Apple trying to store your video in the cloud | Media Maverick »

As I’ve been saying, this is inevitable. Videos (and in particular, HD videos) from iTunes simply take up way too much space for consumers to download them in droves right now (yes, even with huge external drives).

The future is that everything you buy will be put in the cloud and streamed. It will be synced to devices for offline usage as need be, but eventually that need will go away too (farther in the future).

As for Hollywood not wanting to let Apple do this without assurances that it will work on other devices, I’m betting that changes over the next couple of years. The key to Apple’s dominance over the music industry wasn’t iTunes, it was iTunes plus the iPod. It’s about the seamless, integrated experience. Hollywood doesn’t get that — yet.

If the iPad explodes in popularity, they’ll start to. And Apple will have leverage because they make the best devices.

But a big key to all of this is that Apple absolutely needs a presence in the living room greater than its current one with the Apple TV. They need to start taking their “hobby” seriously if they’re going to convince Hollywood to play along.

On Weeping Second-Rate Tears

Over the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice a very interesting tweet by Twitter engineer Alex Payne. I couldn’t help it because a number of people in my stream were retweeting it, or talking about it. I took one look at it, and knew it was a story — because, well, that’s what I do. A few minutes later, Mike called me to tell me to check out this tweet — because, well, that’s what he does. Something that maybe doesn’t get talked about enough in blogging is the importance of a good eye. And good instincts. I’d say it’s maybe the most important trait for being good at what we do.

Anyway, so there’s this tweet (which Payne, has since deleted, by the way), and it’s obviously the basis for a post. Payne wrote, “If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)” That’s interesting on a couple levels:

1) There’s a new version of the Twitter site that the team in internally testing and coming soon

2) Payne is implying it’s at least as good as (or better) than desktop (third-party) Twitter clients

Number 1 alone is worth a post, but number 2 makes it much more interesting. And I’m hardly the only one who thinks so — within minutes of the tweet, Payne was getting @replies from third-party Twitter developers unclear of how to take such a statement. And TechCrunch was getting tips about it as well from other third-party developers, worried about it.

So I write the post. Almost immediately, some people who also work at Twitter start complaining. When I ask why the complaints, I get, “You report on a vague remark with vagaries and speculation. I’ve seen you do real journalism. You can do better.

I don’t know, to me, that statement doesn’t seem vague at all (especially for a communication platform built around 140 character limits). But I think I treated the statement fairly, citing a developer who was spooked by the statement, and Payne’s immediate (calming) response to him. I then talk about new features on Twitter, simplicity, yadda, yadda. I end by wondering what new features could be coming to the site, and if they will in fact compete with those offered by third-parties. Again, that seems fair to me as Payne is implying it.

So why do Twitter employees (and others) get mad? Because we’re amplifying the statement Payne made which they think he shouldn’t have. This is nothing new, it happens all the time in all forms of media. And companies hate it because they want to be in control of the message. But the fact of the matter is that he made an interesting statement, and people are clearly interested in reading about it, reading thoughts about it, and leaving their own comments about it.

I drives me crazy when companies are happy with me for any sort of positive story, then pissed off for anything that can be seen as even just somewhat negative. If everything I write is positive, I’m not doing my job. I’d much prefer it if companies gave me neither praise when I’m positive or hate when I’m negative. I make the calls on what to write. That’s my job. You make the calls on what to produce. That’s your job.

Anyway, what really irks me about that type of negativity is that much of it is implying it’s all a traffic ploy. I mean, I suppose professional blogging itself can be characterized as a traffic ploy in a way, but if that story was one, I could have done much, much better.

As most of you know (and have told me, which I appreciate), I’m very good at titles. Had I wanted to get as much traffic as possible from a post like that, I would have gone with something like “Twitter Planning Website To Kill Third-Party Developers” or “Twitter Engineer Bitch Slaps Development Community” or “Twitter To Make Its Third-Party Developers Weep Second-Rate Tears.” I could do this all day. Instead, I went with “Twitter To Add “Nifty” Site Features That May Make You Forget Third-Party Clients.”

As a title, it’s long-winded, clunky. Worse, it’s far too passive (why include “may” — well, because I felt I should). But I went with it because I think it accurately gets what Payne said across and is still somewhat interesting. But it’s hardly a traffic ploy. Business Insider went more in that direction with “Twitter Rolling Out New Web Site To Kill TweetDeck And Other Third-Party Clients.” That’s also kind of long-winded, but it mentions the very popular desktop client, TweetDeck, (which Payne, never did, by the way) and has the keyword in there: “kill.” Not that I blame them — I use it from time to time as well; it’s a good tactic. But again, I wasn’t going for that here.

But here’s my favorite part about all of this. Twitter clearly didn’t think Payne should have said such a thing, and neither did Payne, who not only deleted the tweet, but has since apologized for it multiple times on Twitter. But I don’t think Payne should have apologized at all, and I don’t think Twitter should have cared in the slightest about the tweet.

From my perspective, what Payne said is absolutely right. Twitter should be trying to build the best client it can. It should have better features than third-party clients. It’s their damn product!

Instead, they’re pussyfooting around, scared to death of pissing off their development community. I get it. The community is extremely important, especially since they’re battling Facebook in a platform war. But I don’t know. I think that by making your product as good as possible — better than third-party ones — you’re challenging your community to do better. Who wants a shitty developer community that you have to prop-up by dumbing your product down? That’s a recipe for longterm failure.

My point, I guess, is this: Companies should stop knee-jerk bitching about coverage. Make your product the best it can be and the coverage will either glow or simply won’t matter. And also let your product handle the rebuttals. Make it awesome, and shut me up. And let your employees say whatever they want. There’s nothing wrong with honesty or being interesting.

[photo: flickr/spaceamoeba]

Hacking NetFlix : Netflix New Releases for March 2nd, 2010 »

Where the Wild Things Are may be the first really popular movie that a lot of people will want to rent on day one from Netflix (and Redbox) — but can’t because of the idiotic 28-day rule.

Another win for iTunes/Xbox Live/Blockbuster, etc. Oh, and Bittorrent.

10 Ways Palm Could Make a Comeback in the Mobile World – eWeek »

A top 10 list of the ages, includes pearl of wisdom such as:

  • “Revamp the Pre” (So basically, redo your comeback product)
  • “Work on WebOS” (Were they not going to?)
  • “Stick with multiple carriers” (Again, were they not going to?)
  • “Remember the situation” (Does anyone think they don’t? Just read Rubinstein’s letter to employees from last week.)
  • “Stay true to Palm” (As opposed to who?)

But my favorite two points are these:

  • “Remember Apple’s App Store”
  • “Forget about the iPhone”

Basically, the whole post goes back and forth between “remember Apple” to “forget Apple.” Really, points one to ten could have been “do better” and I would have taken away the same thing.

Apple isn’t a web company, but the web might be the best thing that ever happened to them.

via Daring Fireball: Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga »

Well said.

It’s in the context of the web as the lowest common denominator platform that compliments OS X versus Windows as the lowest common denominator platform that doesn’t compliment OS X at all.

AppleInsider | Apple predicted to introduce lower cost iPhone models in June »

Ah, more analyst notes. We’ll see. Apple launched the $99 iPhone 3G last year and the $199 iPhone 3GS kicked its ass. Maybe we’ll see a $99 iPhone 3GS this year, but everyone will want the $199 iPhone 3G-whatever-is-next.

What will they offer on the new iPhone? Some early predictions are obvious: the new 1 Ghz A4 chip, 64 GB of storage, 5 megapixel camera with a flash. Maybe a forward-facing camera for video chat? Can AT&T handle it?

Apple Files Trademark Application for Magic Trackpad – Mac Rumors »

I love the Magic Mouse, but this is what I really want. A MacBook-like huge trackpad with multi-touch that I can hook up to my desktop.

I Will Honor The Fucking Embargo

People often write to ask what it’s like to work at a major blog. The answer is sadly not that sexy. In fact, day-to-day can probably best be described by the video below. I’m not even kidding. I think most of us at TechCrunch have this conversation a few times a week (if not a day) at a minimum. And that’s amazing considering that except for a few rare occasions, we don’t even accept embargoes anymore.

If you’re a blogger, the following is perhaps the greatest piece of Internet video ever produced. (More on TC — by the way, the video was actually made by TC Europe contributing editor Steve O’Hear, nice..)

Time for Apple to get serious about video | Media Maverick »

Totally agree. And I suspect with all the talk of meeting with TV execs about cutting prices/subscription plans, Apple thinks so more than it is letting on.

If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

via Official Google Blog: Serious threat to the web in Italy »

Yeah, this is total bullshit.