As I’ve pointed out before, I’ve been a PC guy most of my life and have only been using Macs for the last two years. The biggest takeaway for me has been that Microsoft and Apple are really pretty even: they both pose as poster children for anti-competitive practices, generally favor proprietary code over open source, and make very questionable ethics calls.

Microsoft has been living with the reputation of a big bad corporation for over a decade now. But in the last year or so, there has been a subtle but significant shift in the public opinion, for the better. I can actually pin-point exactly when: it’s since Bill Gates has stepped down. Although Slashdot still illustrates all Microsoft news with the now famous Borg avatar of Bill, the tech media seems to have softened its perception of him. People speak of him with some nostalgia now, and he’s often portrayed as some sort of wise elder spokesman for technology. A lot of that may be due to Ballmer being very unpopular and Gates therefore shining by contrast, but I think that there is something deeper going on here. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’ve been meaning to document my home media setup for a while now because, well, I think it’s pretty sweet and I very much enjoy the setup literally every day. Before I go into the details of how everything works, here are the key benefits of this setup:

• I can watch 3TB worth of content (202 movies and 99 TV seasons at the moment) anytime I want at home. I don’t have to get up and put anything in or out, it’s just all always available. The data is protected against any single drive failure.

• The computers are set up to backup over Wi-Fi without me having to even think about it

• The computers can play music on the Bose speakers by taking over the Apple TV’s speaker output (this is an iTunes feature)

• In addition to playing games, I can use the XBox 360 for DVDs and to stream instantly from Netflix
• I can remote control the Apple TV with my iPhone! (via the excellent Remote app)

Read the rest of this entry »
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This week in etilities, Comcast (Etilities Forum) tries to expand its footprint, Kazaa decides to become a law-abiding entertainment provider, and Microsoft moves its Office flagship to the cloud.

Comcast releases iPhone app, brings premium content to the web

Comcast is starting an online offering trial where if you are subscribing to HBO or Cinemax you can now watch some of the content online. There will be initially about 750 hours of content available, with both movies and TV shows.

Later in the week, Comcast also released a neat iPhone application that lets you check your voicemail, email, see TV listings, and even let you schedule on-demand rentals.

Microsoft announces Office 2010

It’s been a very exciting few weeks for the tech media with the increasingly apparent showdown in between Google and Microsoft. This week it’s Microsoft’s turn to strike with the announcement of Office 2010, which will be free, web-based, and obviously a direct jab at Google Docs.

Kazaa turns away from the dark side

I have many fond memories of Napster and Kazaa in college, providing countless hours of ‘free’ entertainment. This seems the end of an era indeed as Kazaa has announced a new offering with unlimited mp3 downloads for $20 a month. We wish them the best of luck with this new business model.
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What were the highlights of this weeks’ news in Etilities? Let’s take a look.

Forget what you thought you knew about the XBox 360

This was E3 week, and from an Etilities standpoint Microsoft seems to be doing the most for me. First, it is planing yet another XBox Live expansion that boasts Netflix browsing, Twitter and Facebook integration, and 1080p streaming. On top of that, you will also be able to download full retail games on demand straight to your XBox. Finally, it announced a new control system called ‘Project Natal‘, which will basically allow you to control your XBox… without a controller. I don’t know about you, but I can think of plenty of applications for this kind of technology.

Hulu may start charging users

There are rumors (well sourced, but still just rumors at this point) that Hulu is looking into new models where customers would be charged for the content that they watch. I for one would be OK with that, but according to numerous polls out there I’m definitely in the minority:

• This Lifehacker Poll shows 70% of the users saying they absolutely would not do it
• This EngadgetHD Poll shows that 76% of the users are also saying absolutely not

Google wants YouTube to look good on your TV

Google has released its new ‘YouTube XL‘, which is basically a cleaner, lighter interface that aims to look good full screen (for example on a TV monitor, hint hint). Hulu released a very similar interface last week with seemingly the same goal called ‘Hulu Desktop‘.

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When you hear that Microsoft starts laying people off, you just know that the hole we’re in is deep indeed. Businesses everywhere are reporting worse-than-forecasted quarters, and while Google seems to be doing better than most, there may be many painful quarters yet to come.

If you’re a small business, you’re always in need of applications that let your employees e-mail, chat, collaborate on documents and manage their time with a calendar. Google’s answer to this industry need is its application suite, which mostly targets individuals and small businesses. Initially, a company could create Google Apps accounts for up to 200 of its employees for free. Beyond that, they needed to buy Premier licenses at $50 per user per year, which also offers additional storage, guaranteed uptime and technical support.

However, since then the number of users per domain has dropped from 200 to just 50, which if you were a 200-employee business means that you’re not looking at $10,000 per year in licenses. This would likely make IT managers think twice before going to Google Apps as opposed to alternatives like Zoho or Office.

From an industry standpoint, this is a good indication that it is becoming increasingly harder for businsses to thrive on ad revenue alone. The web has a strong culture of wanting everything to be free, and even companies with huge marketing budgets find it hard to break even, for example with Microsoft losing almost $500 million last quarter with their online services. Now of course it can be argued that the mere online presence that results from these services is worth more than than the operating loss, but regardless, it’s likely a rather tough pill to swallow for the company.

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When Netflix (Etilities Forum) announced in October that it would support online video streaming to Macs before the end of the year, it was met with skepticism by blog commentators who weren’t sure it would deliver on time.  And yet here we are, 27 days ahead of the deadline, and after reviewing the service, we can officially say that it works reasonably well.

The first thing that will happen if you try to watch an online Netflix video is that it will prompt you to download Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plugin.  Although the download and installation is quick and painless, this is still a minor annoyance.

If you’ve already experienced Netflix streaming on a PC, you’ll be on very familiar ground, as it is rigorously identical.  If you haven’t, what you can expect is a very clean interface – almost too clean: there are no options to select alternate languages or subtitles.  Thankfully, the foreign films we tested had subtitles enabled by default.  There is also no way to select a specific chapter, which we found to be a noteworthy shortcoming.  Thankfully, there is a nice scrolling feature that allows you to see snapshots of the scenes as you scroll though the length bar, which somewhat compensates for the lack of chapter navigation.

Unfortunately, there were no upsides to the poor video quality. Even though Netflix detected our video quality as ‘High’ due to our fast broadband connection, the picture lacked detail.  The frame rate was fine, but the video was blurry and pixeled.  It’s entirely possible that this is only temporary. Such issues have been reported by users of other Netflix streaming platforms, especially the Roku  box.

Overall, though we are thrilled to see that the Mac community has received long-awaited attention from Netflix, it seems that its streaming service is currently going through growing pains.

Update [12/5/08 9:37PM EST]: Although Engadget is reporting that quality issues with Netflix streaming are resolved, we are still seeing very poor video quality: check out this screenshot if you want to see for yourself.

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The digital music industry is nothing short of saturated with contenders. We’ve previously blogged about a few of them: lala.com, MySpace and Pandora.

In 2006, Microsoft entered the portable MP3 player market with the introduction of the Zune. It has since gone through several iterations both in terms of the product itself and the music service sounding it, and as it stands, it is based on a subscription model just like RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. For a fixed monthly fee, you can listen to any of the songs available in the library. The catch, of course, is that you do not really own any of them. As soon as you cancel your subscription, you lose all access to the music. While the concept is interesting, many consumers want to feel like they own their music, instead of only be leasing it.

Microsoft is aware of this problem and is trying to spice up its offering. It announced on Wednesday that monthly subscribers will now also be entitled to 10 DRM-free tracks per month that they can permanently add to their library. Microsoft is hoping, with this advertised $10 value offer, to give users extra incentive to subscribe to the ‘Zune Pass’. It is also hoping to eventually increase its marketshare of the MP3 player market, which right now stands at a meager 3%.

In the mist of all of these companies coming up with new and innovative ways to sell music, the interesting thing is that the market is completely dominated by the one player using the most basic strategy, iTunes (Etilities Forum). It sells individual tracks for a fixed price, and its MP3 player owns a staggering 72% of the market. The other players may get an A for effort, but Apple gets an A for profitability.

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