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Worshipping at the Apple temple

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 9 Jan 07, 08:03 PM

What makes hundreds of people queue up in the dark along a San Francisco street? You and I might think it's slightly weird to be a fan of a company - they want your money after all - but the cult of the Mac is so strong that some adherents were willing to wait through the night to hear the Word of Jobs.

Well, he certainly didn't disappoint them. It was an incredibly sure-footed performance (see my video report about this here
) - starting with a few swipes at Microsoft with an ad suggesting that installing Vista could be a life threatening operation for your PC.

When the launch of Apple TV the set-top box with wireless connectivity - was rushed through in the first quarter of an hour you knew that something big was coming.

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Gadget round up

  • Darren Waters
  • 9 Jan 07, 07:50 PM

The Consumer Electronics Show may encompass almost every piece of technology on the planet - but it's the gadgets and devices that steal the show.

Here's a round up of some of the cool and decidedly pointless pieces of tech that I've encountered on my travels.

MOBIBLU CUBE 2 and BOXON
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Video on the go has been around for a while - in mobile phones, iPod, MP3 players etc - but now they have become fashion accessories.

The Cube 2 and Boxon are two video players that are so small you could easily use them as jewellery.

Korean firm Mobiblu claim the Cube 2 is the world's smallest video player - it is a mere 25mm by 25mm and weighs 18 grammes.

The Boxon is a little bigger - at 49mm by 12 mm - but it does come with internet telephony software built-in, an FM tuner, radio and voice recording.

Who would watch video on a player so small? The makers believe teenagers will want to use the devices as fashion accessories.

The screen is suprisingly clear and uses OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology.
Both models have up to 2GB of storage - enough for some TV programmes, a film or two and plenty of music videos - and costs around $129 for the most souped-up model.

At the moment it is Korea and US only but the company is in Las Vegas looking for partners in Europe.

SANSA CONNECT
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When the Zune from Microsoft was released there were complaints that its wi-fi capability didn't mean you could download songs on the go.

The Connect is perhaps the device the Zune should have been.

With its built in wi-fi you can stream internet radio stations, recommend and swap songs with friends, download songs wirelessly.

The device is released in the US in March and will cost $249.

If you can't wait for Apple's iPhone perhaps this is the device for you....

Also spotted at CES...

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Silence of the lambs

  • Darren Waters
  • 9 Jan 07, 04:43 PM

Sometimes silence speaks volumes.

At a press conference for the Blu-ray high definition DVD group on Monday the world's biggest film studios were on hand to give their backing to the format.

The big wigs stood in turn to give their support to Blu-ray, waxing lyrical about the format's strengths and successes.

But where do they stand on the issue of "managed copying"?

Part of the Blu-ray - and rival HD-DVD - format's copy protection system, called AACS, is a proposal to allow consumers the ability to copy a disc to a hard drive and then play it on different players or devices that have been authorised by the user.

It's a system similar to the way iTunes handles downloads - you can buy it on one computer and let other computers in your network share the song.

But in the rush to get HD-DVD and Blu-ray out the door last year managed copying slipped off the radar.

"So what are the plans now?", I asked at the press conference.

Silence. More silence. Executives looked at each other, at the desk and anywhere than at me.

Finally, someone spoke.

Ron Saunders of Warner Home Entertainment said: "We are just researching what managed copying can do."

David Bishop of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment said that managed copying was part of "our long term strategy".

In other words: don't expect to be given the right to make personal copies of Blu-ray DVDs you have bought any time soon.

CES Video blog: Day Two

  • Darren Waters
  • 9 Jan 07, 02:58 PM

The second of our video blogs at CES from the 大象传媒 Click team is now live.

Click here for the latest episode.

Brave new world

  • Chris Long
  • 9 Jan 07, 02:49 AM

Here in technology world life is different to other places, where as other worlds have old wooden, dusty ways of doing things - most of them in black and white - all our stuff is shiny and new, and in millions upon millions of colour.

Thus it will come as no surprise to you that we are not using ordinary ways of sending our pictures back to the UK (or the Old World as we now call it). No longer are we strapping rolls of film to transatlantic carrier pigeons. We are using the internet.

Now when we did a programme from Japan back in late 2005 we tried this out for the first time - and it worked (no one was more surprised than us). We would shoot video, then transfer it to our laptop and then put it on the web via X-Drive.

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Gates v Jobs

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 9 Jan 07, 02:43 AM

Okay, I've had enough. 48 hours in Vegas with too many chips, too little sleep, too much trudging past slot machines where bug-eyed grandmothers are investing their life savings.

So I'm heading to San Francisco to hear Steve Jobs at Macworld.

Another city another keynote - and more frenzied fans cheering obscure new software features. I've sat through presentations by both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and always feel a little like an agnostic at a revivalist meeting.

But it is an interesting contrast of styles and personalities. Gates is not one of the world's great orators - but he wins the crowd over because they sense instinctively that he's one of them - a geek at heart.

You know that he really loves those new features in Vista - "really neat" - and a small part of him wishes that he were still coding rather than travelling the world as a digital visionary.

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Talking 'bout a revolution?

  • Iain Mackenzie
  • 9 Jan 07, 02:38 AM

I'm sceptical about the supposed wired home revolution.

Bill Gates tells us that Windows Vista will allow us to access our music, movies and photos throughout our houses.

Everything from your Xbox 360 to your toaster will be spewing out high definition video.

Apple's promising a similar future using iTunes and its forthcoming iTV box.

Problem is... it all relies on us investing in one company's version of the connected home.

Last weekend I connected my Xbox to my PC.

Result - I could watch all my videos recorded in Windows Media format and play MP3s without digital rights management.

So what about all my Quicktime videos, DIVX, MP4, 3GP? What about my music downloaded through iTunes?

Tough luck. I'll need to re-encode everything into a format that Windows likes. Or just give up.

Things are unlikely to be any different with Apple.

Yes, their box will seamlessly stream movies and TV shows downloaded from iTunes. I wonder how well it will it will cope with the 20 other video formats scattered about your hard drive.

Once again it will be left to the tweakers. Those third party software and hardware guys who always end-up saving the day.

Someone will create an add-on to Microsoft and Apple's products which solves the problem... but it's all too bitty.

The big software companies need to drop their guard for a while and and cater for as many of these formats as possible.

Otherwise the revolution will definitely not be televised.

What Is Vegas Trying To Tel Me? Part 2

  • Paul Mason
  • 9 Jan 07, 01:45 AM

The shaving mirror in my hotel room is magnifying my face by about 25 times its normal size. Like everything else in Vegas it knocks its puny British equivalent for six. On close inspection this morning I found that, sometime during the past 46 years, and quite without my knowledge, fine blond hairs had grown out of my ears resembling a biological specimen so precisely that I was thinking of sending a photo of them to my friend, who's a geneticist, as a spoof of the DNA double helix. But now I know what that mirror is trying to tell me: beware, boy, because televisions are about to get very, very big.

At Sony's press conference last night they unveiled the prototype of an 82 inch LCD flat screen television. Unlike the chavvy bigscreens most of my friends under the age of 30 insist on hanging above their mantlepieces, these new Sony Bravias are also High Definition - so you can hardly even see a pixel, even at close range: it looks like an incredibly sharp digital photo, but it's moving.

Hence, be very afraid. Those strands and follicles I discovered in the mirror will soon be visited on you and your family in your living room. And Jeremy Paxman's famously quizzical eyebrows will be the size of two giant squirrels magnifying his scepticism to a possibly terrifying scale...

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