…and it’s from Sun, not Apple? But it’s mighty cool nonetheless. (My 2005 article on the hypothetical Apple BlackBox)
November 10, 06 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Link Cosmos
Today I had lunch at Apple with super-nice, super-motion-graphics-designer Gary Butcher who I met two years ago after he had made a music video for Forss. At some point during the lunch, I looked up and saw Steve Jobs pass on a distance of about two meters. Pretty cool to see the man in flesh and blood!
It’s just not a feeling anymore, hard numbers show that Apple is indeed gaining ground with their portables. Now they’re at 12%. I’m still confused after 2-3 years of waiting for the MacBook Nano (or MacBook Thin or whatever you want to call it). I never use my DVD drive, I don’t need 13.3” (12” was nicer, but it flew down the stairs one day).
So again, here’s my message to Apple: Look around you and realize that you have to make a portable computer that weighs in under a kilo. NOW!
Have you seen it? One of the best interfaces I’ve ever seen. Check out the quicktour movies for some true Apple design excellence. Nevertheless, some social software aspects (no, photo albums don’t count) would have been cool — and dragging keywords to pictures in order to tag them (like in iPhoto) is still a hassle…but wow, what an interface! I’m getting 1995 SGI vibes here (In a good way, that is! You know, that everyone-else-is-still-in-the-stone-age kind of feeling.).
Dear Eric Wahlforss:
We regret to inform you that iTunes has chosen not to accept your application for the iTunes Affiliate Program at this time. Â This may be because:
- The content is unrelated to iTunes
- Your site is temporarily down or under construction — please make sure to apply again after 2 weeks.
- A wrong or misspelled URL given in the application. Â Please correct the problem and apply again.
- Your site is aesthetically unpleasing
- Your site promotes tobacco, alcoholic beverages or excessive drinking/drug use
- Your site contains extreme religious content
- Your site is international (with a majority of visitors based OUTSIDE the US. or written in a foreign language)
Well, Apple, if you could explicitly tell me what’s wrong with my site, I’d be happy to fix it. I’m selling my music on your crappy DRM-ridden platform, remember?
Being able to mark the ones I’ve read is good.And that means podcast integration! Aside from not being able to browse the Apple Podcast Directory for some reason, the interface for storing podcasts is really nice and simple. I’m switching from iPodderX, which used to be my tool of choice.
There are serious threats to the iTunes+iPod value chain now in the form of other better, more open music stores, and new music players integrated directly into mobile phones with slick form factors. Is this the first step towards the downfall of Apples vertical value chain? Will the next version of iTunes offer a sales platform for podcasts? Will the next iPod be a mobile phone? Many questions, and as usual only Steve knows…
All bad things aside, I’ll finally be able to run Virtual PC at full speed — yeeehooo! Wonder how long it’ll take my Intel Mac to be able to dual boot Longhorn+OS X?! Woah, this surely is a change in religion!
I just bought Chopin & Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas played by the incredible Héléne Grimaud. I discovered her through my mother who was blown away by her Bach performance in the Stockholm Concert Hall. Apart from being one of the top interpreters of composers such as Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Arvo Pärt, she apparently runs a wolf farm in the state of New York!
She has eyes like a wolf, too!This wonderful music aside, I’m not terribly impressed by ITMS. That it’s so successful is really proof of the fact that this market is in its infancy. After all, Apple’s music initiative is 100% vertically integrated; They own the hardware and the software the platform runs on, they own the distribution platform itself, they own the player, they own the format, hell they almost own the artists. I’ve sold over 1000 tracks on ITMS, and what do I get? Well, not much! In fact extraordinarily little! And thanks to some bizarre licensing deal, my record seems not to be in the Swedish store (Just one track).
Browsing around, I also realise how much I miss tabs and the normal browser interface. Where is the “bookmark this track” button? Where are the easy-to-use permalinks! This is an n-dimensional space I’m navigating after all! I discovered lots of music metadata errors when browsing the classic catalog — where can I submit the errors? Sadly, my comments on Beatport seem to apply for ITMS aswell!
But, there is still nothing preventing Apple from creating a browser based store later on. They can solve the music integration the same way they’ve done with Widgets, which is quite beautiful (Or they could do it with an HTTP header, which would enable Firefox integration). And lastly, they have promised to open up iTunes when the iPod’s market share drops significantly. Even though I love Apple, I actually can’t wait to see this happen.
This is a fictional review of a product that does not yet exist. It contains a lot of whishes and guesswork…
Will it happen? If you know more than me, please do comment!
The Apple BlackBox is nothing more than a black box equipped with wireless Ethernet, wireless Firewire, Bluetooth, 3G, GSM, gigabit Ethernet, Firewire, USB, DVI-out and a charger port. It comes standard with an internal 150GB hard drive, 1.5GB RAM and a 2.5GHz G5 processor.
It runs Approx. 10 hours on a battery load, but it can run up to 30 hours depending on usage.
The BlackBox comes by default in slick black, but you can buy different skins from the Apple Store. Actually its sophisticated design reminds me of the good old days of NEXT.
There is also a standard carrying pocket announced which will even come in jeans fabric!
It’s running a full Mac OS X 2.1 and Apple has bundled some specially developed software with it.
“Ok, nice”, you say, “but how can I use this wonderful little thing at all? It only has a power button!”. Admitting that this is indeed a very controversial product that definitely represents a paradigm shift, I can still say my “beginners” user experience has been great so far.
The secret is in the software, the most important one dubbed iControl, which is really not much more than a driver layer for OS X that you will hardly notice. It is based upon a standard protocol for inter-device communication. Basically you can set up hardware/software to receive certain remote commands, give certain feedback and report errors.
Maybe the simplest way of interfacing with the BlackBox is using a standard Apple Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth mouse and Cinema Display.
What’s very nice about this is that it forces you not to kill your back. With my Powerbook I could sit for hours in totally unsound positions!
This setup, even though perfect for office needs, doesn’t allow you to work on the field. For this Apple offers a number of possibilities.
Maybe the easiest way is to buy the Apple Mobility package, which consists of a nice foldable Bluetooth keyboard/mouse-pad and a 5” (yes, 5!) hi-res screen. There is a carrying pocket for the keyboard/mouse/screen, which is almost in size to the one for the BlackBox, so you can easily pack it with you on a trip. The screen can also be docked on the top of the BlackBox, which is convenient.
There is a touch/pen version of the screen, which I haven’t been able to test myself, although sources reports it as being very powerful for webpad/PDA-style applications.
There is also a 12” portable screen that can be bought separately.
This is however only one way of interfacing with the BlackBox — there are many other, more exotic ways of doing it.
A Swedish company has announced its support for the BlackBox in its smart Bluetooth keyboard. Basically it consists of two pieces of fabric you put around your hands that magically learn how you type (using neural net technologies). Sources say performance is almost up to par with standard keyboards.
Also a number of manufacturers make glasses and heads-up displays that work with the BlackBox. I have tried some and I have to say it is not all that bad as it was a couple of years back. I think it will be a more common sight in offices within a few years. There is even one manufacturer that makes Bluetooth dataglowes, with a neat piece of software that projects a small 3D-view of your hands in the bottom right of your screen. Now if only that could be combined with typing somehow — then I could finally go Cyperspace®!
As an addition to the digital lifestyle product line, Apple has released a suit of small devices for basic needs called iControls.
There is a remote control for film/music/radio playback with which you can even browse titles on a mini screen.
There is a remote not unlike the ones bundled with video projectors featuring a small button cursor control, and a few assignable buttons. There are USB earphones with a small remote.
There is a Bluetooth headset which can voice-control iPhone (a simple phone-over-IP and GSM app by Apple) which didn’t really work properly for me, but I think it can be because I’m in Europe using American hardware/software. Nifty enough the BlackBox has built in vibration and even hifi-ring tones.
Can’t wait for the Telcos to offer true worldwide flat rate contracts though…
What’s nice about the iControls is that you can really configure them in any way you want, so you can use all of them for everything from presentations to games.
There are also a number of iControl-compatible phones and PDAs that do essentially the same thing. Basically when you hook up e.g. a phone, you get a list of controllable apps and their commands on your phone’s screen — the Apple Mail-app even let’s you view and send mail. One noteworthy thing is that the new Nokia 9510 phone has a DVI-in, which mean it can be used as a real screen for the BlackBox as well. Other PDA- and phone-manufacturers are following this initiative.
Also a number of manufacturers have announced their own iControl-devices ranging from “minimini” keyboards and SMS-style typing pads (with OS X-native T9-software) to portable Bluetooth speakers that display track titles and even “blinkenlights” that you can control from your BlackBox.
What’s nice about this standard is that many of the large companies are also developing other kinds of iControl-hosts, that will — thanks to the standard — be usable with iControls from Apple.
USB, Bluetooth, and firewire handles all sound input/output flawlessly. Recording can be done with e.g. a Bluetooth microphone. Some have complained to Apple for removing the analogue sound jacks for good, but I personally think it’s a step in the right direction to move DACs out of the computers and into speakers and the like. The sound quality improves, devices gets smaller and best of all — audio stays digital all the way.
In any case, the BlackBox plays not only MP3s and OGGs but also MP4s and DVDs (over e.g. the wireless firewire DVD-player from Apple) perfectly, and I think it makes the ever-so-nice iPod more or less obsolete (unless you need a very small device).
From the Monolith ad. ® 2005 Apple Computer
Actually, that is an important point made by Apple: suddenly this box makes a lot of other devices obsolete — but it spawns a multitude of new ones as well.
The only real downside is it’s size — and we all know size matters.
In this field competition is real hard. I, for one, wouldn’t mind carrying my BlackBox everyday, everywhere — but many of my friends still thinks it is nicer/cooler to carry phones the size of a thumb. It’s just that aside from the phone they need to carry their PDA, their iPod and their portable computer with them aswell..plus chargers for these devices and so on. And they need to sync things (ok, I admit products like iSync make it easier, but with the BlackBox you simply don’t have to deal with it.). Not to talk about all the separate user interfaces you need to learn and re-learn all the time.
I was never a PDA-fan and I admit I couldn’t do everything with my phone but since the BlackBox I have been turned…or well…the PDA has turned into something I like. Now I don’t feel it’s returning to the interfaces of the 90s whenever I want to update my calendar or send a message to somebody. Instead I get the glory of hardware accelerated aqua.
All in all, the BlackBox is a killer product — mainly because of its versatility.
I’m using it on a daily basis already — my Powerbook, Powermac and iPod are all on eBay — and I can just recommend you to start saving up!
February 13, 03 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Link Cosmos
This is where I put down thoughts and reflections on the web, music, design and entrepreneurship. It’s also a place for my bookmarks, my photos and my portfolio.
I’m a student at Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm School of Economics. You can find out a lot more about me and what I do in my portfolio.
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