No release date in sight for TiVoToGo for Mac

I responded on a Tivo employees blog here: http://www.zeigen.com/blog/?p=284#comment-9478

But really quickly.

1) VPs of Marketing are paid to talk about things they don't understand and make it sound good. Apple isn't closed it is just that the guy who wrote this for the VP is in Marketing and is probably about as technically minded and informed as any tube sock you might have in your sock drawer. Of course Windows is more closed. The real difference is that Windows Media can play back the unecrypted Tivo stream and creating a DirectShow filter to lift the DRM during playback is pretty straightforward. Quicktime doesn't do Tivo MEPG-2 via any offering from Apple, so Tivo needs to write (or borrow from any of several open source projects [legally of course]) an mpeg-2 decoder for Quicktime.

2) They definitely don't care enough about Mac users to get this done. It is a dead simple project for them. At this point the only real surprise is that the Linux guys haven't made it work yet.

3) Tivo Download Manager will get you your Tivo content the easy way. Or search around on Google for Tivo DRM Crack and you will find other options that make use of Galleon. Or there is a widget for downloading from Tivo, you will still have to address the DRM.

>> Does that sound like the beginning of an email from a corporate VP? "I am in Vice President ..."?

Mac OS X "closed"?

That statement makes my brain hurt.

Maybe when he says "closed" he really means "none of our dime-a-dozen .NET developers can figure out how to write software on a Mac. They tend to get confused by how great every looks and how easily the UI is to use."

Steve,

Am I being dense, or what? Tried the links with your name, but can’t find any way to contact you on either of those sites (although the pimento thing is catchy). I’d like to talk to you more about this TiVo to Mac thing...but am hoping there’s a way to do it without loading Windows (like #13, I don’t even want it to touch my MBP).

Help.....

As a side note to #14, I’m with Greg...TiVo Desktop for Mac did release later. Made me nuts having to wait.

Dear Tom,
Perhaps you should get an Apple Developer Connection membership for your developers! With a company like Tivo I'm sure you could afford the ADC Premiere membership for $3500 you get 8 support calls to Apple for code level help, testing the Apple labs up to 3 times a month (bejong Tokyo and Cupertino), and admission WWDC where your developers can talk to the engineers at Apple and the Mac programming community.

Please forward this to the appropriate parties, thanks,
Joel

#20 - it's not the OS that's the issue; it's QuickTime. Calling it closed is a little misleading, but calling it inadequately documented for the things TiVo needs to do would be an understatement.

How does an OS which provides source to the kernel and source to key data structures (in CoreFoundation) end up being more closed than Windows?

Got an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid. Wonderful on my 24" Intel imac.

Didn't Tivo first demo TTG on a Mac years and years ago..? You've got to think that if they wanted to, they would have done the Mac version by now, so the assumption has to be that it isn't coming. Like TTG on the Series 3 - that's never going to happen either. These two reasons are part of my decision (along with the $1000 price tag) to abandon my two expanded S2s and go with the Comcast box. It's a shame because I've had Tivos since 2000 but I think they're becoming less and less relavent.