the CouchGuy blog

Lala.com, the music site that allowed users to scan their own digital audio connections, then access those same recordings from anywhere via lala’s web interface, is shutting down at the end of May. Lala was recently purchased by Apple Inc., with most pundits presuming that Apple wanted Lala’s programmers and intellectual property to enhance future versions of iTunes.

Emails today to Lala users discuss the shutdown and the future of customers’ Lala-purchased music:

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

With the iPad turning the tech world upside down, it has been awhile since this blog focussed on the product that, in many ways, was responsible for the blog’s creation in the first place — Apple TV. The CouchGuy continues to find Steve’s Little Hobby to be an indispensable part of his own home media setup.

After long hours trying to make Windows Media Player run through a WMP Extender and appear on my home TV, the CouchGuy family was able to bring our digital video to the big screen with ease after buying the first generation Apple TV. Within minutes of receiving the unit from UPS, I was streaming iTunes-based content wirelessly and I’ve been happily using my Apple Remote (and later my iPod Touch) from the comfort of the couch ever since.

But looking at the advances in digital media handling offered by the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad are making the Apple TV look a little long in the tooth by comparison. Yes, the Apple TV has had some improvements along the way. Buying and renting video directly from the iTunes Store has pretty much eliminated any desire I had to buy DVDs or “upgrade” to Blu-Ray, even after I moved to a lovely new HD widescreen set awhile back. The newest incarnation of the Apple TV interface is much cleaner and easier to use than the original as well.

But my new iPad will do so much more. With the Boxee, EyeTV and AirVideo apps on iPad I have access to much more than I can see on the Apple TV. Boxee’s app-based structure allows their offerings to grow and change quickly and serve narrowcasting audiences as well as the mass market. The EyeTV app brings the off-cable recordings I make myself using Elgato’s DVR dongles on my iMac streaming right to my iPad. (I can even launch EyeTV on the iMac from my couch, should I forget to leave the application running.) Most amazingly to me, I can use AirVideo to stream almost any video file on my home network to my iPad anywhere I happen to be, and let my iMac do the heavy lifting of transcoding the file on the fly to something my iPad will display. That is so freaking sweet!

Moreover, with more and more video sites embracing HTML5 open standards and dumping the anchor-around-the-neck that is Flash, my iPad can bring me video from an ever-widening array of web-based sources. It seems odd that I can sit in my easy chair and watch this streaming stuff on my iPad, but can’t easily share it with Mrs. CouchGuy by putting it up on the big screen in the family room.

The iPad is such a great media device — much, much better than any desktop or laptop computer on the market for that sort of purpose. Not just movies and music but great gaming and instant access to information, plus a tie to a global community of friends and correspondents. All this power and it never even gets warm, holds a charge all day, and is the easiest to use computing device I’ve ever had. I want my home theater system to be this good, too.

The time has come for Apple to use all it has learned from their ahead-of-its-time hobby machine and all they have learned from the phenomenal success of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as mobile entertainment devices and bring it together in one cutting-edge new piece of hardware.

It is time for a second generation to emerge. It is time for Apple TV 2.

What is Apple TV 2? It is my notion of iPhone/iPad style cutting edge tech brought to the Apple TV’s tasks. It is what the next phase of the Apple TV experiment can be. What should it bring to the table and how can it work? Here’s my vision:

The Best of the iPad to the Big Screen

The Apple TV 2 should be based on a ten-foot interface version of the simple iPhone OS, and should incorporate the integrated custom-chip power inherent in the iPad. A ten-foot interface cries out for simplicity, which is what the iPhone OS brings to the table. Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos, YouTube, Settings and the iTunes Store all launch from icons you can arrange, customize or hide to suit yourself.

An Apple-style simple remote replaces a touch interface for the basic controls here. Those with iPhones or iPads, though, can control Apple TV 2 with touch-interface controls and keyboard. In the case of the iPad, the interface screen itself can be mirrored on the iPad screen, making it the next best thing to having a touch-interface HDTV and arms like Reed Richards.

Inside the box, Apple’s new custom chip sets and solid-state flash memory instead of a hard drive bring reliability, quiet, power and integration to the Apple TV that rivals the iPad’s own — without the heat problems the current model suffers. (Yeah, the CouchCat will miss her favorite heated winter perch. She’ll get over it.) New chipsets provide even more reliable wireless networking and streaming, fast video processing, in-box transcoding, and graphics power that will open new avenues for Apple TV 2 entertainment.

To take full advantage of the additional power, Apple TV 2 has more I/O options than the original model. The unit features HDMI output with a pass-through port, so it doesn’t use up your limited number of HDMI inputs on your HDTV. It also supports direct output to Mini DisplayPort. Hook it directly to a big Apple monitor, if you like, instead of an HDTV. Component video, optical audio, analog RCA stereo audio and Gigabit Ethernet ports are there, along with USB 3.0 802.11n wireless networking and the built-in IR receiver.

Bluetooth is the big story, however, allowing all manner of wireless peripherals to enhance the Apple TV 2 experience. Wireless keyboards work, of course, as do Bluetooth headphones. If you want to integrate the rest of your home theater components, Apple will sell you USB or Bluetooth IR blasters that attach to your components and let you use the Apple TV 2 interface, your iPhone or your iPad to control those, too, with the same Remote 2 app that runs your Apple TV 2.

There’s a Vapp for That

The other way the iPhone OS manifests itself in the Apple TV 2 is to make it endlessly extensible via Video Applications (aka “vapps”). All the existing Apple TV functions are now launched as vapps, and the additional processing power of the Apple TV 2 let’s you call up new sorts of vapps as well. Apple provides several new built-in widget-like vapps. One lets you view and modify your iCal, for example. Some vapps like that one can even be brought up while watching TV or videos in a picture-in-picture format.

But third-party partners can build and provide vapps, too, through the Apple TV 2 Vapp Store. The EyeTV vapp not only streams EyeTV recorded shows, it lets you set up recordings from your easy chair with a program guide interface. Wikipedia, TV.com and IMDB vapps instantly answer those “what is that actor’s name” questions for you. Breaking news scrolls from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc. Can run as vapps as well.

Some vapps can even interact with live TV shows. Vote on Dancing With the Stars with the ABC vapp, or watch “pop-up” commentary by Nathan Fillion right on top of the latest episode of Castle. Some vapps are primarily gateways to content providers, like the TWiTtv and Revision 5 vapps, on which you can watch live streaming programming.

Unlike the Apple App Store, the Vapp Store is populated with fewer but more polished and comprehensive vapps from trusted partners. Most are free, some require subscription paid through your iTunes account. A SafariLink vapp, however, lets you stream almost any HTML5 standards-based video you can call up on your iPhone or iPad browser to view on your big screen if you want to do so. Many of those sources, however, have vapps of their own.

And, of course, inevitably…

Let the Games Begin

Some vapps are games, and the more powerful custom chipset in the Apple TV 2 allows for very, very cool games indeed. The usual array of casual games are here, as might be found from the better iPad App Store vendors. but you can also get much more sophisticated games, including some that allow multiplayer action and even live play against people around the world. You can even use specialized wireless game controllers with some Apple TV 2 game vapps. Games could rapidly become a major reason to buy an Apple TV 2.

Welcome to the Video Social

Game controllers are not the popular Apple TV 2 peripherals. One or more iSight 2 video cameras can be connected to allow the family to gather around and share a photo slideshow with Grandma or a family video night with loved ones across the country. Picture-in-picture video chat to share a favorite show with your friends could become a favored pastime, especially if encouraged by the networks. (Sing Along With Glee, anyone?) Access the camera from your iPhone or iPad when you are away from the house to check up on the cat.

Another popular vapp is a home message board. Turn the TV on (which most of the family does the second they get home anyway) and get a visual reminder in one corner of the screen if a message has been left by a family member. Pull up the vapp (even picture-in-picture) if you want to check a message. A message can be some quick text, or you can even record a video message using the iSight 2. Forget to leave a message? Don’t worry, you can leave one remotely from your iPhone, and check the Apple TV 2 family message queue remotely as well.

An Apple TV 2 could become a strong new product line alongside the Macs, iPhones and iPads — no longer just a hobby — if Apple chooses to apply all they have learned from the mobile experience to the living room experience. What do you think? Ready to pre-order an Apple TV 2 yet?

Bloggers who think ethical behavior is a joke and claim to be “committing journalism” only by accident because they don’t want to be saddled with codes of time-honored journalistic conduct who then dive behind a shield law and talk about suing the police at the first sign they might actually be subject to the same rule of law all the rest of us peons have to live under.

In a post on his independent personal blog (which is titled TheFlashBlog and carries the Flash logo prominently, despite his “personal opinions, not Adobe’s” disclaimer), Brimelow rants that “this is a frightening move” and that “any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this.”

Adobe’s John Dowdell has similarly decided to claim his employer has some sort of moral high ground because mean ol’ Apple won’t support Adobe’s favorite piece of bloated, mobile-unfriendly (some would say everything-unfriendly) little piece of proprietary crapware. 

I’l leave The Macalope and Daniel Eran Dilger to do the job of torpedoing Brimelow and his ilk. They are first-rate ilk-torpedoers, even if turning those two loose on a couple of Adobewhiners is like watching Bambi vs. Godzilla again — fun, but over so quickly. (And yes, that YouTube link to Bambi vs. Godzilla works fine from my iPad!)

I don’t think I’ve made any secret of the fact that I don’t really miss having Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. But I’ve been hearing a lot from people who are having a better browsing experience in Mac OS X without Flash as well. And I am mightily sick of the crap coming from Adobe’s people, official and “unofficial”, on the subject. So I’m cutting the ties altogether. I’ve just downloaded ClickToFlash and I’ve installed it on my primary iMac — the one I’m using right now.

From now on, I will at least control when and where I use Flash while browsing. It will be interesting to see if I miss Flash at all, and how many times I really find the need to click one of those silvery boxes I will see in place of Flash-laden content. (And it is nice to see that neither Tumblr nor Disqus Comments which power this little site require Flash, nor does the old couchapple.tv site…) (Rats. Tumblr’s little photo slideshows are in Flash. I’ll have to fix the few places I use them. Small price to pay.)

The graphic badge above is my personal reminder that I am OK with being Flash-free. I have a bunch of real blue Lego blocks, and I plan to add some stickon letters and a pinback to one so I can wear my badge proudly offline as well. (What? Oh, like you don’t have a bunch of blue 2X2 Lego blocks lying around your house, too! What kind of a geek are you? OK, go here… and remember that Uncle CouchGuy took care of you in your moment of need.) Since some Flash shills and lazy developers want to engage in breast-beating and whining, I think we should show them that not all of us are unhappy about a decidedly Flash-absent existence.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am tired of the whiners and the self-serving people who’d want bitch about mean ol’ Apple not letting them crap in their pretty clean sandbox. But otherwise I am a long-time Adobe booster. As an early convert to desktop publishing (before the phrase existed, in fact), I’ve used Adobe software for many, many years and I want to continue doing so. But I sure wish they’d get a clue that their overpriced Creative Suite is getting less and less relevant to publishing as it is today, as they spend more time protecting their old ways of doing business than developing things that make sense for users. I saw Quark die the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts, and I’d hate to see that happen to Adobe.

Adobe, please give us great tools that make things work for standards that make sense such as HTML5. Please shut down the whiners instead of sending out your evangelists to fan the flames.

Meanwhile, I’m OK with the Blue Block. How about you? If so, feel free to grab and use the BlueBlockOK graphics attached here. A link back to this page (http://www.blueblockok.com) would be appreciated.

The blog’s changed tone a little since I started this experiment, so I decided to change the look a little, too. The posts have become a little more personal, but the video/media angle certainly isn’t going away (and neither is the focus on Apple technology).

Thus, the new logo and slugline, which pretty much sums up our household nicely. CouchGuy, Mrs. CouchGuy, CouchCat, Apple technology and the infinite world of the entertainment media.

(Yes, there is more than one cat in Real Life. Let’s not be pedantic…)

Anyone out there remember what this is riffing on? If so, post to the Comments…

Paul Thurrott, Mighty Minion of Microsoft and Agitator Against All of Apple, is sharing his first impressions of the iPad. (You aren’t really expecting a link, are you? If you must, you can surely find him…) Somehow, he manages to start with words of praise and still end up with something that is a smug dismissal of the device. Shocked, utterly shocked am I.

He gets some of the praise out of the way early along with some back-handed compliments. “High quality, nice design”, but “very expensive for what you get” and “not all that impressive”. (Last I looked, the iPad was delivered at about half the price most everyone was predicting, but that’s the least out-of-reality opinion Thurrott offers, so let’s push on past that one.)

His first two major gripes on his list are certainly damning, though. The charger brick isn’t small enough and the box the iPad comes in is too thick. As opening salvos go, that’s not exactly a full salute from the Guns of Navarone.

Paul’s next round of firing is almost as desperately foolish. The iPad is too heavy. This is a real problem for Thurrott — he comes back to the point again and again. It’s too big; it weighs a ton; his kids would get tired just holding it. How old are these kids? Unless they are still teething, maybe they need to get outside and get more exercise. Most of the people I’ve talked to say the iPad is hefty enough to feel solid and durable, but feels surprisingly light in comparison to other devices that do a lot less.

So Paul wants to take this already-too-hefty device and do what? Graft more stuff onto it! He wants two cameras and four speakers, no less. Oh, and he wants the scene to be wider. But he wants it to be smaller, too. Uh, right. Lighter with a bunch more stuff and a screen that’s wider and smaller. We’ll get right on that.

Paul says it is a shame they couldn’t deliver a single peripheral on the day the iPad went on sale, too. He’s cheesed off that he hasn’t got a case. (You haven’t had a case for a long time, Paul…) I guess this Apple-branded case and mini dock I bought along with my iPad Saturday morning are just figments of my imagination.

In other critically important news, Paul says “the default wallpaper is ugly”. (A matter of taste, pal. I like it.) Also, the screen “gets smudged just from the air, it seems”. He doesn’t make the connection that you actually touch the screen a lot with your fingers, I guess. I’m amazed he didn’t kvetch about Apple not including a special cleaning cloth with the iPad — all the other trolls did. After all, there was plenty of friggin’ room in that massive box, huh, Paul? The special coating on the screen makes it shed even the greasiest prints with a wipe of any old rag, but Paul won’t be satisfied with less than a force field between his chicken-fat-smeared digits and that “smudgetastic” screen.

Thurrott admits “performance is great” and “screen responsiveness is superb”, saying “this should be studied and copied”. Don’t worry, Paul — your buddies down at Microsoft Study & Copy… uh, that is, “Research & Development” are sure to already be on top of that. What other praise exists is mostly for a few non-Apple apps. Thurrott loves the Amazon Kindle app and the Marvel Comics app, for example. Good thing Amazon had Apple around to make a device capable of running and displaying that good-looking app of theirs, isn’t it, Paul? It’s a cinch that wasn’t happening on any other device like, say, their own.

His final conclusions? Though he spends most of the “review” complaining about trivia like oversize packaging and ugly wallpaper, while praising such key matters of performance, quality and design, Paul Thurrott wonders musingly if the iPad is even worth reviewing. Really, Paul? Really?

Thurrott says, “Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.” Paul says it, sheep believe it, and that settles it, I guess. One definition of a “tool” is an otherwise inanimate object that does whatever task the person controlling it wants to do, whether or not the action involved makes any sense. That sounds more like you, Paul. You and I and anyone who has read anything you’ve written in the past knew you had to hate the iPad long before you ever opened the box or even saw the specs. The lame list of gripes you have here shows clearly that what came out of the box you opened on Saturday really didn’t make any difference in how your review was written.

There are certainly areas in which the iPad can be improved, and anyone who says there are not is just blowing smoke. Too bad you didn’t deal with those areas at all. But then, why bother to really work at a review when your conclusions are going to be the same whether you do or not.