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Apr 19
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So, what’s been going down in my absence? After a three month absence I thought I’d better catch up by posting my thoughts on the recent (and not so recent) news stories, so here (in no particular order) are the ones that caught my eye.
Suitably following on from my last serious post, the Apple TV finally launched – I pretty much stand by all of my previous comments, especially that the Apple TV’s success is probably in the hands of the hacking community. I actually had a play with one in the Regent Street Apple Store the other day and wasn’t too impressed, scaling low quality video up to an HDTV (they were using Sony TVs) looks pretty bad and given that HD content takes an age to download and isn’t that prevalent I really can’t see the need, I might consider it for £99 for the hacking alone but for £199 you can jump. Also, given that Microsoft are adding more codecs to their Xbox 360 player there’s even less of a need for it, I do agree with the crew from Macbreak Weekly that it’ll give video podcasts a realistic shot at getting HD content into the living room but I’m not convinced it’ll get the critical mass to make a difference.
In further Apple news, the announcement that EMI would be offering DRM free music. I really think that this will be the start of a sea-change in how the record companies view digital music one way or the other. Personally I welcome the move and will definitely begin purchasing music from iTunes if I know that I’m not tied to their platform.
And finally, in the gaming arena there was the launch of the PS3 in Europe, despite a couple of facts and figures about “record breaking” sales the whole thing went with a bit of a whimper and to date there’s still a lot more supply than there is demand. The problem right now is software and with only two viable titles on release right now (RFoM and Motorstorm) the prospect of laying ot £400 for one is hardly attractive. We’ll have to wait and see, in the long run I expect Sony will catch up but even if they do I doubt that they’ll achieve anywhere near the dominance of the PS2 – those days are over. The other niggling thought at the back of my mind is that Sony were originally touting the PS3 as having a 10-year lifecycle, if that holds true then just as they’re hitting the middle of the curve I’d expect both Microsoft and Nintendo to come out with another generation of hardware to challenge whatever momentum Sony have gathered up to that point. For my money, I’d pick the soon to be released XBox 360 Elite with a larger hard drive, HDMI, better online support, better games, better price, etc. etc. As for the Wii, I really don’t play it as much as I expected to but because it cost less I’m not too upset – I’m sure that at some point they’ll release a serious killer app and I’ll be straight back on it for a while.