Christopher Mackay’s Blog

Steve Jobs’ announcement at All Things D that YouTube would be supported on AppleTV has lead to comments by Apple’s David Moody at iLounge.com:

Moody said that YouTube will soon be encoding videos in the H.264 streaming-efficient compression format preferred by Apple TV, and that all new videos submitted to YouTube as of the mid-June launch of the AppleTV update will be playable by the device. From then until fall, YouTube will be encoding its entire back-catalog in H.264 format, adding videos in chunks until everything is accessible to Apple TV users.

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Today, in response to a complaint on the QuickTime VR mailing list, I’ve posted an entry on QuickTime VR on Wikipedia. Previously, the entire entry consisted of a link to the QuickTime page.

QuickTime VR (virtual reality) is one of many capabilities of Apple’s QuickTime multimedia software, which operates as a stand-alone player for Macintosh and Windows PCs, as well as a web-browser plug-in.

There are two main types of QuickTime VR files:

1. Panoramas
2. Objects

VR Panormas are typically 360-degree photographs (3D-modelled scenes) which allow the user to look all around a certain location and, in the case of cubic panoramas, all the way up and down, too. These photos — sometimes called nodes — may be stitched together from a number of photographs (anywhere from 2 to 20 or more), and multiple nodes can be connected to form a scene..

Object VRs allow the user to rotate or otherwise manipulate a virtual object — again, photographic or 3D-modelled — by clicking and dragging on it. Single-row objects allow rotation along a single axis, and can have quite small filesizes. Multi-row objects may allow the user to see the top and bottom of the object, but will result in proportionately larger files.

It’s not perfect, but hopefully it will be improved upon, by someone else if not by me.

Obviously, I have no idea whether or not Apple will announce a video-enabled iPod on October 12th.

If they do, it will be called iPod video.

Why is that so hard to deduce, given iPod mini, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, iPod U2, and Mac mini? The rumour sites all seem to call this a “video iPod”, or even more improbable names (e.g. viPod, vidPod, vPod, video iPod).

Apple recently announced a series of updates. The most widely-anticipated was the Motorola/Apple/Cingular iTunes phone. To call it hideous is an injustice to all self-respecting things hideous. Still, it’s a toe-hold in a new market, and it stakes out some small territory. More will follow. Enough about that.

QuickTime 7.0.2 was released, marking the first full release of QuickTime 7 for Windows, and the quashing of some QuickTime Player Pro bugs that were of particular interest to QuickTime VR authors like myself. Kudos to the QuickTime team.

iTunes 5 is also fun. John Gruber has a hilarious take on the app’s appearance, in which he correctly identifies himself as an Apple interface zealot. He’s not wrong, but he is amusing. Visit his site. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The new iPod nano looks brilliant. The black version is the one to get. The lanyard headphones option is very cool. It’s almost enough to make me wish I didn’t have a 20 GB click-wheel iPod. Almost.

Oh, and you can now buy all of Madonna’s music — on a song-by-song basis, no less — via iTunes. I’d make some snide remark about how no self-respecting Pink Floyd fan would ever listen to Madonna if it weren’t for the fact that I bought two of her tunes…

But where’s the iPod video? Either there’s going to be another announcement soon, or Robert Cringely’s predictions vis-a-vis an iTunes video store aren’t quite on the mark.

One of the notable updates that came with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was QuickTime 7. It offers significant improvements by way of H.264, a codec that offers radically-improved video quality at lower data-rates than Sorenson 3, the old stand-by that’s getting, well, old.

However:

• Some editing functionality in the Pro version doesn’t work. This seems to be a result of bugs in QuickTime Player.app, as opposed to QuickTime itself, as using a copy of QuickTime Player 6.5 restores this functionality.
• Multi-node QuickTime VR panoramas still function properly, unless you need to be able to tell where hotspots (links between nodes) are. Then you have to rely on clairvoyance.
• While most of the bugs primarily affect QuickTime Player (as opposed to the arguably more-important browser plug-in) and are mostly related to authoring functions rather than playback issues, few (if any) of them were addressed by the recent release of QuickTime 7.0.1. This release seems aimed more at users of Final Cut Pro.
• There’s still no sign of QuickTime 7 for Windows. Normally this would be quite annoying, but with these outstanding bugs, this is a good thing.

Today’s SteveNote at MacWorld San Fransisco was a notable one.

In addition to an extended preview of Mac OS X Tiger (which looks great), details on the next release of Keynote and AppleWorks’ successor, Pages (bundled together as iWork), iLife 05 and QuickTime 7, he announced the real treats — Mac mini and iPod shuffle.

• Streaming QuickTime of Expo Keynote
• Mac mini (US link)
• iPod shuffle (US link)
• iWork (US link)
• Tiger
• iLife 05 (US link)

While the Mac mini is a bit reminiscent of the PowerMac G4 Cube, I think this one’s going to be a runaway hit. At $629 Canadian ($499 US), it’s the right computer at the right price. It’s reasonably configurable (although the price on a 1 GB RAM upgrade is monstrous) and unbelievably tiny. The real selling point though, is that Windows switchers can keep their monitors, keyboards, mice, and printers. Oh, and their iPods.

The iPod shuffle is going to be an even bigger hit. I’m betting that lots of these are going to be sold to current iPod users who want a second unit that’s a little less bulky, less droppable and more grab-it-and-go-able. Those who’ve been sitting on the fence can officially jump off at these prices.

Of course, there will be those who complain that it’s not also a GPS/camera phone/HD camcorder; they’ll be wrong if they predict sluggish sales.

Tiger’s looking interesting. Dashboard looks very cool, Spotlight could easily revolutionize everything I do (Mail 2.0 is going to be amazing), and I think developers are quickly going to embrace this system-wide search technology, pushing it far beyond anything Steve Jobs demoed this morning.

So, I go out of town for a couple of days and Apple goes completely crazy. (Streaming QuickTime/MPEG-4 video of the event is available, as are photos. This is a very good thing.

• Black U2 iPod (with their upcoming album pre-installed)
• iPod Photo (colour screen, album art, colour calendar & games on the iPod & iPhoto sync)
• new versions of QuickTime (6.5.2) and iTunes (4.7)
• But most importantly, the iTunes Music Store is coming to Canada in November!

How cool is that?!? I bought copies of the latest releases by R.E.M. and Mark Knopfler yesterday. They may well be the last CDs I ever buy. Here’s hoping.