The Apple Broadcast Network 190
Hodejo1 writes "In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild. That makes a proprietary amalgam greater than what the TV networks had in 1959 and one that easily serves as a foundation for a pending broadcast network that will be delivered not through tall radio towers, but through small wireless hubs and the Internet. Call it the Apple Broadcast Network. iAd is how Apple plans to pay for it."
Drivel.. (Score:5, Informative)
I told the firehose this link-bait was stupid, not sure why it did not listen. TFA article does not make any sense. There is no meat to it. It does not offer any information. The entire thing is pointless.
BTW there is nothing in the article that is not in the summary, so feel free to comment away without clicking. Not clicking is actually preferable in this case. I would dispute the point of the article, but since it makes no point, it is difficult to dispute. It is also, umm, pointless....
Those numbers seem fishy to me. (Score:2, Informative)
"In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units."
There are 300 + Million people in the U.S. and you're telling me that only 63.5 million sets have been sold from 1950 to now???
I call Bullshit.
"By 1960, there were 52 million sets in American homes, one in almost nine out of ten households."
Jordan, Winthrop. The Americans. Boston: McDougal Littell, 1996: 798.
"According to data from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), there are currently 285 million televisions in use in US households."
North American TV Market and Its Relevance [pdf]. Energy Star Research, 6 January 2006.
Re:OUseless without an unlimited data plan (Score:4, Informative)
They've still got WiFi, which covers a LOT of places. It covers my house, my parents house, my friends houses, my work, and many restaurants, hotels, and other places of business. Most of the places I use my iPhone, usually when I'm sitting around waiting for something, WiFi is often available.
For the rest of the time, yes, theres 3G. Someone (Engadget or Gizmodo) did some calculations the other day and found that it would take ~11 hours of streaming TV shows on Netflix to use up the 2G monthly allocation the new data plans have. That's for a normal computer, not lower resolution designed for mobile viewing.
They could get people to watch quite a bit of content without killing their bandwidth caps, especially if you pre-load it when on WiFi for on the desktop and then sync it to the phone (basically, as video podcasts).
I will agree that the fact that cap is there would make me have to think about watching content when I had to get it over 3G/4G/HyperPonyDataRadio, when I wouldn't have thought about it before.
Goodbye Flash. (Score:3, Informative)
If that's not a good reason to stop using Flash on websites, I don't know what is. If you're an advertiser, and you use those annoying Flash ads that we all hate, then it's time to change, or die.
I may not agree with all of Apple's reasons for not using Flash, but I sure as hell love the result.
Re:Do not need. Do not want. (Score:4, Informative)
If you say in a non-inflammatory way that you don't like Apple and do not have an interest in their products and services, why then you are "-1, Flamebait".
That also applies if you say something in favor of the App Store, or the iPhone in general in comparison to Android. Or anything negative about Android.
In other words, welcome to the Internet, where if you say anything that someone disagrees with, you run the risk of -1 Flamebait/Troll.
As for the OP AC, his post is flamebait/troll. His post, in its entirety is:
Subj: Do not need. Do not want.
Body: Apple has nothing to say that I find worth hearing. Apple has nothing to show that I find worth seeing.
No real content other than, "I hate Apple." Flamebait/Troll would apply to pretty much any topic with such a post. Android, Google, Microsoft, Linux, you name it. Maybe about BP it would get a pass...
Re:Flash already exists on mobile (Score:3, Informative)
And neither of those are cases "where Flash is technologically better than both of those".
Sorry, I won't play your pointless semantic games. Flash is more portable than Apple's proprietary Cocoa Touch, and it's more powerful than HTML5. As a result, there are plenty of cases where it's the best choice out of all three for a given project; whether or not it's the best in all respects simultaneously is irrelevant.
As a solution for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, the combination of Cocoa Touch and HTML5 thoroughly outclasses Flash.
Sure, if you ignore the issue of portability -- which is exactly what Apple wants you to do.
And no, it's not clear at all that it's better than nothing. No Flash means no Flash. Flash Lite means some Flash works and some doesn't.
Yes, and some is better than none. Which part of that don't you understand?
And that doesn't even address the issue of most Flash being entirely unsuitable for multitouch.
That's because it's a red herring. The only "issue" with Flash on a touch screen is hover effects, which are certainly not vital to "most Flash". And HTML has hover effects too, so your logic would also have us abandon HTML in favor of some other proprietary Apple technology.