why does everyone bow to Apple these days? This is the kind of crap they always pull: a one-year old device that doesn't do this, can't do that, buy a new one don't change the battery blah blah blah...Unless you plan on watching movies on your laptop or desktop for now, don't even bother. Although I do have Netflix, and their movies stream very nicely, never have had a single glitch.

i'm not an apple user, but i did try recently working on a clients apple laptop to try and burn a few video clips from his camera (captured with iMovie) onto a cd (because there we're only a few videos)

first off, i found out that apple laptops don't like showing you the .mov/.avi/.mpg/.whatever unless you open iMovie or iDVD.. so we can't even see what file format the video is..

i guess (according to my client) .mp3s don't exist outside of iTunes either...

apples also can't burn 'data cds'... so we ended up wasting a whole 4.7gb DVD on about 250mb of video...

so buyers of the new macbook air: 'congratulations' you've just paid too much for the newest, prettiest peice of incapable hardware... ^_^

Hey,

Love the site. Grouse, thanks for the article. Sorry to hear about the trouble you had watching a downloaded film. A suggestion, just in case you haven't tried it already -- try running the Disk Utility to fix permissions. We live overseas and have been feeding our US TV fix via the iTunes store for some time now.

We also use iTunes to manage ripped versions of all our kids' DVDs (the originals go into sleeves to prevent scratching). Playback has mostly been flawless. Recently, though, I hooked up our travel drive to my semi-retired Powerbook G4 while Stateside and got the same choppy playback problem.

Fixing disk permissions fixed it immediately. Just one of the few quirks of a unix-based operating system.

As for the second post about Apple's not showing file types or burning data discs, I'm afraid that's an assessment that might have been better made after spending a little more time with the machine.

I'm looking at a ".mov" movie file sitting on my desktop right now, next to this browser window. Along with two ".zip" files and a folder full of ".mp3s."

OS X allows you to choose to show or hide file extensions as you wish, either for each file individually or for the whole system. Here's a fine explanation of how to do it....

*http://www.fileinfo.net/help/mac-show-extensions.html

Though, like most things on the Mac, it's pretty easy. Just go under the Finder preferences and in the 'Advanced Menu' click or unclick "Show all file extensions."

The note about Macs not burning data discs baffles me. Of course they burn data discs, and have done so for years. I have a folder full of data-only DVDs in my closet right now -- backups of years of documents and programs, movie files included.

Again, here's a pretty simple tutorial (four one line steps)...

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42663

But it's awfully easy. From iMovie, you also have the choice to burn your movie as a "project archive" (saves all the files an effects, but not as a single layer movie playable in a video player)... or to burn it as a video to play in a DVD machine, which it sounds like you did.

I don't want to come across as a rabid fanboy, though admittedly I'm a longtime fan of Apple products. And really, I do appreciate the article.

But just so you know... most times you have any issue with an Apple, you can just type it as a question or short sentence in Google with "OS X" afterward and you'll come up with a quick solution.

Best of luck. Hope you change your mind!

Last weekend, I bought my very first Apple product. It was a 160GB Apple TV. I plugged it in, and it worked.

I can rent or buy a movie or tv show from my couch. It's easy. I rented Hidalgo, it played perfectly. I can pause it, rewind it, fast forward it.

After we watched the movie, my wife got ahold of the remote. I kept hearing her exclaim, "This is great!".

She was watching various podcasts for free. National Geographic has one entitled "Otter Babies."

Apple TV and Itunes have merged the TV to the internet. It's simple, its not expensive, it easy, and its fun. There is no going back.

The advantage of Apple TV rentals, is that you don't have to fit anybodies schedule. You decide when to rent, you decide when to watch (you have 30 days to start watching, 24 hours once you first watch it.). You can pause, rewind, fast forward. It's just like going to the video store except you never have to leave your couch and you never have to return a video. No late fees are possible.

Jon, the fact that you couldn't get a specific movie to work after going "full geek" on your older gear is pretty irrelevant. Think about it: you spent hours trying to get an older G4 laptop to drive your TV with all kinds of geeky tweaks. Wouldn't you have been better off just picking up an Apple TV box (at $229 they are cheap) and *plugging it in* to your TV? What is your time worth?

More to the point, saying that Internet TV is *years* away because you had trouble with your old laptop just doesn't make sense. I buy or rent Movies on iTunes fairly often and it really couldn't be easier. Sorry, Jon, you're wrong: Internet TV is today.

"first off, i found out that apple laptops don't like showing you the .mov/.avi/.mpg/.whatever unless you open iMovie or iDVD"

False. Look at the icon or use "Get Info" (that's the Mac's "Properties").

"i guess (according to my client) .mp3s don't exist outside of iTunes either..."

Also false.

"apples also can't burn 'data cds'..."

Entirely false.

"so buyers of the new macbook air: 'congratulations' you've just paid too much for the newest, prettiest peice of incapable hardware..."

You say you're "not an apple user." Hardly necessary to point that out...

Not sure what you are trying to achieve with a 800 MHz PPC, but you do realise you are trying to play 480p AVC here. You are trying to cut the Canadian wheat fields with a hand scythe.

I bought an apple tv for my niece this Christmas, her father is really anti-apple and refused to help her set it up with her PC, needless to say 15 minutes and she had itunes and the apple tv working just fine. I wondered if you wanted my 6 year olds email address so she can help you out (come to think of it she was only 5 at Christmas).

Disoneflipguy.... Not sure where you are coming from you can burn data CD's from a mac and you can also view a movie without actually opening any applications (let alone only imovie/DVD), try that on your PC.

Quote: "It was in the third hour of a bewildering odyssey into the iTunes rental wilderness..."

Umm, you used a six-year-old Mac- who'd have guessed that might be trouble? A lot of this can be traced to DRM, but the good news is that with modern hardware, you can take your movies with you. Try that with Unbox, Hulu, or Netflix.

I'm using iTunes movies with my Mac & iPhone, and really loving it. The only problem is that the movie selection isn't great at this point.

Houston, while you're ad for apple is entertaining, I'm curious as to how that is all different from digital cable. Of course for all I know you could be plat for apple or somethinng, but I am curious as to how what you did with your apple tv and Hidalgo is so vastly superior to what I did with my samsung and digital cable and Shoot Em Up.