thomas fitzgerald.net

Ok, this is kind of weird. It seems that the new Aluminium IR remote from Apple has a phantom button. They removed the play pause button from the centre and positioned it below the arrow pad, yet according to Tech Crunch, the centre still works as a play pause button

That might make some sense as just a straight-up ergonomic design change, but the weirdest thing is that the center of the navigational circle is still a button, that does the same thing as the Play/Pause button.

I don’t mean to dump on everyone’s enthusiasm, but I have to take issue with everyone (and by everyone I mean the majority of mac related blogs) getting very excited at the discovery that the iTunes LP format and the iTunes Extras format seems to be designed to work with the appleTV some time in the future. I’m sorry, but did people really think they wouldn’t support it on the AppleTV at some point? I’ve seen this at least ten times in my RSS feed this morning and personally I think it’s a non story, because, of course they’re going to make it work on the AppleTV.

From MacRumors:

Apple has quietly discontinued the 40GB Apple TV overnight and reduced the price of the 160GB model down to $229. Previously, the 40GB and 160GB models were priced at $229 and $329, respectively.

Might a new model finally be nearing release? Here’s hoping.
[Read Apple Drops 40GB Apple TV and Discounts 160GB Model to $229 - Mac Rumors]

With tablet rumors swirling out of control and supposed iPod touch photos doing the rounds, the build up to Apple’s usual September annual event seem to be bigger than ever this year. Just to play devils advocate here are my thoughts as to what we will see for Apple’s consumer electronics fall lineup. (Disclaimer: I have no inside information. This is just pure speculation and it’s just for the fun of it so please don’t take this too seriously)

So the season Finale of Battlestar Galactica aired on friday night on the SciFi (sorry, SyFy) channel in the US and I think it would be fair to say that the two hour episode was one of the most eagerly awaited events on television in years. The show has a huge fan base and the much publicized finale was something everyone was gearing up for. Of course a lot of people get their shows off iTunes and this was probably one of the most eagerly awaited downloads since iTunes began selling TV shows. So you can only imagine how pissed off a lot of people were when they decided to split the finale into two parts on iTunes so they could charge twice as much for it.

At the moment this announcement seems limited to the iTunes store in the USA, but it’s good news for those who have wanted this feature. HD Movies will cost $19.99 which doesn’t seem like particularly good value when you consider that they are only 720p, the average price of a blu-ray disk is around $20 with many selling for less on Amazon, and movies on itunes are DRM’d up the wazoo. Just as an example – the movie “Bangkok Dangerous” is $19.99 in 720p HD on itunes or you can get it on Amazon for $17.99 on Blu-Ray, for which you get 1080p video at a much higher quality, and it is a 2 disk special edition with a boat load of extras . I’m sorry but this is not good value Apple / Movie Studios.

I just came across this excellent article recounting some of the things critics said when dvd first debuted and people were predicting it’s early demise, and more importantly how they’re using the same arguments against blu-ray.

Here’s a couple of thing’s I’ve been pondering all day.

Why have Microsoft been hyping the crap out of their xbox 360 sales numbers over the last couple of weeks. It seems like every other day they’re putting out a press release saying how great they are. Could it be that they know that the price drop on an aging system will only work so long and they want to make the most of it while they can?