But it doesn’t store movies! I can purchase them instead of renting them for the same price from Amazon! But an Xbox/Mac mini/HTPC/Roku/GoogleTV does the same thing, if not more!

Well, yeah. This centralizes your media onto your computers and NAS setups; it’s not a hard drive with HDMI anymore, it’s a receiver. As a receiver, it’ll most likely even play those shows that you ‘buy for the same price’ on Amazon; otherwise, it’s a choice between owning a license for a show and watching it on a computer, or renting it to watch on a TV, iPad, iPod Touch, and/or an iPhone. That workflow is an important designation; you start watching media on the bus on your iPhone heading home, then continue it on the TV where you left off. Later, you head out and watch the end on your iPad. It’s about making media convenient for when you’re on the go, and when you’re not, across an integrated set of screens.

Now, imagine that workflow when you have devices and screens everywhere you go. Your iPhone, iPod, and/or iPad go with you to the toilet, the kitchen, the park. Of course you can already stream media to your TV on a variety of devices. But how seamless is the transition to anything other than a computer and the receiver (whether it’s an Xbox, HTPC, PS3, whatever)? How economical is it to scale up to multiple TVs? How many different encodings do you have to make to support the media on a bunch of devices? How willing do you think the average person is to sit around using Handbrake for every show they want to watch when they can just pay a buck and watch it right then? This isn’t a device for the tinkerer or the person that wants to sit around messing with things; this is for the plug-and-go crowd. And of course, it’s not as appealing to the sorts of people who pride themselves on stealing media and bitch about paying for any content that they use, in any format. For people who already have Xbox and PS3 systems, this is meant to supplement their setups, hook up to another TV, go on the road… remember the Rabbit systems in the ’80s?

But that’s really not the important part. Apple certainly isn’t interested in merely being a passive device manufacturer. Think back to the mid-’90s, when the music labels were fighting tooth and nail against selling music online on a per-song basis. I was involved in some negotiations with them at the time, and I remember how dead-set they were against the single-pay model. They threw around terms like ‘experience’ and ‘cohesion’ – and while they had a point, they were missing what mainstream consumers wanted; music as a commodity, an impulse buy. The product is part of a lifestyle, but to varying degrees. Not all music is ‘art;’ some of it is disposable, just like the difference between gourmet food and snacks. Each can be appropriate in the right time and place, but some people are happy only partaking in one type of cuisine, and really don’t try/want to understand people with different tastes. And people still sometimes have a tough time seeing media as a product; even content creators have trouble viewing their work as, well, work, and not as some sort of perpetual lottery ticket that lets them create once, profit forever, while ignoring the efforts of all of the other people involved who enable the piece to be sold/distributed/promoted.

The landscape of how we buy and consume video (and from whom) is changing, just like it changed with music. It’s not surprising that networks are dragging their heels (just like the music labels did); people are already migrating from standard broadcast channels to using DVRs, PPV, VOD, and other mechanisms to view content, and are in many cases beginning to ditch their cable services while still watching their favorite shows. Previously, networks were big brands that had the benefit of being the central means of discovering and promoting new shows. What happens when any show developer is on even footing to have their show discovered? What happens when the distribution channels are fractioned and no longer distinct in anything other than where the content can be accessed from? Granted, so far there haven’t been any self-made success stories in independent music (although plenty of non-mainstream artists do well enough to get by). But independent video is another beast altogether; there are already podcasts and online programs that are moderately successful. Soon the lines will blur between video programming and e-commerce as well; programs will be advertisements, but structured in an episodic manner that makes it seem like ‘normal’ shows. This means that, as advertisers start to feel muscled out of short-form ads, they’ll migrate into creating programming incorporating their products. Think long-form ‘infomercial’ and ‘edutainment,’ but with an interactive element – brands will be partnering with independent producers to create more targeted, niche programming. This is something that’s been in the works from content creators for a very long time, but it’s just getting to the point where the distribution mechanisms make sense for it to work. Media is still a lucrative business because messages are distributed; when we disagree with those messages, we deem them ‘propaganda,’ but really all media is trying to get us to buy into something as well as to buy something.

And what about Ping? Well, obviously services like iLike, last.fm, etc. already exist to create a social channel for music sharing. While it does seem a bit odd that Apple wouldn’t just buy out iLike, chances are good that they needed a new system because they’ll eventually be using it for more than just music. The services that exist now that socialize all of your media (there are a few) don’t have the advantage of letting you get a recommendation and then pressing a button to have that media instantly accessible on your screen/device. Ping, in its infancy, is all about getting artists off of MySpace. Its next steps, however, will be much more revealing in how Apple’s recent cloud acquisitions fit into the picture.

And what comes after that? Well, think of what can happen with presence detection and your iDevice and/or something like a MiFi. Think of various verticals. Think of integration. Think of what needs to happen for the non-high-tech, non-urban crowd to advance its technology. It’s obvious what Google and Apple’s strategy is if you think about it, and that Microsoft needs to shift a few of their pieces. They all have a vision for the future; do you?

First of all, I think one thing that’s important to point out is what happened in 2007. I was at MacWorld that year (no, that’s not the important part) when they announced the iPhone. But they also announced something else that rarely gets mentioned: the new company name. Apple Computer Inc. was now Apple Inc. They dropped the ‘computer’ because their company was no longer focused on just computers, going into the mobile space and other areas.

The reason I think that’s important is to see that Apple doesn’t view their mobile platforms (iPhones, iPads, iPods – ‘iProducts’) as computers. They don’t expect or want these machines to be robust, configurable computer systems. They want streamlined, controlled devices. There are lots of devices that have little OSs running them that are single or limited use systems: remote controls, video consoles, eReaders, slingboxes, DVRs… etc. Most of these systems can, if you void their warranty and therefore give up any support, be hacked to do things they weren’t designed to do. So can the iProducts. But all of these devices are designed to function a specific way and are ‘locked down’ because of that. Yet people view the iProducts differently, blurring them into the category of computer when they’re not really made to be as such.

“But!” the developers cry out. “It runs browsers! It runs apps! I should be able to see any Web site perfectly on it, and put any apps on it that I want!” Well, to an extent you can do the latter. If you void your warranty and any claim to support on your device, you can create your own apps and put them on there. “But!” they cry again. “I have to use Apple’s tools to make apps for it, I can’t use any tool I want!” Well, I think that speaks for the intentions of Apple vs. the intentions of developers. The intentions of Apple are to have apps on their platform that do all of the cool things unique to that platform; to take advantage of accelerometers, location detection, etc. so that the apps are so cool and so unique they compel people to buy the device. Developers want to make apps that they can ‘code once, and deploy everywhere,’ to get the most bang for their development buck. While both are ultimately about the almighty dollar, they’re both at odds with each other. Apple doesn’t want a bunch of generic apps that are available everywhere; at the very least it wants the ones on its platform to take full advantage of all of the features it can. And, pragmatically, Apple doesn’t want to support a bunch of custom-configured devices that are running anything and everything the end user hacks into it. That’s been part of their computer model for a while now, and it’s carried over to their device philosophy too. You may not agree with that model, but Apple builds things for people who want to ‘drive’ the device more than for those who want to modify the engine. Really, that model is great in certain environments/situations and not so great in others; and I don’t see anything wrong with that.

So. Flash. It is odd for Apple to just downright decree that they’d strip away a technology so prevalent on the Web when their devices have Web browsers. Steve Jobs himself published a brief missive on the logic behind that decision… but since a lot of people are blinded by their emotions and their biases, they misread it, pick out chunks out of context, distort things to fit their agenda… just like 95% of every tech or political ‘discussion.’ It’s easy to blindly hate, to pass judgment without facts, to assume motives, to simplify… and people like easy. Oddly enough, that’s also why Apple makes devices that are designed to just be easy. The bottom line is that Apple has its reasons to exclude it, good or bad. Frankly, I think it’s a mixture of both. But the retorts I see are really not helping. Apple is doing it because Flash’d hurt App Store sales? Really? There are tons of free games online that works fine; having more games would increase device sales, which are a greater revenue stream, and therefore support more apps/money, not less. Because of iAds? Maybe, but that’s more of a long-term goal than short-term, and showing how much ‘better’ iAds are than Flash would help the iAd platform. Because Apple hates Adobe and is an evil monopoly dictatorship bent on controlling the world? That’s too silly to even counter. Because Apple is a hypocrite about open standards and wants to make a profit? As a shareholder, I damn sure hope they want to make a profit, but encouraging closed systems and open Web standards isn’t really hypocritical. Keep in mind that historically Apple has seen ‘open apps/systems’ as being paramount to a support nightmare and basically ‘crap,’ and needs to be shown they’re wrong, not told that they are. Adobe has the ability to whine about it or to prove those reasons invalid. If Adobe comes out with a great mobile implementation of Flash, then other devices start coming out with compelling apps that drive people to the devices using them, Apple will take notice. If developers create amazing apps with Flash that do cool things, Apple will take notice. It just needs to happen before minds will be changed, so make it happen!

So, even with infinite possibilities of the future, we tend to shelter our visions of it within comfortable, safe, and predictable paradigms. Science fiction isn’t as much about fear and the vast unknown anymore; it’s about cool, it’s about gadgets and explosions and one-liners. It’s gone from Rod Serling to Michael Bay; from drama to melodrama. Science fiction does not equal effects and chases; it can be more than just old war/western movies set in space (or a blue-tinged Earth). And this is what Doctor Who sometimes gets wrong, but sometimes gets really right. Like so much sci-fi these days, it was given a reboot treatment to ‘freshen’ it up, to try to shake the stigma of its previous low-budget visuals and attract a new audience. This is a show that’s supposed to be fun, light, and not preachy about the Doom that Will Occur if You Don’t Change Your Ways Now, yet that doesn’t mean it can’t have engaging stories and elements of suspense, mystery, fear, and wonder. While I barely remember anything of the older episodes I used to watch as a kid, I was very excited about the new series, as it is a concept that can, rather literally, do just about anything – go anywhere, at any time – and, best of all, it does so from the viewpoint of a tourist, with ordinary people along for the ride. It’s a show you can enjoy if you don’t care about the Science part of sci-fi, yet isn’t as stupid in this department as some other shows are. But in a way, its strengths are also its weaknesses; different writers and an open invitation to take the character any place and/or time can lead to some amazing stories, but it’s inconsistent. While The Twilight Zone had an open slate in terms of characters, Doctor Who is really about one central man. And like so much modern fare, it does tend to resort to chases and explosions and effects at times, cheapening it a bit. Don’t get me wrong; I love explosions and effects most of the time, but episodes like Midnight and Blink really prove you can do a show like Doctor Who without it all revolving around How Cool the Planet Looks.

So, suffice to say I’ve been a fan of the new show – not all episodes are strong or even good, but there are so many gems in there it makes the whole series brilliant. And while Christopher Eccleston was fun and a great Doctor in his own right, David Tennant has raised the bar so high that his departure really feels more like the end of the show than the end of his turn; it’s almost more of an era ending than the new year was. I’m afraid for the new season; I keep having nightmares of blue filters and lens flares and Matt Smith becoming Emo Doctor. Maybe part of that is that it’s hard to swallow being ten years older than a 900+year-old man; at least I’m only 3 months and 3 days older than David Tennant. Maybe part of that is cynicism about committees trying to make the show ‘cooler’ and hoping to get the Twilight audience/dollars. Whatever it is, I’ll hold off on the new Doctor for a bit and let all of the stages of loss pass first. So hello, 2010, and goodbye Doctor. It was a fun run, but I’m hoping that there’ll be something out there this year without a bunch of lens flares and sparkles and blue filters, and I’m not yet convinced that it’ll be you.

(*I think we’ve seen what would happen if aliens really did land today; videos would be on YouTube, a bunch of people would write blogs about how the videos are fake, a bunch of other people would write blogs talking about how much they love the aliens & how they totally relate to them cos they’re, like, so misunderstood and Team Aliens 4evr! <3!)

Please share this information; re-tweet it, blog it, link it from your site; and thank you! This promotion is good through February 13th.

iPhoto

iPhoto is by and far the most drool-worthy (and upgrade-worthy) product in the mix. While it’s been possible to send photos to Facebook and Flickr from within iPhoto for a while (with a free and paid plug-in, respectively), the new integration is much more seamless. The new slideshow themes are pretty nifty; they even included some music for them, which is a nice touch (even if one of the tracks is Randy Newman). What has everyone buzzing about this version, though, are Faces and Spaces. Faces can be used to auto-detect people within your pictures, so you can sort through and find pictures with certain people easily. It even gives you a handy corkboard view with Polaroid-style images for each of the people you have. Spaces uses metadata (or your own input) to divvy up your photos by where they were taken; you then have a map with pins to indicate each area, and can sort and view them that way. Images you take with this metadata (including any taken with an iPhone) will automatically be marked, but it’s easy to add your own info; simply press the Info icon on the bottom of an image and it flips over (just like dashboard widgets).

iMovie

iMovie really needed to be updated; the last version was such a disappointment that Apple even ensured that users who upgraded could still hold on to the previous version. But there’s always been that one big challenge for iMovie; how do you make it simple enough for users who just want to ‘set it and forget it’ without forcing those who want a little bit more to jump all the way up to Final Cut Express (which would be overkill for them)? This version is definitely a step in the right direction. The Themes are simply awesome; you set a theme and it automatically applies appropriate transitions to your movie (for example, the Comic Book theme automatically switches comic ‘pages’ to transition). There are several advanced options built-in now; picture-in-picture, reversing a clip, speed (slow-mo or speed up), and a green screen. You can add effects to your footage to give it that romantic glow or make a daytime scene look like night (admittedly, in the same fake-y way that TV does it by making everything blue and a little darker). And for a travel/holiday video, what could be more fun than the Indiana Jones-style map? But still, iMovie is simply not a tool for anyone who wants to really control how they edit video. Even with the precision editor, it’s still too clunky to really use to do anything more than chop off the beginning and end of a clip. And for a lot of people, that’s fine. Those people will probably also appreciate the video stabilization, which will reduce the shakes in their footage. I won’t be giving up any of my other editors any time soon, but I will definitely use this for some fun videos; and what’s wrong with that?

GarageBand

GarageBand seems to be getting a bit ambitious with its new ‘learn to play’ feature. There are probably a lot of guitars about to lose some dust with this. It has Basic Lessons (for keyboard or guitar) to teach you the principle concepts of playing, and then there are Artist Lessons, which cost $4.99 each and have an original recording artist teaching you a song. It’d actually be a fun social/family gathering activity – learn how to play a song and have people sing along (you can even play the song without certain portions, so you can mute the vocals or the band as needed). This would also be a great feature to see if little Eddie really will follow through with his commitment to learning music before forking over the money for a home studio. The new guitar amps and stompboxes are simply too much fun; it’d be easy to lose hours playing with the effects. One minor niggle is that the starting screen hides the Movie option by default, and it’s not readily apparent that you can scroll. I’m also not crazy about the starting options; they’re instrument-centric for the most part, although you can start with Loops for a blank slate. Also, I wish they’d added new styles to Magic GarageBand; it’s a great way to quickly make background tracks, but there are still only 9 genres to choose from.

iWeb

iWeb really is a cool app; unfortunately, it suffers from being smack dab in the middle of a rock and a hard place. Anyone who wants to make these kinds of media-rich Web sites will want more control to style it and add more customization, and anyone who would love its simplicity probably isn’t going to feel like they need to use it. While it’s nice that they’ve made it easier to host elsewhere, it still seems as though the market that would care about that probably uses WordPress, or at the very least wants their own design. The new widgets are kind of hit and miss. The Google maps and AdSense remain, but there are some nifty new additions such as a countdown timer and an RSS feed. The unfortunate miss is the iSight integration. While the still photo feature could be useful in certain situations, the iSight movie option is rather worthless; you can’t edit or make changes, and a 9-second recording was over 400MB. Needless to say, it’s a much better option to just record the video in iMovie (where you can still use your iSight), and then edit it and place it into your site. The YouTube widget would be useful to many, but I think it also needs Flickr integration (yes, yes, it has MobileMe integration for sharing photos. But even iPhoto admits people want Flickr integration). iWeb does remain the easiest and fastest way to get started with podcasting; maybe if Apple toots that horn a bit more loudly it’ll gain iWeb some love.

iDVD

iDVD feels like an afterthought compared to the rest of the applications. The starting screen isn’t consistent with the rest; instead of being greeted by the ‘getting started’ screen with the video, you go directly to the starting options with a link to tutorial videos at the bottom. I can’t really tell what’s been updated in this version; admittedly I don’t use it much, but they didn’t even bother to put it on the products listing on the back of the retail box. That being said, it remains a solid choice for creating very nice DVDs of your movies and photographs.

To upgrade or not? While iLife isn’t terribly expensive, it doesn’t make sense for everyone to upgrade. Upgrading makes the most sense if:
•    You have a ton of photos and need more methods to sort through them; especially if you’ve got a lot of people or locations to sort by
•    You haven’t already paid for the Flickr plug-in for iPhoto
•    You want to do more with video but don’t need to go all the way up to Final Cut Express
•    You want to learn how to play music or would have fun making your own music
•    You would use iWeb to integrate videos you put onto YouTube or share events, etc.
•    You never use a tripod and want to get rid of the Cloverfield effect in your videos

While I was in town a little early to catch up with people, we got the event started on Sunday night with a cocktail reception for Adobe Community Leaders. The beer was good (always a priority for me), the company better; there are a lot of new managers in our midst these days, and it’s really very cool to have people come up and say ‘I know you from Twitter.’ Of course, that means I’d better watch what I say, heh… and there were some people that have never been to a MAX before that I know from other events, so it was great to see everyone in one place. It was rather unfortunate that the speaker’s reception overlapped this event (as a lot of people had to choose which to go to), but since that ended earlier, may of them still swung by at the tail end to say hello.

The Day One keynote highlights are here, so I won’t go into a lot of detail about them. The Video DJ that they had was great. Looking around, most of the crowd had iPhones, and everyone was speculating and placing bets on if they’d announce official support for Flash on the iPhone yet. (The answer? Technically there, now it’s a business issue.) I think the biggest takeaway was the name changes, as many ‘codenames’ were replaced by official monikers. Flash Catalyst (formerly Thermo) is a game-changing app, and we were privvy to a DVD with not only an early version of the software (i.e., look out for bugs), but an exclusive ‘black hole’ feature that can wipe out anything you put in it (it was suggested that perhaps the LHC was used to burn the discs). Day One also saw the introduction of the new Groups area on Adobe’s site (http://groups.adobe.com). I have a group set up for the Northern Virginia Adobe User Group, so please join; even if you don’t go to meetings or aren’t in the area, we’ll still have (hopefully) useful information to share.

The Day Two keynote was the big product-centric one, complete with a secret agent/007 theme, lab coats, and most of the people on stage Twittering as they were waiting for their parts. Since CS4 was just released, most of it centered around features in those products. If you want a breakdown of all of the tools (as well as the archives of some liveblogs that were being done at the event), this is a good resource.

One new aspect this year was the inclusion of several ‘unconferences’ – lounge-style areas with specific topics that were usually more advanced than the regular sessions. These were a big hit and many people stayed exclusively in them. While I found it a little harder this year to find sessions that were advanced/relevant enough for me, adding on something like this in my realm would have been perfect.

There were mixed reviews of the sessions as usual; I can’t imagine a conference where that wouldn’t be the case. I went to a couple of good ones, and walked out of one when we saw it wasn’t going anywhere. This year they announced that all of the sessions would be posted onto AdobeTV, which I have mixed feelings on. I think it’s great to make them available, but I don’t think that they should be accessible to non-attendees for a few months. I paid for the conference out of my own pocket (as did many of us), so there should be some exclusivity for those who paid. And the session scheduling app and on-site process was horrid. Each year they make the scheduling app worse; focusing more on using technology-du-jour than on making it usable. Check a schedule on an iPhone? Can’t do it. If you wanted to change your sessions, you had to find a kiosk, update your information (if you were lucky enough to be able to even get it to log in), then you had to update your RFID. If you just wanted to go into a session you weren’t registered for, the evil Moscone Militia would glare at you as your badge beeped ‘access denied’ and hiss ‘go stand in the corner.’

The Event Night was interesting (we hit up the deYoung and Science museums), but definitely could have been organized a little better in terms of notifying people what stuff was closing or only done at certain times. Some people didn’t even realize it was two buildings until the next day, and most people couldn’t get any phone reception to meet up with people there. We got to see every ‘major’ attraction – the rainforest, the living roof, the overlook, the big head thing, the planetarium, etc., but a lot of people said that they missed stuff. And it probably wasn’t the best idea to have drinks with no food outside of the sneak peek/MAX awards right before the event…

There was a lot of stuff we did outside of the conference, as usual. From lounging at an old speakeasy with utterly incredible drinks to wandering along the cliffs overlooking the beaches to eating/drinking/miscellany at lots of fabulous places, it’s always great to spend time with the ‘family,’ and be with those kindred spirits. It never seems long enough, no matter how exhausting it is. And speaking of kindred spirits (ahem), this event also marked the kick-off of our new company, Kindred. Our first ad launched a little bit before we did, but we have a placeholder up now and will have our site up and running and more information/details about that very soon. I’m very excited/fortunate to be working with such a talented group of people, and look forward to the amazing stuff we’ll be doing soon.

Next year MAX will be in Los Angeles, a little bit earlier (the beginning of October), so I’m already preparing for that insanity… as should L.A!