[Rant] ...another interesting article | ANN.lu |
Posted on 30-Nov-2003 18:32 GMT by bbrv | 56 comments View flat View list |
Here is a New York Times Magazine article about Apple, the iPod, marketing, product development and management.
We contend that this Community can produce a Super TiVo-like device that integrates the network into the use of the content itself. The Pegasos is building block #1 to any competent computing environment and the necessary tool required by the developer support enlisted to customize the platform for consumer use. A Pegasos computer is a desktop machine. A Pegasos computer enclosed in a fan-less VCR-like size case becomes a consumer product: a black box. The Pegasos black box operates equally well with a television screen or a computer monitor. The Pegasos black box could come with its own file sharing and downloading programs -- music, movies, video games – a preference is selected, a source found, the entertainment begins. The technology would be invisible to the entertainment experience. The consumer manages the experience through an easily understood user interface with a remote control or through a web browser and a keyboard for more sophisticated users. As the hub of the Home Entertainment Center high fidelity sound/audio can now be introduced through the 24/7 broadband Internet connection to bring existing home stereo equipment back into use. Here the Pegasos black box can be positioned to be a consumer product that would do to a TV set what MP3 did to music – any show any time.
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...another interesting article : Comment 47 of 56 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Trizt on 01-Dec-2003 12:03 GMT | In reply to Comment 45 (Daniel Miller): First of all, I won't comment the last part, as I know that some readers have other opinions and it's a bit off topic IMHO.
Yes, a mouse is a better tool than a remote to move a cursor, but there is another solution that has been around for a quite long time and I think I have seen it on one remote, trackball, it allows you to be in your bed without any hard surface to move around the cursor as you wish. Of course it will take a couple of days to get used to it, but you will master it quite fast. The major problem today is that things are made for right-handed people, at least 10% of the population is left-handed, so the device should be operateble for both left and right handed persons.
WebTV is one of those early tools, kind like my digital-decoder I have for cable-channels, it can do some basic stuff, but really isn't that good at those other things. Here is the flaw that when they was first thougth, there was a limited things you could do, even on a computer, and gui-design/userfriendlyness is something that has come on later years and many tech people haven't studied any form of design, which tends to have lead to products that haven't always been easy to use.
To make a MMBox based on Pegasos/MorphOS will requier a lot of software, today IMHO MorphOS lacks quite much software and the software that can be run, is many time quite outdated (from the 90s or late 80s). There is a great need to get new software and I think if Genesi can afford that, that when people exchanges their Pegasos to a PegasosII, that the Pegasos would be donated to a software project if they agree on make a MorphOS port of it.
I think there is the same problem with the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4, they too will need a hughe amount new updated software.
At the moment it seems that linux would be the OS of choise if using a PPC based platform, as it has more of the needed software.
Some of thise "problems" can be overcome with getting proper drivers for hardware, which in some cases can be a bit difficult, just look at nVidia, they aren't open enough. But "we" will need a TV-capturing card that supports at least MPEG/MPEG2, if possible even DivX in some format, the graphics card have to be able to handle those things too without the help of the CPU. For getting the phone functionality, you need either a modem card of some kind that supports voice or that you have program for phone-over-tcp/ip and national companies providing a such service (I don't think people in general is perpared to get a subscription on a phone service over internet in a country farfar away and which most likely won't provide you with a portal system where people without an internet connection can call you). I think that a MMBox needs to work as a digital-decoder too, I guess this will be a more difficult taks to solve as hardware (haven't seen any such PCI cards) and I guess the digital-tv-channels will be doubtfull against a software solution, as it's easier to hack to see channels for free. Say we have the PCI card, I think it's important that we don't need to have two cables in for see TV/digital-TV, but just one TV-in.
As I pointed out before, I don't think it's good to create a new protocol to get your movies from your computer, here I think it's really important to use what already is there, samba is a quite good option, but I have a samba free environment and would like to see NFS support, nothing prevents to have both.
Neat extra feature culd be dual display, not everyone has space for two devices to display on, so I guess this could be an option, but could be nice to allow people to do more than one thign at the time, say the kids are playing the new Quake4 while dad and mom watches the new Titanic3 movie. This would requier the possibility to split the sound in a good way (maybe use a 7.1 soundsystem, where 2 of the speakers are dedicated to teh secondary monitor). |
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