[opendtv] Re: Apple Is Looking to the Internet Fast Lane
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 May 2014 08:04:40 -0400
On May 22, 2014, at 7:10 PM, "Manfredi, Albert E"
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote.
>
> Wasn't Apple anxious to get in bed with Comcast, to sell them a proprietary
> STB?
There are rumors, but only that.
> Wasn't Apple the first to drop Flash, to be sure and have their iToy users
> dependent more on iTunes?
This had nothing to do with iTunes. It had everything to do with using a widely
supported industry standard (with hardware decode support in commercially
available GPUs, and battery life for mobile devices. Netflix uses h.264. Amazon
Prime uses h.264...
Get over it Bert; you are usually the one pushing industry standards.
> Doesn't Apple determine what software is written for their devices?
No. OS-X is open to developers. iOS Apps are curated; this means Apple tests
them to make sure they do not contain malware or major flaws that cause the
Apps to crash. They do block Apps on occasion that raise social concerns; for
example, they just took down an App that was being used to track market prices
for Marijuana.
> Doesn't Apple restrict the OSs that can be used on their Macs?
No. You can run OS-X, Windows or Linux out of the box. With emulation you can
run virtual machines for all of them simultaneously.
Apple is far more open than you give them credit for.
> That's certainly true, and I also pointed that out to you and to the FCC.
> That's why Wheeler shouldn't make a huge deal about fast lanes per se. But
> the broader question of net neutrality and of conflict of interest for
> MVPD/ISP companies, and of the scarcity of competition now for ISP services
> (since they are owned by the same local quasi-monopolies that offer cabled
> MVPD service), are questions that do need to be addressed.
Absolutely. Something we can both agree about!
>
> I wrote:
>> I believe that this was just the free market taking advantage of an
>> obvious, but short lived, set of training wheels.
>
> Which doesn't invalidate the point. If we start seeing MVPD/ISP content being
> blocked, prices increased, capacity caps, and/or any number of other
> practices to which the Internet has blissfully been immune until recently,
> you can expect this wonderful medium to become far less wonderful.
Again we agree.
>
>> Bottom like the barriers to real market competition are significant.
>
> We know that. So what you do is you regulate only that aspect that is
> expensive to build, i.e. the infrastructure, especially the infrastructure
> through neighborhoods, because it cannot be competitive.
Title II did not work in terms of promoting competition over AT&T leased lines
- in fact they shut it down. Verizon is looking to wireless as the answer to
the infrastructure costs...
Pervasive WiFi could be another means to bypass the toll booths.
And then there is the issue of "good enough."
The CE industry is all a buzz about 4K TVs. But they may actually cause a
reduction In delivered image quality, at least until they can deal with issues
like contrast, compression artifacts, and color gamut. Bigger numbers are not
always better.
Once we have enough bandwidth to the home to support multiple streams for mom,
dad and the kids, then "good enough" will once again win the day. The question
we should be asking is what are we going to do with Gigabit broadband?
The audio industry has found the "good enough" sweet spot. We don't need iPods
anymore, just a link to the cloud...
Regards
Craig
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