To Quote From Whitman

"O me, o life..."

Interesting that Robin Williams stars in a new sitcom whose name is based on Apple advertising copy, and now one of his past performances is cribbed from for a very effective Apple ad.

Apple: 4K for 1K?

Speculation has reached a fever pitch as it often does the day before an Apple product presentation. I've been relatively confident regarding one bit of speculation of my own ever since the WWDC reveal of the new Mac Pro: Apple has a 4K display ready, and the price will be the big surprise.

iPads and refreshed models of Macs and Mavericks, alongside a possible refresh to the iPod line? All of this is widely expected.

The long-awaited halo-end of the Mac line was pitched heavily on the back of its ultra-powered graphics horsepower, and consequently its ability to run up to three 4K monitors at once. The existing Thunderbolt Display also uses three inputs that are made obsolete by the new Mac Pro: Thunderbolt 1, USB 2, and the now ancient -looking FireWire 800.

Only in the last few days have people gotten more confident about predicting a new 4K Thunderbolt Display, and I'm surprised that everyone I've read or heard seem to predict the cost at $3000-$4000.  These people include John Gruber and Marco Arment on the latest installment of The Talk Show, among others.

That price range sounds much more reasonable for the Mac Pro itself. Applied to a desktop display, the hefty price tag runs counter to the trend seen since the introduction of the 24" LED Cinema Display at $899, which replaced a 23" Cinema Display that originally cost $1999. For reference, the 30" Cinema Display from the same line dropped over time from $3300 to $1800.

It would be bizarrely out of character for the flagship Apple display to ratchet up in price at this point. One of the areas where Apple has shored up its component purchasing leverage in particular is in displays, including both iMacs on the large end and phones and tablets at the smaller end.

Aisin Seiki has been selling a $700 39" 4KTV (and a $1000 50" model) since April. I'm not saying that directly correlates to Apple's ability to price a 4K "Retina" display at the $999 point of the Thunderbolt Display, but if anyone in the computing industry has the component volume leverage to be first to move, it's Apple. If Apple can, they will, and it would be a hell of a precursor to a late 2014 TV set launch.

I wouldn't necessarily peg the same 27" size as the Thunderbolt for what I'm calling the Retina Pro Display, but it would make the most logical sense for it to be offered in the size of their largest iMac. That way, it would begin to drive down component pricing  so that the iMac line could go 4K next year and not have an impact on margins. Refreshed MacBook Pros and even Mac mini models would have to support the new display resolution with beefed up graphics cards, but perhaps the theoretical new Air models wouldn't...or perhaps only at a reduced resolution.

It's not really Apple's style anymore to wow people with how much more than the old product their new thing costs.  Whether it's Phil Schiller or Tim Cook who drops the news, an Apple 4K Display for $999 that works with their hot new Mac Pro would be a great way to sell multiples of three of them.

You know who really wins if this turns out? Whichever monitor arm mount manufacturer makes a three-headed model. 

Post Script (11:30am CT 22 October 2013)

In 2012, Aisin Seiki (which generally does business as "Seiki" in the US) licensed Vizio's QAM patent portfolio.  Those who dismiss them as a second-rate "Asian third party" are ignoring the fact that they are using the same core signal processing technology as one of the biggest LCD TV manufacturers in the United States. What I can't personally speak to is the signal processing and upconversion quality of their Ultra HD offerings. Could part of Apple's "fab-less" chip design strategy, with regard to graphics in particular, be geared toward reducing their overhead in display chipsets?

2nd Post Script (1:30pm CT 22 October 2013) 

So my 4K/Retina desktop display prediction didn't pan out...yet. I stand by the pricing and positioning logic above, and expect some sort of movement during the coming months.

AppleTV Adds Channels, Taketh Away "TV" Button?

AppleTV added Disney Channel, Disney XD, The Weather Channel, VEVO, and Smithsonian Channel the other day. I fired up my AppleTV just now to put something on, and the TV Shows button in the top row is gone all of a sudden.

Maybe it's a momentary glitch, or maybe Apple decided people didn't want to "own" their TV shows after all.

UPDATE (4:10pm CT): It looks like this is a global thing. It isn't just US or UK, and it isn't the result of a software update. Does it bother anyone else that Apple can remote-pull or have core features fail one by one?

UPDATE (4:35pm CT) : After trying to open TV Shows in iTunes itself, it crashes you out to the main iTunes Store screen. Clicking on individual shows found on that main page still take you to the individual show pages. This all makes it seem like this is a temporary thing. For people in Europe doing their evening TV watching, the failure of the TV Shows "frontend" on the AppleTV itself is something that looks like they intentionally, maliciously removed the ability to access content they've paid for in advance.

The Critical Path 87 & 88: "De Gustibus" & "Siri in the Driver's Seat"

This morning, Horace and I recorded two episodes back-to-back, in an effort to catch up on being behind as well as to address the mountain of news and topics to discuss from WWDC last week.

Part 1, "De Gustibus" looks back at his first-of-its-kind AirShow event, the thrust of Apple's desktop hardware strategy and the "hardcore" Mac Pro, and a bit on Mavericks and especially iTunes Radio. 

We closed the day with Part 2 ("Siri in the Driver's Seat") focusing a great deal on iOS 7, but not with the reductive, colors-and-pixels design lens that others have over the past week. We instead look at what this overhaul means with regard to where Apple is going next, zeroing in on Siri and other bolted-in service improvements and enhancements. The next installment of our AsymCar discussion spins out of that, and we close on what iWork for iCloud really means  in the grand scheme of all things Apple.

We're recording Episode 89 this Thursday morning. There really is that much to discuss. 

Culture On Demand: Deep Focus UI

I'm not a "tech blogger", but as with any time Apple does much of anything now, their keynote yesterday has some direct implications on the world of content consumption and discovery.

 "Flat" design expectations are now out the window. The look of the new iOS UI is all about not just depth, but layers of focus. With this fundamentally shifted visual paradigm, we're seeing the next big step in how Apple handles UI on product categories, both current and those they've yet to introduce: some theoretical (a watch, a larger iPhone), and evolving hobbies (TV).

The most famous cinematic example of deep focus is Citizen Kane , a movie that was not shot in 3D, but which achieves a perception of multi-layered depth. Cinematographer Greg Toland achieved simultaneous focus across the fore-, mid-, and background through very precise placement of objects in the frame, staging, and lighting.

The same principles apply to iOS 7 and, to a lesser extent, what I've seen of OS X Mavericks. Like the most basic tenets of stage magic, the new "look" is just as much about the window dressing as it is the structure of where the audience's eyes are being directed.

My kneejerk feeling about the Human Interface overhaul is that it's an exciting and interesting change that opens up a lot of possibilities. There are features and design cues in Apple's HI that are found in both Android and Windows Phone, but they're among the best parts of both. Things like awful icons and visual details that need smoothing out will eventually get fixed. 

Most importantly, a shift this big makes me confident that when Apple overhauls the AppleTV interface, it will change things as fundamentally as their mobile and desktop UI experiences have. 

Let's not forget that the current AppleTV runs on a custom version of iOS.

Gone from iOS are faux-3D design choices that look as fake as styrofoam boulders on Star Trek sets. The new iOS and OS X feel and look as different from their predecessors as the newer JJ Abrams Trek looks as compared to the most refined version of the original canon. In general terms, the new stuff is the epitome of modern design: big (but simple), bold (but subtle), and sleek.

Replacing the old are thin layers stacked in precise levels of depth. On Apple TV, I'm only starting to think about how this might specifically be employed, but overlaid layers of live content are interesting, including configurable, cross-platform notifications. Think of weather, stocks, and other apps as widgets that are as configurable in layers as you choose. The same actionable push notifications in Mavericks could be linked to your TV.

iCloud Keychain exists not just to solve having to enter the same fleet of passwords on your computer and phone, but certainly to also cover AppleTV at some point. Entering TV channel app passwords is one of the biggest problems for set-top boxes. Instead of re-entering them all, your AppleID will become your single sign-on for all of your content subscriptions.

I'm excited about modern, fresh, and near-futuristic design flourishes in TV apps, but I'm more interested in voice search tied to content. Think of what Siri already does on top of what was announced yesterday (improved function and quantity of indexed databases). Siri already knows who I mean when I ask about "John Malkovich" or "Jean-Pierre Jeunet". Wikipedia, Bing, and some version of IMDb that isn't owned by Amazon (which they're already using) are the tip of that iceberg.

I'm most enthused by the idea of Apple forcing a unified interface that pushes content vendors to index their content in a way that is user-friendly and leans toward driving discoverability.

As a Roku user, I'm never shy when complaining about how clunky and slow all of their apps are. The recently-introduced cross-"app", system-wide search is a fantastic improvement, but it does not go far enough. Individual app experiences are still awful. If Apple moves in the direction it looks like they're telegraphing, Roku is on the verge of being blown completely out of the water.

Note that they did not show iOS 7 for the iPad, nor is an iPad beta available yet. That may be indicative of the larger-screen interface working differently, due to the alternate usage pattern of a larger device as it relates to the expanding types of baked-in service logins (Facebook, LinkedIn, others). The larger-screen iPhone that many assume is in the works would be a part of this "bigger-screen" implementation of Apple's new Human Interface philosophy. 

The TV is a hell of a larger screen. 

More on all of this soon, after I play with both iOS 7 and Mavericks. I have more reading to do on all the game system stuff from yesterday too. 

Culture On Demand: Reading 4K Tea Leaves, or: Apple's "Very Grand Vision" for TV

Late last night, All Things D posted the full video of yesterday's Tim Cook interview.

At the ten-minute mark, they dive into discussion of TV. I found it interesting that All Things D themselves omitted "very" in quoting Cook on what Apple is doing about "fixing television". Following Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo playing their hands in the set-top space, Cook was exactly as cagey about TV as he was last year. Of completely inconsequential interest: the roadblock ads that are running on All Things D this week appear to all be for new $7000 Sony 4KTVs.

I'm fairly convinced that at some point in the future, Apple is going to release both a revamped "hockey puck" and a physical TV set.

Macs, Retina, and 4K

Look to the iMacs and the Thunderbolt monitor released over the last couple of years to see Apple refining glare, viewing angle, and contrast quality. The radically slim profile of the newest "Late 2012" iMac displays reveals a continued drive toward thin, colorful, and beautiful monitors.

What no one really talks much about are the aspect ratio and resolution of the 27" iMac and the Thunderbolt display, which both feature a 16:9 panel that runs at 2560x1440. It isn't an enormous leap over 1080p, which is where it appears the vast majority of 22-inch and larger computer displays are bizarrely (to me) topping out. Jump down to the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and you have a 2880x1800 display.

The resolution of 4KTV is 3840x2160.

I would be surprised if Apple didn't wait to release a TV until it could be more than "just" an overhauled AppleTV puck crammed into a 1080p display. It has to be more than a gorgeous aluminum and glass shell. I don't know why Apple would release less than a 4K television.

Apple is pushing all of its products toward the Retina ideal. No matter what unfounded "channel sources" tell some analyst who gets quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Apple's own product evolution patterns have proven time and again to be the best way to read their moves. Apple plots a very steady, concerted course, and that's visible in that for two straight years, we've gotten the same kind of dodge at All Things D from Tim Cook on TV. Frankly, we got almost the exact same rhetoric from Steve Jobs at D8, with some adjectives swapped. Based on their overt focus on "resolutionary" devices, I'm going under the assumption that the Apple "iTV" is a matter of when, and not if. They're massively bought-in with the display industry, and the TV is the one mass-market screen they don't make as of yet.

So, when do we get this fancy Apple television? Everyone, including Kara Swisher on stage, has been pulling a Veruca Salt and demanding it now. Since Apple talks like they're waiting on something, my assumption is that it's for 4K panel pricing to go down. That way, they can sell a TV at a price that people will actually pay. No matter what vestiges of the Apple Pricing Myth still exist, they won't put a TV on sale that costs $7k, no matter how pretty it is.

The Puck

The AppleTV, as it currently exists, could very well be what we have through the end of 2013. They may finally do a substantive overhaul of the OS. They may add more apps (channels). I hope they at least take a cue from Roku and add system-wide search. Maybe they'll rev the device again with a yet-faster processor.

The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will both cost around $500 this fall. The Wii U is not likely to budge from $350. I got a hearty laugh this week from well-heeled game and media industry columnists who bent over backwards three times to explain how badly their tech-averse parents will be desperate to pay $500 for an expensive, aircraft carrier-sized bloatbox. For $350-500, my mother would much more likely get an iPad and, depending on the iPad model, an AppleTV, both of which she would actually use.

The sound logic for leaving the puck in play is that it's the actual TV's Trojan Horse, thanks to an extremely low cost of ownership. Even after the introduction of the full-on TV set, it turns any non-Apple TV into most of whatever that thing ends up being and doing. This disparity already exists traditionally in the Apple ecosystem, with the best example found in comparing the iPod touch and the iPhone.

The two devices are much closer in feature set and software support than ever before, but the iPhone is always king when it comes to internals, most prominently in the processor, RAM, and camera. The question then mutates into pondering what Apple will add to the AppleTV to make it more compelling, as well as what they will hold back for the actualt TV hardware.

Informed Outside Speculation

Let's start with a couple of things that Apple will not do.

Unlike Xbox One, there won't be some sort of ever-present, "always listening" system in a physical or functional form like the Kinect 2. That sort of surround-speaker-sized box would never get into (much less past) the concept design phase. The moment I saw that bit in Microsoft's keynote, I could instantly picture Phil Schiller's takedown: "the new AppleTV is only listening when you tell it to listen, and it won't track your heart rate, the number of people in the room, or whether you're in your underwear".

Tim Cook said himself that Apple is not in the content creation business, nor does it want to be. That's a smart move on Apple's part.

Indicative of what I think they will do on the TV side of things is the way in which Cook chose to answer a question regarding "new services" late in the interview. He indicated that Apple is more focused on finding more applications of existing services than they are in creating new niche services to see what sticks (like Google has). He made specific mention of Siri, FaceTime, and iTunes.

The AppleTV puck needs better navigation control than the gumstick remote it comes with currently. "Just get an iPod touch/iPhone/iPad" is not a solution to this. I don't see them going bulkier with something like Roku's RF-based, accelerometer-enabled Wiimote pseudo-ripoff...but maybe Apple will at least make a new RF-based remote that finally frees us from the tyranny of line-of-sight.

With that addition, AppleTV can have Siri, which would be activated by a button press and hold on the remote, just as on iDevices. The key is not having a remote that does not require line-of-sight. Siri has to "just work", right out of the box. System-wide search ("Siri, I want to watch The French Connection") should be part of that. Why else did they spend so much time working on and showing off Siri finding info about movies, actors, directors, and so on? Why stop at buying movie tickets? Why not build on this function in a different application?

There's no way the puck gets a FaceTime camera. People would have to attach it to the top of their TVs like the original iSights. The FaceTime camera will go right where it is on Apple's existing displays when they make the TV. Gesture control could theoretically be implemented, but it would be odd of Apple to require that the camera be on at all times. They actually care about privacy and design things around that, instead of constantly tying themselves in knots trying to look like they do (see Microsoft's last week of press).

The question mark for me is iTunes, and what "iTunes" continues to mean. Cook talked about it as this massive content ecosystem full of this and that, but functionally, it's a storefront.

Apple likes to throw around the buying power their users offer with record labels and studios. Apple would face anti-competitive inquiries if they fully blocked other storefronts from AppleTV, but they haven't opened the platform to very much paid video content outside of iTunes. Those few include Netflix, Hulu Plus, MLB, and NHL apps.

Amazon Instant is still missing from the AppleTV app list, even though it's on all other set-top app boxes. It presents the best cross-section of problems. Unlike Netflix and Hulu, there is "purchase and own" content in that Amazon service, which is protected by Amazon DRM. It would be inelegant if the Amazon Instant app for AppleTV lacked all of those purchase options (just like the iOS app does), only giving Amazon Prime users access to their free streaming content. Then again, "inelegant" has never stopped Amazon before.

Will we see Apple open up so that channel apps like Warner Archive Instant, Acorn, Crunchyroll, and others could pop up as they do on Roku, Blu-ray players, and so on? I don't see how they can avoid that, but they will do everything possible to delay that for as long as they can, and make sure that the interface defaults to driving people to spend money with iTunes. If there's any monopolistic thing Apple should be worried about, it's limiting which services you can buy or rent content from on their set-top service. Their saving grace on iOS has been the 70-30 split standard, which puts it on the vendor to choose whether to accept those terms.

By iTunes, did Cook also mean the App Store? Apple has admittedly never been serious about console-style, "real" games, but their iOS game developers already speak the language that the TV would. It would be interesting to see what they could come up with that isn't just an iPhone or iPad game over AirPlay. All three major console manufacturers have multiple things going against them in the indie developer space.

This is very much an open topic, and it won't be closed anytime soon. I'll revisit all of this after WWDC and E3.

Don't expect any direct TV talk at WWDC. See Jim Dalrymple's excellent summation of where your expectations should rest.

What you should pay attention to is the further convergence and interaction between iOS and OS X, which will take center stage. The design and UI choices found in both iOS7 and OS 10.9 will be especially indicative of however it is that Apple is actually thinking about TV. Remember, they've been working on this for years.

Samsung's Best Buy Land Grab

A few weeks ago, Samsung announced impending "Samsung Mini-Stores" coming soon to Best Buys nationwide, obviously in the mold of the Apple in-store pop-ups. I stopped in to the store nearest to where I live today and found this bit of real estate razed just across from AppleLand.

When is Best Buy going to fully transform into a landlord for all the electronics brands they sell?

Apple Bans SAGA #12 from iOS, Or: No Gay Sex Please, We're Apple

The issue has been refused from in-app sale on "inappropriate content" grounds from all iOS apps: ComiXology, the Image Comics app, everything...except for iBooks. That's odd, and smells anti-competitive, since Apple sells an enormous pile of radically more graphic content in iBooks and iTunes.

This enraged tweet from Merlin Mann is a good indicator of where the fan base is at the moment. God, if he were a superhero he would kick some bureaucratic ass and quick.

iOS wasn't properly scaled from the outset to transform into its present state as an impossibly broad content delivery machine. Steve Jobs originally and forcefully pushed for only web apps in iOS (or was that spin?). With native apps and content, Apple becomes the judge, jury, and censor regarding acceptable content. As far ahead as they think in some areas, they actively ignore a lot until its a big enough problem to matter, to infuriating effect. If you don't make noise, they won't feel compelled to act. Send some emails to the not-hard-to-find executive team's inboxes if you don't like this. They do listen, but if there's no noise to be heard...

Have you not read Saga and think comics are a lousy place to find sci-fi? Be warned: the book is for adult eyes, and earlier issues are more graphic than the two measly panels that caused this little fracas. Listen to Merlin and I talk about the first six or so issues between ourselves and take some calls from some muy interesante listeners on The Comic Shack. Go ahead and subscribe. The show is back very, very soon.

I'm stuck on this Merlin-as-a-superhero thing, God knows why. I think there's something there. Hm.

Update on 2013-04-10 22:08 by Moises Chiullan

See this update on the story, complete with more analysis.

Hot & Cold Branding: Ron Johnson Out, Predecessor Back at JCP

CNBC broke the news within the last hour. Plenty of people have speculated that this was going to happen for months and months.

If anything, not giving Johnson's reworking of the JC Penney a chance to work over time will end up being their next-biggest mistake to signaling that JCP really doesn't know what it's doing by re-hiring the guy who got them in bad shape in the first place. Their stock fluctuation in the short term, I suspect, will be indicative of the long-term trend.

The best things Johnson's overhaul brought to JC Penney were the streamlining of price structure (eliminating 70 different "Clearance" racks) and making checkout possible in less than 10 minutes. I started shopping there again. Maybe he belonged at Apple in the first place. I hear there's a job opening.

Everything old really isn't new again.

Apple Doubles Down on Security

Stan Schroeder reports the developing acquisition story for Mashable (keep checking them for updates):

AuthenTec‘s line of products includes smart fingerprint sensors for PCs, smartphones and other products as well as identity management software for individuals and businesses. The company’s clients include HP, LG, Cisco, Motorola, Nokia and others.

This is an acquisition of a scale much larger than simply plugging in-app purchase holes. As a major, multifaceted platform company, they need to own some security talent just like they needed semiconductor talent a few years ago. If we don't continue to trust them with all our credit cards, then they lose one of their biggest advantages.

He also notes that one of AuthenTec's bigger clients is Samsung. Hm.

Marty's Day Out (featuring Siri)

I wish that Scorsese would do another side thing featuring himself, like My Voyage to Italy. This time, it woud feature his plucky new sidekick, Siri. Oh the escapades they'd get into. Think of something that'd be called Marty's Day Out, with a Gershwin score.