There is a lot of buzz in the media industry around Apple plans to offer video rentals in January. I have even seen articles saying that this may mean the end of Blockbuster and even NetFlix. I don’t see why. If Apple only plans to make their current movie catalog available for rent, they will hardly become a threat to anyone. Why? Simply because of the poor video quality they currently offer, which may be enough for an iPod, but certainly not for a big flat-screen TV.

Offering rentals in addition to movie purchases will not change this fact. To be really competitive and win new customers, Apple needs to offer a much larger movie selection but foremost they need to move to HD, and that probably means moving to 720p. So far, not a single rumor has indicated that this will be the case. That means that either that may be the secret Steve Jobs is keeping for MacWorld or that this new effort will not create a major breakthrough in terms of new users moving to iTunes to get their movies.

I know that there are many out there who have still not adopted HD. Nintendo for example is making a killing selling the Wii to customers who do not care about HD and that is fine. However, when you sell a device like the AppleTV which does not advertise support for resolutions less than 480p and favors connecting to a TV through an HDMI connector, that is obviously not the public you are targeting.

Right now Apple offers three devices that could display HD content, the AppleTV, the iPhone and the iPod touch. Add to that all the Macintosh line of computers. However, Apple also offers two other devices, the iPod nano and the iPod classic which do not offer the proper display size ratio to support HD content. That means that moving to HD would leave out many recently released products. That doesn’t make much sense. If Apple chooses to move to HD they will probably have to keep offering regular content for many of their customers. That could explain some of the rumors about variable content pricing. It may turn out that the price will not vary based on the content, but instead based on the resolution of the content. That would be more in line with what Apple is already doing with iTunes plus.

Of course, right now all what I have been saying is purely speculative. However, if Apple wants to compete effectively in the media server arena, they will need to move to HD at some point, even if it is just to match what others are already doing. MacWorld seems to be the perfect occasion to announce such a move and in my opinion this would be a far more important announcement than just movie rentals.

Back in 1999 I was the proud owner of a Sega DreamCast. It was a great console with many excellent games such Hydro Thunder, Soul Calibur and my personal favorite, House of the Dead 2. However, less than three years after its successful introduction, the console was discontinued. I understand that many factors drove Sega to take this difficult decision. Strong competition from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo is probably the most widely cited reason with the lack of DVD playback capability coming in as a close second.

While I do agree that these explanations are valid, I thing that there was more to it. Sega was financially weaker than its competitors and while the one year head start they enjoyed over everyone else helped them generate a lot of cash, that proved to be insufficient. Why? Many Sega early games were extremely successful, generating millions in sales. So, what happened? My perception is that piracy killed the Dreamcast.

Just when competitors were launching their new consoles, the Utopia bootdisk became available. This disk allowed to play “backup” game disks. This had a devastating effect on Dreamcast software sales in many countries, at a critical time for Sega that needed a lot of marketing dollars to compete.

I see something similar happening to the Wii. The recently announced hack will open the flood gates for pirated games and will deprive Nintendo from some badly needed cash to fight Microsoft and Sony. Add that to the fact that Americans, who are statistically less likely to adopt piracy, are quickly adopting HDTV and will therefore ask for more HD content and you will understand why I am not upbeat about the future of the Wii. So, if you love your Wii and want to prove me wrong, keep buying original games.

Last Thursday I was invited to have dinner with Nick Donofrio who is Executive Vice President of Innovation and Technology at IBM. The event was organized by HR to revitalize the technical community in our organization. Among the persons invited where some of the best technical resources from the different organizations that form the company (ITS, BCS, AS, IGS and SWG).It was a nice experience. Nick certainly knows IBM in depth. He has been part of the core team for decades now and he has been responsible for taking many far reaching decisions such at moving the mainframes from bipolar to CMOS technology, a decision that in retrospect certainly saved the company when it was going through tough times back in the early nineties.Few persons within IBM can explain the company’s strategy as well as Nick or Steve Mills. That is why it is nice to talk with them because it becomes easier to understand the big picture, something that is not always clear when you spend the day working on a small part of the business (in my case, software).One of the things that bothers me is that at IBM we lack a CEO who is able to articulate a clear and compelling technology vision to our customers, the press and the employees. That is why you will always hear about technology superstars Ellison, Jobs, Schwartz and even Gates (who doesn’t have many interesting things to say lately) but never about Sam Palmisano, IBM’s current Chairman, CEO and President, in case you were wondering who he was (as many of our customers).I shared my concern with Nick Donofrio and he told me about all the superstars we have at IBM who provide that technical vision and prowess that we IBMers like to share with our customers in order to create a competitive advantage that smaller competitors usually find hard to overcome. Most of them are part of our large team of IBM Fellows, that includes luminaries such as Grady Booch as well as our army of Distinguished Engineers. They are the ones who set at communicate IBM’s vision, a task that in most tech companies is in part the responsibility of the CEO.Nick is right, IBM has a great senior technical team and I would love to become part of it. Right now I have to focus on becoming a senior certified software it architect, something that I expect to achieve next year.Still, I would love to have a CEO that is respected in the technology community for his vision. After all, running IBM shouldn’t just be about the financials. Shareholders may disagree but in my opinion it takes a great technological leader to grow a tech company, not a banker. That is my opinion, both as an employee and as a shareholder.

Forrester Research recently posted a research note explaining why IT Department shouldn’t and won’t support iPhones. While I disagree with some of the concerns mentioned by this company (specially those related to security since the content on the iPhone is usually stored on a server, not locally) I have to recognize that they make some valid points.

There has been a heated debate on the Internet as to wether the analysis was correct or not. A Wall Street Journal blogger counters Forrester’s opinion by interviewing a relatively small business owner who defends the iPhone in a work environment. I must say that I am not impressed by this article. The fact that this particular business user doesn’t get the valid concerns expressed by Forrester doesn’t mean that their analysis is flawed. This is in my opinion like all the web developers who defend simple languages like Ruby or PHP over Java simply because they do not understand the complex problems that Java is designed to solve.

What Forrester Research assesses correctly though is the incredible power held by business users. They tend to totally ignore IT when they want to get things done quickly. In this case the iPhone is such an improvement over previous technologies that IT will have to support them, like it or not. Remember, IT doesn’t run the business, they are usually regarded as an obstacle to progress. If users clamor for technology they will eventually get it. If it were any different we would still be using dumb monochrome terminals. Even though I am an IT guy I must say that I am really happy to see the power of end-users. Sure, it makes our work much harder, but it also keeps innovation running and that is extremely positive.

Today I have spent most of my day staring at a screen, saying Wow! In fact that is not totally true, sometimes, instead of Wow! I would say Amazing! or Holly cow! Before you ask, no, I did not install Vista on my laptop. That would be a total waste of time and it wouldn’t justify a single expression of amazement, I am much too familiar with the kind of garbage Microsoft produces to be surprised.

What happened is that today I got a brand new 1080p 60” plasma television installed in my living room. If you have been reading my blog you may now that I have been watching less and less television and you may therefore wonder why on earth I would spend good money on a new TV set. You are right, I didn’t buy it to watch television. That is good, because regular channels do not look very good on such a huge screen and I only have about ten HD channels, most of which are extremely boring.

What I really wanted was to be able to view the output of my PS3 the way it was meant. You see, until recently I have been using my console primarily as a Blu-Ray player. That by itself justifies a large screen, but what really convinced me were some of the recent titles released for the PlayStation 3. One clear example is Uncharted:Drake’s Fortune. This is a typical platform game but incredibly well executed. It is the first time that I have found myself spending time just looking at the amazingly beautiful landscapes instead of running to the next level. It is that gorgeous. The same happens with Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction and even simpler games such as Super Stardust HD.

Many do not even imagine how much current games cost to develop. As you probably already know, there are many games that cost more to produce than a feature film. I am not surprised, when you see modern games you see that they are the future of entertainment. That doesn’t mean that I expect movies to quickly become obsolete. For that to happen, many problems need to be solved first. For starters, computer games still cater to a relatively small audience, primarily young males. That needs to change, quickly. The second problem is more complex. Consoles have become very good at online gaming. However, that does not really mean playing with others, it generally means playing against others. That is why consoles do not provide the same kind of feel good experience as going to the movies with the family. That is why most generally play alone and watch movies in group.

That dichotomy is, from my point a view what is causing problems for Sony. It is clear that the PS3 was designed to conquer the living room. That is why they included features such as HD movie playback, picture browsing, music sharing, etc. The problem is that if you are a hardcore gamer you do not want to put your console in a place where you may not be able to play, simply because other family members are sitting there to spend some quality time together. I strongly believe that the PS3 would have been much more successful if it had casual games that can easily be played in small groups of people across gender and age barriers. That would be much more consistent with the way Sony’s console has been marketed so far. That also means that even though I am looking forward to Metal Gear Solid 4, I think that Sony needs to release more games like SingStar or SceneIt to make major inroads into the living room.

Yesterday I finally upgraded my hacked iPhone to firmware 1.1.2. At first it seemed like a great idea. The new firmware fixes a number of annoying bugs. For example, I was getting a lot of unreadable junk text messages from my cell phone carrier. Now I can finally read all those useless messages that remind me to check my voice-mail. More importantly, I no longer feel excluded. I also do no longer see the system crash when browsing through my song library using cover flow. So, everything should be fine and dandy, right? Not quite.

It turns out that since upgrading to 1.1.2 I can no longer use my harman/kardon original drive+play interface to listen in my car to the music stored on my iPhone. When I select the playlist option I just get a spinning wheel and after a while the display returns to the main menu. I am not sure what happened, but it sure is annoying. The situation is not desperate though. If I want to listen to podcasts, I still can. I just have to select that playlist before connecting the iPhone to hear the sound through my car stereo.

I haven’t found more people complaining about this problem, but I sure hope it will get fixed in a future firmware upgrade.