Apple launched the video section of the iTMS with 2,000 music videos, a few TV shows, and some Pixar shorts. And more hype than Microsoft has generated with Windows Vista.

What? You’ve not heard of Windows Vista? See what I mean?

I’m enough of an early adopter that I didn’t hesitate to buy a few videos, a couple of TV episodes, and a few Pixar short movies from iTMS when it launched a few weeks ago.

No, I don’t have an iPod with video. Yet. I stopped at the Apple store this week. They were in stock, black and white. The color screen is beautiful, so I have no doubts it’ll be a bigger seller than the original 5 gig iPod, or the 10 gig, or the iPod photo.

The new iPod is just an iPod that does music, photos, and video playback. It’s just an iPod.

In the few weeks since the iPod with video launched, and Apple updated iTunes to version 6.0 to handle video sales, over 1-million videos have been purchased.

At $1.99 a pop, that’s a couple million dollars to get Apple’s new venture started. So, is there a problem?

Yes. Video selection is thin. Very thin. Ultra thin if one is to consider the number of ‘videos’ that are available in the marketplace. There must be tens of thousands of movies. There must be thousands and thousands of old and current TV shows.

There must be thousands and thousands more music videos available. Even the ones I want I can find on Yahoo but are nowhere to be found on iTunes Music Store.

Apple is right to hype the 1-million videos sold in 20 days. Chances are good that 1-million is about all that Yahoo, Napster, Microsoft, and Real combined sell in music in 20 days.

But it’s not enough, though Apple was quick to point out that iTunes Music Store also have over 2-million songs available from over 1,000 music labels, and 11,000 audiobooks.

I want to believe that movie distributors, music video producers, and TV distributors are standing in line at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA to get their content on iTMS.

After all, the announcement video, though not a major suprise, didn’t come with the usual leaks associated with something so obvious as an iPod that plays video.

I’m convinced that the road to video will be a steady ramp up to success, though, for early adopters, it may seem like a slow liftoff. I’m also convinced that we haven’t seen the ‘whole video picture’ yet?

Why? While at the Apple Store I also had opportunity to dink around with Front Row on a new iMac. Contrary to comparisons, Front Row is abosolutely, positively NOT Microsoft’s Media Center done by Apple.

Front Row is deceptively simple. It’s a ‘front end’ application that provides users with a familiar iPod-like interface to scroll through Movies, Music, DVDs, and Photo slide shows using a simple remote control device. That’s it.

What’s missing is a device to get TV shows, movies, and more music videos into the Mac for storage, and OUT OF THE Mac to your TV set. That’s missing from Apple’s current offerings.

Hmmmm. Macworld 2006 is just two months away.

The folks at Mac360 have a few domains for sale. If you've ever dreamed of setting up and running your own site about Apple, the Mac, iPods or the iPhone, this is a great way to get started. Click here for the basic details, and click AppleScene, iPhoneKillerTips, or ChatterMac for a more complete list.

• Article by Alexis Kayhill • Published on Monday, October 31, 2005
• Category: News & Commentary • 6 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now

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Readers Talk Back:

waterboarded says:

Uh, dude. How does an article from 2005 have anything to do with mocking Time Machine?

BTW - Time Machine sucks on my Mac. It keeps crapping out after two or three tries. By reading Apple’s support forums I can see that, uh, well, a million other Mac users have similar problems.

Nice idea, bad implementation.

— Posted on Fri Nov 09 at 11:18 am by waterboarded

PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ says:

O.K, first things first! I have to tear into you on how you’re mocking down time machine.
You are wrong, Time machine is the bomb and I am going to explain. First I must admit I was a bit weary of the software program myself. I have a MAC PRO desktop; yes the Mac Daddy of all Macintosh computers. I bought Mine stock at the Apple store a year ago this coming December. It only came with the stock Barracuda ATA 250 gig hard drive. Well I only have 65 gigs on it but I have been dying to upgrade this beast, so I bought A 750 gig Sata drive for my upgrade. I have three more hard drive bays to go, well actually two now. My Mac can take up to three Terra-bytes of hard drive space. Will I ever use that much, hell no but I have to get there sooner or later just because I can.

Note to all you guys who buy from the Apple store, you don’t have to buy Apples hard drives. Apples 750 gig sata hard drive is priced at $500.00 I believe. (RIP OFF) I bought my 750-gig sata from http://www.Tigerdirect.com for $310.00. Same brand name, same everything, just does not have the picture of the Apple on the Specs of the hard drive. I also buy my external hard drives from tiger direct. Apple rips you off on their hardware. Yes some it I would not compensate for, like memory even though when I go to upgrade my ram all the way to 16 gigs, I am not going to mix and match ram with generic verses theirs.
Again that’s http://www.tigerdirect .com

O.K. TO THE SUBJECT OF TIME MACHINE!!!
I installed my new 750 Barracuda hard drive into hard drive bay one after taking out the stock 250 junk ATA hard drive (still going to use that one in hard drive bay two for now till I buy another drive)

Simple as this, I put in the new drive, formatted option 1 (GUID) and then installed a fresh copy of Leopard, then it asked me if I wanted to use Time machine to back up after OS X 10.5 was finished. I checked yes and about 45 minutes later I was up and running like I cloned my hard drive. The only things I had to redo was my Intego serial numbers to serialize and switch my audio out back to fiber optics (because I have a sound system that would make the fire in hell blow out) and that was it. Yes that simple. No problems what so ever. I now warship Time Machine and I also learned with the Mac Pro desk top having that second internal hard drive (former stock apple 250 gig drive) I don’t need a external hard drive, I can use internal drives for Time Machine. EVERYONE SAVE YOUR MONEY AND GO BUY A MAC PRO, you think your new IMAC is fast, go to a apple store and play with a 4 core or 8 core MAC PRO, you will never be able to look at your former Macintosh in the same way.

PEACE.

P.S, I originally upgraded on the stock 250-barricuda hard drive from to Tiger to Leopard with out wiping my hard drive, I just simply upgraded to Leopard out of Tiger. Well my Printer stopped working, P of my games either would not run at all or froze up, my mail kept shutting down, safari would just quite also and I allot of other weird problems and then I would get error’s reports to send (is this apple or micro-crap I am thinking!) What I am getting at is with the fresh install of Leopard (not upgraded on top of tiger) I have got my printer back, all my games except one and that one is “prey” the one I want to play the most of course. If your having the same problems, I suggest you make sure your time machine is nice and backed and wipe that upgraded version you have because that is the problem. And don’t Always believe apples call in tech support because ` of them are Idiots and I can’t stand Apples Geniuses but that that’s just me, if you need their help and can’t problem solve then I guess you have no option. GOOD LUCK.

— Posted on Fri Nov 09 at 4:13 am by PRO~DUAL~INTEL~3/GIGAHERTZ

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