Apple's new software may steal the show
- From: sav <notthisbitsavage@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 01:44:03 +0000
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/13985186.htm
Apple's new software may steal the show
CONNECTS HOME NETWORK TO TV
By Mike Langberg
Mercury News
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer's co-founder and performer in chief, rarely shows any reluctance to sell -- or even over-sell -- his company's accomplishments.
But on Tuesday, I believe he underplayed a major move by Apple to grab the best spot on the couch, so to speak, at the center of the digital living room.
Jobs began a 35-minute presentation to several hundred journalists gathered inside Apple's Cupertino headquarters by declaring he would only talk about ``medium-scale things.' He then literally pulled the veil off a new version of the Mac mini computer and a big external speaker for the iPod music player.
Jobs spent only about five minutes talking about what I see as the big news of the day: Apple's first software for using a home network through a television screen rather than a computer monitor.
This goes right to the core of what the digital living room is all about.
Soon every form of electronic entertainment and information will arrive in our homes through a single high-speed Internet connection -- music, phone calls, movies, instant messages, television, e-mail and more.
A single box will collect this river of digital data, acting as a kind of traffic cop that directs the flow around the house.
A long list of companies want to control all or part of this new system, including Advanced Micro Devices, AT&T, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Sony and Verizon.
But getting different devices in the home to talk with each other is very complicated, made even more difficult by Hollywood's concerns that any new technology is an invitation to rampant illegal copying.
Apple has already been a pioneer in selling music online with its iTunes software, and last year added downloads of TV shows and music videos.
Apple's Mac OS X, the software running all its Macintosh computers, also has built-in features for easily connecting Macs in a network.
But hardly anyone wants to watch movies, listen to music or show digital pictures to friends while perched in front of a computer. You want to do those things while relaxing on the sofa, looking at a TV set.
Apple bridged that gap Tuesday by combining two previously separate pieces of Mac software: Bonjour and Front Row.
Bonjour is the built-in feature for easy networking. Macs on a network use Bonjour to automatically recognize and communicate with each other, and can even connect to Bonjour-compatible devices such Apple's Airport Express wireless base station. Even Windows computers can also be added to a Bonjour network.
Front Row is an on-screen interface for easy access to music, movies and photos, with big text intended for viewing from across the room. It comes with a small remote, so you don't have to get out of your chair while flipping through your media library.
Already available in the iMac desktop and MacBook Pro notebook, the new Mac mini, available in two models at $599 and $799, is the first computer from Apple to offer Front Row for under $1,200.
Front Row has also been upgraded to work with Bonjour.
This means you could lounge on the sofa, using Front Row to control the Mac mini. The Mac mini would be plugged into a big-screen digital TV, rather than a conventional computer display. Flicking the remote, you could pull up music and video stored on computers elsewhere in the house.
Of course, you could also look at entertainment stored on the Mac mini's own hard drive, put a CD or DVD into the Mac mini's slot or download files from the Internet.
``No configuration. No setup. It's pretty cool,'' Jobs said Tuesday.
Microsoft and its allies in the Windows world have been struggling for several years to create the same kind of experience, but haven't succeeded in capturing the ease of use and elegance delivered by the Mac with Bonjour and Front Row.
Of course, there's still a long way to go.
The Mac mini doesn't yet work as a TiVo-like digital video recorder, despite rumors and speculation before Tuesday's event.
While it's technically easy to build TV tuners into computers and write software for recording TV shows, the cable and satellite industries have yet to truly open their systems to hardware they don't own.
(Mac users can add DVR capability through external TV tuners that come with recording software, most notably with the EyeTV product line from Elgato at $150 to $350.)
But even without video, the smooth implementation of home networking through Bonjour and Front Row once again puts Apple comfortably ahead of the competition. That's something to boast about.
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