(Image courtesy of Crunchgear.com)
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has become the tech equivalent of a magic eight-ball: Instead of shaking it up for the answer you seek, simply fire off an e-mail to the right address and get wisdom thrown down from the mountain. This week the subject is HD video -- specifically uploading it via the iPhone 4 as well as playing it on a Mac.
MacDailyNews is reporting that reader Chris T. fired off a missive to Apple CEO Steve Jobs inquiring about the iPhone 4’s annoying lack of ability to upload the beautiful HD videos it records:
“I’m a HUGE fan of your products... but I have a complaint... What's the point of building in HD video capabilities when the compression upon uploading directly to youtube makes the videos useless and not viewable? They're not even remotely viewable!! I was so excited about this feature on the iPhone 4, but sadly to say, this is a serious disappointment. In today's world, HD video is pointless if I can't upload it ‘as is’ directly to the net.”
We totally agree with Chris T., and were happy to hear that Jobs took to his own iPhone with the response: “You can upload them via a Mac or PC today. Over the air in the future.” No idea what the CEO considers “the future,” but we hope it’s not the same one with flying cars and teleportation, because that’s kind of a long wait.
Meanwhile, MacRumors reader Siva is still annoyed that Blu-ray does not appear to be on Apple’s radar for the Mac. Steve Jobs himself famously referred to the HD disc format as “a bag of hurt” and there has been no movement to adopt the format on the Mac, despite Apple being part of the Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) since early 2005.
Siva (and the rest of us) will likely continue to be disappointed, since Jobs doesn’t hold out much hope for Blu-ray on the Mac: “Blu-ray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD -- like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.”
But Siva didn’t abandon hope. According to MacRumors, he fired back that even though this may be true in the long run, “the medium term benefits were substantial, including high density backups and high quality video. He also argued that high-end video formats have had a much higher uptake and points out the lack of DRM was in part what made MP3 take off.”
Jobs is having none of it, responding with: “No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.
“I think you may be wrong -- we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.”
Despite trouncing the competing HD-DVD format early on, Blu-ray has continued to face an uphill battle as consumers have seemingly become bored with collecting movies on optical disc and fail to see a vast improvement in picture quality from DVD (which is certainly not as great as the one from VHS tape to DVD). Undaunted, Hollywood studios continue to push Blu-ray even as they dip their toes into the streaming waters and continue to wring every little last bit of life left from the popular DVD format.
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