Posts Tagged ‘Apple TV’

AirPlay and the AppleTV

Posted on 21/3/2012, 12:24 pm, by Colin Charles, under General.

The announcement for Mountain Lion came quite a while ago so I’m definitely late to the game. However one feature that excites me the most is AirPlay to an AppleTV. You can already do this AirPlay mirroring with an iPad (which I’ve not tested before). But why is this big for laptops?

Every respectable hotel I stay at has an iPod/iPhone dock. It may be from Bose or from some third party, but whatever it is, there is a dock. It started as an iPod dock, and now its pretty ubiquitous since many folk have iPhones. Solves the carrying a charger problem as well.

Many hotels I go to now have a DVD player. Some even have a BluRay player. I never use these devices. I watch TV sure, but I don’t carry physical media with me.

Imagine if every hotel room has an AppleTV? No more watching crappy Pay TV but mirroring my screen with some streaming video. Or just watching stuff off VLC (I hope AirPlay works with VLC).

You’ll say that no hotel will want this. But no hotel wanted to provide fast Internet either (long distance calling killed by Skype, Pay TV killed by streaming movies, etc.). It becomes a necessity after a while. In fact many hotels now give you a free Pay TV movie per stay if you’re so inclined.

I wonder if Apple will go into the projector making space? Or if AirPlay technology will be licensed to projector makers. After all, imagine seamless sync of your video out via AirPlay to a projector, with no cables whatsoever? Great for presentations, and one dongle less to carry.

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Unexcited by Apple Music event announcements

Posted on 2/9/2010, 2:41 am, by Colin Charles, under General.

Today I installed iTunes 10. Apple has stopped requiring you to reboot your computer the moment you get an iTunes upgrade – I consider this a plus point. Its now sporting a new logo, and things look a little more polished in the application.

iTunes PingNoticing no Ping, which seemed to be all the rage in the morning, I wondered what the cause might be. Quite clearly, you don’t get in on Ping, Apple’s new social network, if they don’t run an iTunes Music Store in your country! The moment I made the change to my US-based iTunes account, all seemed to be OK, and I could start playing around with Ping.

Then it became clearer why they didn’t want me to use Ping. “Each time you purchase, review, rate or like music on the iTunes Store, it will appear here” (so it said on my profile). At the moment, Ping does not fit my use case – I rip audio CDs that I purchase, and they have information within iTunes thanks to the CDDB database it syncs with. I have never purchased music from the iTunes Music Store, because I cannot be bothered with using a foreign credit card or looking for iTunes gift certificates.

Does this in any way hamper last.fm/AudioScrobbler? Probably a little, considering Ping is built-into iTunes. Plus you can follow your favourite artistes ;-) Does this mean people will quit last.fm for Ping? I find it highly unlikely. But last.fm is probably on their toes now, since there’s some overlap – concert recommendations, etc. Ping also is run within iTunes, you can’t use a web browser. There does not seem to be any API either.

Then, people got excited with Apple’s new Apple TV. I didn’t. Its not international. OK, not international enough. I can still buy the old Apple TV from the Malaysian or Singaporean Apple Store. The new ones seem to be available for sale in Australia, UK, the US, and probably a few other countries where you can rent/buy movies from the store.

The iPod Touch? Some good changes, but the camera isn’t all that hip. Good enough for FaceTime. Speaking of FaceTime, it is apparently based on open standards. Steve Jobs said something like it will be open. When will Apple release some information about how others can independently implement FaceTime? Or inter-operate with FaceTime?

Game Center looks interesting. Social gaming is going to be big (also, big in iOS4.1). The new iPhone 4’s don’t have iOS4.1 yet, but when the update comes (next week?), you will get Game Center too. And the iPod touch should be fast – sporting an A4 chip. Apple has successfully made devices do multiple things (iPod touch: music player, game machine, video conferencing tool, etc.). Would I buy one? I’m still too smitten with my iPad, so much so I haven’t used my 1st generation iPod Touch since April 2010!

The new iPod Nano looks cool. Its a pity they’ve removed the camera. And the shuffle, well, its a shuffle – I’ve never owned one.

So the Apple Music event turned out to mostly be a bummer, unless you live in a country where the iTunes Music Store is available.

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