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Things have quieted down in the Apple-focused blogosphere after the storm of news coming out of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week.
Despite the slowdown, there's still a few notable developments. Mozilla's Firefox 3 release seemed to find a spot on most every tech blog site. Also, Apple's OpenCL has taken a solid step toward becoming an industry standard that might help make Apple CEO Steve Jobs' comments about taking advantage of multi-core processors a reality.
And oh yeah, Apple announced that it has served up 5 billion songs on iTunes.
Foxy Browser
Mozilla's much-anticipated Firefox 3 release was supposed to kick off at 10 a.m. PST on Tuesday, but Mozilla's servers were so jammed with requests that some individuals weren't able to download the application for about two hours, though some blog commentators noted access issues through much of the day. In the first 24 hours, though, Mozilla managed to deliver more than 8 million downloads.
The top new features include one-click bookmarking, instant Web site ID, improved performance, full zoom of any Web page, a password manager, a smart location bar, and a better platform-native look and feel regardless of which OS a user runs on.
As one commenter brought up on the MacRumors.com site, Firefox can be an important transition application for Windows-to-Mac switchers. "Firefox 3 is awesome. As a switcher, FF is warm and familiar. I just can't get down with Safari. I keep trying -- everytime I click a link in Mail I try. But it's not happening for me," noted GeekLawyer on the Firefox 3 post.
Of the 8 million or so downloads, the vast bulk of users come from the Windows world, Steve Naventi, a spokesperson for Mozilla, told MacNewsWorld. Here's the breakdown: 90 percent Windows, 7 percent Mac, 3 percent Linux.
As for a platform-native look and feel, though, found little love in the blogosphere. "The UI is hideous," noted neven on the MacRumors.com post, though commenter extraextra noted that despite the UI, "it is pretty damn fast."
OpenCL to Fire Up Multi-Core Processors?
While Jobs talked at WWDC about the problems associated with software that's not designed to take advantage of computers using multiple processors, the biggest news is a concrete step toward rectifying the situation: The Khronos Group -- an industry consortium that manages a handful of open standards, most notably OpenGL -- announced that it would take a look at Apple's OpenCL efforts with its new Compute Working Group.
"The Compute Working Group potentially will be one of the most significant standardization efforts at Khronos. Highly-accelerated parallel computation across GPUs and CPUs is essential to many emerging rich consumer applications that will transform the computing experience of diverse users," noted Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group.
"Significantly, this initiative is aimed at both desktop and embedded devices -- the day when you will be able to hold a supercomputer in the palm of your hand is perhaps not so far away," he added.
Initial participants in the working group include 3Dlabs, AMD, Apple, ARM, Codeplay, Ericsson, Freescale, Graphic Remedy, IBM, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Nokia, Nvidia, Motorola (NYSE: MMI), QNX, Qualcomm, Samsung, Seaweed, TI and Umea University.
"The Khronos Group will evaluate OpenCL as a proposed standard, but there's no guarantee that all companies will eventually head down that path," noted Cnet blogger Tom Krazit in his One More Thing blog.
"That's because there's a notable company missing from the founding members of this group: Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). If Microsoft chooses to go down a different path with the next implementations of Windows and Windows Mobile, it will be hard for the chip companies to resist following suit," he added.
"I think the 'chip companies' have learned some valuable lessons about Microsoft," commented ballmerisanape.
"I seriously doubt that they will wait for Microsoft to release it's next OS. Vista's utilization of hardware is very sloppy as it is, and has ridiculous hardware requirements for the little eye candy that it currently has. If were are going to compare Apple's current OS to Vista.. 10.5 is arguably much more "flash" and works perfectly on very old hardware.. even the old G4," ballmerisanape wrote.
"The eventual standard doesn't have to be OpenCL, but I'd much prefer a solution from Apple than I would one from the individual graphic chip manufacturers, if only for the fact that their solution will likely give an advantage to their own products. In this respect I'd be interested to see what Microsoft would propose, or anyone else that is independent of the hardware itself," commented kelmon on the One More Thing post on the subject.
Only Five Billion Songs?
Apple tooted its own horn Thursday, announcing that it has sold more than 5 billion songs on iTunes and that it's now renting or selling more than 50,000 movies every day, "making iTunes the world's most popular online movie store".
Movies rented or bought on iTunes can be watched on Macs or PCs, iPods, iPhones, and on widescreen TVs with either an Apple TV or a quick and dirty computer-to-TV hookup. Apple also revealed that the number of movies available has jumped up to more than 2,000. While that's a lot less than the 10,000 videos Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) is offering with its on-demand movie playing service, Apple arguably has a lot newer and fresher content -- and 350 titles also available in high-definition.
While some bloggers thought 50,000 titles a day was a bit light -- it adds up to about about 18 million a year -- others weren't so concerned. Case in point is the fairly common practice of not buying CDs for years while buying lots of songs on iTunes -- which works great for the ubiquitous iPod and MP3 players. Video, however, may be slower to transition from the big screen to the small screen.
"Watching video on portable media players is ok if your traveling or something, but not something most people would choose to do over conventional tv setups so i think that market is pretty limited by the small form factor of the device. If blu-ray systems didnt cost a ton and did more maybe the physical media model would see something of a revival, for now I think there is just gonna be a few years of stagnation as no one player can seem to get that critical mass," noted commenter mbene12 on the AppleInsider.com post on the subject.
Others see more immediate promise. "Seems decent for an industry in its infancy and likely to grow pretty quickly over the next few years," minderbinder added to the online conversation.
The real issue here may be that Apple is showing consumer success at selling products that could be easily stolen online by many consumers for free via file-sharing -- if they're comfortable with breaking copyright law, of course.
"All things considered, that's a lot of songs," Mike McGuire, a vice president of research for Gartner (NYSE: IT), told MacNewsWorld.
"What Apple has done is they've shown there is a segment of people who will pay for music online," he explained, noting that Apple is still setting the bar high for legitimate online store competitors.
As for 50,000 movies a day, McGuire said that's also pretty impressive. "I don't know that anybody is close to that. And this is a catalog that is not broad and deep," he added.
Despite support from most major Hollywood studios, iTunes movie rentals are still hampered by unfriendly restraints. Most notably, once the user starts playing a rented video, it must be watched within 24 hours before it disappears. Also, many movies aren't released to iTunes until 30 days after their DVD release dates.
