Derek | Derek Punsalan

iTunes movie purchases can not be re-downloaded

Ok, I admit up front that this is more of an [informational] rant regarding the iTunes Store. In addition to iPhone / iPad apps, I purchase music, television and movies. I rented a movie once but was disappointed by the asinine expiration rules of digital rentals.

After hitting play I have 24 hours to finish the rental (is a problem)
I have 30 days from the date of rental to watch (unlikely problem)

Digital rentals should be leisurely. The most unusual of renters should be able watch 10 minutes of a film every other day if they wanted. Once it’s finished, done. No more access to the rental. But that’s rentals and I will rarely if ever go down that path again.

My rant is about movies downloaded from the iTunes Store. Earlier this month I was packing up for a trip to Whistler, BC for a weekend of snowboarding. Last minute I decided I’d download some epic snowboard / ski films for downtime at the lodge. I opened the iTunes Store and purchased The Art of Flight, All.I.Can and One for the Road. Easy. The weekend happens and I capture lots of GoPro Hero2 footage. I’m running out of disk space on my MacBook Air so I start deleting previously viewed movies from iTunes.

Once home, I sift through the GoPro footage – deleting a good portion of the files and recovering some disk space. After reviewing my homemade clips, I decide I want to watch The Art of Flight again. I had grown so accustomed to how the iTunes Store treated app, music and television purchases that I assumed the same applied to movies.

Purchase and download [iPhone / iPad app, music or TV show]
Use app, listen to music or watch TV show
Grow tired of app, music or TV show
Delete
Months later decide to use, listen to or watch show
Re-download free of charge

Who hasn’t done that?

You can re-download songs, apps and TV shows from the iTunes Store however you will not be able to re-download the movies.

Lesson learned. Digital movie purchases aren’t really yours to keep unless you really do keep them in your possession. I guess if I plan on keeping my Air as a main machine, I’ll have to consider carrying an external drive with me to hold my iTunes Library. So continue enjoying the freedom of re-downloading purchases from iTunes free of charge – just don’t forget movies are not re-downloadable.

P.S. If it’s a bandwidth thing, Apple can start saving some immediately if high-def (HD) and standard-def (SD) variants of videos were not bundled. If I want to purchase the HD version, don’t force the SD download as well. Note: even if you pause and delete a SD variant during download, the iTunes Store will continually attempt to serve the file until you accept.

P.P.S. If you’re contemplating picking-up the GoPro Hero2 and want to send some referral love use this link. I’m enjoying mine – Early powder morning at Stevens Pass.

Early powder morning at Stevens Pass

I purchased the GoPro Hero2 a few weeks ago with plans to use it during my various outdoor activities. Here’s a sample while snowboarding at Stevens Pass. Overall I’m impressed with this tiny little video camera. It’s bare bones but I’m not complaining. The protective case and various mounts make it super versatile. If you’re contemplating picking-up the GoPro Hero2 and want to send some referral love use this link.

Honestly, how is the Jawbone Up?

When the Jawbone Up was announced, I was excited. Excited with the idea of data logging my daily routine. Initial reviews were positive. I almost purchased one until I stopped and wondered “would I really use it?”. I mean sure, of course I would use it. For awhile at least.

I probably would have given up on the product and returned it. From what I’ve gathered, longterm users are experiencing bricked devices, poor battery life, an unpolished iPhone app and generally poor experience. Here’s a good one the Up:

Here’s the TL/DR version: Don’t buy this piece of shit. It doesn’t work, it will fail, and the software is terrible. Jawbone is still selling them even though they know they’re all future bricks.

Ouch. Read the entire post if you’re on the fence with the idea of purchasing the Jawbone Up.

UPDATE: Jawbone CEO issues a public apology and offers full refund and the option to keep the band – no questions asked.

Steve Jobs letterpress for charity

Awesome. The iconic Steve Jobs quote as a 10″ x 26″ print. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Acumen Fund. Available for $95 unframed or $195 framed – Get yours here.

My Amazon Kindle Fire thoughts

A few weeks ago I linked to a Kindle Fire review. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to spend some hands-on time with the device, I can share my own thoughts. Without organizing any of these into any specific order:

The 7″ screen and overall form factor is great. I can hold the device comfortably in one hand.
I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve accidentally turned off the screen while typing in portrait mode. Maybe its my typing method, but occasionally my right pinkie sleeps the device.
Touch response is not perfect but for the price point I haven’t seen anything better.
Strange, jittery and inaccurate scrolling experience. A few times when viewing emails I’ve tried to scroll vertically but the content frame scrolled horizontally.
Reading magazines is like taking a physical newsstand issue, tearing out the pages, scanning pages individually then sending them to the Fire for reading. Scroll, pinch and zoom. Repeat. Fortunately each magazine includes an optimized text option for reading (preferred over the default magazine experience).
Valuable step without requiring root: Go to Settings > More > Device > Allow Installation of Applications and toggle to On. Then proceed to install the Dropbox.apk manually – use this to install .apk files missing from the Amazon App Market.
Definitely nice to have easy access to streaming video content via Amazon Video on Demand (free for Prime members).
I was reminded of how competitive Amazon video / music content pricing is compared to Apple’s offerings. Which is great.
I doubt the Kindle Fire will ever be a go to device when I travel. Hence my statement earlier that this will probably be better for a family member.
Graphics are jittery in games like Peggle or Plants vs. Zombies.
I definitely wouldn’t mind handing this to my niece or nephew to play with, drop or do whatever with. It’s smaller, lighter and feels less likely to free-fall thanks to the rubberized back.
The Fire strengthens my belief that Flash does not belong on a mobile device. At least not on this device. I found an interesting looking clip from YouTube but the experience was terrible. After the initial buffer, I managed to watch about 20 seconds of unsynchronized audio & video before the video eventually froze while audio continued.
I hated the fact that I had purchased certain apps from the official Android Market which I would need to repurchase from the Amazon App Store.

If I hand the Fire to my niece or nephew, they hand it back and ask politely for my iPad. I expected that considering they’ve grown to love certain iPad titles not available in the Android Market. I imagine this would not be the case if the Amazon Kindle Fire had been their first tablet experience.

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting usability study on the Kindle Fire.

Sharing HTML5 video with SublimeVideo

I rarely utilize video as a medium for sharing on this site. But if I did, I would use SublimeVideo. The hosted service provides universal playback of videos in any browser on any platform. SublimeVideo provides a beautiful HTML5 player with fallback to Flash (for older browsers). The only task you have is providing the video content.

Unlimited playback with standard analytics is free while premium paid plans provide real-time stats, SSL and email support. Worth a look if you’re interested in supporting HTML5 playback.

Stop MobileMe / iCloud mobile document hang

The spinning [OS X] beach ball of death would often pop-up whenever I started a new iA Writer document. I fired up Console.app to see if there were any hints as to what may be causing the temporary hang and found the following:

11/22/11 11:07:35.566 AM librariand: items added to file://localhost/Users/Hermes/Library/Mobile%20Documents/ mobile documents not enabled (4)

Mobile Documents. Hmm. That could be referencing one of two services on my Mac: 1) the old MobileMe service or 2) the new iCloud service. No reason to be signed into MobileMe anymore right? Signing out of MobileMe but staying signed-in to iCloud seems to have resolved the temporary hang. The console no longer complains about mobile documents being disabled.

iA Writer and WordPress publishing

iA Writer has some magic joojoo. I use this no gimmicks focused writing tool at work to record meeting notes and brainstorming sessions.

I’m playing with a publishing flow (for this site) which will allow me to compose my thoughts within iA Writer and publish directly to the site using a few handy keyboard shortcuts.

Credit to this iA Writer + WordPress workflow which I used as a base. I experimented [and failed] with Markdown.pl + Automator for conversion prior to sending the post to the site. If anyone has any tips on getting the workflow working correctly, please leave a comment. The current system works like this:

Compose post in iA Writer
Keyboard shortcut via Keyboard Maestro
Part of the macro includes the posting workflow (select body, compose email and send to site)

I tried to mix in the shell script to handle the markdown -> HTML. For now, I’m using the handy Markdown on Save Improved plugin.

If crontab was configured correctly, this iA Writer to WordPress post should be published automatically.

Not so hot Amazon Kindle Fire

I submitted an order for the Amazon Kindle Fire yesterday and cancelled the order shortly after. On paper, the Kindle Fire is intriguing. The $200 entrance fee provides direct access to all things Amazon – Video on Demand, audio, shopping, books and magazines.

It’s a bad game player, a bad app platform, a bad web browser, a bad video player, and, most disappointingly, a bad Kindle.

The closing line from a very human review of the Kindle Fire by Marco.

The Kindle Fire will continue to sell well though. Especially for those who haven’t spent time with any other tablet…

iPhone 4S

Last week I preordered the iPhone 4S (along with over 4 million others). One 16GB for Syl and a 32GB for myself – both in white. The processor bump and Siri is pure awesomeness. Period.

I can honestly say that any experience I had with [the previous] iPhone 4 Voice Commands were purely accidental. Comparing iPhone 4 Voice Commands to Voice Actions for Android? Android wins no contest. Compare Voice Actions (Android) to Siri (iPhone 4S)?

Let’s just say that the moment an iPhone user triggers Siri, they need only speak while Android requires certain keywords in order to perform an action like “send text to” or “send email to”. Interacting with Siri comes naturally.

As Siri continues to mature and grow through the initial beta period, I can’t even begin to imagine how much the system will improve.