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An executive with Time Warner has indicated that his company would give up control of the user interface of its services to Apple in order to broker a deal.
Well, duh. Who wouldn't want to cede the design headache for a cable box OS to someone else? And let's not pretend anyone's doing a bang up job right now. Have those interfaces changed much since the 1980s? Well, yes, but that's mostly to support DVRs. Often, it's still just an accordion of shows by channel.
What surprises me is that DirecTV or Dish isn't all over this for some sort of exclusive. Want to outfox cable? Have a better interface. And since many more folks could theoretically all have DirecTV or Dish than any one cable service, it's a no-growth barred proposition for Apple too.
So why isn't Apple pushing for DirecTV as a partner for Apple TV? One word: Cloud.
AppleInsider's post doesn't quite put one and one together, but they're getting there here:
Apple is said to have had discussions with major cable operators to let consumers use a branded set-top box to view both live television and Internet-based content. Apple is rumroed to have proposed an advanced cloud-based video recording service that some said would blur the line between live and on-demand content.
Apple was said to have been particularly interested in storing recorded content in the cloud, which would allow users to start any show at any time from a number of devices beyond their living room television set.
(pretty bad when the rumor site can't spell "rumored")
So the deal isn't just TV (duh). It's about zeroes and ones. Satellite providers don't have an interactive pipe into folks' homes. Cable companies do. Apple knows that interactive pipes are what drive computerized hardware sales. Satellite can essentially only drive conventional TV.
Apple's after much more than your television. They want your movies (commercial and personal), your refrigerator, your toaster, your car when it's parked outside -- they want your centralized, almost always on "entertainment" center and a front-row seat not just providing content, but providing access to all content.
Make sense? It's not about the TV. It's about the literal cable.
[Q:]... The publisher apparently withheld [a Stephen King book's eBook version] to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasnโt this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.
[A:]An illegal download is โ to use an ugly word โ illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical.... Thus youโve violated the publishing companyโs legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but youโve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability...
What crap. Is the book out of print? Is that hardcopy somehow obsolete now? Of course not. There's obviously value added with the eBook or ole C.D. wouldn't've wanted it. How does Mr. Cohen (the "Ethicist") decide when you've paid enough into the system to begin illegal civil disobedience?
Can I pay for the movie in the theater and then download?
Better parallel: Can I burn a Blu-Ray b/c I've purchased the DVD at full price?
What if I paid a clearance price for the DVD? Have I still paid in enough for someone to forward me a bootleg Blu-Ray in high def?
If I've read the book, can I sneak into a theater showing the movie that's not quite filled? Where's the harm in that?
Would it really put poor, poor CD out to take along that "more than three and a half pounds" of codex on his trip? Really?
Look, if you want a law changed because, in this case, you feel superior enough to remark "the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology", then start lobbying. Now show me one fair law that's anticipated a specific technology perfectly. Sort of another anachronism, ain't it? Honestly, I think eBooks are an interesting way to leverage your ownership of IP into more profit. As long as we're not EULAing hardcopies, knock yourselves out.
Furthermore, in this case we have easier solutions for CD. Wait for the g*******d eBook to be released. Trade time for money. Read another book on your trip. I just finished Water is Wide by Pat Conroy on my iPod. You'll enjoy it. If you want to read a new book now, ya gotta pay. Or why not go to your local library and reserve a copy to read while you're waiting. That's a pretty good deal, isn't it? You're not out a buck. Now you read Conroy on your trip and you get to know the latest and greatest from that sick-o King[1]. And guess what, you've already paid for the privilege. Take advantage of it.
Had Cohen even so much as said, "Though the risk of being caught is low, it does exist, and in NY the penalty is [X]. I would also say that you need to delete the eBook as soon as you return from your trip, when its marginal utility is gone, and that once the eBook is released, you should stop using this rationalization immediately," I would have felt a little better.
As it stands, it bothers me that a representative of what's essentially the record of the United States could show such a simpleton's approach to ethics and encourage his readers to break the law without understanding the ramifications on themselves and the corporations that provide them with their goods. I'm no corporate cheerleader, but when a "ethicist" rationalizes stealing in officially sanctioned e-print, you know society's gauge of right and wrong had long since made a turn for the gutter.
[1] Actually, I'm suspicious King is one of the best authors alive. I've read a few of his books that aren't about blood and guts, and they're all exceptionally well written. Still, I tried that city in a bubble book and couldn't get past the first few chapters. SICK. It's all about how you apply yourself, I guess.
Thereโs an e-book reader app, but itโs not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits).
Well, he's probably not wrong in the sense that movies in a book form factor have largely displaced the demand for text.
That said, I've personally purchased a good deal more books (here, "books writ large") recently because of my iPod. I've sailed through a few junk novels (vampires and WoW fantasy), Pat Conroy's The Water is Wide (horrible job editing the eBook, however, RosettaBooks), part of Pygmy from that Fight Club guy (a little too hard core for me to finish), short story from Frank Herbert, a double issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, etc etc., as well as a few books for young'uns that I've managed to share.
The key is that it's lots easier to read when you're accidentally carrying these books around with your calendar, notebook, mail handler, and mp3 player. If the iPad is mobile at all, those who do read will read more.
And more importantly to book publishers (and this is where Pogue misses the boat), it's a lot harder to buy a used eBook than a used codex (ie, paper book). The iPod/Kindle/iPad/iPhone platforms all allow strict DRM, both in software and in physical tipping points (how exactly would I share my eBooks? I can figure it out, but 1) it's illegal to pass files, I believe and 2) I can't toss 'em across the office when I'm done and not worry about when they come back).
The iPad will be much friendly to read on than the iPod and iPhone, even friendlier than the none too colorful (see Sega Game Gear commercial, above -- and that's the guy from My Name is Earl, ain't it?) Kindle. I've used my laptops a good deal, but a longer-lived battery and a friendly, hand-holdable device should encourage even more folk who like to read to read digitally and, I'll wager, to read more. And it's going to be much more likely that what they're reading is material they purchased directly from the publisher. Take that, local thrift store!
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.
I wonder. I've always bought into the concept of delayed gratification, even if I do occasionally [purchase from Amazon and] download a random album or two on a whim (Krankhaus only a few good tracks; Delores O'Riordan's Are You Listening much better). It's taken me most of my life to figure out that in all arenas, impulses must be strategically resisted and then followed, not simply delayed until masterpieces of idealism are finally created.
I figured this out in part from basketball coaches. When I played [third string], we were always told to concentrate on fundamentals, defense, rebounding, and hustle. "We'll teach you to score," the varsity coach used to tell us as early as junior high.
Turns out that's a lot of baloney, and Brooks is feeding it to us too. What's expected is that *everyone* is teaching themselves to score. You're not supposed to be able to completely resist the impulse to shoot like mad, no matter what the coach tells you. What he was saying is, "You'll teach yourself to score; we'll find places within a [necessarily constrained] offense for you to do so."
If all you can do is hustle, rebound, play D, and be in the right place at the right time, you'll never win a game. At best, you'll tie. And unless you're Robert Brickey (name appropo, no?) or Dennis Rodman or Ben Wallace, you won't have much of a career. You're stuck, instead, as the main training dummy/sparring partner for the first-stringers. (Not that I'm complaining. Scrimmage time is playing time of a sort, and I got a lot more than the guy sitting second string. And I still have the misplaced notion I can stop anybody in the post, whether he's 6'4" and 250 lbs (so beating me by 2" and 35 lbs. And I'm slower. F**k.) or no. It's all about confidence, baby. That's another post.)
Discourse expects impulsive behavior and then does its best to proscribe the same -- in a horribly exaggerated fashion -- with the understanding that the idealistic vision will be unattainable. As my current compositional method (and flawed basketball skills) attest, I never understood that common discourse really wasn't for neurotically literal-minded schomes like me.
(This, by the way, is part of the reason programming is so much fun for idiots like me. Idealistic discourse is, in a digital world, suddenly enabled! With good guidance drafting specs (always a priority for me), you actually can write exactly what's expected of you.)
iTunes Tagging lets consumers โtagโ songs broadcast by a digital FM station by pressing a button on a radio. The HD Radio stores song metadata that transfers automatically to an iPod when it docks to the radio. Later, when the iPod is synced with a PC, all the userโs tagged songs will appear in a playlist for previewing and buying.
Let's not play dumb. Like Firefox and Google, Clear Channel is doing this because they'll get a kickback for each track sold this way, or they're at least paying Apple up front to play, right? If Apple's paying them, I've misjudged Apple's clout, though it's still a win for the Jobsaphiles.
But this brings me to my second concern, the digitization of the public airwaves. I know analog radio's full of adverts already, but there's something extra creepy about the content carrying commercial metadata like digital mules. It seems like the public benefit, the content the advertisements are supposed to support, from broadcasts are getting harder to find.
And that's the point of digital, right? If nothing else, we can package any sort of non-physical content with digital without having to redesign the method of delivery. iTunes tagging is one way commercial interests can shove their way into what used to be independent content. HD radio is another -- how long before we have HD 2.0? 3.0? etc?
I was recently looking at the Honda Nighthawk, and the motorcycle's been pretty much the same for twenty years. Up until Feb of next year, we could use most any TV made in the last half-century to get our CSI or American Idol fix. How long before TVs are "upgraded" as quickly as video game consoles and our VHS, ur DVD, um... Blu-Ray players?
Poorly written blog, I know, but this iTunes tagging is representative of the future in a way I don't quite yet fully comprehend, but it's setting off the proverbial warning bells.
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