How Apple will takeover the living room
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
About two year ago, in my living room, I swaped my noisy MythTV Linux based XPC by a MacMini running EyeTV with an EPG subscription and connected to analog cable TV with an Elgato TV Tuner Stick. The MacMini was connected using DVI to an 51″ Plasma screen. EyeTV integrated with FrontRow and the Apple Remote. I could browse my music library, play live TV, see the Movie trailers fromt the Apple site. It was great.
Then I couldn’t resist buying an Apple TV. It synced over-the-air with my iMac, so I could play podcast, photos, videos in HD Ready over the component connection of my plasma screen. My Apple TV was connected with the optical connection to a Yamaha Natural Sound 7.1 Home Theatre Receiver. I could play my music in full digital from the MP3 or AAC file to the speakers.
Then, with a US voucher, I managed to setup my Apple TV with a US account and started renting HD movies with 5.1 sound, complete TV Series, and more music. All from my couch. It was still great… However to program TV show recording, I had to switch from the Apple TV to the Mac Mini : from my DVI input to my component input on the Plasma, from one input to another on my amplifier, from one Apple Remote to another, and from the Apple TV interface to FrontRow, to EyeTV… that was silly. I quickly realized that I could record a show on the MacMini, let eyeTV compress it to H264 and upload it to my iTunes Library. As my Apple TV was syncing videos with iTunes Library, I could watch my recording from my Apple TV, offering a somehow integrated experience. But I missed the high quality of the original recording. On the good side, I could also watch my recording with my iPod Video and iPhone. Still, the whole experience was a bit clumsy and I had to maintain and update two devices for what should obviously be integrated in one, like does Windows Media Center on the dark side.
Now let observe the Apple TV back panel. You’ll notice an mysterious unused USB connector… So here is my prediction :
Apple will release a USB Stick Tuner, compatible with DVB-T SD and HD (which require no re-compression) for it’s Apple TV and will add an EPG to the interface.
Why the delay ? Apple is probably waiting for DVB-T/DVB-C to become mainstream as they’ll probably want the experience to be qualitative and recorded digital broadcast (Mpeg 2 or Mpeg 4) are identical to the live signal. The codec in Mpeg 4 can even be H264, just like Apple Movies.
It’s not in Apple style to catch up with competition, so now let’s imagine what Apple could add to this product. First they would maybe release not one but several USB Tuner Sticks. One for Freeview (digital terrestrial TV), one for DVB-C (digital cable TV), one for analog, with an hardware H264 chip like the Turbo 264. You could switch them when you move from one channel provider (cable, satellite, Terrestrial) to another, or from SD to HD, or from one standard for encoding to another (still te be invented). Much better than a single build-in interface…
Your Apple TV is in reality a complete, Macintosh computer hidden in a tiny pizza box, running MacOS X (Tiger). When not recording or playing, it could run a background process that would compress the huges Mpeg 2 or Mpeg 4 recording to pristine Quicktime H.264 then sync them with your main iTunes library … which in turn would sync with your iPod Video, iPod Touch, and iPhone over USB. So you wouldn’t even have to do any action to have your favorite recording in your pockets.
As it knows your Apple ID, your Apple TV could also register itself with MobileMe Back To My Mac service and run a QuickTime streaming server. You would be able to stream recordings (those just compressed in H.264) over the Internet from any iTunes client, and even from your iPhone over a Wi-fi connection, just like with the SlingMedia Mobile service or for your music with Simplify Media.
An option would allow the Apple TV (which hard drive is limited to either 40 or 160 gigabytes) to store the QuickTime files ready for streaming to a 1 terabyte Time-Capsule and a firmware update would add iTunes server services to the Time-Capsule.
When watching your recording on your Apple TV, you’ll use the Apple Remote for control, but Apple would add TV show and EPG control in Remote for iPhone (which already control playing Music Videos on your Apple TV when they are in an iTunes synced playlist).
For those without tuner, you could stream your USB webcam video like with Remote Buddy.
Apple would also release an EPG client software for the iPhone that would store your recording settings on MobileMe. Of course your Apple TV would sync with MobileMe too. So it would be possible to program recording from anywhere in the world.
Without recording anything, it would be possible to stream live TV from your Apple TV to any Mac on your home LAN thanks to 802.11n bandwith (like you can do it today with music on Airport Express). From anywhere in the world, you’ll be able to watch a lower resolution, switch channels, start a recording… from your iPhone over wi-fi or any iTunes client on MacOS X or Windows. Just like with Sony’ LocationFree TV and the PSP. In September Sony will launch PlayTV a HD DVB-T tuner with DVR software for the PlayStation 3. They recently launched their HD Movies online store in the US. So you’d better hurry up Apple !
The Web2.0 is nothing new.
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Movies
A thousand times bigger ?
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Thoughts
In the seventies I had my first experience with a digital computer. Actually the word computer is a bit exagerated, it was a TI58c, a programmable calculator from Texas Instrument that could remember a little program in its resident memory even when turned off, which was a revolution at the time. I used it mainly to cheat at the exams. It’s memory capacity was expressed in bytes. That’s all I remember from computing in the seventies.
Then it was the eighties. And in 1981 precisely, I bought my very first own computer, a ZX81 from Sinclair computer. It had a whopping kilobyte of memory. Unfortunately some of those 1024 Kilobytes were used for the display memory. I quickly bought the 16K extension. But it was overheating and disconnected frequently. A few years later, around 1984, I bought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with 16 K of memory, that I quickly upgrade to the 48K model. I still own a untouched sample in my office, thanks to my partner John who found one in an attic. One of my best friend was lucky enough to get a 128K Macintosh. But all I could afford was a Sinclair QL… enought to overleap the Commodore 64 K that all the others kids from my school where bragging about. In the eighties we expressed memory in kilobytes.
Then it was the nineties. And in 1991 I founded Ex Machina, a prepress and multimedia studio. My first hard drive was a 20 megabytes hard drive. It was huge, thousand times bigger than my previous storage unit : the 3 1/2 floppy drive. But I had trouble opening a photoshop file the size of an A4 page, and to be able to cut and paste between two scans, I had to backup and empty my whole hard drive. Luckily hard drives where growing fast, and suddenly I was sending 40 Megabytes Syquest disks to my offset film supplier. Then Syquest drive became obsoletes and replaced by optical disks, up to 512 Megabytes, … I started creating CD-ROM of 640 Megabytes. In the nineties we expressed memory in Megabytes.
Then we passed 2000. In 2001 Ex Machina, my first company merged with Emalaya and became Emakina. I can remember my first 1 gigabyte removable magneto optic disk drive. And I had 20 gigabytes in my Macintosh laptop. Then 40, then a hundred gigabytes. Now my iMac has a 500 Gigabytes Hard Drive inside and I burn 4.7 Gigabyte DVD disks. I read 40 Gigabytes Blue Ray disks in my PS3. In the first 10 years of the third millennium the memory unit where the Gigabytes, … but my first Terabyte drive entered my house as an Apple Time Capsule. I have several servers with terabytes drive at my Emakina offices, I have a 30 Terabytes storage cluster at ContactOffice, one of my company that provide webmail and online file storage. I can clearly see that the memory unit of the twenties will be the Terabytes (1000^4).
Every 10 years the memory unit grow by a thousand factor. With little imagination you can forecast petabytes (1000^5) drives in the thirties, exabytes (1000^6) in the forties and zettabytes (1000^7) in the fifties, yottabytes (1000^8) in the sixties… enough to record digitally every sound your ear, every image each of your eyes captures in a resolution higher than your retina, every smell, every taste, every touch feeling, … every bit of the chaotic signals your brain thinks is reality. To remember everything forever. Hope I’ll live long enough to see if I was right.
Good night.
Changed my mind. The next Apple product should be the iCar …
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
… an in-dash car entertainment, communication and navigation system.
I was reading about the beta firmware 2.1 for the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch and it seems we will be getting turn-by-turn direction in the Google Maps iPhone application.
Now just imagine a standard in-dash unit which at the press of the finger would reveal an touch sensitive LCD screen, controlling what would essentially be the electronic of an iPhone. Add some radio DAB/FM/AM circuitry - similar to the Apple FM iPod remote for the iPod 4G - and optionally a connector for a boot CD changer, and you’ll get the ultimate in-car entertainment (featuring iPod music, video, podcasts, TV series and Movies), communication (with Bluetooth for headphones, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, Wi-fi) and navigation (using Google Maps) solution.
Let’s call it “iCar”, as I couldn’t find a better codename.
With iCar you will be able to drive in town and have restaurants, hotels, museum, night clubs, gas stations, and other points of interest informations pulled from the internet using 3G or Wi-fi internet connection and displayed live on your moving map. Click theirs icons for turn-by-turn driving directions, rating, comments, menus, calling them or send them a message.
Park the car and wait a few seconds for download and watch pictures from MobileMe Galleries and Flickr taken around your car location do a nice slide show. This thanks to your GPS and the localization feature of the iPhone.
When listening a cool song on the DAB or FM radio, a button will trigger Shazam (or an Apple equivalent) and offer you to buy the track, music video or complete album from the iTunes Music Store. After waiting a few seconds to download a track over 3G, you’ll be able to listen to it forever.
When not driving, watch podcasts, videos, tv series, movies, … all on the beautiful LCD screen.
Park your car within Wi-fi distance of your home computer and sync your iTunes media with your iCar automagically, just like with an Apple TV. For those unable to park their computer so close, an iPod connector will permit connecting any iPod or iPhone and syncing media down to the drive or transfer purchases done on the iCar back to your iPod.
Thanks to MobileMe, iCar will also sync over-the-air with your email, calendar and address book. Great to have a look at your agenda without getting your iPhone out of your pocket. But even better, you’ll have only one finger touch to get your driving direction for a contact in your address book, or the next meeting in your calendar!
With Apple Speech Recognition, and Text to Speech technologies currently included in Mac OS X, you’ll be able to ask verbally your Apple iCar to read your day’s agenda aloud, or your latest emails. You’ll even be able to dictate short messages and emails.
This would be a revolutionary product and an entirely new platform for third party application developers. A specific App Store would allow downloading applications to iCar over-the-air. Facebook will release an app that will locate your friends (those who agree) on the map, thanks to their iPhone and iCars GPS. Trip advisor will release an application that allow sharing reviews and rating for any place around your car. Apple will release Remote, an application that allow locking your car remotely and driving it from a distance for Batman like performance 
Photo blogging from iPhone
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Pictures
Vedett !
The next Apple product : a digital camera
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
The current crop of digital camera is great hardware. I have always be a loyal fan of the Canon IXUS range and bought like 5 of them from the first 2 Megs to the latest 10 Megs (accidentally broken). Recently I bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ5 and it’s (mostly) great. It can snap pictures up to 9 Megs and even record video in HD definition. But the interface is just rubbish. I general Camera software is just lame. It almost hasn’t evolved in a decade.
Apple could design a revolutionnary digital camera, the iCamera. First by it’s form factor : a touchscreen, twice the size of an iPhone, slightly thicker. Video resolution would be HD Ready (720p), so the Screen resolution would be 720 x 1320 pixels at the same dpi res as an iPhone.
Then it would also be new hardware combination, built on a simplified version of the electronic of an iPhone (removing the bluetooth, GSM circuitry) and a Casio Exilim (or similar). The rest of the space would be used for batteries and memory storage.
As of course recording would be on solid state memory (Apple bought a lot of memory to manufacturers) or a 1.8 in 4200 rpm hard drive. It will start probably start with something like 64 Gigs of SSD / 160 Gigs of HD, but would quickly evolve to 128 Gigs of SSD or 320 Gigs of HD…
But storage wouldn’t be an issue as Apple iCamera will of course sync over the air (Wifi 802.11n) with a Apple TV, MobileMe Galleries, iPhones and over Firewire / USB 2.0 with Macintoshes and iPods.
But the real revolution would be great Apple software ! Of course the shooting software will allow Photo Booth like live effects, including background replacement, optical and digital zoom, special flash modes, … But the killing feature would be iMovie 08 and Aperture like video and photo software editors, running on the camera device, using the touch screen interface.
This revolutionary product would define an entirely new category of devices that would allow shooting, editing and publishing Hi def still photography and HD quality videos on the field. This will especially makes HD video easy to produce which may leverage the whole HD video economy.
Digital Still and Video Cameras is a category with great hardware waiting for a decent “Apple quality level” software like computers, music players and mobile phones. Please Apple, give the Nikon, Canon, Sony and Panasonic a lesson in software engineering. Millions of families are waiting for a better experience.
Congratulations! You are one of the first 250 iPhone3G-owners in Belgium!
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Report
D’un naturel plutôt ponctuel, je suis arrivé précisément à 21h, comme requis dans la charmante invitation de Mobistar. Il pleuvait une pluie fine qui vous glace les os, et avec la chaleur résiduelle du jour, une certaine moiteur régnait, ajoutant à l’ambiance tendue d’un petit groupe d’une centaine de personnes qui faisaient déjà la file le long de la Toison d’Or.
Parmis les plus de 5.000 personnes qui s’étaient enregistrées sur le site dédié à ce lancement, une centaine de personnes avaient eu la chance d’être sélectionnées comme V.I.P. Malheureusement je n’en était pas. Je me glissai donc dans la file des client non V.I.P., déjà un peu frustré - mais c’est tout le but de ce genre de lancement organisé.
Ayant compris du petit groupe la mécanique de la soirée (attendre sous la pluie), je reçu un ticket numéroté 085 d’une demoiselle qui pris la précaution de m’indiquer qu’avec ce numéro je ne passerais pas a la caisse avant 3 heures du matin, histoire de m’encourager.
J’étais bien résolu à me démerder pour trouver un raccourci mais je commencai par prendre mon mal en patience. Pourtant après une bonne heure d’attente humide, ponctué de jatte de café tiède, je commencais a en avoir franchement plein les couilles. J’ai alors usé de mes crédits de journaliste pour aller me mettre a l’abris et boire un verre de Coca tiède en attendant minuit.
Malheureusement mon badget Press ne me permis pas d’entrer avec les “VIP” et je repris ma place dans la file comme un bon citoyen. Finalement, c’est vers 1h30 du matin qu’un Emakinien (que je remercie au passage) me fit passer discrètement la barrière nadar, pour me permettre d’acquérir le “precious”. 4h30 d’attente pour pouvoir écrire ce putain de post et frimer pour quelques heures?
Non, en réalité je pars demain matin, rejoindre ce bon vieux Thierry Tinlot, pour 3 jours de délire au North Sea Jazz Festival à Rotterdam. Je vais pouvoir shooter, twitter, surfer, uploader, blogger, emailer, à la vitesse de la 3G. Good night!
My amateur PHP developer toolset
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under General
I am not a developer, but I enjoy coding sometimes for hacking pleasure. I toyed with Ruby (Rails), Python (Django), exotic scripting languages (WebDNA) but nowadays I mostly tweak PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS code and some Bash. As an long time Apple user, I run only MacOS X on my Macintoshes, so over time I have selected my software tools of choice.
As text editor I use Coda for its well designed interface, integrated FTP browser, grep integration, CSS editor, DOM inspector, integrated terminal and ability to share live code over Bonjour using the Subetha engine, with better developpers than me at Emakina.
Unfortunately Coda can’t grep through a bunch of files, so I still have to use BBedit for massive re-factoring.
I tested SubEthaEdit, the free TextWrangler and ForgEdit. All of them are great text editors too, but lack some polish in their interfaces.
I also use Transmit from Panic as my main FTP software. It’s strong at syncing a whole sites with my servers and just well integrated in MacOS X. It syncs FTP bookmarks over .Mac which is practical when you work nightshift from the office to home Forklift is cool too, especially it’s FTP to FTP feature and integration of Amazon S3.
I experiment a lot of Open Source PHPware, so I download the latest trunk version of my favorite projects from their subversion repository. After using svn X (free but ugly) for years I have recently switched to Version. The current beta 4 is very stable and it’s interface matches perfectly with Coda. I like the way it present the recents changes in a Timeline, that you can unfold to click every file for a quick diff. Juxtapose Folders is also useful and free. But the diff presentation of CornerStone are by far superior. CornerStone is another Mac OS X style Subversion client and I’m still wondering if I’ll buy Version at the end of the beta or go for CornerStone.
But to integrate update of Open Source software I have modified, I use Changes, a stronger diff tool which allow me to compare a whole project then integrate code changes bits by bits into my version. Previously I used DiffMerge (free but ugly), but I was tired of having false positive because of Mac OS X / Windows linebreak differences.
On my development servers, after using Mac OS X Server since the beta version to 10.3, I switched to Tenon iTools. They have great support, keep updating their Apache, PHP and MySQL packages and are a three clicks install on a brand new Mac mini. Its web based remote administration interface allow me to control my servers from anywhere, anytime, even on a Windows machine. When developing offline (during holidays in remote locations) I use MAMP on my MacBook Air.
To edit MySQL databases I currently use phpMyAdmin like everybody, but I just stumbled upon Navicat. If you know some better MacOS X native MySQL editor, let me know in the comments below.
Need a Startup Idea ?
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Ideas
With Scribd you can publish and embed documents. With SlideShare you can publish and embed presentations. Now what I need is a way to publish SpreadSheets as flash embeds. In exchange of this free Internet Startup Idea(tm), let me know when it’s up and running. I need it badly.
Moo Cow Music for iPhone 2.0
Posted by Brice Le Blevennec | Filed under Movies
