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Video: Changes to the MacBook Pro we want Apple to make

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June 2018

cgWerks said:

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There's no ongoing cost for movies purchased in iTunes. In fact if you maintain a local collection of ripped DVDs you probably have ongoing costs in terms of time and maintenance of your storage solution.

I was thinking more in terms of music (or movie) subscriptions, but you're right, movies get more tricky. Though, it isn't impossible for Apple, Sony, Amazon, etc. movie services go away some day. Then even purchases would go away along with that.

I care less for most movies, I guess or video games, which is why I've fully embraced the digital download model for the latter. It's just way more convenient to launch a game rather than having to worry about putting the disc in or if it gets damaged. They aren worth next to zero after a few months anyway, and the technology moves fast enough that I won't be playing any game for a more than a couple of years anyway.

But, music is different. I buy discs when possible and they are easy to rip. Unfortunately, we've had to subscribe to Apple Music to get back functionality Apple took out of iTunes (allowing an easy home-server with download to local devices). I'm kind of miffed about that, though it is nice to grab a track here and there when the urge strikes me. It's kind of worth it for a family, especially of some family members like the streaming aspect.

Movies are tricky. I'm not sure if my Blu-ray has gone funky, but I can only get about 50% of Blu-rays ripped, it seems. I have them stored on a huge drive and shared out via Plex right now... but it's frustrating that I can't rip them all. I've got all our DVDs pretty much ripped (and many Blu-rays came with DVD, so I have the lower quality version, which looks surprisingly good when played via Plex on the PS4... even on a 55" 4k TV).

Since I have to have a big storage space that I keep backed up anyway, it isn't really much additional cost to have enough storage to put our media collection. But, it does take a bit of technical know-how and time. The convenience is nice, though. If my wife is traveling, she can easily (w/o my help) just pull local copies of whatever movies to her iPad and away she goes. I can do the same... even our young son can do it.

So, I like having physical media in terms of ownership, but I hardly ever use the physical media aside from an initial rip.

Sounds like you've got a pretty sweet setup and if you've got the IT expertise and already have a large collection then that approach makes sense (especially as you say in the case of music where the file sizes are more manageable, and CDs have good quality tracks with no DRM). But for someone just starting their collection or without much IT expertise I still think iTunes is a good option.

The argument that some executive somewhere can erase your collection at a whim is still valid, and in the early days of online services I would make that argument myself. But now I temper it with the idea that as long as you deal with reputable companies to begin with you should be ok. For example look at the recent case where Microsoft decided to exit the music business, but upon doing so did a deal with Spotify to ensure their customers' collections were duplicated in that service. I think Apple would probably similarly look after people if they ever decided to exit the music business (and iTunes purchased tracks don't have DRM anyway so could just be downloaded given sufficient notice).

And if worse comes to worst and you do lose everything, its not like its your precious home movies or something, its just the creations of others.

Video: Changes to the MacBook Pro we want Apple to make

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June 2018

cgWerks said:

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Your collection will still be just as excellent as your start to add downloads to it.

Well, not really, because if you stop paying, your content goes away.

There's no ongoing cost for movies purchased in iTunes. In fact if you maintain a local collection of ripped DVDs you probably have ongoing costs in terms of time and maintenance of your storage solution.

Furthermore Apple treats you well if you buy a movie from them! In the time I've owned my 100 or so movies in iTunes, many were upgraded from 720p to 1080p for free, and more recently about 7 or 8 have been upgraded to 4K HDR for free. You also notice new cover art downloading occassionally which is not a big thing but still nice.

Also, since newer Macs (Kaby Lake onwards) have 10-bit HEVC decoding hardware I suspect Apple will start re-encoding a lot of these movies from from H.264 to HEVC soon (to reduce their streaming costs). That saves me doing it! Also they will probably use professional video people who will re-encode from a lossless source and know the best codec parameters for different kinds of movies, which beats me fumbling around in Handbrake.

And never has a movie been removed from my iTunes collection. There are several that they no longer sell on the store, but Apple must have done some kind of deal with the studios whereby people who have already purchased something maintain access even if the studio removes it from sale. Those movies just remain in my collection and can be downloaded or viewed like any other, though I don't expect future resolution or codec upgrades for those ones.

Certainly for subscription services like Netflix you would lose access if you stopped paying. But even then, the cut throat competition in the subscription space means that the ongoing cost of a subscription is still probably less than maintaining a storage array. Unless like Macike you have everything on optical. Or, perhaps in your case you have a personal movie collection and are paying for storage for that anyway, so storing the commercial movies might not add much marginal cost. But in any event I don't think its clear cut that local collections are better.

Apple launches another kind of Bootcamp at WWDC, and it's a HIIT

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June 2018

AppleInsider said:

Looks like a vision of Hell to me... everybody bowing down, red light everywhere, someone at the front lording over the scene with a sign that says "SWEAT" behind them.

Some game developers hint at abandoning the Mac if Apple phases out OpenGL

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June 2018

If Apple drops OpenGL it's not Mac that's doomed, it's OpenGL. Because Windows already favors Direct3D, so if Mac now favors Metal that only leaves Linux, but they are tech nerds who will push for Vulcan to replace OpenGL just because its newer.

That would not create an ideal situation for devs, a different graphics API for each platform! But it will give an advantage to the bigger porting companies who have the resources to create translation layers. Smaller devs will have to either use an engine or pick and choose platforms.