Blog Posts from MacWorld Expo

Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

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iTunes Movie Rentals and device syncing

So, before I left San Francisco, I rented Pirates of the Caribbean 3 to watch on the flight and I synced it to my iPhone this morning. Actually, I started the download process yesterday afternoon, because the bandwidth in my hotel was so poor, but I digress. Anyway, the rental process was very easy and moving the file over was just as I expected. It’s a 1.8 GB file, so moving it over via USB takes a few minutes.

What seems to happen though, is the file is moved from iTunes to the device, rather than just copying it over. When I got home and wanted to watch the end of the movie on my computer (rats…because Apple TV hasn’t been updated yet to support rentals…), I saw that my iPhone sync was copying the 1.8 GB file from the iPhone back to iTunes.

Presumably, in the future, when you want to finish watching it on an Apple TV or other device, you’d have to copy it over yet one more time. I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t just keep the master rental file in iTunes for the full rental time, and copy it out to devices (rather than move), and retrieve the state (watched/complete, or semi-watched) and timestamp of where the viewer left off.

Okay…reading back the above is confusing myself.

Of course, there are really only two likely normal use cases of iTunes Rentals. 1) You rent the movie in iTunes and watch it on your computer completely or sync it to a device and watch it completely. 2) You rent it on your Apple TV and watch it completely there.

Still the use case I’m describing (that just happened to me) can’t be too uncommon: You rent a movie in iTunes and sync to a iPhone/iPod and partially watch it. You get home and want to finish watching it on your Apple TV.

So, the way iTunes handles rentals transfers, I will have moved my ~2 GB file 4 times. Once when you download it, another when you sync it, again when you re-sync it back to iTunes and finally synced out to your Apple TV.

Whew.

Am I over thinking this? Or does it seem that just leaving it in iTunes all the time to begin with fixes a little bit of the wait?

January 19, 2008 at 12:38 am by Chris Ainsworth. | 5 Comments.

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One last Best of the Booths

I do believe one final Best of the Booths post is in order.

There was so much to do and see this week, I didn’t even get a chance to take a nap in one of the sleeping pods Pzizz had been kind enough to set up for us.

January 18, 2008 at 10:57 pm by Michael Gaworecki. | 1 Comment.

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My second day on the show floor

I thought I’d share a couple more interesting products and booths that I came across today.

We’ve all been in a situation where our iPod has run out of juice, leaving us tuneless and videoless at the worst of times. Which is why I think the iZAP R08-IV for iPod Video is a great product. The literature claims that it can give your iPod up to 10 hours of video playback and a whopping 36 hours of audio. But the guy in the booth told me he thinks the 36 hour estimate is “soft”! ZAP!, whose name stands for “zero air pollution,” also makes the Recharge-It-All Universal Battery, which has connectors for every mobile device you can imagine. Plus there are actually four rechargeable AA lithium-ion batteries inside that you can take out and use in your digital camera. It’s convenient and it can help you be more environmentally friendly!

IntelliScanner won a Best of Show award at last year’s Macworld Expo for their IntelliScanner mini, which is a miniature barcode scanner that lets you scan all your books, music, and movies and manage your collections in their proprietary software. This year they’ve come out with the professional-grade IntelliScanner SOHO for managing inventories and other bigger cataloging jobs. The software has an interface similar to iTunes, and it even lets you create the equivalent of iTunes playlists so you can organize your audio, video, and book libraries by genre. Before you say “You’ve got to be a serious neat-freak to want one of those,” consider this: The software also has a function that lets you track who you are lending a book, DVD, or CD to simply by scanning it in! My friends would probably think I’ve finally lost it if I started checking out my books to them, but I’ve lost so many from “lending” them to friends that I really don’t care at this point.

I wrote about the Modbook yesterday, but I didn’t get any pictures. I happened to cruise by today and got a couple of great pictures of one of their demo guys drawing a bluejay on the Modbook, so I thought I’d share them.

January 16, 2008 at 9:28 pm by Michael Gaworecki. | No comments.

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I’m now officially a rumor site

So only 2 of my 8 predictions came true during Steve’s keynote, but I think that more than qualifies me to start a new Apple rumor site.

This keynote of course had some pleasant surprised:
(more…)

January 16, 2008 at 12:12 pm by Bryan Schwegler. | No comments.

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Too Many Gadget Distractions for PC Girl

My goal going into MacWorld this week was to try to learn everything that I could about using Mac Notebooks. The idea was that this would make it easier for me to make the transition from PC to Mac. But what I discovered when going through the exhibitions today was that I couldn’t keep my mind focused on my goal. There were just way too many cool gadgets and fun accessories to let me stick with a Notebook-Only mindset.

I may not have decided on any Mac computer stuff yet but MacWorld did give me the final push that I needed to make a decision about another Apple item I’ve been wanting - the iPhone. I’m the kind of gal who always just gets whatever free phone comes with my contract because I really don’t use my phone much anyway. But what I do use all of the time is my computer. I’ve been eyeing the iPhone constantly since before it even came out. Checking out all of the accessories that are available for it now just made me want it even more. But then I realized that since I don’t use the phone part, I don’t need the phone part.

So I’ve made a decision, I’m going with the iPod Touch. It’s got a bunch of new upgrades that interest me. In particular, the fact that the Maps feature can find where I’m at before it points me in the right direction wins me over. And the fact that I can check the weather with “just a touch” is kind of appealing. But I imagine I’ll probably be more likely to use the mail function than anything else. After all, I’ve got to quickly tell everyone in my social network about everything that’s distracting me at MacWorld!

January 15, 2008 at 8:58 pm by Kathryn Vercillo. | 3 Comments.

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iTunes / iPhone update server overloaded

If you’re trying to update your iPhone and iTunes, get in line. I was able to get my iTunes updated to 7.6, but can’t connect to the iPhone update server at all. Anyone having any luck? Post your successes and thoughts in the comments or on the forum.

Note: Macworld also seems to be crashing Twitter sporadically.

January 15, 2008 at 3:08 pm by Chris Ainsworth. | 3 Comments.

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My Macworld keynote initial impressions

Wow…where to start?

I gave myself time to think about Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote on my way back from Moscone West to the hotel, and let what I just saw sink in a little. Let me take the major announcements and items one-by-one and give you my first thoughts. Bear with me…I’m still trying to get my head around some of this stuff.

January 15, 2008 at 3:04 pm by Chris Ainsworth. | 1 Comment.

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Hopes and predictions

If you take “There’s something in the air” as literally as you can, it seems obvious that Apple is planning on releasing either a new wireless device or new wireless capabilities for its existing product lines. But then who knows if they even mean it literally at all.

Instead of what I think Steve Jobs is most likely to announce, here is my list of the rumored products that I’d most like to see unveiled tomorrow morning…

January 14, 2008 at 8:01 pm by Michael Gaworecki. | No comments.

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Our Macworld blog on your iPhone

We’ve installed a free WordPress plugin to generate iPhone friendly pages (and some iPhone mobile goodness) for the blog. Of course, if you’re wandering around the show floor during Macworld, and you’re staring at this site or something else on your iPhone, don’t forget to look up from time to time to watch where you’re going.

January 11, 2008 at 2:02 pm by Chris Ainsworth. | 3 Comments.

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