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- Apple Kills Lala Streaming Music Service, But What Does it Mean?
As you may have heard, Apple plans to shut down streaming music service Lala.com at the end of May, a company it purchased only recently in December of last year. At the time, speculation ran rampant that Apple was planning on using the service to launch its own streaming music venture, probably for use with iTunes and the company’s varioius iDevices.
Lala features an 8 million song deep catalogue, which can be streamed by any user once for free. If you wanted to play the song more than that, you paid 10 cents and received unlimited replays. Download purchases were also available, starting at 79 cents per track.
No new users are being accepted to Lala as of last Friday, and the website will be shuttered entirely on May 31. That means anyone who paid for unlimited streaming options will also be cut off at that time. Apple has said it will be refunding paid subscribers with iTunes credit in order to compensate, but of course iTunes can’t match the 10 cent unlimited streaming deal.
So what’s Apple’s end goal in buying and then fairly promptly killing the service? Speculation abounds that it wants the intellectual property and staff in order to create its own rival to popular services like Pandora and Last.fm, while still funnelling yet more consumers to its hardware line.
But is it actually time for Apple to bite the bullet and accept that cloud-based streaming is the future of media distribution? I think the answer is no. Cupertino knows it doesn’t have to be ahead of the curve regarding media distribution so long as it continues to lead the way in media playback devices. iPod is still the category-defining brand in that regard, and the iPad’s million unit milestone just recently proves that Apple isn’t yet done reshaping the market according to its own vision.
Apple is shuttering Lala.com at the end of the month, that much is inevitable. What is far from inevitable is that this move will somehow lead to Apple launching its own streaming music service to fill the void. It’s much more likely that Cupertino made the purchase (which was barely a drop in the bucket, in terms of purchase price) to scope out the streaming music service from the inside, pull it apart and see how it ticks. From that vantage point, it would be that much easier to make an informed decision about how quickly Apple had to move into the space, and I’m willing to bet that what they found out is that there’s no hurry.
Shutting down Lala probably just ends a resource bleed and eliminates a potential iTunes competitor now that Apple’s gathered enough intel. So if you’re saving that iTunes credit they gave you for closing out your account for when Apple launches its own streaming service, don’t, unless you feel like waiting a long, long time.
Переслать - How-To: Final Cut Express Stabilization Using iMovie
One big feature missing from Final Cut Express is the SmoothCam video filter, which is found in Final Cut Pro. Of course some things had to be left out to make you want to buy the pro version but I had to find a way around this.
iMovie, on the other hand, does have a stabilization feature built in so I hatched a plan: I’d use iMovie for the clips that need to be stabilized. Here’s the process of taking a clip from Final Cut Express and using iMovie to stabilize it.
Export the Clip from Final Cut Express
Find the shaky clip in your Final Cut Express timeline and set the in and out point around it. To do this, go to the start of the clip and press I to mark the in point. Then go to the end of that clip and press O to mark the out point.
Go to the File menu and Export the clip as a QuickTime Movie…
I titled mine “BeforeStabilization.”
Stabilize the Clip in iMovie
Launch iMovie and create a New Project.
Now go to the File menu and Import the clip.
I unchecked Optimize video in an attempt to keep the file from being converted too many times.
After the clip is imported into your Event Library, Right-click on the video and select Video Adjustments.
The Inspector window will come up. Click on the Clip tab and then the Analyze Entire Clip button.
Wait for iMovie to analyze the clip.
Now the Inspector window can be closed.
Now drag your clip to your project and watch the clip to confirm iMovie did its job.
Export from iMovie
Now we need to export the clip out to bring it back into Final Cut Express. Click on the Share menu and select Export Using QuickTime.
You want to try to use the same settings as the files currently in your Final Cut Express timeline. I’m using a 1440×1080 Apple Intermediate Codec timeline so my export settings mirror that.
Give this new file a location and a name to save with.
Import the Clip into Final Cut Express
Use the File menu to import the stabilized clip.
Add the new clip over the original to see how they compare.
Conclusion
These are a lot of steps to go, but if Final Cut Express & iMovie are all you have, they will work. The stabilized image is noticeably softer than the original but it’s worth it to have shake-free footage. I’ve also stabilized this clip in Final Cut Pro using the SmoothCam filter and I think it looks cleaner than iMovie’s attempt.
Use a tripod or monopod for your videos and you shouldn’t have to go this process too often. I’ve included my sample clip below with the before and after clips so you can get an idea of the results.
Переслать - iPad Makes its Market Share Mark: Report
Web metrics firm Net Applications report for April reinforces the growing perception that Apple holds its future in its hands, as opposed to it being on the desk or the lap.
Both OS X and Safari for the Mac continue to show tepid growth compared to iPhone OS, and the iPad appears to be the latest example of that trend.
At the end of April, iPad market share as measured by web browsing, is at 0.03 percent, which may seem insignificant, but that is exactly what the original iPhone had after its first month. I think we all know how that turned out.
While the iPad went as high as 0.08 percent during April, the weekend spiking probably has more to do with how Net Applications gathers data, rather than a shift in iPad usage. Looking further into the data, the iPad’s U.S. share was quadruple the international number at 0.12 percent, which makes sense as the international launch of the iPad won’t be until later this month. That likely bodes well for the iPad, though. As more countries sell the iPad, not to mention the addition of the 3G model, share will quickly increase worldwide.
Within the U.S. itself, the top five states for iPad usage, ranging from 0.19 percent to 0.16 percent, were Hawaii, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Nebraska of all places. The least popular state for the iPad was Wyoming, which matched the global average of 0.03 percent. Not surprisingly, San Francisco saw more usage than any other city.
Looking at the bigger picture, the introduction of the iPad, plus increased share for both the iPhone and iPod touch, boosted iPhone OS to 0.68 percent share in April. While that is insignificant compared to Windows at more than 90 percent, or even OS X for the Mac at 5.32 percent, iPhone OS is closing in on Linux at 1.05 percent—you are going down, penguin!
Looking at iPhone OS from the mobile perspective says more about web browsing on the go than units sold. Even though BlackBerry and Symbian are available on more devices sold, the browsing experience is a painful one, hence the lead by iPhone OS devices.
The free and low-end Java Micro Edition likely holds the overall lead because with more than a billion cell phones sold a year, quantity still matters. Nonetheless, iPhone OS will likely become the leading mobile OS this year, at least as measured by Net Applications. It also should be noted that Android has increased share by nearly an order of magnitude since last year at this time, and that could be trouble for Apple.
Those skeptical of Google’s ability to disrupt the mobile OS market and threaten Apple might want to review what happened with desktop web browsers. Chrome will almost certainly double Safari’s share by the end of the year. Safari, now at 4.72 percent, has been stuck between four and five percent for nearly a year. In contrast, Chrome has more than tripled its share in the last year, and now stands at 6.73 percent.
With the advent of Chrome OS, that may prove to be trouble for OS X for the Mac. At 5.32 percent, OS X for the desktop is up about half a percent over last year, but the dominance of Windows appears unassailable, at least for Apple. The best that can be said for OS X for the Mac is that Snow Leopard has finally surpassed Leopard as the most used version of OS X. Snow Leopard has 43 percent share to Leopard’s 40 percent, with Tiger a distant third at 13 percent. With Apple’s singular focus on iPhone OS at WWDC10, it appears Snow Leopard will have plenty of time to gain OS X market share before OS X 10.7 INSERT_CAT_NAME_HERE is released.
While April's report by Net Applications has plenty of good news for Apple, we are also seeing the beginning of the end of an era. The Mac is becoming less and less important to Apple's business model. The iPhone and the iPod provide roughly double the revenue of the Mac, and the success of the iPad will only further decrease the importance of the Mac to Apple. This isn't to say the Mac is doomed, but that its preeminence at Apple is at an end, if not among Mac faithful.
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