EGOPOLY

I have a Nexus One and an iPhone.

I agree with this review 100 million percent.

The N1 is a nice enough phone, but I would never switch to it as my primary phone, giving up the iPhone.

OK, I’ve had a few days to think about the iPad. First, I must have one. But that was pretty much a given for me even before I saw it.

What is with the name?

I suppose at some level, it was the inevitable name. It’s the name they had to go with. It really explains what it is in 4 characters: if you know what an iPod is (who doesn’t, with 250,000,000 sold?) and if you know what a pad (of paper) is, you get it right away.

But I am so sick if the iWhatever branding thing, I’m always hoping they’ll start to move away from it. I guess not. I’ll get over it, and I suppose everyone else will too.

This is the part where I say how smart I am.

Even though I got only 8 points out of 15 on my self-imposed prediction test, I’m going to congratulate myself for being exactly right on the main points: it’s a giant iPod running iPhone OS with 3G. Having instant access for iPad users to all the zillions of iPhone apps in the app store is such an obvious win.

Instant Backlash, seriously?

The storm of ‘meh’ from the interwebs is crazy.

First of all, after slashdot’s infamous ‘meh’ of the original iPod in 2001, you’d think people would think a little bit more before pronouncing a new Apple gadget junk. Or any gadget for that matter: until you’ve tried one in your hands, you really should just shut up and think for a while first. One thing I’ve noticed is that in all the commentary I’ve read this week, all the ‘so what’ stuff is from people who were not at the launch, who did not get to play with the device in their own hands. For the folks who were lucky enough to try one, the reaction seems to range between journalistic restraint (gosh I love this thing, but I need to talk about a few meaningless flaws so I sound objective) to outright gushing (which is how I expect I would react if I had the chance to play with one.)

Second of all, and more important: the critics and pundits who are proclaiming ‘big deal, nothing to see here’ couldn’t be more wrong. This is a watershed event in information technology, you morons. It’s like NCSA Mosaic. It’s less obvious because Mosaic opened a new age in IT because it exposed millions of people to something they hadn’t known about: the Web. In the case of the iPad, it’s a little different: there’s no clear ‘new’ concrete thing that is being introduced to the world. But it’s there, and it’s going to change everything.

The Big Deal

The huge thing, that most technology writer people just can’t seem to get, is that most people, normal, non-nerd, non-techy, non-computer-hobbyist people are not like them. They don’t like computers. They can use a web browser, they can mostly use word processors, though don’t understand 95% of the functionality of them. They really don’t even think about all the backup, network configuration, and security stuff, except as some vague, scary and complex thing that is rather worrisome.

They don’t like to get new computers, because it takes forever to transfer their stuff over to it, and the OS is probably different. All the menus have changed and moved around. And after they start using the new computer, some stuff won’t be the same, and they will have no idea why, or how to fix it.

For a lot of normal people, and I’m talking about smart people here, lawyers and doctors and writers, they don’t even really get the paradigms that programmers have tried to create for them: windows and folders and files and processes. It’s all just pictures on a screen, and these windows and docks and workspaces are just confusing and complicated. They really could care less.

So, when you read people writing, “The iPad sucks. My netbook does everything I need, is cheaper, and what’s more I can do more things: multi-task; run a terminal; write programs; etc,” you can be pretty sure they are one of the geeks. The iPad is not made for them. They are 5% of the population. Apple, since 2001, has been trying to come up with products that please the other 95% of the people. (Granted, they may have been trying to serve the larger side of the population since 1984, but since 2001, with the iPod, they’ve been succeeding better than anyone ever has.)

The revolution that is starting with the iPad is this: replace the general purpose computer as the information tool for most people with a more automatic solution. It’s like John Gruber recently said: replacing manual transmissions with automatic transmissions. For most people, the iPad is all they will need for news, entertainment, communications and authoring.

The era of computers, as boxes with screens and keyboards, sold in Best Buy for the mass market is ending. People will flock to iPad-like devices, from Apple, and probably from Motorola and HTC and Archos.

Various Red Herrings

They are becoming very tiresome. These are flaws that critics will point to in the iPad, the same ones they have been whining about since the iPhone. I can’t run two third-party programs at once; I can’t install my own system extension for keyboard macros; I can’t replace the battery; I can’t run Emacs. Yes, those things are all true. But guess what? That’s what your notebook or desktop computer is for. If you need to do those things, you need a computer. The iPad is not replacing your computer for you.

Most people, the vast majority of people, don’t even need to do these things. And if they sort of would like to sometimes, guess what: given the choice of the scary headache of maintaining a computer vs. having a simple magic device, they’d happily go with the magic.

The only legitimate complaint I’ve heard that is a use case for regular people is this: I can’t listen to Pandora while I read my email or do other things on the iPhone/iPod/iPad. Yes, there are a few things, a very few use cases where running a background task is actually useful for a lot of people. If that’s a dealbreaker, then an iPad isn’t for you. Maybe Apple will license Pandora into the iPod app; maybe they will actually allow users to designate a limited number of apps to be allow to run in the background. But don’t hold your breath.

The iPad’s Flaw

The gaping hole in my whole thesis is this: you actually need a computer to own an iPad. So this great freedom I’m going on about, about being free from the tyranny of the traditional computer is just so much bullshit. You still need a computer so you can back up all the settings and movies and music you’ve loaded onto your iPad.

Apple needs to build some infrastructure so that you don’t need a Mac to support your iPad. This may take the form of automatic online backup and sync (to me.com), or maybe some kind of sync to a time capsule/airport at home. Android phones, at least as of 2.x seem to have this: when I switched from my Verizon Droid to my T-Mobile Nexus One, I did nothing but sign in with my google account and all my settings, accounts and apps I had downloaded appeared on the new phone in a minute or two. I lost nothing, I didn’t even have to think about it. The iPad will have to work this way for the transition to pad computing to be complete. I’m fairly certain Apple is well aware of this.

My experience with the Nexus One leaves me greatly encouraged that Google totally understands the revolution that is coming with the advent of the iPad. In fact, given my computerless transition from Droid to Nexus One, I’d say they are already perfectly poised to release a pad computer that needs no box computer to support it.

Can you hear me now?

If you didn’t realize where things were headed when the iPhone, the iPod touch and the various Android phones came out, the iPad is your big wake-up call. Everything is about to change in a huge way. Wake up.

Updates: the part where I link to articles that support my position and ignore others

Frasier Speirs – Future Shock

Popular Science – Future

John Gruber – Automatic Transmission

Steven Frank – New world vs. old world

Byte Cellar – Guaranteed Future

Alex Payne – Conflicted but totally sees what’s coming.

Fabrizio Capobianco – iPad scorecard

Ethan Nicholas – My Mom’s next computer

Dan Moren – Third Revolution

All the professional writers are making their predictions and/or wish lists for what Apple tablet/iSlate/iPad/Magic Muffin will be and do. So here are my amateur guesses:

1. It will essentially be a larger iPod touch: mostly a large glass multi-touch screen running multi-touch OS, the same OS as the iPod and iPhone. Not Mac OS X, nor something in between that and the iPhone OS. CORRECT

2. It will have a single camera, mounted on the front/screen side. For video iChat. It will not have a camera on the back of the device. Something that is 4X larger than an iPod would be an awkward camera. WRONG

3. It will have Wifi, bluetooth and some kind of 3G support. The 3G vendor will not be ATT. It will be Sprint or Verizon. You’ll need to sign up for a contract to get the discounted price. Right on 3G, wrong on ATT

4. The discounted price will be $499. The full price with no contract will be $799. NAILED IT

5. I wish, wish, wish it would have an OLED screen. But I don’t think it will. Update 2010-01-11: so I got a Nexus One. The OLED screen on that is so beautiful, it makes the iPhone screen look very rusty by comparison. Clearly, it’s also economically viable since the Nexus One price isn’t too far off the iPhone price. So I’m thinking OLED is a real possibility on the table, especially given the battery life benefit. WRONG

6. It will be about the thickness of the current iPhone 3gs. WRONG

7. It will have a brushed aluminum metal back, like the new iMac. The apple logo on the back will be plastic, and will be the antennae location (like new iMacs). This is a completely random guess, and I’d be just as happy with a black plastic back like the iPhone. YES NAILED IT!

8. It will have an integrated speaker, and microphone. The only inputs/outputs will be dual headphone jacks (so you can watch a movie with your friend on a plane) and an iPod dock connector. 1/2 WRONG No dual jacks

9. It will have the same physical buttons as the iPod: power/sleep; home button; volume NAILED IT

10. There will be two models: 64GB and 128GB. The 128GB unit will be $649/$949. WRONG: models are 16/32/64

11. It will have an ARM processor, not a netbook-style x86 chip. Battery life, people. WRONG: Apple processor

12. It will have a fixed, non-user-replaceable battery. Of course, duh. EASY

13. software: will include iChat, so you can video chat with your friends who are on macs or on other apply tablets.WRONG, given lack of camera

14. software: there will be some kind of Apple ereader with itunes store support for buying content. Amazon will also offer a scaled-up version of kindle reader for the larger screen.CORRECT; amazon kindle app already works on iPhone, so will work on iPad

15. size: about the same total dimensions as the Kindle, but it will be almost all screen. I guess that makes the screen about 9″ to 10″. CORRECT

It took me a long time to figure out why anyone would really want a giant iPod like this. But watching how people consume applications in the App Store, I think I’ve figured it out. People, normal people, not nerds like me, hate computers. HATE them. They are mystified by basic concepts like files and applications and processes.

The dead-simple iPhone model is this: your magic candy bar does one thing at a time, whatever it is you want it to do. You can add more things to it for one or two dollars, sometimes more. You don’t have to install backup software, anti-virus. You don’t have to decide which mail program to use. It does what you want it to do, and you don’t need any of that nerdy computer bullshit to use it.

A large iPod, then, does all those ‘computer’ tasks that work better on a larger screen, but don’t require a mouse and keyboard. Essentially, many small information and entertainment ‘tasks’ that you don’t do all day long. Computers as we use them and think of them today are destined to be work devices, used by programmers, scientists, financial workers, artists, designers, architects, doctors, accountants, lawyers to do their actual work. When they go home, when they want to check the weather, watch a movie, read a book, play a game, they will pull out their little magic mirror. The conventional computer as an entertainment platform, as a budding replacement for TV, as a mass-market consumer electronics item will have been a short-lived phenomenon, from the 1990s to the 2010s.

I’ll update this post later with my score. If I get over 50%, I should be a professional.

Update: here is what John Gruber thinks, and John Siracusa. They are both very clever fellows, and it seems to me that their predictions mostly match mine. Which makes me say: woo hoo! yeah, baby, we’re on to something!

Update: more rumours that support my guessing: http://gizmodo.com/5437479/google-china-ex+president-says-apple-tablet-is-a-101+inch-iphone-with-webcam

Update (Jan 11, 2010): Orange exec giving more weight to my front-video camera prediction.

Update (Jan 21, 2010)): More intelligent analysis that totally supports my ideas. From Gizmodo.

Paul Graham’s recent essay, Apple’s Mistake is a very clear, and I think, fair description of what’s gone totally wrong with the App Store and the associated review process.

The absurdly reductionist summary is: “unless Apple pays attention to what programmers think, the iPhone as a platform will wither and die.” How I hope Apple takes that argument to heart! But the bitter, cranky realist in me says it’s probably not going to happen. Nor do I think Apple will suffer much (noticeably) if they continue on their current path.

I’ve had an iPhone since the second day you could buy them. I love the device, as I have not loved any other gadget. And this is what I believe breaks Paul’s argument: the device, without any apps at all, is so much better than anything else out there, I would not seriously consider switching to some other phone. I suspect a lot of people, most people in fact, who care not a whit of the pain and suffering of programmers to labor to get their wares into Apple’s store, who like the simplicity and elegance of the iPhone would behave the same way.

I actually have two phones. I’ve been carrying a Motorola Droid for about two weeks. There are some things about it that are quite cool: GMail is the best email I’ve ever used on a mobile device, better than Blackberry and several million times better than email on the iPhone. I love that I can use my Google voice number for all calls, automatically.

Aside from that, though, it feels very, um, Linuxy. And nerdy. And clunky. (I won’t even get into how ugly it is next to the iPhone. Some people care about design, and many don’t.)

Linux is great, of course. But UI’s built on top of Linux tend to be oddly inconsistent, patchwork and fussy. The Android UI, at least the one that Motorola has put together for Droid, feels a lot more like a computer UI than it does a seamless mobile UI. Apple managed to take what a phone UI was like and extend it to do things you wouldn’t think you could do with a tiny screen and fat fingers. Android seems much more to have been taken from a computer UI and hammered down to a way you can touch that UI on a tiny screen.

It’s hard to describe exactly what things make it seem that way. But probably it comes to things like: too many nested menus; two ways of navigating apps; no direct manipulation to delete an app; and too much awareness that there is a ‘file system.’ To install music on the Droid, you have to find a special menu, enable and mount the phone as a drive, and then copy mp3 files from your computer to the droid. How many normal people are going to even know what the heck “mount” means?

So, the problem with Paul’s warning scenario actually affecting Apple is this: the iPhone is so much better as a device, hardware and software, out of the box, that millions and millions of people will prefer it to other devices. And there’s no close second: you have the crappy phones from Samsung and LG, and the meh phones from Nokia, and the almost-good-but-too-geeky phones from Motorola. And they all have different quirks and sizes and input methods. So where will most developers put their time? The ones who actually want to make some money? On the one phone where ALL the screen sizes are the same, and all the APIs are the same.

I wish it weren’t so. I wish Apple would think something like “Gee, we are just crushing everybody on industrial design, simple interfaces and marketing. Let’s also crush them on making the developers love us too.” But they don’t seem inclined to care, and I don’t really think it will impact their bottom line if they don’t.

Motorola: if you want to beat Apple, make one phone. One single phone that is the expression of all the very best your industrial designers can put together, and one UI on top of Android that is the most carefully researched and tested that your UX experts can come up with. Or Samsung or LG, or Nokia. Make one single phone, and make it better every year until it beats the iPhone. Then people will buy it. Then the developers will come. And you can treat them like crap, or not, it doesn’t matter.

This is the camera I want to get, but it’s hard to find. I saw it on Amazon for a 40% markup, but I’m not that rich, stupid or desperate.

Official page at Canon

Movie mode notes from canon

dp review forum

Amazon link

Reviews: popphoto

Black dot issue info (thanks Russ for the link).

I didn’t see this written anywhere, but I just tried it, and it works. With the iPhone, you can click the microphone to pause the currently playing song, or double-click to skip to the next track. This makes it very pleasant to listen to music, and IMO is what made the iPhone the “best iPod ever.”

What was really annoying was that the first iPod Touch didn’t have this feature: to skip songs, or pause, you had to pull the thing out of your pocket, look at it, wake it up and pause/skip. This made the iPod touch the “worst iPod ever,” at least as far as listening to music goes. For me, this seemingly hostile feature drop, even more than having no physical volume control, relegated the iTouch to watching movies and web browsing.

But all is forgiven. Plug your iPhone (or compatible, presumably) headphones into the iTouch, queue up a playlist. You can pause by one-clicking, skip by double-clicking. I’m hoping the new Nano has the same improvement.

I wrote earlier about the iPhone’s poor SMS alert features, and how that made it unsuitable for my wife who is a doctor. I’m now 90% certain that a blackberry is the right choice for her.

The SMS thing is huge. I probably could hack something together, like have a web site that would keep sending SMS alerts every 5 minutes until she acknowledged it. But that could get very expensive/annoying in failure cases. Such as: the phone is in SMS coverage but not data, so you can’t stop the server from paging you.

Blackberry SMS alerts are fully customizable, and there is an alert LED as well. I don’t know if there is a persistent audible beep, but a long and loud alert plus the blinking red LED is good enough.

The other thing gets into the classic blackberry vs. iPhone debate. I won’t get into that too much, but mostly people talk about the touch screen keyboard vs. the physical keyboard; or screen resolution; or 3G quality; or integration with enterprise systems.

But all that is irrelevant to my choice.

First, the keyboard thing is a bullshit argument. Some people have a hard time with the touch screen keyboard, and they are aces with two thumbs. Some people are touch screen wizards. And others, such as me, are completely hopeless with both. The keyboard thing is largely a question of personal taste, and one is not better than the other, objectively. A touch keyboard gives you more screen to play with, a physical keyboard gives you different UI benefits (such as dozens of physical shortcut navigation possibilities.) It’s trade-off city.

When I really started thinking about what my wife needs for a smartphone, instead of thinking of an excuse to buy a shiny, pretty iPhone, I got into the real use cases. The primary one is this: it’s 3am, or she has 3 minutes between patients, and she gets a page/SMS. She needs to get to the email message that contains the voicemail quickly. If you imagine this use case on an iPhone, and really time it out, it would be something like this:

0. Pretend, just for argument that the incredibly quiet SMS alert on the iPhone actually gets noticed. In reality, it won’t much of the time, and then the entire work flow below gets delayed by 10 minutes to an hour.

1. Wake iphone (instant)

2. Slider unlock swipe (if you are sleepy because it’s 3am, you might have to do this twice); 1 second

3. Type unlock code. Oops, touched the emergency call button. OK, finally got it right. 5 seconds.

5. Open SMS. Find message. (2 seconds)

6. Touch Mail icon. Mail launches. (1 second)

7. Wait while Mail polls for new messages. (5 seconds)

8. Wait some more while Mail polls, because it just noticed the Wifi and reset it’s TCP connection. (15 seconds)

9. Or wait even more because EDGE/3G coverage is weak at the moment. (20 more seconds.)

10. OK see message that has the voicemail attachment and callback number. Listen to the attachment. Wait while it downloads (5-30 seconds.)

11. Listen to message, call patient. Call patient is instant because you can just click on the phone number in the either the mail message or the SMS.

I’ve been living with my iPhone for a year. I love it, it’s the best consumer electronic device I’ve ever owned. But this is the way it really is. I’m a computer programmer, I have zero stress in my job. I don’t really care much if reading email takes 30 seconds. If I’m checking email on my phone, it’s because I’m bored in the waiting room of the dentist and I have 30 seconds to waste. People aren’t throwing up blood while I’m waiting for an email to pop up on my screen. (Oh yes, I went there.)

You might think I’m being picky here, with these 1 and 2 second things. But put yourself in the situation. It’s night, you are tired, you are stressed. You probably haven’t slept much because you’ve got a lot of pages. Every stutter in the work flow is like a slap in the face, and your blood pressure ticks up a notch. Speed matters, and if you think 1 second is fast, then Google is going to eat your lunch when they eventually get around to entering your business.

OK, now walk through the Blackberry scenario. If you haven’t actually used a Blackberry for a while, you’ll have to trust me. This is the way it really is.

1. Wake Blackberry. (instant)

2. Type unlock code. Getting the code wrong/hitting the emergency call key is a lot less likely; one of the UI benefits of physical keys. (2 seconds)

3. Read SMS message (1 second)

4. Launch email (instant)

5. Oh look the message is already there, thanks to the insanely fast and reliable push infrastructure that RIM has perfected. Read message (instant)

6. Download voice mail attachment (5-30 seconds.) I’m going to guess this is about the same on the blackberry as the iPhone, but I don’t know that for sure, because I haven’t tested it yet. Based on current rumors, it’s possible that the iPhone has some weakness in the 3G stack, so it might be that the Blackberry actually is faster.

7. Call patient. The Blackberry can make a phone call from the selected phone number in the email, just like all smart phones. (instant)

With the Blackberry, there’s no stutter in work flow at all, except waiting for the download of what could be a long, rambling voice mail from a sick and occasionally demented patient. That’s pretty much unavoidable until networks get faster/better coverage.

A much better solution to all of this would be to forward the voice mail left on the office phone system to iPhone visual voice mail, or to the voice mail box of the Blackberry carrier, with caller ID intact. I don’t know of a way to do this with a self-hosted PBX (we’re using an Asterisk-based one now.)

Finally, there’s an obvious question here. Why doesn’t she just call her office voice mail and listen to the messages, once she gets the SMS? This is, in fact, what we do today. It’s not really satisfactory because of a problem with the office PBX: for some reason, incoming calls are very quiet. If you listen to them on the phone, it can be hard to understand what a sick/elderly patient is saying, because they talk quietly or mumble. For whatever reason, if you just play the audio file in email, it’s much clearer and louder. We’re working with our PBX vendor to fix this, but honestly, I’m about to put the thing back in the box and send it back. So the whole adventure of getting a smartphone to listen to voice mail is a pragmatic solution to vendor intransigence.

I found this on the new readynas.com commuity site: http://www.readynas.com/?p=291. Looks like there’s lots of good stuff there.

At work we just got this new coffee machine. Google always brags about the free soda, snacks, meals, massages, pedicures, dry cleaning etc. But that stuff is expensive.

This coffee maker wasn’t cheap either, but if you allocate the cost across the 15+ engineers that use it, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than buying RAM upgrades. And the coffee it makes is so delicious, so much better than normal drip-brewed coffee, it will make your programmers happy. Imagine if your programmers and product designers were not only happier, but cranked up on good old caffeine.

Can you love a machine? Spend a week with this beauty and you’ll find out. So shiny.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting an Apple TV for a while. I have a Tivo, and it supposedly can do things like show my digital photos and home on TV. But I’ve tried to set it up a few times, and various things either don’t work at all, or are torture to configure. Part of the problem is that I have a Mac at home, and although Tivo does claim to support Mac, it doesn’t actually seem like they do. (I even bought Roxio Toast so I could copy shows from Tivo and burn DVDs or save them to an iPod. That actually works, but it’s something I rarely care about doing.)

I have over 10,000 digital photos, almost all family stuff going back to 1999. But I also have a few thousand family film/slide pictures I’ve scanned in going back to 1962. It’s fun to look at them, but it’s more fun to look at them with the whole family. This is the thing that was interesting to me. If my photo library was just a click away on the TV remote, it would be a lot more likely that we would site with the kids and look at them.

The same applies to our home videos, but they are mostly still sitting on digital tape, waiting to be imported and cleaned up. Until very recently, I didn’t have anywhere near the disk space to hold all those hours of kids birthday parties and family trips. But I recently got a home network storage device, so maybe I’ll decide to get organized and get that stuff online finally.

I was in the Apple store today, getting a video out cable for my ipod nano, and I started playing with the Apple TV they had there. I’ve been putting a some of my DVDs on my ipod, so I can have a library of things to watch on plane trips. (The video cable was so that I could put some kids shows on the ipod, and take it with us on our upcoming winter vacation. It’s easier than bringing a pile of DVDs, and eliminates the risk of them getting scratched up. That’s the theory anyway; I still have to choose about 12 hours of programming to load onto the ipod, and then put it on there.)

The new user interface on the Apple TV is really nice. It’s very simple, very clean. I like that it is white text on black background, instead of the shifting blue/green/red hazy loop that plays in the background on Tivo. So I decided to buy it on semi-impulse. If thinking about something for 6 months and reading about it before you buy it is impulse.

It was pretty easy to set up. I plugged the component video into my TV (my TV only has one HDMI input, and that’s used by the DVD player.) I plugged an ethernet cable from my network in, power it up and it came right up. I had to type a 7-digit code into my iTunes on my home computer, and then the Apple TV started getting music, movies and photos from my iTunes library. It was at this point that it really hit me how freaking cool this thing was. Right on the TV, I could see all those movies I had set up for my ipod. “Wow, I could just totally watch Star Wars right now, without going into the closet, finding the DVD, and opening the DVD player.”

I know, “opening the DVD player.” How impatient can I be, right? But seriously. Have you opened a DVD player lately? You press the button to eject the disc drawer. Then you wait there for 57 million centuries while the thing decides if it should open. You’re not sure if you pressed the button all the way, so you push it again, but OH! it started to open, so now you just closed it again. HA! How hard is it to open a drawer? This is why consumer electronics suck in general, and this is why Apple (or anybody who tries a little bit to put themselves in the shoes of the consumer) is going to eat (or is now eating, I suppose) Sony’s lunch. It seems like a very tiny minority of consumer electronics pay any attention at all to the user experience.

I feel like this is really the inflection point, where digital audio was about 8 years ago, when your music suddenly was at your fingertips instead of on a shelf in the living room. It’s taken a while for video to get to that point; mostly I think it’s just a function of how cheap storage has to be. Terabyte storage is now affordable to have at home. Certainly portable media players, like the ones from Creative, have been around for years. But until you have enough reliable disk space, you’re not going to make a serious effort to encode your whole movie collection.

So I’ve been burning a lot of CPU time encoding my personal movie collection onto the Apple TV. Gosh, now I wish I had an 8-core machine instead of a little 2-core! Here’s something that’s going to drive Intel chip sales: all those millions of movies people are going to be encoding for their iPods, Apple TVs or other media players. Encoding a 2-hour movie takes an hour on my two-core machine; it would take 15 minutes on an eight-core Mac Pro.

Regarding the movie rentals on Apple TV, I was initially annoyed at the 24-hour time limit on watching a movie. But in practice, it hasn’t been bad. I just don’t start a movie unless I know I’ll be able to watch it right through. For me, that means late at night, after the kids are all asleep. It is definitely true for me, though, that I would rent more and watch more if I could watch a movie in 2 or 3 chunks over the course of 4-5 days.