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The Future Is Now... (7/25/99)
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We know that some of you don't actually visit every single Mac news site minute by minute to keep tabs on what Apple's up to, so it's possible that, if AtAT is your primary contact point with the Realm of Apple, you're not up on the latest QuickTime buzz. What with all the iBook frenzy last week, we never got a chance to talk about one of the other fairly big Steve announcements: namely, QuickTime TV. Apparently that's the moniker by which Apple's collection of live streaming video content will henceforth be known-- and while it may lack a bit of originality, hey, at least it's descriptive. But the news wasn't that Apple was pushing the name "QuickTime TV"; what got the crowd buzzing were the announcements of what Apple would be broadcasting, and, perhaps much more importantly, how they would be broadcasting it.
First, what they're showing. Longtime AtAT fans are no doubt aware of our annoyance at the continued lack of any substantial streaming entertainment content at Apple's QuickTime page. If you're a news hound, you're all set-- between Bloomberg, BBC World, NPR, and Fox News, you've probably got all the news you can stand. For entertainment junkies like us, though, the pickings were pretty slim: HBO trailers, Fox Sports (for those who actually find that stuff entertaining), and WGBH-- a public television station. Need we comment? But things are looking up; at the keynote address, Steve announced the addition of several new faces to QuickTime TV: VH-1, Rolling Stone, and Disney, to name a few. Now there's some entertainment. And ABC News even got thrown into the bargain, just in case you didn't have quite enough news already.
Okay, so now Apple's got a veritable cornucopia of content: the next question is, how can they deliver that content to your QuickTime Player at high quality, given the sorry state of Internet bandwidth? Face it; there's so much stuff floating around the 'net, traffic congestion is a real problem-- especially if you're trying to stream live video from a server in California to a client in Boston. Fear not: it's Akamai to the rescue! Akamai is a Massachusetts company that appears to have tackled the bandwidth problem by setting up their own "relay stations" all over the world; now that Apple's partnered with them (as you can read in a press release), that video stream from California is actually being rebroadcast by a server physically nearer to the client system. The result? Cleaner, smoother video to be enjoyed by all. Don't you just love it when other people work so hard to improve your leisure experience? It kind of gets us all choked up...
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SceneLink (1680)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/25/99 episode: July 25, 1999: There's more to the iBook than meets the "i." Meanwhile, Apple unrolls new streaming QuickTime content and a partnership intended to enhance your viewing pleasure, and Bungie's apparently not content with just being living legends-- they're going for straight-out godhood...
Other scenes from that episode: 1679: Ah, The Little Things (7/25/99) We admit it-- we were pretty skeptical about the iBook the first few times we played around with it. See, despite its curves and translucency and Bomb Pop/Creamsicle coloring, it was easy to get the impression that all we were holding was a stripped-down PowerBook in iMac clothing... 1681: ...The Future Kicks Ass (7/25/99) Now that last week's Macworld Expo is only a quickly fading memory, we can look back on it and reflect on the high points-- the stuff that really stuck with us. The only tricky bit is trying to isolate that single product, experience, or entity that constituted the absolute pinnacle of the show...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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