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Papermaster hire on hold; IBM wins injunction
Apple's quest to replace outgoing iPod and iPhone VP Tony Fadell has run into a major roadblock: a federal district judge has granted IBM an injunction, forbidding former IBMer Mark Papermaster from joining Apple's ranks, at least for now. The story is a classic HR nightmare. According to a timeline at Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog, once he was offered a "once in a lifetime" position at Apple, Papermaster indicated he was going to resign at IBM. IBM executives then offered Papermaster a "substantial increase" in pay to entice him to stay. Papermaster declined, and quit. The next day, IBM filed their suit with the Southern District of New York, alleging that Papermaster is in violation of the non-compete clause of his employment contract. Papermaster claims in a counter-filing that Apple and IBM are in two totally different businesses: The former a consumer products company, the latter a high-end server manufacturer. Uh huh. Pundit Robert X. Cringely speculates that tapping Papermaster for the iPod/iPhone job was duplicitous, and Apple intends to move Papermaster into the lead position at the newly-acquired PA Semi division once the yearlong non-compete clause of his IBM contract expires. Apple said in a statement to Reuters that Apple "... will comply with the court's order but are confident that Mark Papermaster will be able to ultimately join Apple when the dust settles."
Cringely thinks the Apple TV will hurt Blu-ray and HD DVD sales
#vistachart { border: 2px solid #333; border-collapse: collapse; } #vistachart td { padding: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc; vertical-align: top; margin: 0; line-height: 1.3em; } #vistachart th { font-weight: bold; text-align: left; padding: 4px; background: #eee; } #vistachart th.mainth { border-bottom: 1px solid #333; font-size: 1.2em; } #vistachart td.red { background-color: #f08c85; } #vistachart td.green { background-color: #b3e2c4; }We know, we know, he is hardly the authority on anything HD, as we all learned from his PBS special on the subject, but he might be going a little too far on this one. The Apple TV does a great job at what is it designed for: getting mainstream America's content on their HDTV, but it couldn't be any worse at HD and still support it. How can a 4 GB HD file (Yes that is the maximum file size) that doesn't support surround sound, even begin to compare with either HD DVD's 30GB or Blu-ray's 50GB? Sure it will only be the movie and not all the extra stuff that some of you love so much, but even the main feature on HD DVD or Blu-ray is well over 15GB and that is with only one sound track! Is this guy mad, or do people really not care if their HD looks good, as long as the content is labeled as HD? Just to lay it all out for you, here is a comparison between HD DVD and the Apple TV. HD DVDApple TVComments / notes MSRP $399 $299 While it appears Apple TV wins this one, unlike the Apple MSRP, the HD DVD is flexible. Maximum Bit rate 36.5 Mbps 5.0 Mbps No comparison. Maximum File Size ~30 GB 4 GB While the movie can't use up the entire 30 GB there is still no comparison. Available HD movies for sale today 163 0 This might change, but who knows when? Video CODECs VC1, MPEG2, H.264 H.264 Although the Apple TV supports MPEG2 and MPEG4, not for HD. Audio outputs by player DD, DTS, TrueHD, DTSHD, PCM PCM (stereo only) This is the biggest limitation.
Crazy Cringely Rumor: Apple to do H.264 Hardware in Every Mac
Robert X. Cringley is not the most reliable source of news, but he is almost always provocative. So take this one with a big grain of salt, but he is suggesting that Apple will soon incorporate hardware H.264 decoding and encoding chips across the Mac line. The big advantage of this would be to allow every single Mac model to offer full 1080p HDTV decoding without depending on the speed of the main processor. This would make the Mac mini, for instance, a perfect HDTV DVR. Further it would make the Mac the choice for consumer video processing a la Youtube, allowing users to process video for upload more quickly then on any other platform. Says Bob: "It's an aggressive play that fits perfectly with Apple's traditional role as the hardware platform of choice for new media development. And I am sure the company will have at least one new service or application that will uniquely support this new chip upon which Apple is placing a $500+ million bet."As I said above, take this with a big grain of salt, but it is provocative and has just enough plausibility to it to give one pause. So is what do you think, TUAW readers? Is this another one of Bob's pie-in-the-sky rumors, or is this a brilliant move by Apple's into HD video? (And what about the Apple TV and a video iPod?)Update: corrected typo
Cringely: blame Vista's delay on OEMs, Apple to sell OS X for PCs
You've got to love the pundit on their soapbox, don't you? This week Cringely, whose previous insightful predictions have rung true in Intel buying Apple and Apple quitting their iPod business, in his usual roundabout prose blames OEMs like Dell or HP for Vista's delay. He connects the two by asserting that Microsoft must not have anticipated the buffer / test period required by their larger OEM partners to get the OS running stably on their boxes before release; thus, since Vista had to go gold long before launch -- and MS wasn't ready for release to OEMs -- they had to delay so as to give their partners the time necessary to confidently release Vista boxes. (All of which kind of invokes the hysteron proteron fallacy of the unproved premise supposing its conclusion). But Cringley's not done: after we're all integrated and settled with our Macs with Boot Camp either as beta or in Leopard, he'd like us to believe Apple will become a Windows OEM and start selling Macs with Vista and OS X out of box "if it will help sales." Um, ok, but there are lots of things Apple could do to increase sales. And what's more, he goes on to suppose Apple will again fork their processor platform by going to 64-bit Intel chips, which they'll use as a ploy to sell a standalone 32-bit version of OS X to Windows users for installation on their non-Apple PCs (since you'll no longer be able to get 32-bit Apple boxes). Whoa, Cringely, you're gonna have to slow things down next week, ok? So many absurd suppositions at once are making our heads hurt a little.
