ZachInglis.com

The HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray war is almost at an end. I say almost as it is not official yet, but now Best Buy and Netflix are jumping to Blu-Ray, it is close. The only thing left is for Paramount and Universal Studios to jump ship and Microsoft to support Blu-ray.

It did not even come down to the technical aspects, like it should have been. HD-DVD had shown that it was the better format, with larger capacity disks in the market than that of Blu-ray (Though of course Blu-ray was technically larger, this had not been shown.) Even so, the HD-DVD team had been reported to be working on a 45gb disk.

With this in mind, I think there are a lot more reasons why HD-DVD should have won. For example, the naming convention is also a plus for non-technical users. People know the acronym HD. I feel that people trusted Sony too much without considering their past experience. Sony are persistently trying to create new format technologies and locking people into them. Sony is known for their failed formats: Betamax and UMD, and this should have been a bigger factor than it was.

I have also hard reports from equitable close friends that have said they found their HD-DVD to provide a better experience. I personally have not seen a Blu-ray video so cannot confirm this.

Where HD-DVD really failed? They had a hugely rich company supporting them, Microsoft. Microsoft were lazy in their support and in my mind the sole reason that Blu-ray won. Microsoft specifically said that there will be no HD-DVD games, I suspect for when the Xbox 3 emerges, and that you have to pay a premium (no pun intended) to get the add-on or a unit with the player hardware built-in.

If Microsoft aggressively pursued (let’s face it, they’re well known for their aggressive tactics) they could have very successful with HD-DVD, even taking a reasonable loss on the players would have ultimately helped them. What is worse for Microsoft though, is if they did succed, they would cause the Playstation 3 to take a huge hit. On the flip-side, we will now see a huge rise in the Playstation market share due to the Blu-ray win. People wanting to purchase a new console will pick the Playstation because Blu-ray is the winning format and that Xbox does not have support for it yet, will go for a Playstation 3. This is especially the case as a Blu-ray reader is around the same price as a PS3, so why not pick one up while you are at it, and a game or two.

Contrary to my bashing, I have been watching Blu-ray’s development for what is probably about 4 years now. I was very excited and very upset to see its gone the way it has. I own a HD-DVD player and will continue to use it still.

There has been rumors that people ringing up Apple Support have received free overnight shipping on their MacBook Air’s. Hearing the news I tried to get for my fiance, Esther’s MacBook Air (Which she ordered just after the keynote) for her.

They suggested that this was not possible, due to the fact that she didn’t order the higher model (yes, the one that is double the price), even though people are still paying more than they should for it.

So if you are hoping to ring up and ask for overnight shipping, make sure you’re ordering the one with a solid state drive.

A whole month after she ordered it.

Last week, on the opening of the iPhone, everyone swarmed in to get an iPhone. I stayed at home, waiting calmly.

I would love an iPhone if it was given to me, i’d have no qualms with accepting a free one, but is it really as good as everyone says? Apple products bring the animalistic sides of people, making them step over people to get their hands on the shiny devices, not knowing the real deal about it. This is very much America’s culture to me, taking life by the horns and just doing what you want with less thought than needed.

Sure, the iPhone is pretty, sure it wows you, sure you’re a very proud owner… but let me tell you, i’ll be more happy with my 2nd generation than you will be with your 1st. It’ll be prettier, more functional and probably have some features you’ll envy. You’ll have to wait for 2 years before you can buy the next one in the line. Granted, I will too, but the 2nd generation will learn from the first mistakes.

Mike Davidson wrote an excellent post on the pros and cons of the iPhone but those con’s are careless and should have been included. Some are going to be, but I’m guessing some aren’t till gen2, and Apple are BOUND to miss something important; such as what happened with the Nano’s.

It was mentioned to me that 3G drains battery faster than EDGE and thus coupled with movie playing and probably constant Geek usage, the battery would be dead quickly. In generation 2, they’ll probably have fixed some of the battery issues with the movie playing and such, and maybe researched how to use 3G better, giving me the possibility of having 3G.

I’m not just talking about the hardware, i’m talking about the service too. I heard nothing but bad things about AT&T and Cingular before the iPhone was announced.

The iPhone is the first in a series of great devices from Apple, Why get the ‘foot in the water’ one. Good things come to those who wait.

[edit] Read the comments. I think Colin provides a very convincing argument. And as most of my friends have said; Gen2 will probably be in 2 years anyway.