This week’s Hosts are:
Allison Sheridan
The NosillaCast Mac Podcast http://podfeet.com
Twitter: @podfeet
John F. Braun
The Mac Observer?s Mac Geek Gab http://www.macgeekgab.com/
Monday?s Mac Gadget http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/features/mondays_mac_gadget/
Twitter: @johnfbraun
Don McAllister
ScreenCastsOnline – http://screencastsonline.com
The MacScreencast Guy http://themacscreencastguy.com
Twitter: @donmcallister
Bart Busschots
Personal Blog: http://www.bartb.ie
International Mac Podcast: http://www.impodcast.tv
Twitter: @bbusschots
Changes in iWork on the iPad
Better Office Integration
Access to MobileMe iDisk
Webdav – anyone actually know of any WebDav services? I do – I run it on my own servers sometimes – just a simple loadable apache module
http://www.box.net/ 1gb free
Is Box.net still working with WebDav? Thought they’d removed the webdav interface
ah could be my info is dated
http://icloud.com/en/webdav 3gb free?
Enough to start actually using iWork on the iPad?
Still having to manually manage versions of files but a step in the right direction
SpiderOak https://spideroak.com/
2GB free, 100GB for the same price as Dropbox charges for 50GB ($10/month or $100/yr)
(Knightwise from http://knightwise.com turned me onto SpiderOak)
Mac OS X Server?
Impending Apple TV
Out this week?
Who has pre-ordered one?
AirPlay in General? (Airplay is a standard radio broadcasting industry term http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplay)
I see that iTunes 10 is using the AirPlay terminology for the audio streaming to an AirPort Express.
Is Apple taking a risk by moving to a streaming model, in light of Net Neutrality and/or providers charging for certain levels of data consumption?
Blu-ray on Mac
Steve (Sheridan) suggested this topic.
Problem statement:
- He makes home movie DVDs with chapter markers, scene selections, music, and pretty covers to give to family and friends after shared events. For example he’s created a 2 DVD set of our European vacation for Don, Bart and Knightwise, including a 30 minute slideshow to music.
- The sad part is that while the source material is high def, he can’t easily make high definition DVDs since Steve Jobs believes that physical media is over and there’s no Bluray burning capability built into the Macs of today
The Question(s):
- Is there yet a (reliable) Bluray burner/software combination that would allow us to make Bluray DVDs?
- Where do you see this going for the future? Bart and I talked about maybe we’d be able to post a disk image online for friends/family to download (someday when bandwidth levels increas) – is this the future? or what other ways could we accomplish this same goal?
John likes this topic, just got a Blu-ray player!
Maybe Steve J was wrong when he called Blu-ray a “bag of hurt?”
Phil chimed in with “We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes.”
Unless you can match the price of my local library (free) or redbox (1.50 a night) I’d like more options
Blu-ray looks very nice from a storage capacity point of view (25GB single/50GB dual layer)
I have the same question, can’t you just get a Blu-ray burner and use something like iDVD?
Final Cut Pro 7 will actually export to Blu-ray: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/whats-new.html
According to the guy from Roxio I talked to last year at MacWorld, even their stuff matched with a BluRay burner wasn’t any good. That was a year (or was it 2 years ago?) though so maybe it’s better now?
Picks:
Allison: Launchbar ($35) from obdev.at/products/launchbar Haven’t recommended on MRT since 2008, time for some fresh love!
Don: Plane Finder AR for iPhone 4 ($2.99) Just for a bit of fun. my.pinkfroot.com/page/plane-finder-ar
John: treamWatcher ($15) eloquentsw.com/streamwatcher.html
Bart: totally stupid time-waste, but I love it all the same iQuarium for iOS ($1) idreams.pl/iQuarium
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I would like to make a comment about the license of Blu-Ray as a bag of hurt. The problem has never been the HDCP encryption that is compulsory in HDMI and optional in DVI, Apple has that licensed for a long time.
The problem is the AACS DRM of the Blu-Ray itself, to get a key for this you need to offer a way to create a full secured path from disk to screen, that is relatively easy in a dedicated player, in a computer means signed driver for video and audio, add support to encrypted communication to memory and to the graphic and audio cards, add support to disable all the other peripheral and software presents in the system while playing the Blu-Ray. All this means for Apple to rebuild a lot of the inner working of the kernel of MacosX and probably break the i/O Kit framework for building drivers with the result that none of the present drivers will work and all of them will need to be redone.
Windows implemented this secure path as part of the transition to vista and we already know how it went with respect to driver availability
It doesn’t mean any Blu-Ray disk is going to use this capabilities but the system must support them.
Windows has the advantage that if any error in the implementation of this secure path cames to light can pass the fault to the Graphics an audio cards/driver makers and the PC builder that will pass the ball to back Microsoft. In the case of Apple any error in its implementation will means a lot of legal problems as a minimum.
And will be errors because is not posible to implement a secure channel in an open computer with the hardware that is shipping at this moment.
Thanks for reading my rumblings.
Yours
Masquisieras
Comment by masquisieras — September 29, 2010 @ 4:00 am
Have to agree with the other comment; any bag of hurt the Mac user faces is solely due to Apple. They cannot argue high licensing costs when Blu-ray players are shipped with sub-$400 windows portables. It is all about Apple trying to prop up their dire Download business model; forcing users to accept a very second-best 720p download instead of 1080p Blu-ray disks along with all their extra content. Getting Mac-friendly Blu-ray devices is also a total nightmare as I found out when I wrote my article for my Blog – “Getting the most out of Blu-ray on a Mac”. I did finally get everything working after my own bag of hurt and now enjoy BLu-ray storage and the ripping of Blu-ray disks into excellent quality (better than Apples) 720p format for use on my Mac, iPad and AppleTV. My article is found on my blog (www.TheAppleChap.com) or directly at:
http://www.theapplechap.com/TheAppleChap/Blog/Entries/2010/6/20_Getting_the_most_out_of_Blu-ray_on_a_Mac.html
Hope it all works for you too!
TheAppleChap
Comment by The Apple Chap — October 19, 2010 @ 10:42 am