As expected, AV Foundation from iOS 4 will be added to Lion. My take is that signals the end of QuickTime as we’ve known it. But it’s not only that there’s a new Framework for working with time-based audiovisual media – there’s a lot more to QuickTime than that, and it’s all the interactive and additional technologies in QuickTime that don’t appear to have a future. Features that were important when QuickTime MOVs were the preferred (at Apple) distribution format.

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Attack of the Minis http://tinyurl.com/46an3wm

Light Peak is an interesting technology and one I want to see sooner rather than later. Essentially it’s one connector for all purposes: peripherals (storage, i/o), networking (short distances in first release, longer later) and a replacement for the connectors we use now (which will largely work with adapters. The only protocol that may not run over Light Peak is USB 3, but USB 1 & 2; FireWire 400/800, eSATA, SAS ethernet and Fibre Channel could all be replaced with a single Light Peak connection at 10 Gbits/sec.

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Light Peak “ready to go” says Intel http://tinyurl.com/2vdqoyu

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iLife 11 still 32 bit. http://tinyurl.com/27dckw3

Seems like all Apple’s Apps – pro and not – that have QT dependencies are 32 bit. Just because most of QuickTime (other than fairly simple playback) is still based on 32 bit C APIs and Apple haven’t worked on QTkit (the 64 bit Cocoa version of QuickTime) since the release of Tiger OS X 10.4 some three years ago.

So it’s not just Apple’s Pro Apps that are having trouble moving to 64 bit Cocoa – it’s any of their apps that have a heavy dependency on QuickTime.

I haven’t bene able to confirm, from the tiny amount of information that was given at the show yesterday, whether or not AVFoundation has come to OS X but the introduction about bringing technology back from iOS to OS X desktop certainly augers well.

OK, no-one has told me anything about next week’s OS announcement but, as it relates to QuickTime (and my expectation of a new footing with AV Foundation from iOS) here’s how the script might go:

QuickTime has been one of our biggest success stories: powering not only iTunes but our professional video and audio applications as well. With 10.6 Snow Leopard we introduced QuickTime X, built on what we’d learnt from playing media on iPhones. Since that time we’ve learnt a lot more. In fact we’ve built a powerful new media foundation in iOS that we think takes QuickTime to a whole new level in media creation, playback and management power.

Or something like that. It’s very consistent with the way QuickTime X was pitched for Snow Leopard and Apple’s self congratulatory style.  If I hear any words vaguely like that, I’ll be cheering.

Apple to preview next version of OS X on October 20th. http://tinyurl.com/2f9j2k6 That’ll help FCP make 2012 timeline if the expected changes to the underpinnings of QuickTime are ported from iOS 4.1.

Let’s guess: announced October 2010, finished 10.7 at WWDC 2011, Final Cut Studio <next> sometime thereafter? I think this makes the 2012 timeline seem reasonable: announcing OS X 10.7 in July would have made it difficult.

Dubbed “Back to the Mac,” the invite’s image shows a slightly rotated Apple logo with a lion peeking through it. In the invite, Apple says “come see what’s new for the Mac…” and adds that it will present a preview of the next major version of Mac OS X—which I think we can now safely presume is Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The company will also be providing a café breakfast and a coffee bar—isn’t that nice of them?

Apple’s new Apple TV and 99c TV show rentals are definitely a step in the right direction but the cost is ridiculous.

Peak, premium, the best there is, content on major networks gets between 25 and 65c per viewer per show in revenue. That’s the top, highest end. So yes, the top of the top could conceivably rent for 99c, but the lesser shows? No way I’m spending 99c to watch a Daily Show (10 to 25c tops).

Last October I did a detailed tracking of what we watched and priced it out in the Apple store of the day. We watched that month an average of an hour and a half a day and the “best price” (taking advantage of Season Pass discounts) was $112.55. With rentals that would drop to $85.14.

Now, Dish (or Cable or whatever) 100 channel plan is around $65 a month, but I can watch up to 640 hours in that month (or record it for time shifted viewing). That’s about 10c an hour, not $1 per show. Of course, no-one can watch or record 640 hours in a month. The American Average is 135 hours a month of viewing (depending on who you ask, this is the conservative, lower end) or around 43c per hour, not per show.

An HBO subscription, with 32 hours of original programming a month equates to about 31c per hour, not show.

Part of what I find egregious about Apple’s new pricing is that it’s 99c for a 22 minute show, 99c for a 44 minute show or 99c for an extended episode. No allowance for the fact that some shows are worth more than others.

I’d cheerfully pay 10c per Daily Show. If I did and Apple took their 35%, that’s roughly 6.5c per show per viewer by 2 million viewers or $130,000 revenue per episode against approximately $35,000 per episode in cost. That’s an improved deal for the Daily Show producers and a fair deal for viewers.  The absolute maximum I’d pay for a Daily Show is 25c and at that I think it’s a rip off.

Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, Burn Notice et al. I’d be happy to pay 50-65c but not 99c. Even at that these shows would be better off with this revenue model.

So, nice try Apple but until watching 4-5 hours a day, every day for a month has to be under $60 a month in total for it to be considered a cable replacement. Of course, this may not be Apple’s doing at all. It’s much more likely that the content owners have some ridiculously outsize estimate of the “value” of their content.

Video: Flash on Android Is Shockingly Bad http://bit.ly/bHaKkM

And yet, people think it can be done on an iDevice and even want it!

While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset, all of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.

So, to be clear. There is no working version of Flash running on any smartphone, but somehow Apple should magically make it work on their devices with no access to the source code? In what reality is that reasonable?

Connecting the Dots (AV Foundation and QuickTime) http://bit.ly/9CEpCo

It seems increasingly likely that the reason that QTkit hasn’t had much work, is because the focus has gone into recreating what QuickTime does, in iOS, with a plan to move it back to OS X with 10.7.

Remember, Final Cut Pro can’t be “Pure Cocoa” and 64 bit before “QuickTime” is.

iTunes at 99c per series per month??? http://bit.ly/cINIzR

Right now it’s a single-source rumor so it can hardly be taken seriously, but the price point is “right”: about the same net revenue to the network as from advertising. We watch about 10 shows in any typical month, and $10 would feel very right to me.

I guess we’ll know next week.