The Total Home Media Management System

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Apple hardware updates are extremely important, we have to get past the 1GHz barrier unless Steve enjoys dodging tomatoes ... however, "big whoop" AFAIC ... a ~15% increase in processor speed alone hardly rates getting "Blown Away", especially since it's a year and a half behind it's competitors ... obviously, at this point, those over-ripe tomatoes might still sprout live wings-for-Steve.



Conceptually at least, a lot of this revolves around the fact that current Apple hardware has no off switch - I think this is more than a mere "stability" touchstone, I think it reflects a kind of clear intellectual marker for Apple product designers to shoot for, as in "let's make our stuff so useful, people can't switch 'em off because they need them so much" ... and it points towards an ever increasing server style personality for their machines, specifically a media style server which you'd never want to switch off because it's always going to be busy doing one thing or another. It's a very natural progression as computers get more and more powerful and able to perform more an more functions, with all the advantages of digital media management, which were previously only commercially available in the analog realm.



So, with that lighthouse for future hardware trends in view ...



If we then combine this never-off concept, with the new Hardware (and yes, my fingers are still crossed for G5's, which I still think are somewhat likely - if not at MWSF, than very soon after) and this really obscure technology of Apple's called, what is it again? Oh yeah, "QuickTime" ... and wireless home networking ... we might finally have a value proposition worth far more than the sum of it's parts, especially considering that to-date QuickTime has yet to included any sort of MPEG-4 option for mysterious reasons.



You've heard the arguments before, but to quickly recapp ...



a G4 can:



- probably use Alti-vec to very nicely encode and compress TV-signals at damn fine quality direct to hard disk.



- MPEG-4 with quicktime media, to store and manipulate the data, and later to stream it over any variety of transport protocols, ethernet, modem, wireless etc etc



- internet access, to talk to various servers in a TiVO-esque manner. But considering this is a Mac we're using for a server here, there's far more value in this than just a TiVO box, at the very least, it can serve up all your .mp3's as well.



- wireless home networking, to allow various media files to be sent live anywhere in the house to some sort of Apple media recieving device, including true Macs, Mac like media appliances and otherwise (there might even be a separate box to hook up to your tv)



- OSX audio manager, allowing 5.1 sound and many other effects right out of the box



- the Aqua style finder, with an interface oddly designed to be as good at mouse input as it would be for a pen style pointer input, much like a palm or an earlier Newton.



- remote windowing in Cocoa ... something that was in NeXT servers as far back as '89, to allow remote control of these servers from any of these Apple media devices as easily as if you were right in front of the machine.



Sooner or later, Apple has to put this all together into a cohesive package which is easy to use ... and which computer company out there is the best at putting difficult technology into an easy to use, cohesive package?



If Apple can do this and demonstrate it at the show, it will be as important as any G5 upgrade.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Apple should start out with the basics.



    1. Start supporting HomePNA(3.0 due this year support 100mbs over standard phonelines :eek: )



    2. Promote Airport! Find out some way to Wirelessly send MP3 audio to a home stereo(something like a pod that hooks to your line in ports)



    3 MP3 Server addon. The ability to play multiple MP3's with very flexible routing.



    4. Put a Digital Out on the Macs finally. SPDIF or Coax..it doesn't matter. Soon customers will be able to jack right into their Dolby Digital/DTS Receivers and hear surround sound.



    5. Apple got caught sleeping and the Redmond Beast ate Bungie. Apple Don't be stupid. Create a Games Division. Promote Macs+OpenGL= Great Games.



    I'm outta time.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    dstranathandstranathan Posts: 1,717member
    [quote]Originally posted by hmurchison:

    <strong>Apple should start out with the basics.



    1. Start supporting HomePNA(3.0 due this year support 100mbs over standard phonelines :eek: )



    2. Promote Airport! Find out some way to Wirelessly send MP3 audio to a home stereo(something like a pod that hooks to your line in ports)



    3 MP3 Server addon. The ability to play multiple MP3's with very flexible routing.



    4. Put a Digital Out on the Macs finally. SPDIF or Coax..it doesn't matter. Soon customers will be able to jack right into their Dolby Digital/DTS Receivers and hear surround sound.



    5. Apple got caught sleeping and the Redmond Beast ate Bungie. Apple Don't be stupid. Create a Games Division. Promote Macs+OpenGL= Great Games.



    I'm outta time.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    [quote] 5. Apple got caught sleeping and the Redmond Beast ate Bungie. Apple Don't be stupid. Create a Games Division. Promote Macs+OpenGL= Great Games. <hr></blockquote>



    AMEN! Bungie rocked! Remember Marathon? That game was a sleeper, but I think it was superior to Quake/Doom in many many ways! And it was a Mac-based FSP game (it actually went to Windows AFTER the Mac)



    I am tired of waiting for "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", waiting for "Nobody Lives Forever", etc. If Apple kicks a games division into high gear, or at least pushes their support for Open GL, we may see kick-@$$ games faster on the Mac!



    (can you tell I want Wolfenstein on my new G5!?)
  • Reply 3 of 8
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    A G5 would do games well, eh?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    There is currently no significant Apple initiative to create Macintosh games that has a hope of succeeding, especially in the face of the current crop of game consoles. If there was, I would know about it. Apple is nowhere in the games market right now, and it will take a lot of work for them to get anywhere and there are currently no signs of that happening. I'd love to see that change, but I'm not holding my breath.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    kurtkurt Posts: 225member
    Whatever happened to Robert Morgan who used to do a column for Macweek called Recon For Investors. His website was last updated just about a year ago with a promise of another update before MWSF 2001.



    <a href="http://www.pelagius.com/AppleRecon/"; target="_blank">http://www.pelagius.com/AppleRecon/</a>;



    He was talking about the whole digital lifestyle concept years ago and that Apple was going in that direction. It would seem that he may have been right and the R&D are finally catching up to Jobs vision.



    Anyone ever subscribe to his service or know anything else about him?
  • Reply 6 of 8
    [quote]Originally posted by Kurt:

    <strong>Whatever happened to Robert Morgan who used to do a column for Macweek called Recon For Investors. His website was last updated just about a year ago with a promise of another update before MWSF 2001.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yeah, that "Golden Convergence" thingy he kept raving about - I wondered where those rants went, but I supposed they went the way of MacWeek (sadly)...



    Basically, if Apple's not releasing G5's, that vision finally coming to be would make up for it; and if Apple does release G5's and "Golden Convergence" along the lines of a "Total Home Media Management System", I'll need to do my laundry very badly ...
  • Reply 7 of 8
    [quote]Originally posted by Programmer:

    <strong>There is currently no significant Apple initiative to create Macintosh games that has a hope of succeeding, especially in the face of the current crop of game consoles. If there was, I would know about it. Apple is nowhere in the games market right now, and it will take a lot of work for them to get anywhere and there are currently no signs of that happening. I'd love to see that change, but I'm not holding my breath.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    Is MS's Active-X kicking the crap out of OpenGL in the games market? That would be a shame for everybody ...
  • Reply 8 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    [quote]Originally posted by OverToasty:

    <strong>

    Is MS's Active-X kicking the crap out of OpenGL in the games market? That would be a shame for everybody ...</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yes Microsofts Direct-X 8 is Demolishing OpenGL. Apple is too late to the party and the Programmer is right. Games on a Mac are stilborn. It's Pathetic. I've sold Macs for years and have seen "countless" potential Mac sales fail because the kids say "My friends have PC's and XXX game and I want that" ....now what Parent can tell their kids no? Apple is forever 2 steps forward 1 step back. Buying Bungie would have probably payed much more dividends than buying Raycer, Spruce(?) and a few other small Apple Aquisitions.



    However,

    If any company can make integrating disparate A/V pieces together in an intuititve manner it's Apple. I've decided to go light on my A/V purchases because the future is fairly easy to fortel. DVD's will soon hook up via Firewire bypassing internal D/A conversions, HiDef will gain support rapidly(it also uses FW), the amount of small devices that can do serious number crunching will proliferate. The only thing that has kept things back is Copyright issues and low cost DSP's. Look for CES 2002 to have a few suprises in the Digital Hub arena.
Sign In or Register to comment.