Posts by JEDIDIAH

Re: True enough.

iTunes is over hyped proprietary nonsense. It's an 80s approach to something that can be made redundant by a website like Amazon or Netflix. As a media manager, it's also outdated since mobile devices now have the power to do that themselves.

The role of iTunes as a gatekeeper is simply unnecessary.

My phone is now more powerful than the first machines that ran iTunes.

Re: No Ethernet or USB 3 ???

It's worse than that and most Apple pushers won't even acknowledge it.

This isn't just Apple only but it's "New Apple Only". If you have even a slightly older Mac, this thing is of absolutely no use to you. So if you've got any older machines at all, this thing won't connect to them.

This thing is only useful if you have "this years" Mac.

You're better off getting the cheap pocket USB drive from Walmart/Tesco.

Obvious Paradox

You're not a "nerd" but you need large amounts of high speed storage.

How exactly does that work again?

A "normal" person is just going to use a USB pocket drive from Walmart or Tesco.

Shark007

Have you seen the kinds of sites that host multimedia components for Windows and MCE?

That kind of crap right there is reason enough to dump Windows for a Mac at least.

It's mind boggling what DOS Lemmings will put up with. It never ceases to amaze me. I know it shouldn't since I remember the old nonsense with memory management. Still does though.

Re: I can take your GPL code

Your nonsense is EXACTLY why this whole nonsense about the h264 monopoly cartel is such a problem. Our culture and personal information is held hostage to these corporate interests that want to take advantage of everyone.

These kinds of patent cartels are a threat to everyone and should be taken more seriously.

Re: I can take your GPL code

I am "stealing" nothing by playing my own paid-for copy of some DVD with whatever program I choose. The only reason there is even any sort of "ownership" associated with playback is as a backhanded non-cricket extension to copyright law that shouldn't be tolerated anyways.

The physical copy is legitimately acquired and it's my personal property. I should have the legal right to decode it . Period.

Re: Linux

> THe problem exists with some Nvidia drivers - the company does not provide them

Just use the ones supplied from the vendor. Chances are that there's a nice "download vendor graphics drivers" here button on your desktop. Very easy. Even a Mac user can manage.

Re: Really??

Now Windows users get to experience that joy.

The only tricky part on Linux is the DVD DRM. Everything else is handled "App Store" style.

Re: Really??

Stuttering on a "recent nvidia card" ?

An Atom can playback BD rips with a recent nvidia card. Never mind DVD.

Even the relatively ancient 6x00 generation of nvidia cards had partial HW acceleration for MPEG2.

Re: "rely on the many quality solutions on the market"

> So, Microsoft is simply removing

Being unable to play DVDs while the MPEG2 decode support is BUILT INTO THE GPU?

That's pretty counter-intuitive.

What I care about is being able to play my DVDs, home movies, and HD-PVR recordings. Don't care about dodgey marketing rhetoric about "improving efficency". Stuff either works or it doesn't. It either works out of the box or not.

If it's not included, then are you left on your own to sort out things yourself without a proper package manager?

Fanboy silliness.

No you are just a clueless n00b that wouldn't know his machine were having any sort of difficulty unless it completely failed to boot.

Macs are just PCs. Typically, they are trailing edge PCs with no good means for upgrade or maintenance. They use the same random spare parts as any other PC. Some models of Dell and whatnot are actually very good for Hackintoshes because of this.

"tuned"

That's funny because the first generation of Mac I purchased had insufficient memory to deal well with the version of MacOS that shipped with it and graphics apps threw up warnings about Quartz clearly indicating that the video chip was not up to snuff.

"tuned" indeed...

The missus ditched the Mac I gave her because of how Apple likes to do things that seem gratuitiously different. That and lack of support for legacy Win32 software. Fancies her iPad though.

Re: OSX

I don't recall MacOS being terribly optimized in this way. While "startup time" seems to be a great fixation for Windows users and Microsoft.

Sometime when I'm really bored I will have to horse race one of my Macs and my Win7 machine just for laughs.

Re: Apple's Success

No.

Apple has simply ceased to be a computer company.

They are a consumer electronics company. They're like the 80s division of Sony responsible for the Walkman.

What computers they do still sell are PCs pretending to be appliances. Although they are only PCs when it suits Apple marketing. Otherwise they're not PCs. Fanboys go happily go along with all of this.

Their actual PC numbers are miniscule both compared to Apple's own numbers as well as the rest of the PC industry.

Re: Apple's Success

> pay a premium to do away with all the rough edges, half-arsed feature implementations and confusing inconsistent interfaces.

Apple's advantage here is grossly over hyped.

Re: I'll miss it

No one ever tries to pretend that the toaster can replace your PC.

Apple and the fanboys love to advocate that kind of thing.

Now if I have a video appliance of some sort, I expect it to play my home movies or shows I've recorded off of cable. That's a fundemental use case relevant failure. It's hardly comparable to running gcc on my VCR.

Fanboys seek to lower expectations and berate and misrepresent anyone who isn't drinking the kool-aid.

Fanboy Ferrari Delusions

Beyond the fact that no Apple product is really a Ferarri or BMW, you have the very real problem that these are ultimately computing platforms that depend on 3rd party support. The "compatibility" issues that plague computing devices can allow products to become entrenched even when they are completely unworthy.

Many have said that the Mac vs PC thing is repeating itself again.

Apple is living high off the hog for now. That will likely not last.

Unfortunately, computing devices aren't nearly as interchangeable as cars.

In truth, no Apple product is a Ferarri. Although your attempt to claim such just demonstrates the other poster's comments about annoying conspicous consumers.

Re: but only iTunes fans need apply.

> iTunes will play DRM-free content you buy elsewhere, no problem. It's drag and drop.

No it isn't. Not even close.

It's easy to "hate Apple" when fanboys make up rediculously fraudulent claims.

iTunes does NOTHING for video management of alien video formats and has very limited support for anything.

This is why people jailbreak this device.

Re: He really wouldn't need to transcode them

Remuxing doesn't do you any good if the format inside the container is not supported or it uses features that are beyond the ability of the appliance to deal with.

Needing to remux is no less stupid. Really is just shows MORE contempt for the end user because it demonstrates that the appliance already has the ability to deal with the content in question. It simply chooses not to.

The vendor has made a conscious choice to ignore the wider world and to make the device more inconvenient to use than it really needs to be.

Remuxing n+1 files is still n+1 worth of bother.

Re: Solution for self-inflicted problem.

If these devices were allowed to be treated as the PCs that certain people like to pretend they are when it suits them, then all of these "appliance" protocols would be moot. All you really need is a rudimentary file sharing protocol and the freedom to use it.

Of course you have the problem of limited format support. That's a key "feature" of most of these devices. AirPlay doesn't help that. It just adds another layer of indirection.

Re: XBMC

A total luddite spouse can control any HTPC running XBMC. The only advantage the ATV2 has is price.

The ATV2 still has decoder limitations if you are using XBMC or player limitations if you are using Plex. You don't need AirPlay for music or photos.

An ATV2 is still limited ARM hardware that isn't fully functional unless you burgle the device so you can install better software on it.

iTunes is not unique any more and is very replaceable.

Solution for self-inflicted problem.

Streaming from your phone is just a stupid parlour trick. It's something to impress the clueless. It's a very limited feature that mainly exists to cover up the limitations Apple artificially imposes on the ATV2. If the ATV2 were allowed to have it's own apps, the idea of using a $500 device to hack around the limitations of a $99 one would be moot.

First your streaming to one device and then to the other on wireless networks that aren't great to begin with. You're doing all of this despite the fact that the overpriced tablet isn't actually any more capable than the cheap little puck by the TV.

Just let the iPad without a monitor do it's own decoding and run it's own apps.

Not allowing the user community to improve the user experience is major fail.

The Usability Paradox

Transcoding everything by hand is really an absurd suggestion. At least something like Plex offers the illusion that the ATV can play everything and doesn't require you do go through a lot of upfront fuss and bother. Plex (and XBMC) also offer superior media management.

This is one part of the process that some people like to gloss over. This is where XBMC shines and most other solutions (iTunes, MCE) tend to fall down badly.

Re: When will parents learn

Consider this a fundemental design problem with iTunes. You're forced to provide payment information even if you have no intention of buying anything. Free content is muddled with adware and these micropayments. Any system where such micropayments can't be disabled across the board is just asking for this kind of trouble.

It doesn't even have to be "misbehaving children". I personally don't want to end up "buying" something I didn't intend.

You force people to be "in for a penny, if in for a pound" and you will create this kind of problem.

It's entirely unnecessary.

Re: In other news ...

I think the number for Apple products is WAY too high. Consider the distribution of percentages across various demographic groups. Some of course are going to have less penetration than others simply because Apple products are "luxury" goods and a lot of households simply don't have the money to waste on products of that kind regardless of what kind of logo is on it.

iPod/iPhone likely represents the bulk of the numbers and iPhones are already being undercut by Androids.

iPads aren't numerous enough yet and probably are secondary Apple devices. Apple's computing products simply don't have enough penetration to be relevant to this kind of study.

Even in the suburban conspicuous consumption demographic, there may not be large enough numbers to justify generalizing 50% to the population at large. The 50% number probably is for the suburban conspicuous consumption demographic most likely to even have Apple products.