Comments on: Apple posts tools for building TuneKit iTunes LPs and Extras

By: Gunga Din Movie Streaming « marcel6840736

Gunga Din Movie Streaming « marcel6840736 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:48:49 +0000

[...] Apple posts tools for building TuneKit iTunes LPs and Extras … [...]

By: nat

nat — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:09:54 +0000

One of the best uses for TuneKit that I haven’t heard suggested is for App Store app pages in iTunes 9. Each app could essentially have its own interactive, self-contained promotional website with videos, photo galleries, all with slick animations and (if enabled) music. It could even house things like leaderboards for games. Just a thought.

By: hofighter

hofighter — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:19:05 +0000

I think Apple may very well have a winning game plan here. What I really want is for content that I find interesting to be easily discovered and seamlessly delivered to my consumption device of choice (whether that’s my computer, my iPhone, or some future TabletMac). I frankly hate thumbing through magazines at the airport news stand looking for something to keep me intrigued during my flight. I surely hate all the adds in today’s magazines – more adds than compelling content for sure.

If Apple could provide me with an iTunes eco-system for all my reading needs – news, pleasure, etc, I’d be all for it. It could suggest articles I might find interesting based on my past buying habits, and it would certainly be more accurate than my news stand stumblings. Maybe I could just buy the article or two that I care about instead of the rest of the crap I don’t.

Silly analogy maybe, but “rich content” makes me think about the Daily Prophet newspaper from the Harry Potter books and movies. Maybe Apple could provide a way for me to choose how I consumed an article…(1) read it myself, (2) watch a short clip or news broadcast, or (3) maybe have it read to me text to speech. The possibilities seem endless and far more compelling to me. I’d frankly be ecstatic to pay Apple (and all their future publishing partners) for a service that puts everything I want to read in front of me – and maybe even wirelessly at that. Bring it on!

By: MipWrangler

MipWrangler — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:22:40 +0000

@Enzos

Mip: you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! I’m using Safari in 32-bit mode so that the add blocker works. (I’m sure Dan will understand, it is he who also recommended click2flash)

Honestly, on RDM it isn’t too bad (other than the additional load time) because the ads quickly scroll off the page while reading Dan’s lengthy – yet enjoyable – posts! Plus I read them in Mobile Safari most of the time anyway.

By: The Mad Hatter

The Mad Hatter — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:43:42 +0000

ChuckO, My apologies, I had misread this earlier article of Daniel’s to mean that the css/html files were DRMed.

enzos, rm is about the only filetype it can’t play, that is a Real Player format, and was popular at one time, until Microsoft used their monopoly to ship Windows Media with every copy of Windows.

Dorotea, I like Videolan/VLC. While as enzos found out, it doesn’t do .rm files, or DRMed Windows Media, it does everything else, and it works on all operating systems. Since I also use Linux, and even have to use (god forbid) Windows the odd time, having one Video player for all platforms is great.

Yes, ITunes works. Hell, Windows works too. I prefer to avoid both of them when I can.

By: enzos

enzos — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:30:46 +0000

Mad: afraid the VLC player let me down badly a few days ago – couldn’t open or convert .rm files (for a non-technical online mag owner/friend). Tried ffmpegX and, after all the hassles of setting it up.. it didn’t work either. Ended up uploading the bloody things to Youtube which worked fine but not what was intended. I feel the problem is really the unnecessary proliferation of codecs. What a tangled up mess!

Mip: you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! I’m using Safari in 32-bit mode so that the add blocker works. (I’m sure Dan will understand, it is he who also recommended click2flash)

By: Imapolicecar

Imapolicecar — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:47:08 +0000

“One might just as well complain that retails who suffer crippling losses from shoplifting are “failing to adapt” while demonizing those security controls on clothes as being DRM.”

Not really a good analogy imho. I can borrow my friend’s clothes and wear them if I wish. With DRM it seems I have to borrow the clothes with him inside.

By: MipWrangler

MipWrangler — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:47:45 +0000

Interesting arguments. One delusion that people often are blind to with the whole “just let me pay for premium content without the ads” concept is that companies are perfectly willing to let accept payment for the “premium” content, but then the ads never seem to disappear. As Dan likes to say (and nearly always my favorite part of his posts) – this all happened before. When cable TV first came out (and I mean after the whole community antenna thing for you old timers), many of the cable channels were presented without ads. Now it’s hard to find many channels on cable that are presented without ads. Cinema and gaming have also gone this way. What’s worse in my opinion is that in addition to the ads, the cost of the content has actually increased. So on the surface, iTunes LP/Extras looks great, but I am very skeptical that content companies will be able to pass up the ad revenue, especially since they will not have to share control of the ad real estate with vendors like Google. So in the end I think we’ll end up actually paying to watch ads, especially after the “operation” of skipping them is “not permitted” like DVDs and BlueRay can specify today.

The sad part of this is that I actually think Apple’s got a great idea here! Their push for using standard technologies like HTML and JavaScript great to see. In my opinion big media just hasn’t shown itself to have enough integrity to make me believe they’ll use it to make the experience any better for consumers. Making money is why they exist after all.

p.s. Don’t forget… ads don’t just degrade the experience by being present (which they do), but they often degrade the performance of the content as well. RDM is 2 – 3 times faster to fully render with ads disabled. I leave them on for RDM because I want to support Dan’s work, but it certainly makes the experience less pleasant.

By: ChuckO

ChuckO — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:23:23 +0000

I still don’t get how this is “locked” into Apple proprietary format’s. They are open web standards slightly altered so you don’t need a full fledged web server opening up your computer to all kind of security problems like we’ve seen with Microsofts various personal web servers. It seems to me to be a trivial exercise for other companies to build apps that could “play” this content like Apple’s products do. I think Apple just feels like they’ve got the hardware solutions that people will want to buy to view this media on and want to do everything they can to keep Adobe’s proprietary crapware out of this ecosystem.

By: Dorotea

Dorotea — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:30:01 +0000

@The Mad Hatter and FreeRange.

I think the two of you simply have different standards of judging. The Mad Hatter values having a wide variety of codecs while FreeRange values having a system that “Just Works”. I really like iTunes – it just works for me. I don’t have an extensive DVD library – but those that own have been “Handbraked”, and are now available to me through iTunes/AppleTV. Love it…. it works for me.