Meador Manor

Back in the Dark Ages of Microcomputing, before the IBM PC or the Apple Macintosh, I owned a couple of TRS-80 Color Computers with Microsoft Basic. They were clunky but quite fun to program throughout my junior high and high school years. When I was in my second year of college my friend Sam bought one of the first Macintosh computers, and it was indeed revolutionary. Its graphical interface and software were incredibly impressive, although hobbled by the hardware of the day.

But the higher cost of a Macintosh and the dominance of the Microsoft operating system made me a fellow traveller on the road to the Microsoft monoculture of today. For years Microsoft Windows PCs have been quite flexible, cheap, buggy, and difficult to operate with scads of available software. Whereas Apple Macintosh machines have been elegant, expensive, integrated, and easy to operate with much less available software.

I don’t regret my failure to follow the Macintosh road since Microsoft machines have dominated in my professional work. But the resurgence of Apple, with the tremendous success of the iPod and now the company’s use of more capable Intel microprocessors, leads me to wonder if I might splurge and buy myself a Mac one of these days. I have been mightily impressed by and invested heavily in the two iPods I have owned and Apple’s iTunes software.

The elegance of Apple’s products and marketing is nicely contrasted to Microsoft’s mind-numbing complexity in the following spoof, which was created by Microsoft employees.

I’m also being influenced by Leo LaPorte’s excellent This Week in Tech and MacBreak podcasts. Leo’s enthusiasm for the Mac platform is infectious.

So before I upgrade to a Microsoft Vista PC, with all of the attendant headaches that will entail, I think I just might take a bite out of an Apple.

Goodness, I hope not!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKi5kv7MwPg

When I was a kid, I thought it was oh so very cool to have personalized stationery. And I still enjoy a monogrammed shirt. But far more rewarding is the personalization of entertainment that is accelerating dramatically in this new century. We are finally beginning to see the long-promised and rewarding convergence of the personal computer, stereo system, and television.

Being 39, I can recall when there were only four channels on our family’s black-and-white television: the NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS network affiliates. I remember the excitement of finally seeing a Star Trek re-run in color after my folks finally bought a color set in 1973. A decade later the VCR and video stores appeared. I remember putting down $300 deposits so I could rent a machine to watch the movies. That launched the personalization of media entertainment that is still dissolving a shared culture of conversation and cultural reference.

But it was music that led the way into a personalized digital world of entertainment. I now listen to all of my music via my laptop computer or my iPod, using songs either ripped from my extensive collection of CDs or downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Now that transition is underway for television, with movies to follow.

My current cable service gives me 91 television channels and 47 music channels, and I could elect to get up to 81 more pay-video channels. But out of that huge pool I only regularly watch two weekly shows: the wonderfully dark re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica and, on the other end of the spectrum, the comedic satire of South Park. Sadly, neither is shown on the handful of high-definition channels. So I’m thrilled to see video moving towards personalized downloads. I already spend more time watching downloaded video podcasts than watching cable. For now the podcasts I watch are all free downloads focused on computer technology: This Week in Tech (TWiT), Digital Life TV (dl.tv), and Diggnation. But Apple has already starting selling a few regular TV shows as downloads. Eventually I’ll be able to purchase high-definition episodes of my few TV shows, and can dispense with cable TV. CableOne knows that, hence their transition into a broadband internet provider.

Movies and television series are next, once the bandwidth barrier is overcome. I watch lots of feature-laden DVDs from Netflix, plus a few from Hastings. Why bother with arriving at a movie theater on time only to then suffer through twenty minutes of ads and previews, a noisy audience, and long movies without intermissions? But mailing or carting DVDs back and forth is a pain. Once they get a bigger internet pipe to my house and the movie folks get their act together, I’ll be rid of that nuisance.

So my advice is to not waste any money buying the forthcoming high-definition DVDs. They’re a stopgap measure and will have a limited lifetime. CDs will be essentially dead in a few years, and DVDs will follow. Convergence is underway, and it is a wonderful thing.