming audio and video over the Internet." Wow, what an invention! Whod'a thunk?

Clear Channel got a patent on "creating digital recordings of live performances" causing them to claim a monopoly on producing post-concert digital recordings.

A company called Ideaflood got a patent on "hosting and assigning domain names on a wide area network" and started suing providers of myname.companydomain.com sites.

"Automatic access of a remote computer over a network." Wow!

"Generating, distributing, storing and [playing back] musical work files." Really?

"Playing games on a network." Oooh.

"Administering tests, lessons, assessments over the Internet" has been a big problem for providers of online learning.

The rest of the civilized world has "non-obviousness" as a requirement for granting a patent.

I think it is time for the U.S. to implement this very good idea, before all that is left of the empire is the torch of the Statue of Liberty sticking up out of the sand.

The U.S. is now in the process of getting foreign aid from China, with grants to teach Chinese in public schools, and funding to set up Chinese-designed high-speed rail systems that the U.S. can't afford by itself.

Next will be Chinese aid to help extract rare minerals such as neodymium for use in Chinese engineering and manufacturing in China, so we'll become a country that exports raw materials and buys finished consumer products, somewhat like what the old colonies did for about 400 years.

(I just heard that when everything is added up, U.S. military spending accounts for more than 50% of Federal taxes. This probably can't continue...)

"Do you have a source for that?"
Same source you're getting your "facts" from.... and that's my entire point.

"I don't know, but it is one of only 3 supported formats in Final Cut Express."
Bat crap.
It doesn't support avchd... it transcodes it, and does a crappy job at it too. 5.1 surround is downmixed. That's not exactly what I would call support

"My point is that people acquire knowledge about the values that this country was founded upon, but they don't understand the meaning of them."
The topic here is your nasty habit of spinning your apple opinions into fact... not about Patton... values of a Country, Geese flying South for the Winter....etc.

Subject: Press release from Sony Creative

Anyone is entitled to have a differing opinion, but when you are stating your opinion as fact you are misleading people.

So you weren't clear about how you defined "supports avchd."

Most people would define "support" as meaning "can be used for in an appropriate way."

Transcoding has many advantages over staying native, and there is absolutely nothing inappropriate about it.

You're of course entitled to have a preference that it be supported "natively," and you can choose your tools accordingly.

Avchd is a consumer format, I didn't know there were consumer cameras with surround sound also?

Please show me where I was "spinning my apple opinions into fact." I'm always interested in ways to communicate more clearly, and it is obvious that I failed in that here.

Unless you confuse "spin" with "having the wrong opinion," which is a pretty common occurrence.

Asdrew,

Thank you, that's the kindest thing I've heard here today.

:O)

thx Coursedesign.
Interesting banter, but not on subject :)

Your reply is funny ;-) I don't remember you arguing that patents are bad when Apple was suing.... ;-)

"the courts agreed with them that the regulations of certain ways to issue stock options were not well defined and basically unenforceable." No such "finding" was determined in Steve's case........ Apple offered a "lower" Apple official to the feds for the human sacrifice to "settle" the inquiry.

BUT I do agree there any truly stupid patents, like "one click" patent, ........ common processes should not be patent! ;-)

"per-channel alpha compositing (Apple got that one 18 years ago" patents have a limited life span. BUT Where has Apple donated their "multi-touch" patent?

BUT the tele patents are hardware and software blend to create a workable cell solution far beyond the skill set that Apple corp has. Apple is clearly using other corps ics and hardware practicals and use tele protocols that are not their design, Plus, all other cell manufacturers pay fees and have a better claim than Apple.

As for the "human sacrifice," that has been standard procedure in many recent high-tech company cases.

I don't have the competence to judge the patent merits, but I hope that the Federal judge in East Texas who is sought out by plaintiffs because he usually rules for them has the expertise available.

The saddest part is that with the current U.S. patent system (where non-obviousness is not required), every player needs to put as much into defensive patents as they put into actually useful new stuff.

That way they have patent pools they can trade for whatever they need to cover something that they invented but someone else filed a patent for a long time ago (up to 40 years before the patent was published!).

"Anyone is entitled to have a differing opinion, but when you are stating your opinion as fact you are misleading people."
Yes, I quite agree.... and that's why I got into this. YOU state your Apple opinions as if they are fact, which they are not. YOU"RE misleading people. Maybe Apple doesn't support BD because Steve doesn't believe in it.... OR..... maybe Apple doesn't support BD merely because Steve got up that morning and did a coin toss. At the end of the day you don't truly know why Apple doesn't support BD, so don't talk like you do.

"So you weren't clear about how you defined "supports avchd."
Now this is too funny to even comment on.

YOU state your Apple opinions as if they are fact, which they are not.

I said "Apple doesn't think BD has a significant future."

Steve Jobs made this specific statement recorded by Engadget:

Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.

At a Macworld event, he made the following specific statement:

Clearly, Blu-ray won, but in the new world order of instant online movie rentals, in HD, no one will care about what format is where.

Those are the standard polite ways for people at his level (CEO) to say, "I don't think BD has a significant future."

Now I don't quite understand your standing here.

Are you an aggrieved Mac owner who is pissed off that you didn't get Blu-Ray in the box, and you have to go spend several hundred dollars to get Toast or Adobe Encore or maybe even some $29.95 shareware solution and a BD burner?

If not, why do you care even the slightest what Steve Jobs thinks? Or what anyone else at Apple thinks?


"So you weren't clear about how you defined "supports avchd."

Perhaps this is funny to someone with less post production experience.

An NLE supports avchd when it provides a complete solution for editing avchd-originated movies.

There are four main ways to do that:

1. Transcoding to a far more post-efficient intermediate codec such as Cineform or ProRes or DNxHD

2. Allowing avc to be edited natively

3. Editing avchd on an uncompressed timeline

4. Editing avchd on an intermediate codec timeline.

There are various advantages to each of these.

The transcoding solution offers speed of editing, minimized deterioration when using effects and grading, and avoiding previously unknown race conditions when working with avchd footage (where every frame is forwards- and backwards-dependent on a series of other frames).

Such race conditions caused previously undiscovered bugs to be found in every NLE when long-GOP format support was added, and these bugs are quite hard to find if you're looking for them.

Many editors discovered this in the early days of editing HDV, and avchd is a far bigger system load that that.

Avchd is a great recording codec because of its compactness and high quality for a given bit rate. It is a terrible post-production codec however, and in this case not even straight cuts avoid a deterioration when the video is re-rendered.

Hey, I'd love for life to be simpler, too.

But I'm beginning to suspect it ain't gonna happen.

"U.S. military spending accounts for more than 50% of Federal taxes" again more spin. entitlements,non-military gov payroll and gov retirement benefits are real majority of the spending. So many special interest groups rehash the data until they generate the answer they want.

Apple is a control freak, its funny to hear them complaint that BD is too complex..... concerning the number of companies putting out BD players and have them in their computer products. I think the real truth is that Steve did not want to piss off MS while he was launching his mobile products, letting MS focus on its very expensive fight with Sony+friends to stop the PS3/BD intro and slow the market penetration other gaming products. MS did drop the ball on the mobile side during that time and Apple had a easy run.

Sony regrets selling it mobile cell phone in 2001 and agreeing not to re-enter the mobile market. Ericsson has not been "focused" on the phones as promised and spent their research money on cell networks,etc,,,, Sony has been funneling research capital into the division to get it back on track.

For those who don't know apit, let me translate: "spin" means "different opinion." :O)

(And for those who don't know Bill O'Reilly: "spin-free" also means "different opinion." :O)

I think the mil spending analysis was from the non-partisan GAO (Government Accountability Office). Will try to find the numbers because they are painful enough. It is unclear why we need to spend as much on the official mil budget as all other countries in the world together (really!). This is fun over a couple of beers, but it really hurts in our wallets.

I'm sure Steve Jobs is tiptoeing around Steve Ballmer so as not to offend him...
Microsoft has always generated a LOT of profit from selling Office on the Mac platform, and more recently added a lot of profit from selling snow to Eskimos (Windows to Mac users).

Ericsson sure seems to have been stuck in the phone-as-phone days as you say, sad really. A bit like the railroads not adapting to become transportation companies. Adding a camera and SMS support doesn’t go very far.

I think the non-smartphone side of the mobile business is going the way of the dodo, even for the cheapest disposable phones at 7-Eleven eventually.

Apit, you're right about the mobile market.

This is how it used to be:

1. Carriers ruled the industry with an iron fist

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