Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Apple Schmapple

Well, Apple released some cool stuff today. I guess the biggest deal is the new Macbook Air, which is like .76 inches thick or something like that. Only $1799, so act now. Right. Well, hopefully this will drive down the cost of the existing macbooks. The new one has multi-touch gesture support, a 5 hour battery life, and no optical drive (finally - those things devour batteries). Apple also released some new stuff for their new iPods (like maps and email). I think Apple also announced something cool about Apple TV, but I forget what it is. As is par for the course after an announcement by Steve Jobs, the online Apple Store is down.

4 comments:

carson said...

Apple TV has a new movie section allowing internet rentals. Writers, director and actors however will not be paid for these unless a new contract is signed, because of course the internet hasn't proven to be of profit to the producers. They want to wait 3 years and see if there is anymoney to be made in new media. I wonder why Apple saw a different bottom line.

A said...

Apple is a combined branding machine and hardware company. The fact that you can now download "rentals" with this cheap device is huge for those who don't own a computer or are too befuddled by technology to hook one up to a TV. When you think about it, it's pretty ridiculous to send a DVD full of data through the mail via Netflix when we have this lovely system designed specifically to transfer ones and zeroes called the internet.

The hilarious part to me is that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have similarly-priced gadgets that are already connected to TVs and the internet.

Maybe Apple should hire some of those recently-fired writers to produce some original content for their new toy. The iTunes Store exists to sell iPods, not music - if this Apple TV device takes off, why not offer writers a cut of those sales combined with some content-based residuals?

carson said...

And so it shall be, Family Guy's creator is trying to set up original internet content through google using the WGA (writer's guild of America) guidelines for residual pay. A fair contract for the new media device used.
I would applaud Apple in doing so. Shit I would be happy if Gates bought Hollywood at this point.

A said...

Well, Gates is out of the Game - he's leaving Microsoft to head up his enormous charity. While I hate almost everything Microsoft does (with Sony being a close second), Gates's charitable wing does great things for great causes.

Oh, and here's Seth's link:
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/01/wgamrc-deal-wil.html

Family Guy is in a great spot to make this happen - they've got a cult following who will go through anything to watch that show. If Fox, NBC, et al. would rather compete online than on their own stations, they're giving up massive amounts of leverage, and speeding the move to online distribution in the process. And while it hurts right now, in the long run those writers will be paid more fairly if a company like Apple or Google starts making some money from this.