Changes are in the air....

I've just re-read this blog post after completing it and I hate to say it, but it sounds more like a sales letter as you get towards the end. I never intended it to be that way so apologies. Feel free to ignore this one and wait for tomorrows which will be back on track! - Don

I've just posted two audio clips to the ScreenCastsOnline iTunes feeds, one for members and one for viewers of the free feed. The clips describe some changes to the structure of ScreenCastsOnline moving forward.

If you're not familiar with the setup of ScreenCastsOnline, it's my video podcast and my full time job. I've been running it successfully for the past 4 years and since starting the show, I've created over 220 screencasts on all sorts of subjects, applications and topics. Each show is around 30 minutes long and is a full video tutorial covering a specific application or the occasional "MacMontage" show, where I cover a number of hints and tips in a single show.  When I first started, the show was a hobby and all the content was free. When I decided to go full time, I launched a membership scheme and started to produce some of the shows for just the members.

Initially, the membership was very low cost, so I did three free shows and one members show for a long time. I did get the occasional sponsored show or an affiliate deal to help support the show too.

Then about two years ago, I started to feel uncomfortable about the members, in effect, subsidising the free shows. Just one members show per month didn't seem right? So to reset parity, and make it fairer, I decided to move the model to two free shows and two members show each month. The members shows were in a higher resolution and included navigation chapters, but subscribers to the free shows still got two full free shows each month.

This model has been running successfully for over two years, and although I get very few complaints from the members, it still didn't feel quite right, basically giving half my content away for free and expecting others to pay for the other half.

So after much deliberation, I've decided to take the show to it's next stage of evolution, and make it three members shows every month with one full free show, starting as of 1st January. I think this is a much more equitable arrangement that will both attract new members and possibly more importantly, make the renewal decision easier for existing members. 

But if I'm making changes, why stop there!

Pricing has always been an issue in trying to find the sweet spot and realistically reflect the true value of the show. During the initial stages of ScreenCastsOnline, it was a leap of faith for many people to pay for something previously available for free. The whole issue of paying for a podcast was a complete anathema for some people (very few hate mails I have to say though). The whole issue of paying for content on the internet seemed quite a stretch in view of the amount of free content available all over the Internet.

My model was to price it low (a low cost six month membership plus access to the archive) and deliver top quality content on a regular basis. The show has been running for over 4 years and in all that time, I think I've only missed a show three times. The production values have increased tremendously as I've developed more experience both technically and in my delivery.

So I've persevered and the audience has grown.  I've had many instances where people have emailed me and would have been happy to pay the six months membership for a single show, it had been that valuable to them.

As well as producing the show each week,  I've also taken on external screencasting work, turning into a mini production house for others. The extra funds that has generated has gone a long way to supporting the show, but the downside is it detracts from the time available to produce the shows and all the supplementary mechanisms that are needed to support it. I really need to free up some time to concentrate on the ScreenCastsOnline website and make it easier to use and more importantly, easier to find and watch content.

So I thought I'd tweak the pricing model as well!

The current price for a six month membership is $57 - that's not per month, but for six months. In addition, you get immediate access to the archive of over 220 shows - a bargain!

However, I'm not sure that truly reflects the value of the show, especially as that price has remained the same for 14 months or so and since setting that price point, an extra 60 shows have been added to the archive.

So as well as changing the ratio of the shows, I'll be putting up the price of the membership to $87 from the 1st January 2010.

Now I fully realise that this may upset a lot of people who've been following the show for while and just receiving the free show. To offset this, I'm going to make a special offer of a significant discount off the current price of the show for November, to give the opportunity for them to join before the price increase and before the free shows drop to just one per month.

With immediate effect and only up until the end of November, I'm making available a 50% discount for a full six month ScreenCastsOnline membership. No restrictions, not a trial period, but a full membership with the next 6 months worth of shows and immediate access to the ScreenCastsOnline archive. That makes it just $28.50 for a full membership.

Just sign up as usual at http://www.screencastsonline.com/extra and use the Coupon code NOV2009 to get the full discount.

As an aside, I'm not making any changes to the existing members and renewals - they remain exactly the same as they have been for the last three years. Oh, except for a new 24 month renewal rate to save $20. 

Now back to editing this weeks show...

The Return of the Daily Blog Post...

Nothing like making a rod for your own back!

I set myself up a few months ago to commit to a daily blog post for 30 days. I'm glad to say that this worked extremely well and I did in fact blog for much longer than the 30 days. More recently, the blogs posts have fallen off and I'm lucky to manage one or two a week.

However, the discipline of trying to write something every day was quite stimulating and I did receive lots of positive feedback, so I'm going to give it another go.

The posts may not be long and lengthy essays every day but at least I'll try and keep to a regular schedule of creating a post once I've completed my morning emails. As usual, I'll post a single tweet each morning once it's done, so you can keep track that way, or of course subscribe to the RSS feed (badge is in the side bar) for the more traditional approach.

OK, that's the first one done.

Who said "cheat?" ;-) 

The Need for Speed (Part 5)...

Well it doesn't take a genius to work out that even though I was happy with the performance boost from the 10,000 RPM drive, I wasn't going to settle until I tried out an SSD as the boot drive for the  Mac Pro.

I was happy with the drive I acquired for the MacBook Pro, so I ordered another one from Crucial - 256GB Crucial M225 2.5" Solid-State Drive (Part Number CT1018301)

Now as far as mounting in the Mac Pro, I also ordered the optional "Desktop Mounting kit" from Crucial but on delivery, it became obvious that this would not suffice. None of the options would enable me to fix the SSD drive to the Mac Pro disk sled.

After a bit of research, I discovered this:

MaxConnect for SSD/WD VelociRaptor/2.5 inch Drives for Mac Pro Internal Drive BaysThis is a specially designed bracket that replaces the standard Mac Pro disk sled and allows you to attach a 2.5" SSD drive directly to it. It comes with a mountable heat sink and all the screws. Now we were in business!

Installation was simple and I copied across my existing system disk using the Migration assistant via Firewire.

So the results...

 First the boot timings:

Comparative timings between 1TB SATA drive & SSD

As you can see, some significant improvements in boot times, but not so much for Sleeping and Waking. 

Now for application loading....

Shaves a portion off each application (except Safari)

However, these figures don't really do the SSD drive justice when you consider it was already a fairly speedy machine. 

In real life operation, the Mac Pro feels much faster and the difference seems more pronounced. Perhaps not as pronounced as the improvement to the MacBook Pro, but an improvement all the same. 

As someone who uses a Mac 9 or 10 hours a day, any incremental improvement I can tweak out of the performance of my machines is well worth it!

The Need for Speed (Part 4)...

OK, confession time... I'm never satisfied!

I previously wrote about my obsession with tweaking the last ounce of speed from my MacBook Pro by installing a hideously expensive Solid State Drive (SSD) into the laptop. As it turns out, the SSD made a huge difference to the overall performance of the laptop, transforming it into a speed demon.

Now of course, when I'm in the studio, during my normal working hours (normal working hours?) I'm chained to my Mac Pro as my main production machine. This is an early 2008 model, i.e. Pre nahalem chipset, but it's no slouch! It's a quad core machine with 2 x 2.8Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 16GB RAM. The disk configuration is a single 1TB 7200RPM system disk with three 750GB HDs in a RAID 0 striped set. 

In this configuration, my unscientific timings for various common operations are as follows:

Not too shabby!

Let's just step back a bit though, to when Snow Leopard was launched (and before I'd even considered SSD drives) when I noticed a Tweet from my good friend Victor Cajiao of The Typical Mac User Podcast 

Victor also has a Mac pro and had decided to replace his system drive with the 300GB WD VelociRaptor drive. This is a 10,000 RPM drive in a 2.5" form factor but built into a pretty neat 3.5" cast metal sled that acts as a mount and as a heat sink. This baby can attach to a Mac Pro disk bracket, and slide right in. The performance figures were pretty impressive, and the drive was available for £200 inc VAT in the UK.

So I bit the bullet!

The drive was simple to install and quiet in operation. I did notice a significant bump in speed too:

 

Boot times were significantly faster and in general the machine felt a lot snappier and quicker in general operation. The only anomaly was the  iTunes timings but as I load my iTunes library from a network share, it may have been an issue on the network.

So, I was happy as Larry! 

Then I got the SSD drive for my MacBook Pro......

Hmmm....

Part 5 of the saga to follow ;-)

PS You can see the previous parts of the saga here: Original Post, Part 2, Part 3

Something for under the tree...

So I missed the Apple earnings report live but it received plenty of coverage.

Best quarter ever,  tons of Macs sold, tons of iPhones sold - Kudos Apple!

You have to hand it to Apple at the way they strategise their product launches to receive maximum effect. Amazing quarterly results one day which boosts stock price, followed through the very next day with significant product releases that ensure the next quarter builds on the previous.

Truly remarkable.

However, there was one comment made during the earnings call by Tim Cook, Apples COO, which has kicked off the rumour mill and that related to forewarning of an abnormal increase in air freight charges for the coming quarter....

 "The air freight is not related to the iPhone so these are unrelated topics. But, generally speaking the air freight is planned to get enough units in to the channel in time for the holidays and is necessary for that reason."

 "It’s more than normal so you’re correct that in general we spend more in freight in Q1. However, this increase is larger than usual. I’m sorry I can’t be specific on the product but it’s an abnormal sequential increase."

Woah! 

A company the size of Apple having to warn about abnormal air freight charges? They must be expecting some huge costs.

The issue is that I would doubt it's for any existing product that they need to ship for the holidays. Apples fulfilment operation is tuned to perfection and runs like a well oiled machine. They've known well in advance the forecasts for how many Macs, iPods and iPhones they need for the Christmas period (hate calling it "the holiday season") and these units have already been ordered. manufactured and shipped from China on huge cargo ships. The cheapest way to distribute, but the slowest. Shipping by sea is the only way to distribute existing product lines.

No, Airfreight is only needed on new products, just manufactured and dispatched directly from the factories in China. If a new MacBook Pro is developed and released and you buy one of the first models of the production line, it's air freighted direct from China to your door at considerable expense.

So this reference must be to a new, as yet unannounced product.

But the question is what?

I think there are two options....

1 - Apple is just about to announce the new Apple tablet device and is expecting huge demand. The tablet itself is most likely relatively small, so the only way it would rack up huge airfreight costs would be if they shipped large volumes of the device. With the pent up demand, I can well envision this scenario.

However, option 2 is more intriguing!

2 - For Apple to be worried about air freight costs, I have to speculate that the new product has intrinsic high shipping costs associated with it, probably due to its size and weight, or to special handling requirements. My speculation is that we're looking at something potentially extremely large and heavy. Something much bigger that even the biggest 27" iMacs or even 30" Cinema Displays.  

I'm figuring a 42" flat panel LCD Apple TV in time for Christmas.

OK, I'm hoping for a 42" or even a 50" flat panel LCD Apple TV in time for Christmas.

Can you imagine how expensive it would be to air freight these things over from China? If they are ready to start full scale production, it would take months to bring them to market on a slow boat from China, they really would have to take the cost hit to ship them by air to hit the Christmas market. 

Fall back position is that they miss Christmas but there's another event quite soon after where the full Apple TV panel would make a considerable splash. After all, Apple is a consumer electronics company now, so when better to launch a full Apple TV but around the 7th January - the date of the 2010 International CES show. I'm not saying Apple would launch it there, Apple being Apple would probably launch it the same week and still grab all the attention away from CES - how very Apple like.

Just one final thing that I saw a couple of days ago that's been gnawing at me and that's a tweet posted by Kevin Rose before the comment on the air freight at the earnings call...

Omg just met a drunk girl from apple "no apple tablet coming... well, we wouldn't call it a tablet" haha leak!!

Obviously, no way of validating that comment but it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck!

Oh, and the Apple iTablet....

I'd expect to see it announced the day following the next stellar earnings call from Apple :-)