Leukotriene

I spent 8 minutes reading the whole thing. Seriously, you’ve been conditioned to be instantly repulsed by anything that takes longer than 20 seconds to look at. Try reading a newspaper at some point.

The Verge is doing something different by publishing longer form pieces and accompanying short films. I call BS on you genuinely thinking this piece was long-winded, I think you’re just back-pedaling to not look like an idiot. I know what a poorly-written, long-winded piece looks like and this is not one.

The Verge is kinda in a market of one right now since there aren’t many other publications doing what they’re doing. (Perhaps Wired would be considered a competitor? Nobody can touch these video editorials though)

But there are plenty of quick-read tech blogs out there. The market is saturated with them. Maybe they’d suit your tastes better?

You’re an idiot. This piece is considered normal-length in comparison to what you would read in The Atlantic or The New Yorker.

The key word being would, since it’s clear you’ve never read anything in your life longer than a 500 word blog post. Go back to your baby tech blogs YOU GIANT BABY. This website is for adults only.

Welp, I’ve got nothing. Perhaps there’s a bug you’re experiencing? Kinda lame if that’s true.

By the way, technically speaking, even if they /are/ using the same stream that they use on the iPad, that’s not a problem, since I would assume a 720p stream is a 720p stream, whether it’s on the iPad or an HDTV. If anything, the iPad has a much higher resolution. I’m starting to wonder if maybe your ISP connection is too slow to show a high-ish quality Hulu stream in the first place, and that compression blocking appears more exaggerated when blown up onto a 50 inch set? What’s your ISP’s network speed (just out of curiosity)?

Wow, something must be very different between our set ups. My video looks nothing like blocky VHS. Looks like broadcast TV to me.

I’m using an iPad 3 (connected to an Airport extreme base station), and the newest AppleTV (connected via ethernet). Other than connection quality I can’t think of what could explain the discrepancy between the video quality here versus the quality you’re getting.

Quick edit: I said “zero lag”, when I actually meant zero stutter. If you’ve got stuttering, it sounds like your wifi is slow. Hook your AppleTV up to ethernet.

My take on the quality:

I just watched an entire episode of Parks and Rec on my 51 inch plasma. Zero lag. There is pillar boxing and letter boxing. The letter boxes on each side measure about 0.5 inches and the pillar boxes are about 1 inch each. As for the video quality, it’s certainly not blu ray but my eyes can’t tell any difference between this and broadcast HD cable television. If I had to speculate, it looks as if the pillar boxes are there out of the apparent necessity of the letter boxes (in order to preserve aspect ratio), since Hulu uses the top letterbox to display the advertisement blurb when an ad is playing.

If I had to guess, Hulu was forced to take this approach for some strange technical reason with iOS 5. Perhaps doing a straight up “true” AirPlay experience doesn’t allow them to programmatically collect advertising metrics? I don’t know. Another drawback of not using the true airplay API is that you can only initiate the AirPlay session by double clicking the home button and sliding over the multitasking drawer (as opposed to the slicker one tap AirPlay controls that almost all video on iOS uses). In other words, Hulu is using the AirPlay mirroring API to accomplish video on your AppleTV, not the AirPlay video API.

Another drawback to this approach is that the AirPlay mirroring API doesn’t allow you to use the aluminum AppleTV remote to control playback, unlike video using the AirPlay video API.

But when all is said and done, it’s still quite slick, it (nearly) fills up the whole screen, and it looks good enough for broadcast TV. Much better than all previous versions of Hulu for iOS. Let’s hope iOS 6 improves on the already existing APIs so that Hulu (and perhaps HBO?) can give customers the AirPlay experience they want while satisfying the corporate overlords. Bravo Hulu.

“Now, using the mirroring option will send a 16:9 stream to your Apple TV, though it’s not quite fullscreen.”

Um, what does this mean? If it’s 16:9 but not full screen does that mean that there is now letter boxing and pillar boxing while Airplaying? Can you clarify?

/squirts water into quarlow’s mouth. Tightens his glove laces up. Lightly but firmly slaps his right cheek a few times, then his left.

“Get back in the ring tiger! Don’t let ’em knock you down! You GOT this!”

Ok, you did say “can”, not “are”. Touché :)

But then I guess I fail to see what point you’re making. That despite the overwhelming majority of iPhone owners not feeling alienated, that somebody, somewhere (perhaps even right here in The Verge’s comment section?) might feel miffed about Apple’s margins on the iPhone?

Ok POINT TAKEN! ;)

Yet they’re now funding the proliferation of “junk” platforms, thanks to Amazon and white-label prepaid phones in China and India which strip out Google branding from Android completely.

Exactly. At what point will Google back out of Android? It’s kind of nuts to continue spending billions on a platform that benefits its competitors (Amazon). And they make more ad revenue per phone on the iPhone than they do for Android phones. Shareholders have to get sick of it eventually.

Right. Samsung is making all the money off Android, not Google.

Profit doesn’t determine success of a company? You sure?

When you say “you can still alienate people” you mean theoretically, right? Because I can post the customer satisfaction graph again if I have to.

You do? Really?

For convenience, here’s the customer satisfaction results:

“I just don’t understand how an apple customer doesn’t fell taken advantage of when they see this.”

I see the point you’re trying to make but it simply isn’t true. The iPhone clobbers the customer satisfaction rating at 75%. The next closest competitor was Samsung and HTV tied at 47%. iPhone owners simply do not feel ripped off, they are very happy with their phones. Maybe because they don’t pay attention to earnings calls?

“I just see it different. I see over charging people as taking advantage of them.”

That’s rich. Maybe The Verge should add a new row to their smartphone feature comparison list entitled: Doesn’t make good margins. You know, for the discerning consumer.

Uh…why would a consumer ever consider the profit margins of the company that makes the product they are about to buy? When you walk into a store, don’t you just compare prices between the actual products you’re considering?

I’m now considering this scenario:
Guy walks into a Verizon store and the rep says “Welcome to Verizon! Would you like to check out the new Samsung Galaxy S III? We also have the iPhone 4S if you’re interested—”

“—Not so fast! Handover those quarterly results! I factor in profit margins into my purchasing decisions!”

Yes. The very best ideas are so simple that they seem obvious after it’s been shown to you. For some reason, I feel like there’s no other possible way to do virtual keyboard arrow-navigation now that I’ve seen this video.

You’re right. I should’ve taken my hands off the keyboard as soon as he compared Apple to oil companies.

Do you have an actual example you can point us to? Last I checked, they sell a free iPhone on contract and a $400 10" tablet. You can argue that you don’t prefer Apple products, but you’re really stretching it to say that their products are overpriced.

Samsung’s not as vertically integrated as Apple, but I would say they’re much more vertically integrated than other Android vendors. Consider the customer (John Q. Public) doesn’t know or care what an “Android” is, let alone an “operating system”. To them, the Touchwiz UI is how they interact with their phone. In other words, the Samsung phones appear to be more vertically integrated than other phones. The fact that Touchwiz’s UI is really a fork of Android is an implementation detail.

I think the trick is to consider “loss” not as negative profit, but rather as a lack of profit (it can legitimately be considered either way, just as long as it’s clearly stated up front which way you intend it).

So think of the chart this way: of the companies that were profitable, Apple took 73% of the profits, Samsung took 26%, and HTC took 1%.

I think it’s valuable to look at it this way is because it measures the positive performance of these three companies without diluting their performance by factoring in the negative performance of their peers.

But the reality doesn’t jibe with what you’re implying (viz. Apple products are overpriced). The iPhone is competitively priced with other comparable smartphones ($200 for 32GB model, on contract). Point me to a cheaper 10" tablet with feature parity of the iPad.

The days of being able to legitimately call Apple products “overpriced” has long passed since they’ve become an iOS company.

Hey Jeff, it’s common courtesy to link to Horace’s site inline with the post’s text when you mention Asymco. I see plenty of inline links to other Verge pages but the two times you mentioned Asymco, it was just italicized, unlinked text. I’m sure it was just a mistake (no sarcasm). That is all! :)