Peter Kafka from All Things Digital writes today that Apples is thinking about launching a $30 per month iTunes-based subscription service to carry cable and broadcast television programming early next year.

According to unnamed sources, over the past few weeks Apple has been pitching the idea to several of the major broadcast and cable networks.  As the article correctly points out, it’s a tough sell: cable networks will are not going to do anything to jeopardize the lucrative business model currently in place, in which they receive both a large cut of the advertising revenue as well as subscription fees from the cable carrier – and everyone is probably tremendously cautious about the effect on ad load, given the inability so far to monetize internet video through advertising (even industry leader hulu has had trouble selling its inventory).

However, there’s something we think the ‘All Things Digital’ article misses…  something important…

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Several decades after the advent of CAD, electronic ignition and anti-lock brakes, digital technology continues to make new inroads into the auto industry. A few of the more interesting examples:

Advertising?  There’s an app for that. Volkswagen is planning to promote their new GTI (the performance version of the Golf) exclusively via a licensed and rebranded mobile game app released for the iPhone and iTouch.  Recognizing a substantial overlap between the iPhone and GTI demographics, VW is apparently counting on the free app alone to get the job done, and at a much lower cost than traditional commercials and print ads.  The game uses the iPhone/iTouch motion-sensing, includes a virtual VW showroom (at left), and in a clever promotional move, VW plans to give away free cars to the six highest-scoring players.  If effective, look for more convergence between apps and advertising going forward…


The car network Another innovation from Germany: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in collaboration with manufacturers such as BMW, Audi, and Daimler, is working on the specification of a network standard to unify the various (until-now) standalone digital systems found in the modern automobile. Dubbed “Security in Embedded IP-based Systems“, the research project is aimed at reducing complexity and ensuring security, and will be based on Ethernet networking technology and the same Internet Protocol upon which the internet is based. We’re thinking such a system could easily find its way into the aviation industry as well. Yet more uses for ethernet – after over 30 years, maybe the most successful, extensible and long-lived networking technology ever invented.

We try to avoid taking positions on provocative subjects here at digitalmissive – health care town hall meetings, South African track star gender issues – things like that. But I’ve recently found myself sitting in front of a completely Microsoft-free workstation at my current client site – no Windows, no Word, no (gasp) Excel, no nuthin’. So at the risk of upsetting a few of the religious faithful on either side of the great Cupertino-Redmond divide, I now find myself with a few (somewhat unexpected) observations to share.

I’ve been a Windows user for some time now. The bloat, the ambivalence (at best) towards open standards, the security concerns – all this can get annoying at times. By and large, though, I’ve been one pretty happy XP camper for a while now (like many, I sat out Vista). Lately, though, like many of us John Hodgman types, I’ve secretly wondered if I too could one day be as cool as Drew-Barrymore-boyfriend guy….

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We’ve been watching (and writing) about the rumored Apple tablet netbook for a while now – essentially an iTouch with a 6-10″ touch screen, we feel like this thing is gonna be huge.

Hulu’s been working on an iPhone App (using the more Apple-friendly MP4 format rather than than Adobe Flash) for a few months now – imagine a 10″ tablet for the home that can access iTunes, YouTube and Hulu.  Imagine all this running over your fast home internet connection rather than AT&T’s under-performing 3G data network.  Imagine (the admittedly more remote) possibility of the otherwise Microsoft-centric Netflix streaming service coming to the iPhone OS as well.

In short, this could be one compelling consumer electronics internet video device.

We had speculated on a holiday 2009 release, but recenty the Financial Times reported the iTouch tablet/netbook might hit as soon as September. There’s one (as yet unsolved) problem most of the somewhat breathless coverage of this device fails to mention, though:

Battery Life.

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You’ve heard about their growing popularity, you’ve seen them on airplanes -  in this challenging economic climate, the rise of the ‘netbook’ is one of the few recent bright spots in the computer hardware space.   We’ve written about netbooks before – optimized for portability, low price,  and long battery life, these smaller, less expensive laptop computers fill a niche between the smartphone and the full-powered notebook – and they’ve have had that market pretty much all to themselves.

Until now, that is – witness the emergence of a entirely new category of machine (with accompanying acronym): the “MID” (Mobile Internet Device).

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I have to admit I’ve been more than a bit skeptical of recent reports touting mobile video as The Next Big Thing.  Yes, it’s something a lot of people (especially younger people) seem to want, it’s a great use case for us mass-transit users, and with Moore’s Law apparently still in effect, current hardware can now support an excellent user experience.

My issue, though, is with the network.

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A Wall St. analyst’s report on Apple today has touched off a new round of buzz on the rumored Apple netbook – essentially, a 9-inch iTouch.

Although we wrote about this over two months age here,  it’s well worth a bump: given that hulu has just decided to stop waiting for Apple to let Flash onto the iPhone OS and will instead release a workaround app of their own using MP4/Quicktime (à la youtube), this device promises to be one seriously cool “lean-back” (lean way back, if you want to take it to bed) internet video device for the home.

This is going to be a huge success.

Huge.

Which would happen first – would Apple and Adobe get together to bring Flash (and therefore hulu) to the iPhone, or would hulu (like the similarly Flash-based YouTube service) write a workaround iPhone App?

Historically, Apple has been uninterested in letting Adobe get its Flash Player technology onto the iPhone.  Technical power consumption issues have been often cited,  but given that Google’s Android devices have had Flash support from almost square one, perhaps a more reasonable explanation for Apple’s resistance has had to do with a desire to promote their competing Quicktime technology.   Meanwhile, Flash has become the clear defacto standard for web-based video streaming (according to Adobe, the Flash Player is installed on  98% of US browsers) – and in terms of the still nascent embedded CE hardware market, Adobe alone seems to ‘get it’,  recently making decisive moves to become just as ubiquitous there as they are on the browser (more on that here).
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Have you recently taken the New York subway, let’s say, to 23rd, 66th, 86th, or 103rd street?

If you exit at any of these stops you’ll notice some of your favorite entertainment stores vanished. Shut down. Closed for good.

At 23rd and 6th Avenue Barnes&Noble, gone! At Lincoln Center Tower Records‘ flagship store, gone! Over at 86th and 2nd Avenue Circuit City, vanished. And at 102rd and Broadway Blockbuster Video closed its doors, too.

Be it for books, music, movies, or consumer electronics (for anyone 30 years or older), those were among the brands you would likely turn to first – to discover, buy and play your entertainment retail. 

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I was on vacation in Mexico several weeks ago (we’re fine, thanks), and couldn’t help but notice that the local carrier TelCel was able to deliver robust voice coverage in my hotel room situated halfway between Cancun and Belize – while back home, just across the river from Manhattan, AT&T seems unable to deliver voice coverage in all but one 4-ft. corner of my apartment.

Returning home to NYC and in need of a quick news fix, I tried using the NPR iPhone app on 23rd St. one day.  After one sentence, the data connection dropped.  I tried restarting the app – this time I heard two sentences before the connection dropped again.  I tried once more before giving up, recalling NAB president David Rehr’s recent prediction that 130 million mobile devices will be receiving mobile video by 2012 and wondering what the chances of that really were, given that getting even audio to an iPhone in Manhattan is such a hit-or-miss proposition.
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