Can Apple Make Artists?

    Anyone who has watched television without a DVR in the past few months, saw ads online, or just stopped timeshifting to watch the shiny new Apple ads, have heard some very catchy songs. Their latest commercials for the iPod Nano, Macbook Air, and others before, know the style and kind of music that Apple uses for these ads.

    Strongly enough, the last two songs to be featured in Apple commercials have been later met with large commercial success. Take, for example, the Macbook Air song, New Soul, by Yael Naim. Like virtually every individual in North America, you have never heard of this person. She is a songwriter and artist who gained relatively large commercial success in Europe, but practically nothing in the North American market. This all changed, however, when Apple unveiled the debut commercial for their new ultraportable at Macworld.

    After seeing what happened with the song ‘1234′ by Fiest when it was featured in an iPod Nano commercial a few months ago, I rushed to the iTunes Store to check the popularity. A couple of days after the commercial was first unveiled, the song had a two bar popularity level, a pittance. I bought the song (iTunes Plus, btw) and decided to check back in awhile.

    Of course, I forgot about doing that until yesterday. I decided to look at the Billboard 100 for the United States for some unknown reason, when… There it was! An obscure French artist, who would likely have never been heard of in America, suddenly in the top 10 songs. I then rushed back to iTunes, and sure enough, it was in the top songs, with a maxed out popularity.

    This leads me to the conclusion that Apple really has the ability to catapult an artist to stardom. All the proof you need for that is to see the Grammy nominations for Fiest. These songs are even so unique, that hearing one of these songs on the radio, on a bus, or anywhere else, reminds me of the commercial. Apple gains free advertising when radio stations simply play a top 10 song!

    Congratulations, Steve. You (well, your employee’s) are the marketing god(s).

 

Is the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Battle Over?

    Much to the dismay of HD enthusiasts world wide, the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD battle has been holding many people back from enjoying their content in HD.  Much like happened with BetaMax and VHS back in the day, one of these formats is destined to lose, and its content will be rendered obsolete.  After spending $500 on a player, and another few hundred on content, no one wants to repurchase it all in another format.  Thusly, many have simply waited, sticking to there up-converting DVD players, trying to drown their standard def depression in simulated clarity.

Up until the Friday’s announcement, the divide between studio support was fairly equal.  Universal, Paramount,  Warner, and Dreamworks supported HD-DVD.  Sony, Disney, Fox, Warner, and LionsGate supported Blue-Ray.  However, with Warner’s switch to Blu-Ray only, many have been calling an end to the format war, as the sides are so stacked.  With the studio support of Blu-ray, many feel that the others will abandon HD-DVD.

While this very well may be the case, I have a few issues with this bold statement.  Firstly, some of the studio supporters of HD-DVD are very strong. For example, Paramount, in a shocking episode last summer, switched to HD-DVD exclusive. Many thought that huge pay-offs may have been involved, for a Blu-ray only manufacturer to abandon its format, and switch to HD-DVD.  They also have strong hardware supporters, such as Microsoft and Intel, who are expected to do something unexpected at CES 2008.  While Blu-ray still has more support, both in studio and hardware, enough may be invested in HD-DVD to leave some companies hesitant is ditching HD-DVD.

Secondly, consumers will still be anxious for HD-DVD content.  With the recent lowering of prices , some players are going for as little as $199.  Many who have been waiting for this price point snatched them up, and content along with it.  These people will be very angry if and when their players become obsolete, so could drag on support for both formats by the studios for far longer than many predict.

Thirdly, the HD-DVD team may have some tricks up its sleeve for this weeks CES.   Rumours abound over Microsoft putting an HD-DVD player in its Xbox 360.  this could be huge, seeing as a large percentage of Blu-ray players reside in side Sony’s struggling PS3.  others twists could include new functionality that Blu-ray can’t match, such as networking and interactivity that have not been explored on either side of the war.  Cheaper players are also a last hope for HD-DVD.

However, in the face of the recent Warner decision, I still agree with the predictions of the end of the war, although still farther into the future.  Lower prices on the Blu-ray side will really be the nail in the coffin, especially if they can reach the <$150 price range by mid year.   This war has dragged on for too long, and its about time that a winner finally claims the throne.  Last CES, Sony claimed victory.  This year, they may have actually achieved it.

 

Crysis=Meltdown

Well, I’m back and blogging! Life seems to have a terrible habit of interfering with my online life, but a lot has been happening as of late. However, that is no excuse, and the blogging shall commence posthaste!

Well, as many in the gaming community have noted, the new PC game, Crysis, by developer Crytek, has received awards galore for best graphics, physics, and general eye candy. Unfortunately, the game is a destroyer of GPU’s, the slayer of physics cards, obliterator of of RAM, and the annihilator of any CPU you foolishly throw in it’s path.

Now, I do not have the greatest gaming PC of all time. After working this summer at the local Nippon Institute of Technology, I thought I’d splurge a bit on a new PC for my everyday needs, gaming included. Seeing as my budget was limited by the impeding purchase of a car, I settled on a Dell XPS 410 (A.K.A. Dell Dimension 9200). It had a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz, which is it’s best feature. 2 GB’s of RAM, I put in some speedy hard drives, Nvidea 8600, Vista Ultimate, nothing to spectacular, but still reasonable for gaming. It plays Command and Conquer 3 great with all settings maxed, Bioshock, Orange Box, everything looks nice on the Dell 24″ monitor that I use with it.

After I heard on Diggnation that Kevin had to buy a bloody Falcon Northwest insane machine to even get acceptable frame rates, I knew I had to see what it would do on an average persons PC.

I got the game, installed it, which went nice and fast, and booted it up. A little sluggish in opening, but nothing to worry about.  I immediately went into options before anything else and ran its auto detect to recommends video settings. It chose medium for my system.    I then launched the single player campaign, and waited through its monotonous loading.  My first impression when the game launched was this:

Oh!  That looks pretty! Oh…, wait…. it’s not moving.  At all. Damn.

I check the FPS, and I was getting numbers ranging from 1-5.  I went back into options, but now the whole app was lagging to such an extent that i had to hold buttons for upwards of 5 seconds before the system would act on them.   Finally, after far to much tweaking,  I hat framerates in the 20-30 range; still bad, but the best I could really get without being in a polygon jungle.  The resolution was such that I couldn’t aim at all, every movement caused the FPS to drop, looking around made my curser teleport to various places on the map, and it was generally a failure.  It devoured my 2 gigs of RAM, my Core 2 quad was plugging away at 75%, and the graphics card sounded like it was going to take off out of my PC.

So, my verdict is this.  If you like First Person Shooters, but also enjoy having money to spend on things other that PC components, avoid Crysis.  If you have a PC with some SLI’d 8800’s, an insane processor, and more memory that you have hard disk space, you might be able to squeeze out some acceptable frame rates.

 

Pretty Much My First Blog

I suppose that this is pretty much a hello world statement.  Just for starters, I’m a Canadian teen who is easily described as a total internet addict, but I’ve spent too much time sitting on the sidelines.  So, as of today, (and tomorrow if I don’t get through it all), I’m starting this blog, making a Twitter feed, registering a domain, joining Facebook, and a few other things that I’m sure I’ll think of.  Of cource, it’ll take some time to get everything up, running, and intergrated, so please be patient.

-Matt