Featured Article: Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #152: Have I Been Hacked?
So: It's A Video iPod. Sweet!
by - October 13th, 2005
Okey-doke...so it is indeed a video-studly iPod. Inneresting. I don't have mine yet -- and I haven't even had my Apple briefing -- so I can't say yet whether or not this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. If its video features have been implemented as sensibly and reasonably as the iPod's audio features, then a Good Thing is a distinct possibility. Still, I refuse to drop the gun and come out of the house with my hands in the air until I know everything's all right.
See, where a video iPod is concerned I've always been worried about that Purple Cloud of Insanity. It hovers in the super-stratosphere and every time it drifts down to sea level, it causes Humanity to do stupid and bizarre things. Ricky Martin was once a pop superstar. In any major city, there are no shortage of places where you can hand a total stranger $100 and they'll cheerfully stick pieces of metal through your nipples, expecting you to thank them for the service. Know the Cloud; fear the Cloud.
My fear is that the Purple Cloud will work its way into Apple's ventilation system and then all of a sudden, a hitherto reasonable product manager will find him or herself sending an email to all personnel, stressing that is just makes no sense to allow iPod users to install their own video content. Not when Apple can force them to pay up every time they want to see something new, for crying out loud! Remember, this is the company that once put their logo on a video game console and a windsurfer; Apple is no stranger to the Purple Cloud. And in the Bay Area and the Valley, the Purple Cloud is so firmly entrenched that it's received its third influx of venture capital and sixth change in management.
Over the past week or two I've been waffling mightily about the chances for a video iPod. I knew it was coming, but I would have bet money that the iTunes Video Store would have preceded it by at least a few months. The Music Store opened with a quarter-million titles. A mere fraction of its current stock, to be sure, but it was more than enough to light some butts on fire. Compare and contrast this with the Video Store. From my perspective, it contains music videos (which I can't be bothered to watch...even the ones by bands I like), a couple of Disney Channel shows (my juvenile tastes run more towards the Cartoon Network, thank you), "Desperate Housewives" (which I hate), and "Lost."
I love "Lost" -- and friends, does it now make sense that the most important prop of Season Two is an Apple II? -- but I'm avoiding it. It's the same problem I faced ten years ago with "Babylon 5": too many friends whose taste are highly trustworthy are emphatically recommending it, and the two episodes I've seen are way too good. If I stop watching it before I get hooked, I won't need to clear another hour from my weekly schedule.
My hopes are high that "The West Wing" will start tanking again after the election, thus freeing up a slot for "Lost". But until then, there's just nothing in Apple's premiere slate of video content that interests me in the slightest. Can Apple afford to make enough deals -- each one a true landmark -- and broaden Video Store content enough to appeal to such a bizarre and diverse tribe of mammals as the iPod Customer Base?
All of that might be totally irrelevant. If iTunes and the iPod don't care where a QuickTime file comes from so long as it's within the video and audio formats called out in the product specs, Apple has a winner in this latest-generation iPod. I've got a hard drive full of QuickTime movies and TV shows that I've ripped from DVDs and recorded with EyeTV, and the prospect of moving them onto an iPod with a simple clicky-clicky is making my fingers twitch.
And I'm optimistic. One of the smartest things the company ever did was to put a sticker on the screen of every new iPod, politely asking the user not to steal music. It demonstrated a subtle but brilliant understanding of both the digital music market and what a digital music player would need to do in order to make history.
The Understanding comes down to this: You can't prevent music piracy from happening. If you work in the music industry, please read that line again. No amount of technology or lawyers or lawmaking will prevent dishonest people from acquiring music illegally. You can pretend that it will, but in truth, all you're going to do is prevent honest people from exercising their rights as consumers. You can also pretend that consumers will be happy to keep re-purchasing and repurchasing and repurchasing content that they already own, just because they're all terribly offended that the company can't afford to keep your breakroom stocked with complimentary snacks and beverages.
I mean, feel free. But when the Purple Cloud ultimately dissipates, you'll realize that all of your potential customers gave their money to a company and a product with a firmer grasp on reality instead.
All of this worrying is irrelevant for another reason, though: there really is no "Video iPod." There are just...iPods. Essentially, every iPod purchaser gets the video features for free, which, I am now bitterly forced to admit, was the only scenario under which I've said that a pay-for-all-content video feature was even remotely permissible. It's offensive to give a company $300 for a device when that outlay of cash is just the down payment on a lifelong money hole.
That's absolutely not the case here. Even in the worst-case scenario, iPod owners are free to ignore that the video capability exists, and simply enjoy the fact that they can view far greater acreages of photos and track info at once. Sweet.
Over the past two hours, I have mercilessly interrogated all of my friends in the Guild of Macintosh Punditry, and determined that none of them have had any experience with these new iPods that go beyond a few minutes of fondle-time at the rollout event. So obviously, everyone's still eager to take an iPod out of the barn and see what it can do. I'm just glad that Apple staged the rollout in such a way that even now, hours after the thing's been released, I can still get just one more column of video iPod speculation into play. Surely this will leave me in a positive frame of mind when the time comes to review it in print and on TV.
Clever people, those Apple folks.
digs the Mac, and has been writing about the Mac for longer than most of us could tell the difference between a bite of Apple Sauce from a byte of Apple code. You can read his monthly column at Macworld magazine, and his blog at the Colossal Waste of Bandwidth.
Andy's latest book is The Mac OS X Tiger Book (US$16.49 - Amazon).
You can send your comments directly to Andy, or you can also post your comments below.
Most Recent Columns From Andy Ihnatko
- You Can't Spell 'Speculate' without 'Peas' - February 22nd
- So: It's A Video iPod. Sweet! - October 13th
- How to Stuff a Wild iPod - October 13th
Andy Ihnatko's Archives
Observer Comments
Thu Oct 13, 2005 1:28 pm Subject: I understand you *can* watch your own stuff
Quote(my juvenile tastes run more towards the Cartoon Network, thank you),
Imgine if they hooked up with CN and started selling series by the episode. I'd pay $1.99 for particular shows. Ed, Edd, N' Eddy has had a couple of good ones. There's a couple of hysterical Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy that I wouldn't mind having (Billys Shop of horrors comes to mind). There's a lot of shows that have one or two great episodes. Then of course imagine if they started selling Adult Swim series by the show. I've already got Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex on my wish list. Cowboy Beebop and several others are almost there already. Hey, they are already hooked up with Disney. I'd love it if they started selling Dave the Barbarian, there's no place else you can get it, and there were a few of those that were great.
This might be a good way to ease into the Video sales market. $1.99 for 11 minutes of animation (or 22 if it's a long one). I'd pay it for particular cartoons. Might be easier than jumping into the deep end of the pool with movies and right now I'm not even slightly interested in any of the things they have, including Lost.
I would buy and watch the new "The Batman" cartoon in an instant. Plus, iTunes 6 takes video other than the native resolution of the iPod. Steve also mentioned that the iPod converts video on the fly. I wonder if larger res video gets converted for the iPod's screen, but left intact for the TV connect. Here's hopping…
Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:43 am Subject: Re: Don't think just DVD and TV shows
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
The Video iPod is a perfect device to load up all those little "movies" you take with your digital camera..... 30 seconds of junior spitting up, 20 seconds of the kidlet's school play or recital. Then you pull it out and say, "hey, check this out..." and start showing off the kids or the garden or the new boat....
Oh, #$!!@*&
and I thought still pictures of peoples kids were boring.
Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:08 pm Subject: Ahh, the good ol' days
This article reminds me of the good ol' days of printed tech news, when every article published was guaranteed to be hopelessly outdated by the time it reached anyone's eyes. It's been so long. So, so long. *sniff*
All kidding aside (I actually do appreciate reading articles that weren't written, edited and published over the course of an hour or so), the "missing pieces" are all quite well-known now. For those who don't know:
• You can load up your own movies.
• You can NOT load up any QuickTime movie.
• The movies need to be regular mp4s, using either H.264 or regular MPEG4 video.
• Supported resolutions are only up to 320x240 for H.264, or up to 480x480 for MPEG4 (I assume aspect ratio adjustments would be done in that case, but I don't know).
So don't think you'll be able to take your DVDs with you on the go. It would require a lengthy (and possibly illegal) conversion, and the video quality you'd get would be similar to an SVCD. That is to say, better than VHS, and significantly worse than DVD. Definitely worse than anyone in their right mind would want to encode for anything other than web streaming. Bummer.
Personally, I think the quality of the videos on the iTMS is perfectly watchable, but I simply expect (and demand) better from commercial content. If they were SD (640x480), I probably would have already bought all of Lost (which I've never even seen and am not otherwise interested in).
Recent Headlines - Updated Friday, May 16th, 2008
- Fri., 8:00 PM
- iPodObserver - Dr, Danger, Brickfilms, Narnia and More
- 5:10 PM
- StrangeCharm - Explosions and Debris (Week of May 12)
- 4:15 PM
- TMO's DealsOnTheWeb.com - 8GB iPod Touch: $229 Delivered
- 3:35 PM
- Safari Suffers from "Carpet Bomb" Issue
- 2:55 PM
- iPodObserver - Barack Obama's Smartphone of Choice
- 2:35 PM
- Parallels Releases Update for Vista SP1 and XP SP3
- 1:00 PM
- iPodObserver - AT&T: Back to Three iPhone Limit Per Customer
- 12:55 PM
- Mac Gaming News - Macgamestore Intros Agatha Christie: Peril at End House
- 10:35 AM
- Hot Forum Topic - The iPhone's Growing Global Reach
- 10:05 AM
- Unparsed - I found Those Missing iPhones!
- 9:45 AM
- Fone2Phone 2.01 Improves Performance, Cell Phone Support
- 9:20 AM
- Apple Scores 2 Black Pencils at D&AD Awards
- 8:40 AM
- Yahoo to Icahn: Get a Clue
- 8:05 AM
- iPodObserver - Orange Gets Europe, Middle East, Africa iPhone Deal
- 7:30 AM
- TMO Quick Tip - Quick Look: Web Archives
The Mac Observer Reader Specials
- Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com
- Other World Computing: OWC Mercury On-The-Go FW400/800/USB2/eSATA Solutions: High Performance A/V Rated, **Bus Powered** Hard Disk Storage - **Now 40GB and up to ***250GB*** in the palm of your hand. Macworld Magazine Editor's Choice - from $87.99!
MacPro Memory 667Mhz With Apple Spec Heat Sink 2GB Kit $ 90 / 4GB Kit $140 / 8GB Kit $278 Click to Maximize your Macs...
Mac observers can now play Party Poker for Mac as well as Mac casino games by going to MacPokerOnline.com.For the latest Apple products use Ciao a comparison website to find laptops like MacBook Air. Then find the best prices on MP3 players and use our comparison tool to evaluate cell phones.
Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.
Cuisinart ICE-20 Automatic Frozen Yogurt/Ice Cream/Sorbet Maker: 49.95 
32 LEDs Bright Flashlight, Aluminum Case with Button Switch and Lanyard: $9.34 Delivered 
Combo Universal USB car & travel charger: $5.95 Delivered 
Plenio 2G 7" Touchscreen GPS Navigation System: $189.99 Delivered 
Western Digital 500GB My Book Home Edition Triple Interface External Hard Drive: $127.99 Delivered 
