the Orchard
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Apple's Lala music team working on video streaming service for 2010 launch?
When Apple acquired Lala, the obvious use for all that local scanning and internet streaming technology would have been to serve up our hard-drive-based iTunes music libraries from the cloud. Here we are though, eight months later, and the only significant impact from the acquisition was the closure of the Lala music service. And it doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. According to an investigative piece by CNET, Apple is telling the big-four music execs that it won't be offering any significant cloud-based music offerings within the next few months. In fact, CNET's sources claim that Apple still hasn't obtained the licenses required to store and distribute music via a cloud-based service. So what's Apple doing with all that Lala talent then? According to CNET, the team has been working on an "undisclosed video feature" instead of music. Additional sources at the major film studios claim that Apple plans to create "digital shelves" this year letting iTunes users store movies and other media on Apple's servers. Hmm, does that sound like Keychest to you? Naturally, all of this makes sense in light of Apple's plan to open a 500,000 square foot data center (pictured above) in North Carolina later this year at a cost of $1 billion. What better facility to serve up 99 cent streaming TV rentals to a completely overhauled Apple TV in the home, and highly mobile iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone devices on the go. Anecdotally, it's not like Apple's showing too much concern with storage limits on its iOS devices -- the iPhone 4 just launched in the same 16GB and 32GB offerings as the 3GS instead of the typical doubling of flash storage we've come to expect from new iPhone iterations. So really, the question isn't if, it's just a matter of when. Original image courtesy of Cult of Mac
WoW Moviewatch: The Orchard
We first talked about the BitFilm Festival 2009 Machinima contest when we featured La Terroriste last week. With the clock running out on the time for votes, I wanted to mention another machinima entry for this year's contest. The Orchard is a horror-genre movie from Dan Ross (otherwise known as Lafawnduh). Dan is the same creator who filmed The Ultimate Snowdown.The Orchard is an incredibly well-crafted movie that is deeply steeped in its own genre and moody atmosphere. I particularly enjoy how the story is tied up without an obvious, author-determined morality applied to Margaret. The video is well worth the time, and Dan should be applauded for his artwork.Ultimately, I wish good luck to La Terroriste, World of Workcraft, and The Orchard in the BitFilm contest. While WoW.com obviously has no stake in the contest, I think all three would be worthy winners. Good luck, folks! Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
