This would be an awesome Display to go on tour or at least be put up at all the flagship stores in the windows. It would draw mad crowds across the world. I can understand debuting it at WWDC, but i can't afford to go to california and i want to see this thing up close. I can't even begin to describe to you the photographic possibilities with this thing sitting in the 679 N Michigan Ave Apple Store window in Chicago Illinois.
APPLE, IF YOU'RE READING THIS THREAD, PLEASE INSTALL THIS IN MY APPLE STORE.
Is anyone else thinking why did this wall of 20x 30" screens required 20x MacPros?
A MacPro has enough horsepower to run at least 4 if not 8 of those screens, including the processing horsepower. Quartz doesn't require much to produce the ripple effects on multiple items.
Maybe it was the technical challenge of synchronizing 20 MacPros.
I don't even see why they'd have to be synchronized, if one screen was even minutes ahead of another, how could anyone tell?
But my second thought was, reminds me of something..... oh yeah, the big video-screen in Apple's Mac-debut commercial, where dozens of drone workers stood, mesmerized at the great leader's (aka Microsoft) broadcast, then liberated by the Mac Revolution/javelin-throwing-Riefenstahl-babe. In the clips of people watching the "hyperwall", and in the reaction on this board, we are mesmerized by commerce itself. Thank you, Apple, for Twittering the Revolution.
PS - switched to iPhone/ATT a few months ago, from BB Pearl/T-Mobile and, aside from loving my new toy, er, smartphone, my local (NYC) reception is about 4 times as reliable as before.
I don't even see why they'd have to be synchronized, if one screen was even minutes ahead of another, how could anyone tell?
They probably weren't.
Run the same software on 20 Macs, and just get them to request data from App IDs in a different range. You could do this quite easily in Flash too.
I'm sure this is why they chose to run it on 20 Macs, it's much easier to borrow 20 Macs from the store cupboard and run some standard software on each of them, than to spec-up each machine to run this task.
Maybe this could be included as a Screen Saver in Snow Leopard. It would have to scale to show the number of top apps that can fit on your screen(s), and instead of being live work with updated average sales per unit time.
I like that, but how about just grabbing your local icons from your Mac to make a dynamic screensaver, like the one that pulls album covers. Icons are much smaller files, though between your personal apps, system apps and iPhone OS apps they are spread out, but I can?t imagine it would be too hard to grab them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
How do you know that?
1,000,000,000 ÷ 35,000,000 = 28.57 apps per device.
I?ve had many apps that have updated more than that in the 9 months since the App Store went live. I have also reinstalled Apps on the device when I failed to sync it to the device and re-downloaded it again after I deleted it.
I believe it was in Apple's press release about the 1 Billion downloads. I know for sure I read it in official text from Apple. They did address that point explicitly.
But my second thought was, reminds me of something..... oh yeah, the big video-screen in Apple's Mac-debut commercial, where dozens of drone workers stood, mesmerized at the great leader's (aka Microsoft) broadcast, then liberated by the Mac Revolution/javelin-throwing-Riefenstahl-babe. In the clips of people watching the "hyperwall", and in the reaction on this board, we are mesmerized by commerce itself. Thank you, Apple, for Twittering the Revolution.
We knew this was coming when Apple edited history by digitally adding an ipod to the freedom fighter in the ad. We have always been at war with Eastasia^wMicrosoft.
No doubts, 3 Mac Pro could have managed to paint the image of the whole billion of bubbles allright.
Their network connections seem to have been considered as a bottleneck. Apparently, those shouldn't be either, that's resolutely not a hurricane of downloads...
When you're Apple and you've got plenty of Macs sitting around, it is cheaper to use those machines than it is to pay someone to more optimally configure the hardware.
It says on the wall that it's "Live from the App Store"...then it also says it's a 5 minute delay. So which is it, live or delayed? They're not the same.
Why would it be delayed 5 minutes...with 20 Mac Pros running there's certainly no computational reason for the display to be delayed 5 minutes. Certainly the sales data wouldn't require significant bandwidth either....little more than dial-up.
I think it was just a blinking display to mezmorize people...a nice promtional device to visualize and promote the idea about app sales. There's no reason to go to the extra trouble and expense to actually make it a realtime display of actual sales data. I wouldn't. And to cover my butt in case anyone says: "I just bought that app and it's not blinking on the big board", I'd slap a disclaimer on it saying the display is delayed by 5 minutes...that's longer than anyone will stare at an icon waiting for it to blink.
It says on the wall that it's "Live from the App Store"...then it also says it's a 5 minute delay. So which is it, live or delayed? They're not the same.
Why would it be delayed 5 minutes...with 20 Mac Pros running there's certainly no computational reason for the display to be delayed 5 minutes. Certainly the sales data wouldn't require significant bandwidth either....little more than dial-up.
I think it was just a blinking display to mezmorize people...a nice promtional device to visualize and promote the idea about app sales. There's no reason to go to the extra trouble and expense to actually make it a realtime display of actual sales data. I wouldn't. And to cover my butt in case anyone says: "I just bought that app and it's not blinking on the big board", I'd slap a disclaimer on it saying the display is delayed by 5 minutes...that's longer than anyone will stare at an icon waiting for it to blink.
That's my cynical opinion, anyways...
Live in this sense merely means that it?s pre-recorded, say from a bunch of App Store data pulled last week and setup on the Mac Pros. It also means that it?s just a fancy display randomly picking apps.
There is nothing sinister about their wording. They are taking data directly from the App Store and funneling it to these machines. Why a 5 minute delay? I couldn?t tell you, but that it doesn?t mean that it?s not live. If a delay meant that something wasn?t live then you?ve never seen any live TV as there is always a delay just for the transmission and processing time from the camera to your TV, something they put in delay, like at award shows to make quick edits to appease the FCC asshats.
As for buying an app and having it blink 5 minutes later is absurd. Apple sold 1B apps in 9 months and are presumably selling more even now, but I?ll use those numbers for my point since it?s all we know for certain. I?m not going to look up exactly how many days and hours it was live so I?ll just go with the 30 days x 9 months to get 270 days. I divide that by 1 billion app to get 3,703,703 apps a day, which is also 154,320 an hour, which is 12,860 every 5 minutes, which is 2,572 a minute which is 43 apps a second. There would be no way to catch your app if they did it that way. I?d wager that the Mac Pros (if they are the ones crunching these numbers for the display) are only pooling the most downloaded apps in the last 5 minutes to make an attractive display, not one that puts seizure-prone WWDC attendees into spasms. If that is the case, then it could be defined as not being live, since the stats are tallied in 5 minute intervals, not just a delay of a stream, but that isn?t how you stated it. Still, I?d say ?live? is the best choice of words to get across the idea that this display is connected to what is currently happening on the App Store.
Live in this sense merely means that it’s pre-recorded, say from a bunch of App Store data pulled last week and setup on the Mac Pros. It also means that it’s just a fancy display randomly picking apps.
There is nothing sinister about their wording. They are taking data directly from the App Store and funneling it to these machines. Why a 5 minute delay? I couldn’t tell you, but that it doesn’t mean that it’s not live. If a delay meant that something wasn’t live then you’ve never seen any live TV as there is always a delay just for the transmission and processing time from the camera to your TV, something they put in delay, like at award shows to make quick edits to appease the FCC asshats.
This isn't TV...it's the internets.
Things can indeed be "live"...or at least any delay is in milliseconds, as you chat with people while they do video streaming and whatnot.
I could understand a small delay as data is collated from the app store and then funneled to such a display...but 5 minutes is odd to me. There's no need to buffer the data stream to guard against wardrobe malfunctions or to bleep cuss words.
It's not that I'm an Apple basher...I'm just always cynical about any big corporation, simply because at that level the game itself gets you dirty whether you like it or not.
My guess is that it requests the latest sales data from the server every five minutes. Updating in real-time could significantly slow things down for people actually purchasing apps.
Then, the way the data is time-distributed on the Mac displays is just random over those five minutes.
Comments
APPLE, IF YOU'RE READING THIS THREAD, PLEASE INSTALL THIS IN MY APPLE STORE.
Why do you spell farther - father? Did he abuse you? Is that why the rage and why you call people names?
I suspect you are the one who was abused.
I suspect you are the one who was abused.
I get abused all the time on here for keeping it real. But other than that- NO.
Is anyone else thinking why did this wall of 20x 30" screens required 20x MacPros?
A MacPro has enough horsepower to run at least 4 if not 8 of those screens, including the processing horsepower. Quartz doesn't require much to produce the ripple effects on multiple items.
Maybe it was the technical challenge of synchronizing 20 MacPros.
I don't even see why they'd have to be synchronized, if one screen was even minutes ahead of another, how could anyone tell?
But my second thought was, reminds me of something..... oh yeah, the big video-screen in Apple's Mac-debut commercial, where dozens of drone workers stood, mesmerized at the great leader's (aka Microsoft) broadcast, then liberated by the Mac Revolution/javelin-throwing-Riefenstahl-babe. In the clips of people watching the "hyperwall", and in the reaction on this board, we are mesmerized by commerce itself. Thank you, Apple, for Twittering the Revolution.
PS - switched to iPhone/ATT a few months ago, from BB Pearl/T-Mobile and, aside from loving my new toy, er, smartphone, my local (NYC) reception is about 4 times as reliable as before.
Apple Sucks
You're amazing!
the big video-screen in Apple's Mac-debut commercial, where dozens of drone workers stood, mesmerized at the great leader's (aka Microsoft) broadcast
I think you mean IBM
I don't even see why they'd have to be synchronized, if one screen was even minutes ahead of another, how could anyone tell?
They probably weren't.
Run the same software on 20 Macs, and just get them to request data from App IDs in a different range. You could do this quite easily in Flash too.
I'm sure this is why they chose to run it on 20 Macs, it's much easier to borrow 20 Macs from the store cupboard and run some standard software on each of them, than to spec-up each machine to run this task.
Nice idea though.
You are incorrect.
Downloads are only counted the first time, updates and redownlads are not counted.
Before you accuse people of creative accounting I suggest you get your facts right.
How do you know that?
I have never had a update download twice, if you are then you are clearlt not operating the phone correctly.
Yes, because it's never happened to you, therefore it doesn't happen unless they're doing it wrong.
Maybe this could be included as a Screen Saver in Snow Leopard. It would have to scale to show the number of top apps that can fit on your screen(s), and instead of being live work with updated average sales per unit time.
I like that, but how about just grabbing your local icons from your Mac to make a dynamic screensaver, like the one that pulls album covers. Icons are much smaller files, though between your personal apps, system apps and iPhone OS apps they are spread out, but I can?t imagine it would be too hard to grab them.
How do you know that?
1,000,000,000 ÷ 35,000,000 = 28.57 apps per device.
I?ve had many apps that have updated more than that in the 9 months since the App Store went live. I have also reinstalled Apps on the device when I failed to sync it to the device and re-downloaded it again after I deleted it.
How do you know that?
I believe it was in Apple's press release about the 1 Billion downloads. I know for sure I read it in official text from Apple. They did address that point explicitly.
Very kewl.
But my second thought was, reminds me of something..... oh yeah, the big video-screen in Apple's Mac-debut commercial, where dozens of drone workers stood, mesmerized at the great leader's (aka Microsoft) broadcast, then liberated by the Mac Revolution/javelin-throwing-Riefenstahl-babe. In the clips of people watching the "hyperwall", and in the reaction on this board, we are mesmerized by commerce itself. Thank you, Apple, for Twittering the Revolution.
We knew this was coming when Apple edited history by digitally adding an ipod to the freedom fighter in the ad. We have always been at war with Eastasia^wMicrosoft.
Their network connections seem to have been considered as a bottleneck. Apparently, those shouldn't be either, that's resolutely not a hurricane of downloads...
When you're Apple and you've got plenty of Macs sitting around, it is cheaper to use those machines than it is to pay someone to more optimally configure the hardware.
Why would it be delayed 5 minutes...with 20 Mac Pros running there's certainly no computational reason for the display to be delayed 5 minutes. Certainly the sales data wouldn't require significant bandwidth either....little more than dial-up.
I think it was just a blinking display to mezmorize people...a nice promtional device to visualize and promote the idea about app sales. There's no reason to go to the extra trouble and expense to actually make it a realtime display of actual sales data. I wouldn't. And to cover my butt in case anyone says: "I just bought that app and it's not blinking on the big board", I'd slap a disclaimer on it saying the display is delayed by 5 minutes...that's longer than anyone will stare at an icon waiting for it to blink.
That's my cynical opinion, anyways...
It says on the wall that it's "Live from the App Store"...then it also says it's a 5 minute delay. So which is it, live or delayed? They're not the same.
Why would it be delayed 5 minutes...with 20 Mac Pros running there's certainly no computational reason for the display to be delayed 5 minutes. Certainly the sales data wouldn't require significant bandwidth either....little more than dial-up.
I think it was just a blinking display to mezmorize people...a nice promtional device to visualize and promote the idea about app sales. There's no reason to go to the extra trouble and expense to actually make it a realtime display of actual sales data. I wouldn't. And to cover my butt in case anyone says: "I just bought that app and it's not blinking on the big board", I'd slap a disclaimer on it saying the display is delayed by 5 minutes...that's longer than anyone will stare at an icon waiting for it to blink.
That's my cynical opinion, anyways...
Live in this sense merely means that it?s pre-recorded, say from a bunch of App Store data pulled last week and setup on the Mac Pros. It also means that it?s just a fancy display randomly picking apps.
There is nothing sinister about their wording. They are taking data directly from the App Store and funneling it to these machines. Why a 5 minute delay? I couldn?t tell you, but that it doesn?t mean that it?s not live. If a delay meant that something wasn?t live then you?ve never seen any live TV as there is always a delay just for the transmission and processing time from the camera to your TV, something they put in delay, like at award shows to make quick edits to appease the FCC asshats.
As for buying an app and having it blink 5 minutes later is absurd. Apple sold 1B apps in 9 months and are presumably selling more even now, but I?ll use those numbers for my point since it?s all we know for certain. I?m not going to look up exactly how many days and hours it was live so I?ll just go with the 30 days x 9 months to get 270 days. I divide that by 1 billion app to get 3,703,703 apps a day, which is also 154,320 an hour, which is 12,860 every 5 minutes, which is 2,572 a minute which is 43 apps a second. There would be no way to catch your app if they did it that way. I?d wager that the Mac Pros (if they are the ones crunching these numbers for the display) are only pooling the most downloaded apps in the last 5 minutes to make an attractive display, not one that puts seizure-prone WWDC attendees into spasms. If that is the case, then it could be defined as not being live, since the stats are tallied in 5 minute intervals, not just a delay of a stream, but that isn?t how you stated it. Still, I?d say ?live? is the best choice of words to get across the idea that this display is connected to what is currently happening on the App Store.
Live in this sense merely means that it’s pre-recorded, say from a bunch of App Store data pulled last week and setup on the Mac Pros. It also means that it’s just a fancy display randomly picking apps.
There is nothing sinister about their wording. They are taking data directly from the App Store and funneling it to these machines. Why a 5 minute delay? I couldn’t tell you, but that it doesn’t mean that it’s not live. If a delay meant that something wasn’t live then you’ve never seen any live TV as there is always a delay just for the transmission and processing time from the camera to your TV, something they put in delay, like at award shows to make quick edits to appease the FCC asshats.
This isn't TV...it's the internets.
Things can indeed be "live"...or at least any delay is in milliseconds, as you chat with people while they do video streaming and whatnot.
I could understand a small delay as data is collated from the app store and then funneled to such a display...but 5 minutes is odd to me. There's no need to buffer the data stream to guard against wardrobe malfunctions or to bleep cuss words.
It's not that I'm an Apple basher...I'm just always cynical about any big corporation, simply because at that level the game itself gets you dirty whether you like it or not.
Then, the way the data is time-distributed on the Mac displays is just random over those five minutes.
That's how I'd do it, anyway