MacCentral Week in Review

Editorial: Apple's mobile communications plans ring true
By Peter Cohen, pcohen@maccentral.com

Some folks may lament Apple's absence from the cell phone market -- I've occasionally wished for an Apple-branded cell phone myself. But that's not to say Apple isn't making a play to work behind the scenes. Apple's Senior Director of Product Marketing for QuickTime and Graphics, Frank Casanova, laid out Apple's strategy during last week's CTIA conference in San Francisco, Calif. Casanova's presentation convincingly spelled out Apple's ability to offer end-to-end solutions for mobile content publishers and communications companies.

More service providers are rolling out high speed data networks and more customers are buying multimedia-capable phones, but phones capable of displaying multimedia content have only recently reached critical mass in the United States and elsewhere, according to Casanova. He noted that Apple had to fly him to Japan in order to demonstrate the technology nine months ago, because that's one of the few places where it worked. Multimedia content delivery for mobile handsets has become big business and is growing bigger as consumers demand more content for their phones. Apple hopes to carve out a healthy chunk of that market with their own products.

Real Networks and Microsoft both expend a lot of resources making portable versions of their media player software. Casanova explained that Apple doesn't, mainly because it doesn't need to. QuickTime's file format is the basis of MPEG-4, the video and audio standard upon which the 3GPP and 3GPP2 cell phone standards are based. QuickTime content exported to 3GPP and 3GPP2 just works. That makes it trivially easy for someone with a Mac or a PC and a DV camcorder to make a small video of the kids trick-or-treating in their Halloween costumes and send it to Grandpa and Grandma's cell phones.

Apple products can help professional content publishers in much the same way. Edit your content with Final Cut Pro HD, for example, then use an Xserve running QuickTime Streaming Server -- included as part of Mac OS X Server -- to deliver the content to mobile subscribers. This isn't a hypothetical example: I just described exactly how Fox Sports serves up its content to subscribers of Sprint's PCS Vision Multimedia Services.

Apple has already forged partnerships with major players in the cell phone space -- companies like NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. What's more, Apple counts 25 operators worldwide as actively participating in QuickTime content delivery trials, with 25 or 30 more on the way, all giving Apple's content creation and playback systems a try.

It's an important strategic play for Apple. With Windows dominating the business and general computing spaces, Apple has shifted its development efforts to more potentially profitable vertical markets where it can lead the way. Consumer music is a good example where Apple is the dominant player, with the iPod and iTunes Music Store. Apple's also a strong performer in professional-level digital video, cinema and pro music, and it's winning respect in the information technology space too. Casanova's presentation at CTIA demonstrates Apple's desire to forge a leadership role in this important, and potentially huge, new market by leveraging an arsenal of proven technology that continues to improve.

Apple News

Apple trims music purchases to iTunes 4.5 or higher

Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday encouraged users of its iTunes jukebox software to upgrade to the latest version, available from the company's Web site. As of today users of iTunes 4.2 or lower will not be able to purchase or download songs from the iTunes Music Store, but Apple says the new innovative features are well worth the upgrade.

Mac OS X, BSD Unix top security survey

London-based mi2g Intelligence Unit on Tuesday released a report that says Mac OS X and Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) Unix are the "world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environments." Linux operating systems offer the worst track record, according to mi2g, with Windows coming in second.

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Hardware News

Monster's iCruze plays iPod on car stereo

High-end audio cable company Monster has announced a partnership with audio designer SoundGate to create iCruze, a device that allows you to play your iPod library on your car stereo without transmitting the music over an FM frequency.

Iogear offers Bluetooth Mini Mouse

WiebeTech offers Mac Recovery SATA version

Harmony Express offers 'virtual' USB 5.1 audio

Contour issues iSee-40 case for 40GB 4G iPods

FIA On3 Pro shuttles audio, video from home to cars

Sonos system delayed until January

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Software News

QuarkXPress 6.5 released

Quark Inc. in mid-October announced QuarkXPress 6.5, a free update to their flagship desktop publishing software application. On Monday the company announced the new version's release. It is available for download from Quark's Web site now.

A9.com toolbar ready for Firefox

Propel to offer Internet accelerator for OS X

Aspyr to publish Doom 3 for Mac

World of Warcraft coming Nov. 23

WinTel 1.2.2 offers G4 fix, other improvements

iAuthorize enables credit card sales in Mac OS X

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Around the Web

'Working With Spotlight' developer tips offered

To help Mac OS X developers get the most out of Spotlight, the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) has posted a new article in its Tiger Developer Overview Series entitled "Working With Spotlight." The article covers how Spotlight works, how developers can query it from their own applications and how to create file format importers.

Digital Video Expo West conference program highlighted

Can the iPod Keep Leading the Band?

But there's no software for the Mac, right?

Personal Recollections of Charles F. McConathy

Europeans turned off by do-it-all gadgets - survey

Sizing up the latest iPod iteration

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