Editorial - Macrimination 
The Digital Hub's Missing Piece
By Steve Sobek - Contributing Editor
NOTE: The old Chinese curse goes: "May you live in interesting
times." We must have angered someone somewhere pretty badly -- the world
is not exactly boring at the moment. Some may question what I'm doing
writing the second installment of "Macrimination" just as the United
States goes to war with Iraq. Let them. Maybe I can provide a momentary
break from the bombs and the death for some. Besides, if the NCAA can go
on with the Big Dance, why can't I write my little Mac column?
That said, a central part of the fight against Macrimination has
always centered around an ignorance among the general population as to
what one can actually do with a Mac. You've heard the comments: "You
can't play any games." "Macs aren't fast enough." "But my office uses
Microsoft Word, and Macs aren't compatible." We all know how false these
claims are (If you don't, please see Apple's switch page, I'm not
getting into those basic questions here). But there's one place that
Macs still can't go, for the most part. Given Apple's focus on the
"Digital Hub" over the last couple of years, I've always found it very
surprising.
I'm talking, of course, about online movie and music services, like
pressplay and MovieLink. If you don't believe me,
just click that link on your Macintosh and go to MovieLink. The script
on its front page will chew on the details of your system for a bit,
then spit back a page saying: "You currently do not meet our minimum
system requirements. You will need to adjust the following: You Need
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP." Pressplay is a bit sneakier about it -- its
front page doesn't mention anything, you don't find out until you're
signing up for their free trial and a little box in the upper right
corner describes the program's system requirements: "PC only. Windows
XP/ME/2000/98."
Now I'm a Virtual PC
owner, and I've always prided myself on being able to cheat these cheats
by running Windows in a secure memory space on my computer. For the most
part, I can do just about anything I could do if I had a PC, except play
graphics-intensive games. But they did a good job locking up these
services. I spent a good day about a month ago trying to a get MovieLink
to work on my work with Windows 2000 on my Virtual PC. I was able to log
in, install the software, and even download the movie. But I always got
an error on playback and I was never able to watch it. Purely for
research purposes, I found the hidden file that was my downloaded movie
(which was set to be erased from my hard drive forever the next day!)
and moved it to my Mac work space to see if I could find a way to play
it. At least, it was for research purposes at first. When I couldn't get
it to work on Virtual PC, it was more a matter of trying to get my
money's worth. No dice. Two days later, I rented "Murder By Numbers" at
my local Blockbuster. I had given up on the Internet movie
experience.
This is a huge piece missing in Apple's Digital Hub vision. Think
about it: You can watch and create DVDs, you can have music on your iPod
(only if you own CDs for the music on it!), and you can work with your
digital photos. With El Gato's
EyeTV, you can even turn your Mac into a very capable TiVo system.
But if you want to join the next wave of the digital revolution and
really put your broadband connection to the test and download
"Goldmember," forget it.
There has been a development on the horizon that could finally bring
these services to the Mac. It was recently announced that digital rights
management capabilities could soon
be added to mpeg-4, the streaming media format being championed by
Apple. Digital rights management really isn't very pretty, if you ask
me. The computer files you download or stream are encrypted to prevent
you from copying them from computer to computer, or even from listening
to them or watching them after a certain amount of time has lapsed. I
don't really like a computer file telling me after a day or two that I
can't open it anymore, or that I can't back it up on a CD. It's kind of
like a book refusing to open after a week, but yet you're still left
with that book sitting on your shelf, not good for anything but the next
garbage run.
The big movie studios and music distribution companies, however, love
this technology, of course. It gives them the possibility of sating the
public's thirst for electronic versions of their music without having to
worry about the Napsters, Gnutellas and Kazaas out there. The online
music and movie providers, such as pressplay and MovieLink, use the
Mac's lack of digital rights management as their catch-all for not
supporting the platform with their services.
If the mpeg-4 consortium and Apple adopt some sort of digital
encryption, these services would have no excuse but to support Macs.
With recent news stories about Apple's possible online music service
showing up everywhere, even on
The Associated Press wires, it seems that Cupertino has come to that
realization, also.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I do not support the permanent
use of such fascist technologies. But I like watching movies on my Mac.
I have a broadband Internet connection. I have an iPod. I would love to
just come home late one night and decide that I want to download the
latest movie release and watch it on my pretty 17-inch cinema display. I
already watch DVDs like that sometimes. Unless I have company, I prefer
it over the analog TV I have in the living room.
But I don't have any ideas yet for a better way of doing it. If I
did, I'd be much richer and would have a different day job. Until that
new model is found, Apple needs to assure the big movie houses and music
providers that their media can be played safely on a Mac. It will also
prevent PC people from saying: "See, there's something else we can't do
on a Mac."
Tune in next week, when I explain how Apple is getting some help in
dispelling the mythical Megahertz myth from an unlikely source:
Intel.
Steve Sobek is a journalist and Webmaster of United Mac. Reach him at ssobek@stevesobek.net.
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