Adobe Flash Finally Get On-Board with h.264

Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@Jay Again says, “Say HELLO… to new standards and clearer video.”

And more to the point say hello to already established, and truely universal standards, as opposed to yet another proprietary Microsoft or Adobe standard, (which, even if it’s on “98%” of all computers, it’s still proprietary).

MW=”truth” – As in, and that’s the truth.

IN RESPONSE TO:

MacDailyNews – Adobe bringing HD video, high quality audio to Flash using H.264, AAC (iPhone Flash support?)
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 – 09:45 AM EDT  —  Apple Stock Quote: 131.07 (+3.50, +2.74%)

Adobe bringing HD video, high quality audio to Flash using H.264, AAC (iPhone Flash support?)

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 – 02:58 PM EDT
“Today Adobe, the San Jose software maker, will announce that it is integrating a standard format for high definition video into the newest version of its immensely popular Flash video player. Flash players currently sit on 98 percent of all desktop computers and hundreds of millions of portable and handheld devices. Sites like YouTube, ABC.com and NBC.com favor Flash over competing players like Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s Windows Media, since Flash is relatively easy to develop for and videos play directly in the browser,” Brad Stone reports for The New York Times.

”Adobe will integrate support for H.264, and for the high-performance AAC audio standard, into the newest version of Flash, available for download today,” Stone reports.

”H.264 is an open standard and the result of an industry consortium. Apple added H.264 support to QuickTime two years ago and has been integrating it throughout its entire line of products this year. Microsoft has its own proprietary high-def standard, called Windows Media VC-9,” Stone reports.

Full article here.

Adobe’s press release here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "KenC" for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Take: Paving the way for iPhone Flash support? Apple clearly wants widespread H.264 and AAC support. Now the Flash plug-in for iPhone makes sense. In fact, we’d venture to guess that there is a high probability that Apple told Adobe to support H.264 and AAC, if Adobe wanted to get Flash onto the iPhone.

In early July, The Wall Street Journal’s Walter S. Mossberg reported, “At launch, the iPhone version of the Safari browser is missing some plug-ins needed for playing common types of Web videos. The most important of these is the plug-in for Adobe’s Flash technology. Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months.”

Note: The advanced H.264 codec makes it possible for Apple’s QuickTime 7 (released April 29, 2005) to play back high-definition video on a personal computer without additional hardware required. Apple’s HD QuickTime gallery is here.

Adobe is following Apple’s considerable lead here.

Read My Lips, No Subscriptions

Comment from: Mr. Peabody

If Rubin thinks that model that follows after traditional cable subscriptions is the wave of the future then he’s about 20 years too late.

I’ve always been against subscription services for media delivery even back when there were [apparently] no alternatives – And if a guy like Rubin, with all due respect to his long years in the “business”, thinks that subscriptions are the way to go, then I’m absolutely positive that I don’t want to get stuck with yet another subscription model.

IN RESPONSE TO:

Tuesday, September 04, 2007 – 10:28 AM EDT  —  Apple Stock Quote: 142.189 (+3.709, +2.68%)

Columbia Records’ Rick Rubin dreams of unending music subscription fees and rendering iPod obsolete

Tuesday, September 04, 2007 – 09:09 AM EDT
Rick Rubin, co-head of Columbia Records, appears to be nearly as clueless as the rest of those making up the old guard music cartels. Rubin thinks that subscriptions are the future. Just like most other clueless music label dinosaurs. At least Rubin understands that the music industry is dead, even if he doesn’t understand what will save it.

”Seemingly overnight, the entire industry is collapsing. Sales figures on top-selling CDs are about 30 percent lower than they were a year ago, and the usual remedies aren’t available. Since radio is no longer a place to push a single, record companies have turned to television and movies,” Lynn Hirschberg reports for The New York Times.

”‘Until very recently,’ Rubin told me over lunch at Hugo’s, a health-conscious restaurant in Hollywood, ‘there were a handful of channels in the music business that the gatekeepers controlled. They were radio, Tower Records, MTV, certain mainstream press like Rolling Stone. That’s how people found out about new things. Every record company in the industry was built to work that model. There was a time when if you had something that wasn’t so good, through muscle and lack of other choices, you could push that not very good product through those channels. And that’s how the music business functioned for 50 years. Well, the world has changed. And the industry has not,’” Hirschberg reports.

”Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today’s world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it’s going to be a declining business. This model is done,” Hirschberg reports.

”Rubin… says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. “You would subscribe to music,” Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. ‘You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home… And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now,’” Hirschberg reports.

”Rubin sees no other solution. ‘Either all the record companies will get together or the industry will fall apart and someone like Microsoft will come in and buy one of the companies at wholesale and do what needs to be done,’ he said,” Hirschberg reports.

Full endless article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we explain fairly regularly, whenever clueless music industry types flounder about in the mainstream press: Business models that fly in the face of human nature are doomed to failure.

Human beings like to listen to favorite songs over and over. They like to own these songs, so that they can play them over and over. They do not want to pay someone an unending monthly rate in order to be allowed to hear their favorite songs.

1,000 excellent songs costs $990 (or $1290 for DRM-free, higher-quality EMI songs) for life, but to listen to them with a $19.95/month subscription plan for 10 years would cost $2394, for 20 years it’d be $4788, $7182 for 30 years, $9576 for 40 years, and so on – and that’s not even taking inflation into account! That subscription rate is going to increase over time, but once you buy a song, you own it for life at the price at which you purchased it — your deal gets better over time, not worse.

Now, for the limited amount of people for which a music subscription service would be welcome (those that can’t do basic math or who’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness), we say, by all means, Apple should offer it – if it makes business sense (i.e. development and operational costs are less than profit potential).

Regardless of what happens, the fact remains: The labels want subscriptions to succeed because they dream of a recurring revenue stream, not because music consumers desire such a service. Just because subscriptions are what would preserve the old guard music cartels doesn’t mean subscriptions are the answer. Dinosaurs are extinct for a reason.

We can almost hear the greedy bastards in their music cartel boardrooms, “If only we could get them on subscription plans, if only we could get them on subscription plans…” Dreams of easy, constantly-flowing rivers of cash do not a successful business model make, but it’s no wonder that the music cartels dream of this model. It’s just so powerful that they can’t let it go and wake up. The subscription model is the rope that will hang these greedy bastards once and for all.

One more time: Business models that fly in the face of human nature are doomed to failure.

Now, for TV shows and movies, a subscription service makes perfect sense because it better fits human nature, matching the way people over the age of four consume those types of content than does outright purchasing. Not to mention, where do you store all of that content that you own, but are only going to watch once or twice? Most people can count the number of movies they’ve watched three or more times on their fingers.

We want to buy our music and subscribe to a TV shows and movies plan via Apple’s iTunes Store.

Rubin should stick to producing music, stop greedily dreaming of jukeboxes in the sky that continually rain down money into music cartel pockets, and figure out that it ain’t Microsoft that’s going to own the music business.

Apple Monopolizing NOR Flash Market?

Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@twilightmoon

Ultimately I’m happy for you that you’ve found ATT acceptable to work with, but comparing ATT with Verizon is roughly like comparing one felony criminal with another one – just my opinion obviously – but – - there you have it.

But glad you’re iPhone experience is going well, personally I love most Apple products and find them well worth the investment in every way.

IN RESPONSE TO:

Comment from: twilightmoon@mac.com

My mom and dad were down in San Diego near Mexican border (a bit north so not smack on the border but general area).

They made phone calls from within US, and were charged use of Mexican international phone towers!

AT&T;worked it out, my mom said they were very accommodating.

In fact, before my family got iPhones I read many people complaining about AT&T;on here saying how horrid their service was. We had numerous problems with Verizon. My mom had several occasions where she waited over an HOUR at physical store for VERIZON. Numerous cases of being treated horribly both in store and on phone.

AT&T;? Not one problem so far, never a wait anything close to an hour. Service that’s dependable, courteous, and for a cell phone company, efficient.

IN RESPONSE TO:

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 – 02:51 PM EDT  —  Apple Stock Quote: 135.92 (-0.79, -0.58%)

Apple monopolizes Taiwan NOR flash market

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 – 08:48 AM EDT
“Both Silicon Storage Technology (SST) and Spansion, who are said to have their capacities fully booked by Apple, have no additional capacity to fulfill demand from motherboard makers,” Hans Wu and Esther Lam report for DigiTimes.

”Given that Apple demands a considerable amount of NOR flash and that there is persistent demand growth from handset vendors in China, Spansion is said to have no additional capacity left, the sources said. Spansion rival SST, which focuses relatively more on the motherboard market, is said to have encountered a similar situation,” Wu and Lam report. 

MacDailyNews Note: NOR vs. NAND memory card architecture: NOR flash is typically used for flash memory that’s used to store and run code; it has fast read capability, but is slower than NAND for write and erase functions. For example, in the iPhone, NOR would be used for the operating system code while NAND would be used to store music, videos, etc.

”Citing the present supply situation, several leading NOR flash makers should continue to see their supplies being booked by Apple in the coming months, the sources stressed,” Wu and Lam report.

Full article here.

Amazon Music Store vs. iTMS

Comment from: Mr. Peabody

Some of things this guy says are true, but not with regard to music purchased at iTMS, that’s what really amazes me about the article. If he were talking buying TV episodes and movies I’d be slightly more with him, but he’s not talking about video he’s talking about music. I can tell you that for me the shopping experience at iTMS is far superior to Amazon, (I bought an album of music on Amazon yesterday), and since playing music on two, and occasionally three devices is all I ever need to do, (as opposed to buying music and then giving it away to all of my best buds), all this continued hoopla about how restrictive it is to buy music at iTMS, combined with the facts that he just got plain wrong – is bogus, simply bogus.

If Apple could twist the networks collective arms and allow us consumer-types to be able to burn at least one DVD of shows that would be playable on any standard component DVD player I think iTMS would do even better than it alreay is with videos. That’s my biggest beef with iTMS – and it is a big one. I buy episodes from one or two shows that I can’t seem to live without, and I refuse to buy movies for the already stated reason. If Amazon wants to really get in the game they should offer TV shows (and include Mac users dammit) with no DRM, now that would be an iTMS killer.

I’m glad for both of these commercial outlets for music, and for their support of my favorite platform, and I will undoubtedly shop at both – even though I much prefer the real-world experience of iTMS.

IN RESPONSE TO:

Thursday, September 27, 2007 – 11:46 AM EDT  —  Apple Stock Quote: 153.61 (+0.84, +0.55%)

Salon: Amazon MP3 store vs. Apple iTunes Store

Thursday, September 27, 2007 – 09:23 AM EDT

“I love the iTunes Music Store. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the shop in the spring of 2003, I called it revolutionary, and who can argue that it’s been anything but?” Farhad Manjoo writes for Salon.

Manjoo writes, “Still, iTunes has always seemed like a stopgap measure, something to tolerate until the music industry got its act together. I think of it, now, as a place to buy music that I like, but not a place to get music I love. If you love something you want a permanent copy, and music from iTunes is fundamentally ephemeral: Nearly everything you purchase from the store will never work on any device not made by Apple.”

MacDailyNews Take: iTunes Store-purchased content work on Mac or Windows PC desktops and notebooks, can be burned onto music CDs and played on any CD player and – by ripping said CD – played on any MP3 player on Earth. It’s quite simple. Known to just about anyone who’s ever used iTunes. Yet, it’s amazing how many people get this wrong either by lazily repeating ignorance or intentionally spreading disinformation, isn’t it?

[And, as MacDailyNews reader "kenpet" notes below: You can also use iTunes to convert your non DRM music files to mp3 which is playable anywhere. Just set your iTunes Preferences: Advanced: Import Using to "MP3 Encoder" and you can then convert any track to MP3 under iTunes' "Advanced" menu.] 

Manjoo continues, “This week, Amazon launched a beta version of a music store that breaks this lock-in.”

MacDailyNews Take: You know, the “lock-in” that doesn’t exist. iPods do not require iTunes Store purchases. The iTunes Store does not require iPods. Is that simple enough for you, Farhad?

Manjoo continues, “All of Amazon’s tracks are sold as unrestricted MP3s, free of Digital Rights Management, or DRM — they will work on just about any music player in the world, including an iPod. The store marks iTunes’ first real competition. In fact, I think it kicks iTunes’ buttons.”

MacDailyNews Take: And we’re supposed to care about what you think because so far you’ve gotten extremely simple facts completely wrong? M’kay, Farhad.

Manjoo continues, “Here’s the main way Amazon runs circles around iTunes: I kid you not, shopping for digital music at Amazon simply feels better than shopping on iTunes. That’s because everything is unrestricted. You don’t have to consider where you’re going to play the songs or if you plan to keep them for the long run… Most of the tracks on iTunes, meanwhile, are gummed up by Apple’s copy-protection scheme, called FairPlay. Under these restrictions, you can put your songs on just five computers at a time; make only seven CD copies of a particular playlist; and, if you want to go mobile, the iPod and iPhone are your only option.”

MacDailyNews Take: Quick, alert the manufacturers! Mac and Windows PC notebooks are not “mobile.” Although, for some reason, we see people – on planes, for example – listening to something with white earbuds plugged into their notebooks. Must not be music. Oh, “only” seven CDs (until you change the order of a song and can burn seven more). Regardless, all you need is one CD and – Boom! – unrestricted Psychic well-being out the yin-yang.

Manjoo continues, “As wonderful as it has been to see Apple change the music business — and make no mistake, that’s what it did; Amazon’s store is only possible because Apple paved the way — nobody benefits from a digital-music monopoly.”

MacDailyNews Take: Farhad really screwed up here; he got something right.

Manjoo continues, “From now on when I look for music, I’m going to go to Amazon first. Only if I don’t find something there will I think about buying from iTunes. If you value your freedom, I recommend you do the same.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Kevin" for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Take: You go to Amazon first if you’re interested in saving some money, not because of some ignorant dope scribbling about the value of “freedom.” People who are looking at Amazon forget that prices are not static. These could be introductory prices for all we know. If the labels are giving better pricing to Amazon, and artificially manipulating the market, then Apple – and perhaps Apple’s lawyers – are going to have something serious to say about it.

Competition is good. Don’t forget that it was Apple’s Steve Jobs who called for the end of music DRM, prompting just such competition. So, use the store that offers what you want, whether it be cross-platform support, file formats, bit-rates, selection, and/or prices. We plan to check out both Amazon and iTunes Store when buying music – because they both support Macs and iPods. We’ll probably buy from whichever store has the best price (even though we prefer AAC over the old dino MP3 format). Competition is good. Let it work its magic.

People who look at this as “Amazon takes on iTunes Store” completely miss the real story. Jobs’ call for the removal of DRM was designed to totally marginalize Microsoft, once and for all. It’s the final nail in MS’s coffin. Redmond will not control digital music formats. Apple won. Meanwhile, iPod sales continue unabated as iTunes Store does not and never did drive iPod purchases (which we know because 97% of music on the average iPod is not from the iTunes Store). And, believe it or not, despite recent hyperbole, Apple’s iTunes Store will be just fine.

iPhone LawSuits for Sale – Get Your iPhone LawSuit

Comment from: Mr. Peabody

@M.T. MacPhee – Nice try though.

@darknight – Precisely my point. Whether they had five minutes or five years ahead of time, it’s just too convenient to wait until almost all of the dust is settled and then try and squeek one in.

And while we’re on Japanese culture, lets not forget that they’ve almost always been able to take “western” ways and do them more efficiently with higher productivity. I guess this includes being the litigious piss ants that we’ve become here in the grand ole U.S. of A. No matter how you size it up, it looks frivilous from and end user stand point. They produce intercoms, Apple produces iPhones – whatta ya gonna do…

IN RESPONSE TO:

MacDailyNews – Japan intercom maker ‘Aiphone’ in talks with Apple over ‘iPhone’ trademark

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 – 05:35 PM EDT  —  Apple Stock Quote: 127.57 (+5.35, +4.38%)

Japan intercom maker ‘Aiphone’ in talks with Apple over ‘iPhone’ trademark

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 – 01:38 PM EDT
“Japan’s largest intercom maker, Aiphone Co., said Monday it is talking with Apple Inc. of the United States about the possibility that Apple’s ‘iPhone’ may violate its ‘Aiphone’ trademark,” Kyodo World Service reports.

”Aiphone, listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, claims that Apple’s iPhone mobile phone with the functions of the iPod digital audio player, which hit U.S. store shelves in June, may infringe its trademark,” Kyodo World Service reports.

Kyodo World Service reports, “An official at Apple Japan Inc. said, ‘We cannot comment on this at this stage.’”

Full article here.