Jasonified.

Quite pleased so far with the performance and reliability of the service and the take up by users.

Great comments and feedback and hundreds of scheduled tweets being loaded per day.

Looking at integrating with Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) and other services. Also looking at white label options for specific twitter clients and services.

Also planning to refactor the code and rewrite it in something else, possibly .net or ruby.

Tweet4me, Scheduled tweets from ANY twitter client http://tweet4.me

The tech sites are rife again with stories about Apple planning to release a branded television set within the next 18 months.

I say If they do, it’ll mean the death of the Cinema Display.

Why?

Any Apple TV set would have to work with external devices to be at all useful. Most likely this would mean multiple HDMI inputs, possibly a DVI, maybe a Component/Scart interface (although the latter are unlikely I admit).

Hell, it may even have a Thunderbolt port.

Also, being Apple they’ll probably add USB ports for connecting external media, charging devices, a variation of iOS like we’ve seen on the Apple TV 2 hardware and all this with ethernet and/or wireless connectivity built in.

They might even throw in a FaceTime camera - makes since to have tele-conferences through your “tele” right?

Finally, if they want to compete with regular TVs then they’ll probably have to consider a built in digital tuner with (most likely) recording capabilities. You could use an external tuner but built-in would tie in nicely with iTunes/iOS etc.

So what’s the problem?

Price.

If the price of a full-blown TV is too HIGH then they are too close to the cost of a full-blown iMac. We’ve already seen stories of people buying iMacs instead of Cinema displays and using the target display mode to use it as a monitor! 

If the price is too LOW then why buy a 27” Cinema Display when the TV will most likely come in sizes upward of 27” AND will have connectivity to your computer?

Apple are unlikely to release a TV set without external connectivity that is designed NOT to allow you to connect your Mac to it. So here’s what they’d need to do :-

a) reduce the price of the Cinema display dramatically,

b) price the TV set between the Cinema display and a base iMac,

That’s a pretty big challenge.

My feeling is that if Apple release an Apple Television then it WILL replace the Cinema display and on that basis an Apple Television would mean the death of the Cinema Display.

Lets face it OS “Ten” isn’t going to make much sense when the version number goes beyond 10.9.9.

Apple could of course forget the link ( as most of us have) and call it OSX 11 but there’s a very good reason why they will consider rebranding OSX to iOS.

Let’s review some numbers:-

Windows is used by approx 400m users worldwide.

OSX is approaching 60m users.

iOS is upward of 200m users.

Given Apples love for massaging figures (e.g. including iPhones, iPads, iTouch AND classic iPods for the purposes of “mobile” statistics) there’s a million good reasons to rebrand a future major upgrade of OSX as iOS.

Well, 260m+ reasons actually.

Me: you need to look after Poppy, she’s only tiny.

Leo: when I get big and strong?

Me: yep but also now, remember you’re her big brother, she’s only little.

Leo: Yes, I am.

Leo: and when I’m big and strong I can throw Poppy in the air?

Me: mmm, let’s go just over that looking after Poppy thing again….