After I published a new Hidden Dimensions column on Wednesday about the aggressiveness of Netflix, they announced yet another agreement with TiVo. There are so many ways to watch a Netflix movie now that I believe the company has reached a tipping point that will make it very difficult for the Apple TV to climb out of its hobby status.

Not only are DVRs the “killer app” for the modern household, they have the power to change American life and affect the future of conventional TV programming. Early in the week, I saw an article that described how so many many DVR users are using the 10 PM time slot (East and West coast) to catch up on programs, either from previous days or earlier in the evening, that’s killing ratings for shows at that time period.

With TV shows in the 10 p.m. slot not being all that great, according to the article, it’s a perfect time to sit back after the kids are in bed and catch up. I loved the opening line:

“It’s 10 p.m., and the networks don’t know where their viewers are.”

Some Apple customers have urged Apple, from day one, to add a DVR capability to the Apple TV. Just as with Blu-ray, I suspect that Apple doesn’t want to pay a licensing fee to TiVo as DIRECT does and EchoStar didn’t, much to their financial misfortune.

So I’m thinking that the DVR is such a key technology that a marriage of Netflix and TiVo is just a prelude to more interesting game changers and disruptive technologies to come. I wonder if Apple now regrets not having bought Netflix.

On Wednesday, there was a fun article a Computerworld
about how Apple’s “Get a Mac” TV ad campaign with Justin Long and John Hodgman has blunted Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign,
according to a video metrics firm.

The problem for Microsoft is that they’re not now dealing from a position of strength, and they won’t be for the foreseeable future. So long as that’s true, the Apple ads can continue to maintain the upper hand thanks to the “viral” spread of advertising and word of mouth on the Internet.

Apple isn’t done yet. Now that they have the momentum, the next step will be to add additional, low cost, low power hardware to Macs that will further embarrass PCs and Windows.
I’m taking that forecast to the bank.

On Wednesday, I wrote an article about an amateur astronomer that captured a great photo of Jupiter with a great telescope, but a lowly iPhone camera. It made the rounds on the Internet and was an extremely popular story here at the Mac Observer. Modern Science and even Discover magazine picked up the story. Discover noted that two other amateur astronomers in Italy captured a great shot of Pluto and its moon Charon and published that image as well. The point is that technology in the hands of skilled amateurs can do an awful lot — not to mention inspire others.

Last week, NVIDIA revealed that the chipset in the new MacBooks is theoretically capable of supporting 8 MB of RAM. The question was, would the OS support it? Some enterprising individuals with some cash tested that idea, according to ars technica on Thursday and discovered that Mac OS X isn’t stable at that memory size. A memory configuration of 4 + 1 => 5 MB works and 6 MB works, but 8 MB does not. Chris Foresman suggested that perhaps Apple’s chipset drivers are the roadblock, and the limit could be lifted in the future.

Finally, I got a press release today perfectly designed for USA Network’s Adrian Monk and Natalie and everyone else with OCD. Get your Anti-bacterial Cell Phone Wipes from WirelessWipes.com. A ten pouch is just $2.95. Could be useful after you let your five-year old talk to grandma on your iPhone. Or your dog tries to eat it. Ewww.

Before I get into this week’s news debris, I want to comment on the recent remark Steve Ballmer made about how Apple customers don’t get the “full office.” I am sure that that remark was a simple, factual marketing statement — MS Office for Windows has Outlook (and Access in the Professional version).

I asked Microsoft’s PR agency about that and asked for clarification. They said Mr. Ballmer’s statement stands, and they had nothing to add. The reason for that was probably that, taken at face value, Mr. Ballmer’s comment can be taken to mean nothing more than Windows users get Outlook and Mac users get Entourage - a package that has been shortchanged when it comes to equalling the full capabilities of Outlook.

But the problem goes deeper. Microsoft is on a rebranding campaign, and even though Mr. Ballmer’s intent was only to point out the advantage of Windows, I don’t think it was wise to say so. The reason is that the suspension of disbelief, the willingness to believe that Microsoft has been doing the very best it could on the Apple side is destroyed with that one remark. While Mr. Ballmer probably saw it as a way to point out how wonderful Windows is, Apple customers who experience problems with MS Office on the Mac, from now on, could feel that despite paying their hard earned money, they’re being short changed somehow in support of Microsoft’s agenda to accentuate Windows and denigrate the Mac.

It’s a tricky situation, and it just goes to show how carefully an executive’s words must be chosen.

On to the news debris.

I saw a news story at Barron’s on Sunday that Apple might, repeat might, be thinking about a carrier subsidy program for MacBooks on the other side of the pond. The idea is that with a 3G/USB adapter, the MacBook could get onto the carrier’s 3G data network in those cases when Wi-Fi isn’t available. The carrier charges a monthly fee, just as for a mobile phone, but included is a subsidy that reduces the initial price of the MacBook. It’s an intriguing plan — one that sells more computers and makes more money for everyone without damaging Apple’s brand and higher, unsubsidized price. Alas, it was just speculation.

On Monday, Peter Burrows offered the idea that Apple may be luring Microsoft into an ad war, one that Microsoft, given its ineptness, would have no hope of winning. However, corporate hubris would dictate that Microsoft would believe it could win — and at time when it doesn’t have anything exciting to offer and Vista’s outlook bleak. Will Microsoft fall for it?

Meanwhile, Microsoft is playing the tortoise to Apple’s hare by taking a slow and steady approach to cluster computing. Even though serious supercomputer scientists love Unix and don’t have much respect for Windows, Microsoft’s camel keeps nibbling under the tent, hoping to convince customers that a small cluster, built by Cray, with Windows HPC Server, will appeal to some scientists in a small workgroup setting. Microsoft is nothing if not persistent in this arena, and Apple should be careful not to be overconfident with its own Workgroup cluster.

Of course, as I recall, SGI got in bed with Microsoft and suffered badly as a result. Here’s hoping Cray plays it smarter.

Ever wonder why seemingly good people make bad OS choices?
Computerworld’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols took a stab at it.
I would have approached the article differently, and volumes have written about the effect, but the author has some good observations. Every battle has millions of stories to tell, and this is one.

I don’t normally reference routine help or hints stories as news, but this one is worth noting here and catching up on. The Unix roots of Mac OS X offer all kinds of mysterious, magical functions under the hood. While it’s cool that a newbie can ignore all that on the GUi desktop, eventually it’s wise to dig a little deeper into the OS that is such an important part of our lives. Every Mac user should eventually learn how to boot into Safe Mode, and My First Mac published a very nice tutorial last week.

Back to this week. On Wednesday Gizmodo revealed that there is more going on with the dual graphics units in the new MacBook Pro than Apple has publicized. Why Apple chose implement the new NVIDA GPUs they way they did is currently a mystery, but there’s hope that, at some point, users won’t have to log out to change GPUs. And maybe it’ll end up being a four computational core machine after all. Time will tell.

On Thursday, VentureBeat pointed out that Apple has more cash on hand than Microsoft now — US$24.5 billion vs. Microsoft’s $20.7 billion. Of course, Microsoft did a big stock buyback and also pays dividends. Apple has taken a much different approach, and despite constant inquiries from analysts, Steve Jobs has insisted that the money is not burning a hole in Apple’s pocket. Given the state of the economy, that mindset is, oh so, prescient.

I also don’t pay too much attention to one-off stories about Mac hardware problems. A certain percentage of new Macs are going to be defective, out of the box, and writing about those consumer problems as if they were a product-wide failure is unproductive. However, owners of the new MacBooks may want to watch out for a screen brightness issue mentioned at O’Grady’s Powerpage on Friday. It seems the light sensor may need some tuning or be reacting oddly to certain lighting conditions. A workaround is described, and the discussion continues in their forums.

It’s Friday. The debris has settled.

This week’s debris was full of juicy side items that we need to catch up on: Watching high definition TV, Stallman’s slam on cloud computing, a change in thinking about work environments, the World Computer Chess Championship, amateurs at work, buying or manipulating Apple stock and more.

On Monday, I found Loyd Case’s story about his experience with high definition TV fascinating, and it really hit home. Mr. Case talked about how there really wasn’t much worth watching on TV until a convergence seemed to happen. HDTV, Netflix, and a raft of SciFi oriented shows have all combined to draw him back to the Big Screen and his compulsion has grown. Required reading if you have an HDTV.

On Tuesday I found another compelling article in which the founder of the GNU license, free software and legendary figure in the world of computing, Richard Stallman, slammed Cloud Computing as a trap.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he said.

“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

In essence, we’ll all be cut off from our personal files and resources and end up having to pay a toll to access our own data. Stallman believes it’s a sham, and I can’t disagree with him. In my own life, I have found myself instinctively shying away from depending on the emerging Cloud and will continue to do so. It’s something to ponder because every home user needs a computing strategy with respect to operations, security, sharing, backups and now the Cloud.

Speaking of strategies, have you ever seen those ads where the businessman in on the beach in St. Johns with his cell phone and notebook computer? I don’t know if those kinds of ads sowed the seeds or have just been a symptom of an emerging cultural change about how to get work done. The applicable buzzword is Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE. Sounds good to me — check it out. Maybe you’ll be on the beach sooner than you think.

In the World Computer Chess Championships, a cluster system from the U.S., Rybka, is tied for the lead. This story shows the standings, documents a Rybka game in which it announced mate in 29 moves, an informal game between Rybka and a top Chinese women grandmaster Gu Xiao Bing.

On Friday, there was lots of debris. Jim Goldman with CNBC told the world that amateurs are at work when they sell off Apple stock on an unverified story about Steve jobs having a heart attack. Goldman was stern:

“..such is the ridiculous climate on Wall Street right now. I hope they find this guy who wrote this post. But all the traders who dumped Apple shares based on that garbage have some searching of their own to do. Soul-searching. Selling first and asking questions later is the work of amateurs,”
Mr. Goldman wrote.

Amen.

Have you noticed that Apple and AT&T are sending free SMS messages out about updates to iPhone owners? It’s the fastest way to get to every iPhone. In the “Windows Vista Capable” lawsuit against Microsoft in which the plaintiff claims that Microsoft deluded customers into believing some PCs they bought would be fully capable of running Vista, the question has come up about how to notify all those in the class. National ads and Websites just can’t reach everyone who bought computers with Vista.

How about this? Create a Vista Update that must be installed and then notifies the customer.

“I further understand that Microsoft can classify the update as ‘Important’ so that each end-user must affirmatively ‘accept’ the update so that it appears on their screens — even if they had previously disabled automatic update settings.”

“We believe this is a very reasonable and cost effective way to get closer to personally notifying the people who would be in the class,” Jeffrey Thomas, an attorney for the plaintiffs proposed.

And Microsoft has to pay for the Vista update if the plaintiffs prevail.

Cute.

Awhile back, I commented on the Kodak Zi6 video camera as a good alternative to Flip video for Mac users. Christopher Breen at Macworld said it’s his favorite too, and wrote up an initial impression. I suspect the Zi6 will be on a lot of our readers’ Christmas list. Kodak! Gear up!

Finally, there was an interesting story at InternetNews about the pissing contest between Adobe and Apple over Flash. Adobe wants it on the iPhone and Apple doesn’t. iPhone customers suffer, but in this case, Apple has much bigger fish to fry, and they’re working on their own technology from what I’ve read. Once Adobe gets the keys to Internet video on the iPhone, Apple loses control. The story has some interesting background.

Have a great weekend!