Macs with HD video envy?

Microsoft released a "Made on PC" stop motion animation, showing two personal computers (PCs) on a flight. One's running Windows 7, and the other Mac OS. The Windows computer fires up Avatar on Blu-ray, and the Mac is portrayed as envious: "So cool ... It's like we're really in it!"

I watched the ad on a Mac. In 1080p. Maybe someone didn't think this entirely through.

When Microsoft Office 2011 came out on DVD, I tried to install it on this Mac, but the disk just ejected. When the disk worked in another computer, I realized that it was the first disc I'd tried to use since buying this Mac. Apple's Genius Bar swapped the drive in under an hour and I was able to install, but I realized our distribution methods have definitely changed.

So that's cool, PC. You play discs. You probably have a serial port too.

Apple's 0.7 megapixel 4:3 EDTV media viewer

via tuaw.com

Come on, Apple—Jobs needs a new set of glasses. The iPad is only 1024x768. That's miserly for the HD video age.

A widescreen 1280x768 would have been a megapixel, and HDTV means at least 1280x720. Five years ago, Gateway's CX200 Tablet PC offered that, making portrait view perfect for viewing full page documents including the menu bar, taking notes with Microsoft OneNote—and landscape view ideal for watching movies.

With its 9.7" diagonal and 131 DPI, the iPad offers sharper resolution than Apple's 30" cinema display (4 megapixels at 100 DPI), and the same resolution as the 17" Macbook Pro (2.3 megapixels at 133 DPI), but is less crisp than the iPhone at 164 DPI.

Let's hope the pixel grid is oriented for portrait mode so fonts can use subpixel rendering, or reading will be tiring compared to the Kindle. (It's hard to tell from Apple marketing which is the preferred orientation.)

Sadly, this iPad is not the portable Hulu player I was looking for. Aside from the pixel count barely exceeding Apple's iFrame video format, with HDTV shot in 16:9 and most widescreen movies filmed in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, there will be a lot of letter-boxing on planes and trains this year.