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Technology Stocks : RealNetworks (NASDAQ:RNWK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cesare J Marini who wrote (2877)	4/21/1999 9:37:00 PM
From: soup	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5843

Cesare; If I may be permitted to characterize much of your what you're saying, it's that "Apple has screwed up so bad for so long, it's hard not to believe they wont screw this up too." Fair enough. Two years ago, Calpers voted AAPL's board the worst of any they followed. A year later, Jobs sacks the lot and puts together a world class group. And recently they hired Compaq's manufacturing guy and AAPL now beats DELL for the quickest inventory turns in the business. Also note that DELL originally used NeXt WebObjects to create its online store (and only got off it when NeXt was bought by AAPL.) More to the point of the RNWK thread is evidence of AAPL's motivation to get its corporate wood behind the QT arrow. Remember, it is over QT that AAPL chose to take MSFT to task over before the DOJ. It was Avie Tevanian's testimony that they refused MSFT's demand that AAPL "knife the baby" -- meaning AAPL's development of the QT for Windows. Nobody decides to refuse Bill Gates anything unless the stakes are high enough. AAPL must think they are. ----------------- >I'll be more convinced when I see benchmarks showing that a Solaris system is out-streaming a G4. (?)< I think you mean that the other way around. In any case, here's AAPL's numbers comparing G3/OSX vs. a Dell/Linux vs. SUNW/Solaris running Apache: apple.com Not exactly streaming, but I think you'll agree that the price/performance of G3/OSX at least shows ... potential. G4s come out later this year. ----------------- On the "forest for the trees" point. Look over AAPL's notes for its OS X Streaming Server: >QuickTime Streaming Server on Mac OS X Server lets you start up a streaming digital video channel—with news, entertainment and education programming—on the Internet. QuickTime Streaming Server on Mac OS X Server serves up to 250 stored files and up to 1,000 concurrent users, and can be used as a reflector for live broadcasts serving up to 1,000 QuickTime 4 users. And since Apple is pledged to making the QuickTime Streaming Server source code available to whomever wants to improve it, the technology will continue to evolve thanks to the applied collective brainpower of the open source community. A note on streaming—seeing is believing There are basically two types of streaming—HTTP streaming and RTP streaming—and QuickTime does them both. HTTP streaming works by downloading an entire movie to your hard disk. QuickTime has supported HTTP streaming for over a year. QuickTime streaming files formatted for HTTP via the Apache Server work so well on both Macs and PCs that—in addition to a large Macintosh user base—QuickTime HTTP streaming has attracted millions of Windows users as well. Fact is, the quality of QuickTime HTTP streaming is one of the reasons why the release of the Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace trailer turned into the biggest online download event in history. Just-in-time streaming RTP (for real-time protocol) is a just- in-time streaming technology that keeps your computer in constant touch with the server running the movie. Digital data is transferred and displayed—and discarded once you've seen it. Though a 3-10 second cache of data is stored to compensate for occasional network “burps” that might otherwise compromise quality, at no point is the entire movie stored on your computer. The difference? HTTP streaming is great for short movies and anything else you intend to play over and over again. RTP streaming, on the other hand, is ideal for full-length movies and live events. With a combination of industry-standard streaming protocols and cutting-edge compression technologies, QuickTime 4 delivers perfectly synchronized audio and video streams. What you need to get started If you've already installed the QuickTime Streaming Server Preview which shipped with Mac OS X Server, you'll need to download a general kernel update—recommended for all Mac OS X Servers—and QuickTime Streaming Server 1.0. Minimum requirements are a Power Macintosh G3 computer or Macintosh Server G3 with 256MB or more of RAM, 1GB of hard disk space, and a software update to Mac OS X QuickTime Streaming Server 1.0. The recommended system, of course, is the heavy-duty 400MHz Macintosh Server G3 with 1GB of RAM, 9GB hard disk, 4-port Ethernet card and the software update to Mac OS X QuickTime Streaming Server 1.0.< apple.com All this hard/software can be had today for less than $6,000. What's RNWK got to sell for this price?