Apple Announces MacBook Air Shipping, Apple TV Update Delayed

[SthrnCmfrtr]

Hmm, if $4 is a lot to "college student" then what the hell does a "college student" doing with an AppleTV? You can rent movies for dirt cheap anywhere.
I wish you college students on the board stop acting like you are POOR victims. Many of you have Macbook Pros when all you really need is a basic Mac to get through school.
This "college student" crap is getting tired. There are people on this board less fortune than you, some people here support families and can't afford to go to college or buy Apple toys so pipe down.

He didn't say that he was poor, he said that he was unhappy about spending $4 on something that wasn't going to work out. Last I checked, that isn't "poor," that's being frugal and sensible.

I personally wish that high school dropouts would stop whining about how privileged and wealthy college kids are... especially when they should know that whoever they're talking to probably received their hardware a) as a graduation present or b) with money earned from work-study.

 

[timothyjay2004]

Hmm, if $4 is a lot to "college student" then what the hell does a "college student" doing with an AppleTV? You can rent movies for dirt cheap anywhere.
I wish you college students on the board stop acting like you are POOR victims. Many of you have Macbook Pros when all you really need is a basic Mac to get through school.
This "college student" crap is getting tired. There are people on this board less fortune than you, some people here support families and can't afford to go to college or buy Apple toys so pipe down.

First of all, I have a 1Ghz iBook G4. I don't have the privilege of owning a beautiful machine such as the macbook pro, or even a new macbook, so video doesn't do all too well on it. The AppleTV was bought using a gift card from friends (since they knew I wanted one) and a little extra from myself, nosey. I work to pay for school, so when I use the money I work for to buy something that was supposed to have an update by now, it's frustrating. No, realistically, $4 is not a lot of money (Who the f*ck cares?), but it is to someone who works hard for the money that they do have and who has to put forth 99.9% of everything they make towards payments to school without loans, such as I. What the original point, which everyone is eluding to, was that it'd be nice to be able to watch the damn movie from something that has the ability to do so, more so than my iBook. That's my issue. Yeah, fine, maybe I should have waited to download the movie. Again, not the issue that I raised. The issue I raised was, if the software was released on time, then I'd be able to do so, which would have been nice. BUT, like I said earlier, I'd rather have the update be stable and work well than crash and not work.

My biggest wish is that Apple gets back onto the track they had pre-iphone. And I also hope that some people on here grow up. The "omg he thinks $4 is a lot of money" and the "how can he afford that stuff if he's so poor". You don't know me. You don't know my circumstances, nor how my life is or structured. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I voiced mine. And as a result, 4 people have acted like children over it. Wow...

 

[whatever]

What I am talking about is the poor launch / sales performance / and confusing market segment that has plagued the Apple TV.

Can't comment on "cool" factor - thus far (may change) the Apple TV has been a disappointment for Apple. And NO - I do not own one and, like many others, will NOT own one until the feature set becomes attractive. I'm not a COMCAST fanboy but we have been renting HD movies for some time now w/o needing additional hardware and having the choice of MANY movies from the vast COMCAST library - it is 2008 and still no Apple HD online - Apple is still in a catch up mode with this thing.

"Vast Comcast Library", unless your Comcast has a different list of movies than mine, we're talking about under 100 OnDemand Rental Movies (about 20 are in HD and when I say HD I'm not talking about 1080P (you won't find a channel on Comcast in 1080P), because Comcast does not specify, but trust me most of it is 720P (because that's what they consider to be HD).

And you do need additional hardware, it's called a digital cable box that you paying for. So let's pretend that box cost $10.00 a month, in two years that will cost you more than an Apple TV and guess what, you still don't own it and have to pay Comcast more whenever they decide to raise the price.

I do feel that if the Apple TV was independent of a computer upon launch it would have sold more, the fact that Apple is offering a pretty large update for free is pretty amazing. I for one know that if I had to buy a brand new Apple TV to get the new features I would, because the existing product was not a disappointment and the new features are worth the money.

 

[whatever]

HDTV was a gift. Laptop was graduation present 3 years ago. Apple TV was a present to myself, and I work hard for my money. So, yes, $4 is a lot to a college student. Thank you for your interest into my life.

Where do you live that $4.00 is a lot of money to you? In the US. I don't mean to be a jerk, but back in 1986 when I was in college and I worked part time washing pots at the school cafeteria, $4.00 wasn't a lot of money (granted I was making $4.50 an hour....).

 

[AidenShaw]

Earth to whatever, come in whatever....

...but trust me most of it is 720P (because that's what they consider to be HD).

Apple also calls 720p "HD", and Apple even has the cajones to claim that 4 Mbps is "stunning HD".

The only thing "stunning" about a 4 Mbps stream is the fuzziness and the number of compression artifacts that you get to experience.

There's no doubt why no Blu-ray announcement happened at MacWorld - Apple would have been embarrassed if people could see a Blu-ray picture in the same building with the Apple TV II demos....

 

[netdoc66]

Umm, I know why...

Apple TV is being delayed because Apple knows that the software update will most likely fail based on all the idiots pressing the update button. They figure let the software creep into people's ATV while they're not paying attention that way the strain on getting this software out to all the morons pressing the button will be lessen. Thanks moron's Apples making all of us wait because you all have the combined mental capacity of a single sperm cell

 

[Qubits]

The delay must be Steve's "One More Thing", it was missing from the original keynote.

 

[HLdan]

And I also hope that some people on here grow up. The "omg he thinks $4 is a lot of money" and the "how can he afford that stuff if he's so poor". You don't know me. You don't know my circumstances, nor how my life is or structured. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I voiced mine. And as a result, 4 people have acted like children over it. Wow...

What a selfish sounding post. You need to grow up. You were the one that mentioned all the toys you have and stated that $4 was a lot to you. The fact remains that you paid for the movie rental so you have no one to be disappointed at but yourself.

Lastly dude, try to understand that others on this forum have 3 times the financial responsibilities as you so we are not joining your pity party. My rant is over, I'm done posting.

 

[HLdan]

While everyone is b!tching about the delay of the tv take 2 software update (myself included, being that I bought one last week), just think about how Apple must feel! I mean - every day they postpone the release is one day's less worth of movie rental revenue. Combined with the purchases that tv owners might be making that they wouldn't otherwise, and the net result is that they're loosing out on huge $$$ by postponing the update.

Kevin

Absolutely agree. Without posting the update Apple gets no movie rental revenue. They are not purposely holding back on the release, if that were true they would be hurting the company.

 

[pondie84]

Whether they're holding it back purposely or not is completely irrelevant. If a company states a product will be out by a certain time then they have to deal with customer dissatisfaction should they not be able to meet those timelines. In this case, the time delay is relatively minor. Still, any delay damages the reputation of a company and causes people to have negative impressions when they next watch a key note speech.

I'm sure Apple can live with that... but I wouldn't dismiss people's complaints.

 

[Marinbob]

Mac Air

Anyone know how long from prepared for shipment to the actual date of shipment takes?
Marinbob

 

[AidenShaw]

Thanks moron's Apples making all of us wait because you all have the combined mental capacity of a single sperm cell

But tests have shown that five out of seven sperm cells know that the correct punctuation of that sentence begins:


"Thanks, morons. Apple's making all of us..."

 

[HLdan]

Whether they're holding it back purposely or not is completely irrelevant. If a company states a product will be out by a certain time then they have to deal with customer dissatisfaction should they not be able to meet those timelines. In this case, the time delay is relatively minor. Still, any delay damages the reputation of a company and causes people to have negative impressions when they next watch a key note speech.

I'm sure Apple can live with that... but I wouldn't dismiss people's complaints.

Oh I'm not dismissing people's complaints. The people who are actually waiting for the update (not making purchases prematurely) have every right to be disappointed.
Unfortunately your analysis of this would make every company go out of business.
Microsoft should have been out of business years ago. Vista was delayed forever, service pack 1 still has yet to be released and Vista has been out a year as of today. Thank goodness Leopard is not in the hands of Microsoft or this forum would be trying to pull people together for lawsuits.

I remember when Dell announced the release of the m1330. People ordered it and Dell wasn't shipping for over 2 months. This is not unusual about a company.

I ordered the Time Capsule. Steve Jobs said they would be shipping in Feb. Well he certainly didn't say the end of Feb, because my shipping date is Feb 29th and delivery is for March 6th. I need it now but I ain't complaining, I'm sure Apple has reasons for it. They are not charging my credit card until the day it ships so I can be patient, this forum would be a lot less stressed out if they learned patience and not complain so much.

 

[pondie84]

Yes I agree with you overall. I just think Apple would be better off not giving time frames, or giving overly generous time frames (eg. in a few weeks, rather than 'in just two weeks').

I suppose in the end, the majority of their customers won't obsess over details such as this! Still, it would've made a lot more sense to have the update ready to go straight after the keynote. You have to wonder how hastily the idea was put together. I remember after the keynote people in my office were talking with interest about the itunes rentals (although not really understanding it). All the interest has died away now. What would've been smarter would've been having things all ready to go right away to try and capture the flash of interest.

 

[Apple Corps]

whatever - no additional hardware is needed - full cable service requires a converter and I have the HD version - only 1 piece of hardware for all the cable service. Our library is well beyond 100 - maybe Boston has a problem.

The sales of the Apple TV have been POOR - a generally accepted assessment. It has been a confusing offering and STILL NO HD as of today. Also - even when HD rentals arrive they will not be available in 1080 with Apple TV.

NOT one of Apple's better products / launches - stuck in a holding pattern for how long?

 

[megatronbomb]

Where do you live that $4.00 is a lot of money to you? In the US. I don't mean to be a jerk, but back in 1986 when I was in college and I worked part time washing pots at the school cafeteria, $4.00 wasn't a lot of money (granted I was making $4.50 an hour....).

Higher education costs have skyrocketed over the past few years. Comparing what you paid over 20 years ago to what's being paid today isn't really applicable.

 

[MacFly123]

Appears Apple has software engineers who can't meet their schedules...boo
Has anything been on time in the last year?

So you think that the new software for Apple TV will be Leopard based now instead of Tiger??? Maybe that is why. But if that is the case is the OS X team working on all this stuff, Leopard, 10.5.2, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, or are there different teams for each product? They all run OS X now so how does that work? Either way it looks like they need to hire on some more software engineers.

 

[AidenShaw]

Also - even when HD rentals arrive they will not be available in 1080 with Apple TV.

Right, the "HD" from Apple is 720p at about 4 Mbps.

That means that you have about 3 times as many pixels as a DVD, at about half the bandwidth of a DVD.

A DVD up-converted to 1080p should be better quality than the Apple "HD" at 1080.... Not to mention that the DVD soundtrack won't be a 160Kbps AAC stream.

Too bad that "HD" seems to refer only to the pixel count of the image, not the quality of the movie.

 

[NightStorm]

Right, the "HD" from Apple is 720p at about 4 Mbps.

That means that you have about 3 times as many pixels as a DVD, at about half the bandwidth of a DVD.

A DVD up-converted to 1080p should be better quality than the Apple "HD" at 1080.... Not to mention that the DVD soundtrack won't be a 160Kbps AAC stream.

Too bad that "HD" seems to refer only to the pixel count of the image, not the quality of the movie.

You're not taking into account the improvements in compression going from MPEG2 to H.264.

Also, Apple has already stated that AC3 5.1 will be available on HD rentals. Plus, if you look at bitrates per channel, 160kbps (80kbps/channel) AAC is about on-par with what you would find in an AC3 stream (384kbps/6 = 64kbps per channel or 440kbps/6 = 73.3kbps per channel) -- albeit only with 2-channels, and again improvements in compression help here too.

In the end, the specification for HD is based on resolution only. So 1280x720 @ 250kbps is just as much HD as 1280x720 @ 18Mbps.

 

[mrrory]

Guess we can all stop hitting the software update button.

Yeh, that's so annoying though... I bought my AppleTV the day of the keynote and have been really looking forward to the update ho-hum...

 

[filmguy15]

Well, why don't we reserve judgement on Apple's HD quality until we actually see it on our TVs? We really don't have any room to comment until we see it. Anyway, to the "$4 Guy":

I wasn't attacking you with my comments, and I am sorry that it came off that way. Gotta love text...you can't hear the way I say things lol Just messing around. I too am in the same boat, I am in college and I own a new Mac Pro, Projector, Apple TV, iPhone....

Funny side note. It seems like the trend on my campus is to take out extra cash via student loans, and buy a new Apple product every year or so. Cause, you don't have to pay it back now, right?

 

[Son of Matrix]

where the h*ck is the new Mac ProBoookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.................................

 

[Krevnik]

Apple also calls 720p "HD", and Apple even has the cajones to claim that 4 Mbps is "stunning HD".

720p is HD. Just that HD includes both 720 lines and 1080 lines in the spec as valid resolutions. You ain't gonna be streaming 1080p content anytime soon.

The only thing "stunning" about a 4 Mbps stream is the fuzziness and the number of compression artifacts that you get to experience.

Depends on the codec, the content, and the people doing the compression. I have a couple 720p encodes from 1080p source at under 4Mbps that turned out pretty darn good, considering. Took a fair amount of effort and tweaking of settings to pull it off though. A monkey in front of an encoder can't produce a one-button encode at 4Mbps with high quality, definitely not.

 

[crjeong]

Right, the "HD" from Apple is 720p at about 4 Mbps.

That means that you have about 3 times as many pixels as a DVD, at about half the bandwidth of a DVD.

A DVD up-converted to 1080p should be better quality than the Apple "HD" at 1080.... Not to mention that the DVD soundtrack won't be a 160Kbps AAC stream.

Too bad that "HD" seems to refer only to the pixel count of the image, not the quality of the movie.

Don't forget that DVDs are 480i anamorphic, where as Apple's HD will be 720p square pixels.

Even with the bit rate being lower than DVD, it will still contain many more pixels and will appear much crisper on your HDTV. DVDs will always look slightly blurry due to the fact that the image is stretched horizontally to make it widescreen.

 

[rtdunham]

...Apple also calls 720p "HD"...

What do I know? But i bet David Pogue knows. Here're excerpts from his New York Times column this week on HD. It's in the form of Q&A between him and a Best Buy salesperson Pogue thought he'd catch in misrepresentations, but whose answers he instead found accurate so he endorsed them and used them for the content:

"Q: OK, how about this one: 720p or 1080p?

"A: ...You’d think that 1080p is obviously better than 720p. Trouble is, you won’t get a 1080p image unless you feed it a 1080p signal — and that’s hard to come by. There’s no such thing as a 1080p TV broadcast (cable, satellite, anything), and won’t be for years. Even most games, like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, generally send out 720p (or less).

"So the *only* way to get a 1080p picture on a 1080p set is to buy a high-def DVD player (Blu-ray or HD DVD). That’s the only way.

"[D.P. adds: Even then, you won’t see any difference between 720p and 1080p unless you sit closer than 10 feet from the TV and it’s bigger than 55 inches or so.

"And even then, you’re not getting any additional sharpness or detail. Instead, as CNET notes, you’re just gaining the ability to move closer without seeing individual pixels: “In other words, you can sit closer to a 1080p television and not notice any pixel structure, such as stair-stepping along diagonal lines, or the screen door effect (where you can actually see the space between the pixels).”]

"Q: But a 1080p set costs a lot more than an identical 720p set, doesn’t it?

"A: Yeah.

"[D.P. adds: At this point, he showed me two plasmas, same brand, same size, same model line, mounted one above the other: one 720p, the other 1080p. The fancier set cost $2,000 more — and the image quality was pixel-for-pixel identical.]"

end-of-pogue excerpt. so are we to complain that TV only does 720? I don't think so.