Monthly Archives: October 2008

John McCain’s Last Full Measure of Devotion















The Future of Apple TV?

A year or so ago, I started writing a post thinking through the AppleTV business, and how it related to the iPod business. I never finished the post, and I never felt like I quite had a hold on all the pieces.

One thing I did conclude though, was that the margins on the AppleTV would improve significantly in the space of a year or so. My rationale was that the hardware requirements of the AppleTV were largely tied to the demands of HD video playback, which given the dynamics of the consumer electronics industry, were pretty much fixed. As a result, Apple wouldn’t feel much pressure to upgrade the hardware, other than the storage, and so they could ride Moore’s law on down as the CPU and video chips declined in cost and then merged into a single chip.

My other thought was that Apple would also have the option of giving up some of their improving margins in order to improve the graphics capabilities of the AppleTV and make it a platform for more interactive entertainment, like video games. This is, of course, a tough market to enter, but its something Apple will likely have to confront at some point since the both Sony and Microsoft have other ambitions for the living room beyond high-end console gaming. A reasonably capable AppleTV would be capable of running a lot of existing Mac games, and might persuade more developers to do Mac versions of games.

I was reminded of all of this because of a recent rumor that Apple was planning on releasing a line of network-capable flat panel TVs with AppleTV functionality. I hadn’t considered this before, but in retrospect, its a natural progression that takes advantage of the declining costs of AppleTV hardware, Apple’s existing relationships with flat panel manufacturers, and the strength of their position in the entertainment market with the combination of the iPod and iTunes.

We’ll see if it turns out to be true.

Sarah Palin doesn’t respect you

I couldn’t bring myself to consume the entire VP debate last night. I watched some, I listened some, and then I retreated and skimmed some of the post-debate commentary.

What I heard last night was Sarah Palin all but ignoring the questions she was asked, clumsily transitioning to talking points on often unrelated subjects, and then messily vomiting out a burst of prepackaged buzzwords. The commentary suggests that was pretty much how the whole debate went.

I’m not suprised by her MO, and I’m not surprised that she looked better in the debate than she did in interviews. Interviewers have more latitude to probe her. While I was listening, Biden did a pretty good job of pointing out how evasive she was, but he had to balance that against, well, actually answereing questions.

This is not to say that Biden, like all politicians, didn’t tend to answer the questions he wanted to be asked, rather than the question he was asked, but at least his answers were on roughly the same subject as the questions. Palin was so often answering completely different questions. It was like she answered “I can play flute!” when asked about global warming. It’s like she has no respect for the interviewer, or any of the audience either.

In the end, nothing about her performance reassured me about her competence and ability. She still reminds me of Bush in a skirt: over confident, under competent.

I hope Palin will do a few more interviews before the election. Unless she was outright faking in her earlier interviews, I don’t think she’ll be able to hide behind her “strengths.”.

It may not matter though, it’s hard to imagine that future interviews will attract as much attention as the first set of intervews, or the debate, and so it seems, to the casual observer, her performance in the debate may redeem her. It is doubtful that that will be enough to save John McCain, but it may be enough for her to climb another rung on the political ladder, and that seems to be what’s most important to the sort of person who believes their own bullshit.