Deep Thought · toys

In Light of the Lyrics App Debacle

2009-05-20T02:04:44Z

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/05/appstoreeasteregg/

Apple initially rejected Jelle Prins’ iPhone app Lyrics, which displays lyrics for the songs in your music library, including the profanity contained in some song lyrics. Apple cited that fact as the reason for turning Prins down.

Oh Apple, look what I found:

Perhaps maybe you should make them censor it?

Ooh, and there’s this other app that allows unfiltered access to the internet, including objectionable content which you seem not to like allowing. I think it’s called… um.... Safari, that’s it! Wait a minute....

Yeah, make the developers of that conduit of smut pay for their sins against our children.

Speaking of children, won’t somebody think of them?

So I’ve Just Come Into the Posession of a New Monitor

2008-11-12T00:53:15Z

And it’s been quite illuminating. Before I go on, however, I should note that this post contains images, and that if you’re using dial-up you should take a moment to remember that you are accessing the internet using the telephone line, which although may have sufficed in a bygone era, is a preposterous thought in this day and age. You should then go get something to drink because this page will take a while to load, what with you calling it up and asking it what it looks like instead of using broadband like civilized people.

Ahem.

For starters, I found a minor display bug in iTunes.

I wonder if Apple has any large displays laying around their offices.... Eh, probably not.

I also found that glossy displays are better than matte. All matte advocates are hereby committed to a mental institute for their choice, which is wrong by virtue of differing from my choice.

What’s on the screen? What’s in the room? Hours of fun for the whole family!

Lastly, I’ve found that the mobile web is more fun the larger the display gets.

Who needs line wrapping?

The interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that, despite coming from a dual-monitor setup, I feel more like an evil genius now than I did before. There’s something about a guy hunched over in front of a huge panel that exudes the feel of 1960s evil.

And this concludes the last content-free post I’ll be making.

Saying Is Believing

2008-05-05T07:01:00Z

About a year ago, I wrote an article here on DT analyzing the high-def DVD war and predicting an eventual win for Blu-ray. Despite the fact that I was completely and totally correct, I am not here to brag (although I won’t pass up the opportunity, either). In the course of that article, I poked some fun at the world of technology analysts:

So, here’s the part where I play “tech analyst,” which is to say that I will make something up and present it to you as fact. I will even put it into blurb form so that newspapers can use it and quote me as an expert.

Ironically, it seems that this has worked far better than I had imagined. For reasons I won’t get into, I was recently visiting the online directory site ZoomInfo. While I was there, I decided to have a little fun and search for my own name, just to see what might come up. Among the accurate results was this tidbit:

Now, to be fair, they use some kind of automatic crawler bot to aggregate a lot of their information, which appears to pretty much take at face value anything it is told.¹ I agree that this is a good idea, as we all know that the Internet contains only 100% truth.² I hereby heartily endorse ZoomInfo as a fine purveyor of factual information, and look forward to seeing my new title “James Viviani, President of the United States.”

¹Much like Tom Cruise.↩

²I prefer the “pulp-free” kind, but I understand you can also get it with a splash of various other juices.↩

Who’d’a thunk it? Most facebook apps are pointless

2008-05-02T22:58:00Z

According to a recent study, most Facebook apps are pointless silly time-wasters, according to a CNET blog post. The blog post cites a new study from Flowing Data, which tabulated the nature of the 23,000+ Facebook applications. Roughly 9600 are categorized as “Just for Fun,” while many more are labeled as “Gaming,” “Sports,” “Chat,” and other productivity-killing categories.

Now wait just a second. Why on Earth did Flowing Data research the number of pointless Facebook apps? Anyone who has spend any time on Facebook and has been bombarded with endless application invitations could tell you that most Facebook apps are pointless. A pointless survey on the pointlessness of Facebook apps. Hard to believe someone actually got paid for that.

And besides, who visits Facebook to get anything done in the first place?

Adobe Photoshop Express

2008-04-19T16:28:01Z

Adobe Flex is a Flash-based user interface builder and scripting language, and Adobe’s contribution to Macromedia’s Flash technology. Adobe is faced with a problem, however; although many companies are buying in to Flex for creating web interfaces, people just aren’t as excited about the possibilities of Flex than they are, say, about AJAX. At present, most of the web applications that are making headlines are ones that aim to replace their desktop-based brethren. Most of these applications, such as all of the Google applications, are built on technologies like AJAX. Few are using Flex for these purposes, and because Flex, in conjunction with Adobe’s Integrated Runtime, is essentially positioned as the next generation of Flash. Adobe, of course, would like to change that.

Thus, they created Photoshop Express. Photoshop Express (or Px, as the favicon will tell you,) is actually an online-photo manager similar to Flickr or Picasa Web Albums. You upload your photos, organize them, touch them up, and then share them. Besides being built entirely on Flash, the major talking point of Px is the photo editing functionality, which provides a few nice features not found in other services. Though currently in beta, anyone who wishes may sign up for the service and start using it. Each user gets 2 GB of storage for photos and their own web address for their public galleries; I’ve set up mine at http://modusoperandi.photoshop.com.

Upon first logging in, the upload files dialog is displayed. Luckily, it allows selecting multiple files at once through CTRL or Shift. Unluckily, only JPEG files are supported currently. The uploader has an option for what album, if any, the uploaded photos go into, although this is for all photos in the batch – albums can’t be selected on a photo by photo basis, although uploading them all at once and sorting later is a legitimate tactic. On the flip side, the uploader does allow removing photos to be uploaded and adding more before actually performing the upload. Progress is shown both per picture and overall, and the total file size is calculated and displayed; all-in-all, it’s a pretty nice uploading tool.

The main interface for Px is a good one, and it’s a shame that Adobe Flex Builder isn’t easier to acquire. The application expands to fit the window like any web page, and generally feels closer to a desktop application that alternative services; oh yeah, it looks pretty good, too.

For browsing photos, three views are offered: a thumbnail view, a details view, and a filmstrip view (compare with the Windows XP views of the same names.) Most users will find the thumbnails view best, as it strikes a good balance between displaying information (details) and the photo itself (filmstrip.) From these views, photos can be tagged, given captions, and rated. For additional information, a side panel may be displayed with other metadata, such as the camera and image dimensions.

The editing interface is also very good. Effects with sliders show thumbnails of the image with that degree of effect applied; these previews can be selected, or the slider can be used to tune the effect. Effects are applied instantaneously and are previews when the mouse hovers on the effect thumbnails. The editing tools are what make Px stand out. Some editing effects are new to a web-based editor, such as the Sketch or Distort filters.

Each user is given a My Gallery page, where they can enter some information about themselves and where all shared albums are displayed. Albums are only able to be viewed as a slideshow, but that slideshow can be paused. Links to public pictures can be emailed or just copied to the clipboard. Galleries can be linked to, emailed, or embedded in web pages with HTML.

One major feature Photoshop Express lacks that others don’t, however, is desktop integration. Picasa Web allows uploading from Picasa, Flickr supports several applications including Windows Live Photo Gallery and their own Flickr uploader. Another issue is responsiveness, something that most likely stems from Flash being as resource heavy as it is. The sharing features are also somewhat limited compared to others.

At the end of the day, Photoshop Express is shaping up to be a decent web photo manager, but more importantly, a decent example of a web application that can be created with Flex. With a few more features and some good optimizations, Adobe could have a real contender on their hands, and maybe sell a few copies of Flex Builder while they’re at it.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Quick Tip: Improve Locate Me’s Accuracy

2008-04-14T04:02:00Z

The iPhone’s map application got a poor substitute for a GPS chip when the 1.1.3 firmware update was launched, and iPod touch owners got that same poor substitute in the January Software Upgrade, which I noted in that review places me right in America’s Heartland - I obviously live in America’s Bowels, thank you very much.

The problem is that the Locate Me feature works by detecting all WiFi hotspots (and cell towers on an iPhone) and running that against a list maintained on the servers of Skyhook Wireless. The process to build this database is essentially wardriving, and is a very time-consuming and location-limited process. Thus, if you happen to live in an area where the WiFi hotspots are all residential ones, the chances of being correctly located are slim. This issue is exacerbated for iPod touch users, who don’t have the luxury of cell towers, which have a much higher range than WiFi access points.

Someone at Skyhook evidently realized the problem. He probably asked, “Why pay for people to drive around and map hotspots when people will give us that information for free on the internet?” As a result, this page was created. You simply find your location, give it your MAC address, and you’re on your way. I myself, in keeping with the standards of kneejerk journalism, have just completed this page and received the email confirming that I have pressed the submit button correctly. I will update this posting when “up to a few weeks” elapses and I can be properly located here in America’s Bowels.

iPhone event roundup

2008-03-07T05:26:01Z

Earlier today Apple held an iPhone-oriented media event, covering topics including the iPhone in enterprise to the long-awaited SDK. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the announcements made today.

And yes, I wrote this as I followed the announcements, so they’re very, very early first impressions.

Enterprise

First of all, it seems strange to see Apple even discuss the enterprise market, considering their focus has been on the consumer for years and years. But considering almost every other smart phone out there is designed to be enterprise-friendly, it makes sense that Apple would do the same with the iPhone, especially since some corporate users are already using the iPhone.

Apple announced the addition of a good number of enterprise-friendly features for their next iPhone software, ranging from push email support and better calendar integration to better VPN support to the all-important Microsoft Exchange support. And as it turns out, Apple licensed the ActiveSync protocol for use on the iPhone. As Macworld reports, “With ActiveSync, the iPhone talks directly to Exchange. So the iPhone will get push e-mail, push calendaring, push contacts, global access lists, and remote wipe, all while talking to Exchange. And it’s built into the existing applications—mail goes into the same Mail program, calendar into the same Calendar, and so on.”

I’m not exactly an expert when it comes to the enterprise, but I think Apple just answered a lot of people’s prayers with these additions. Do I think this means we’ll see Apple making a more general push into the enterprise market? Somehow I doubt it. For Apple, this seems to be more of a reactive move. They saw that enterprise was interested in the iPhone, so they filled the gap with enterprise-specific features.

The SDK...

As this video shows, iPhone gaming will be like nothing else out there. There’s a lot of potential for opening the iPhone to third-party developers, and the unofficial apps have shown lots of promise. Now that developers will have a fully-documented API to play with, I can’t wait to see what people come up with.

Scott Forstall came onstage to discuss the iPhone SDK. And what an SDK it is! iPHone development will be based on a new application framework based on Cocoa named...wait for it...Cocoa Touch (those clever folks at Apple). Why a different framework? Cocoa, which many Mac developers use to create apps, is designed around a keyboard-and-mouse user interface, so Apple needed to develop something for the touch-based interface of the iPhone and iPod touch.

Forstall also briefly went over the other layers of the iPhone OS: the core OS almost the same as what is on the Mac, but there are some different core services built atop to. One such service is Core Location, which, according to Macworld, “uses cell tower and wi-fi data to figure out where you are.” Nice to see that Apple isn’t keeping that to themselves.

iPhone development will take place inside Apple’s XCode and Interface Builder development tools. Yay. Apple’s also including an iPhone simulator so you can test your apps without using an iPhone. Weren’t there rumors about a simulator a little while back?

It appears developers will be able to take advantage of the iPhone’s motion sensor. Forstall demoed a photo distortion app, and to remove the distortions you applied, you...shake the iPhone Etch-a-Sketch style. They also wrote a game that leverages the accelerometer to steer a ship. Sweet. Reminds me of a portable version of Nintendo’s Wii.

Forstall stressed how simple it is to develop for the iPhone, even for people who have never developed for OS X, and invited developers from EA, Salesforce, and other companies to discuss their experiences working with iPhone development.

What I hoped to see come out of the iPhone SDK is fairly simple: a decent AIM client for iPhone. Many phones--smart or otherwise--include AIM support. iChat works with AIM. Why didn’t the iPhone support AIM from the very beginning? It looks like I’ll be getting my wish, as AOL is bringing AIM to the iPhone. Score! I’ve never been impressed with AOL’s own desktop client, but I would expect an iPhone client to work better.

As for distribution, Apple will include a new application, App Store, to the next iPhone update. Were they inspired a bit by Installer.app for the iPhone and their own iTunes WiFi Music Store? Signs point at yes. And, of course, you can purchase and download applications through iTunes on your computer. It looks like the speculation and rumors of Apple controlling application distribution were true. Developers can pick the price, and developers keep 70% of the revenue from iPhone app sales (apple keeps the other 30% for distribution). Free apps won’t cost developers a penny to distribute. It should be interesting to see how developers react to this, but it seems to be a pretty fair scheme.

Apple will put some limitations on what apps can be sold so nothing illegal, malicious, or otherwise questionable makes it onto people’s iPhones.

The new features discussed today will be introduced with the iPhone 2.0 update. A beta version is being seeded today to developers, and a final version will be released in June (be patient!). Apple is also introducing the iPhone Developer Program, which you need to join if you want Apple to distribute your app. Joining the Program costs $99 US.

iFund

Also announced was the iFund, a $100 million startup fund backed by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins especially for iPhone developers.

Apple closed with a Q & A session for the press. Macworld’s coverage includes the Q & A session if you’re curious.

Put it together and what do you get?

Trouble for the competition, that’s what!

The iPhone is already selling well in the United States. Now that it will include serious enterprise tools, I think it’s safe to say that the iPhone will make inroads into the enterprise world. Maybe eventually it will help get the Mac into the enterprise world, but I don’t see that happening on a large scale.

What Apple managed to do today is turn the iPhone into a better phone for enterprise users, and an even better consumer toy. I’ve held off on purchasing an iPhone so far because I have my iPod, and I do little more with my cell phone than make the occasional call. I’m lame like that. Maybe now I’ll break down and buy one (or at least consider buying one).

Now what about jailbreaking? Will there still be a market for that? I think so. I doubt Apple will allow developers to distribute iPhone hacks through their app store. So while most users will be satisfied by official apps, more technical users may still want to consider jailbreaking, so don’t count out the unofficial iPhone app community just yet.

All of this is a result of something simple: Apple listening to their customers. It’s something Apple hasn’t seemed to be very open about doing until fairly recently. You can’t add every requested feature, of course, but by listening, Apple made the iPhone a much more attractive device from consumers and business alike.

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Blu-ray wins, consumers lose

2008-03-07T04:33:00Z

It’s been two weeks since Toshiba, creators and primary backers of the nascent next-generation movie disc format called HD DVD, ceased production and marketing of the technology, ceding defeat in a bitter format war raged between it and Blu-ray Disc, championed by a Sony-led consortium.

This move was widely expected following January’s announcement by Warner Home Video that it will be supporting Blu-ray Disc exclusively going forward. As the number one movie studio in the world, Warner Bros. commanded immense weight in deciding the outcome of this war, and once their announcement was made, it took less than two months for companies at every level of the home video distribution ecosystem to fall in line behind it, abandoning HD DVD in the process and leaving Toshiba holding the bag.

So now that Blu-ray Disc is poised to become the dominant next-generation movie format, it’s time to look to the future. A future that, quite frankly, looks somewhat bleak for a number of reasons.

In a Blu-ray dominated future, expect high prices, because everything about Blu-ray is far more expensive than its HD DVD counterparts. The players will be expensive thanks to costly laser pickups, complicated hardware and an even more complicated software stack that will require extensive support from the manufacturers. The discs will be expensive thanks to the relatively high cost of manufacturing discs, and the sky-high costs of authoring them using BD-J.

Expect limited selection, in part because of the high costs of creating a commercial Blu-ray Disc, but also (and far more troubling) because of the requirement for all BD-ROM titles to have AACS encoding before they can play. The costs of acquiring these licenses and the complications of implementing them will shut out many smaller, indie film studios from BD publishing, resulting in a catalog filled with generic, big-budget Hollywood crap.

Expect a poor movie-watching experience. Blu-ray Disc players have already shown themselves to be exceedingly slow at performing all but the most basic of tasks. Starting a movie can take minutes; navigating menus is fraught with problems, and when you get to the actual movie itself, actions such as pausing, rewinding, fast-forwarding and chapter skip can take seconds to register.

Expect to babysit your Blu-ray player like it’s a computer. All of today’s Blu-ray players receive frequent firmware updates to fix bugs in new movies. These updates have to be downloaded from the Internet and burned on to a CD which is then inserted in the player. The updates can take upwards of 40 minutes, and are required in many cases to watch new movies.

Expect planned obsolescence. Think the Blu-ray player you buy in 2008 will continue to play discs released in 2011? Don’t count on it; either the manufacturer will have ceased releasing firmware updates by then, or new movies will be authored for some future Blu-ray specification that your player won’t support (there are already three such specifications, version 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0, each of which support different feature sets that must be implemented in hardware—they can’t be bolted on later with firmware updates.)

And expect to be treated like a criminal. Blu-ray features multiple levels of DRM, ROMmark brands discs with unique serial numbers that can’t be duplicated using consumer disc burners, AACS encrypts the video stream and its Image Constraint Token capability allows the movie studios to artificially cripple the analog output capability of your player, and BD+ locks you out of the movie until it has scanned your player to make sure nothing’s “wrong.” Combined with the internet connectivity features of BD Profile 2.0, BD+ has some scary privacy implications as well, such as reporting your movie selections and viewing habits to a third party. Blu-ray also maintains the region protection seen in DVD (though Blu-ray only has three regions.)

The alternative offered by HD DVD, while not perfect, was decidedly more consumer-friendly and much better implemented. HD DVD simply offered a better moviewatching experience, for less money, and it did so from day one.

Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. Maybe I’m biased. I won’t deny that this article was prompted in no small part by my dismay at how events played out in the so called “format war.” But I’ve found my pessimism reinforced somewhat in recent weeks.

At CES, Sony announced that it would allow consumers to make portable copies of its Blu-ray movies for viewing on the go… but with a catch; the Blu-ray player would have to be a PlayStation 3, and the portable player would have to be a PSP. Gee, thanks, Sony. HD DVD, by comparison, required all players to support Managed Copy which would work with a wide variety of portable players and media servers (when provided for by the movie publisher.) And on March 5, Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow is reported to have said Blu-ray players will not come down to $200 until next year—HD DVD players had already shattered that price barrier last Christmas.

Aside from Toshiba’s capitulation, there has been precious little really good news from the Blu-ray camp in recent weeks. And without the competition posed by HD DVD, sales on Blu-ray discs have dried up, and prices on Blu-ray players have risen ever so slightly. There is no reason to expect that situation to change any time soon.

Maybe I’m wrong, and Blu- ray will turn out OK. But I’m not holding my breath, and neither should you.

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Sony CEO: $200 Blu-ray players coming
Blu-ray to PSP Movie Transfers
Toshiba Kills HD DVD

The iPod Touch January Software Upgrade

2008-01-31T06:00:00Z

At this latest Macworld Expo, iPhone firmware 1.1.3 was announced, with features such as “customizable home screen,” “Webclips,” and a new interface for Maps. It was then announced that these enhancements, along with five applications previously only on the iPhone, would be coming to the iPod Touch in $20 “January Software Upgrade.”

Fast-forwarding past all the “it’s sooooooo unfair why Apple why?” aspects of the move, we must direct our attention to the applications themselves. In addition to the applications, the new features of iPhone firmware 1.1.3 (Webclips and Icon Layout on Springboard chiefly among them) were also included in the software upgrade. For iPhone users, the following rundown/review will say only what you already know. I’m providing this information for those of us who don’t have $60 to spend on phone service each month, no matter how functional and sexy and fingerprint covered the phone happens to be.

Mail and Maps

Mail is a light and decent email client, especially for a mobile device. With support for both POP3 and IMAP, Mail has preset configurations for several popular mail services, such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, as well as Apple’s own .Mac mail. Mail works with any other service supporting either of the two protocols mentioned above, of course, but settings will have to be obtained and entered manually.

Mail maintains the same folders you’d expect from an email client, like Inbox, Sent, Drafts, etc. Messages can be moved between folders, but new folders cannot be created directly in the interface; custom folders can be synced if the email service uses IMAP. Mail displays a two line preview of every message in the list by default, and the number of lines can be changed between none to five in the Mail menu in iPod Settings.

Mail displays as expected from the Safari engine, and supports the same gestures as Safari in HTML emails. Plain text email also displays well, at a size that doesn’t require zooming to read. Puzzlingly, however, no landscape mode support is to be found, in Mail or any software upgrade app, an omission that varies in magnitude from application to application.

The interface is well-integrated with other features of the iPod, if a bit simplistic. Not only can contacts be created or edited by touching the name of a person in the mail headers, but many other iPod applications integrate well with Mail. iPhone users have had this sort of integration since the beginning, but it’s a welcome feature to have added to the iPod as well. YouTube videos, notes, links to web pages, and pictures can all be sent through mail, and emails can be opened up pre-addressed by touching the email address listed for any contact. Nearly every other application on the iPod integrates with Mail in some way.

Maps is essentially the same Google Maps you can find on the internet, just with an interface more conducive to touch use. Maps actually received several new features and an interface refresh for the Software Upgrade and iPhone firmware 1.1.3. New to Maps is the Hybrid view, which shows satellite photos, overlaid with streets, traffic view, which overlays major roads with either green, yellow, or red to indicate traffic flow speed, and Locate Me. Locate Me uses a database of Wi-Fi hotspots to attempt to ascertain your location. I say attempt because, at least in my anecdotal case, Locate Me says I live in the middle of a farm near Topeka, Kansas (I live in Phoenix.) To be fair, this is a residential area, and I haven’t had the opportunity to try it out at some place more public, but I found its current answer a bit more entertaining than a generic “Your location could not be determined.”

Widgets

The rest of the five applications included in the upgrade are considered by Apple to be widgets, a term I find quite applicable. All three of them have fewer features than Mail or Maps, but are useful in their own right. Of these widgets, however, the most app-like is easily Notes.

Notes allows you to… take notes, as is made apparent by the application’s legal pad theme. Notes can be viewed, edited, emailed, and… that’s about it, really. The functionality is rather light, but what Notes does, it does well.

Stocks and Weather are the two other widgets, and are exactly what would be expected. In fact, they happen to bear a more than a slight resemblance to the same widgets in OS X’s Dashboard feature. Stocks displays the day’s loss or gain for each stock added, with a graph available at the bottom with data for up to two years. Weather displays the current conditions, as well as the forecast for the next six days. Multiple locations can be added and flicked between.

Minor Embellishments

In addition to the five iPhone applications, the January Software Upgrade also includes the new features added to the iPhone as part of firmware 1.1.3. Of the minor enhancements, only two are really anything worth mentioning: home screen customizability and Webclips.

The home screen can be rearranged if any icon is touched and held until they all start shivering (of all things….) Icons can be pulled out of the dock, placed in the dock (still only a maximum of 4 icons; unfortunately, there’s no way to pull all icons out of the dock either,) rearranged within the icons on the home screen, or sent to a different home screen altogether. Nine home screens are allowed, and none of them have to be full – just drag an icon to the side of the screen and it’ll flip over.

Webclips are simply bookmarks that are placed on the home screen and remember the position of the view on that web page. For example, if someone were to visit www.dtgeeks.com, then zoom in on the “Currently on Deep Thought” section, then bookmark the site, only the web address would be remembered – further visits to the site through that bookmark will start with the page fully zoomed out. Creating a web clip, however, will return to that exact placement, a function that is handy for quickly referencing, say, a list of recent articles. Webclips also may be used to link frequently used web applications to the home screen – there’s even a method for developers to create their own icon for display on the home screen.

Are these features worth $20? In the end, I believe it all comes down to the availability of wireless access points during most days. If there happen to be Wi-Fi hotspots all over the place in the area where you live, these features are going to get more use than a situation where the only Wi-Fi hot spot for miles is a corner coffee shop. Having an access point at home can provide a good amount of time connected, and some applications, such as mail, can be used offline. Unfortunately, other applications, like Weather and Stocks, don’t’ cache their data, an omission that isn’t apparent at all on the iPhone, but is a nuisance on the iPod Touch, which doesn’t have the luxury of a cell-phone network to pull data off of when there are no open hotspots.

Personally, I’ve found the upgrade to be with the money, though I may be biased as I payed $20 less for the unit itself in lieu of having the applications installed. YMMV.

4.0

Fun Stuff: Hit me on my iPhone

2008-01-27T07:04:24Z

Take iPhone ads and Guided Tour video clips. Add funky hip-hop remix. What does that give you?

This.

Enjoy!
Via Mac News Online

Report: Internet to experience traffic jams by 2010

2007-11-20T08:46:01Z

Some years back, President George W. Bush was quoted as saying, “Are the highways of the internet becoming more few?” Despite his seemingly nonsensical quote, George W. may have been onto something, sort of. According to a new report, commuters on the Information Superhighway could be facing serious traffic jams by 2010.

The reason? Too much data traffic, not enough capacity, and not enough added capacity to keep pace with growth. Hmm, sounds like the freeways here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

One example given is YouTube, which was generating 27 petabytes worth of traffic per month as of mid 2007. To put that in perspective, 1 petabyte is 1,024 terabytes, or over 1 million gigabytes. Most desktop computers sold today have hard drives in the range of 250-500 Gigabytes, and only higher-end desktops are pushing into the terabyte range. So yeah, that’s a lot of traffic generated by a single site. Just to think, three years ago nobody even heard of YouTube.

What does this mean for you? If these predictions come to pass, without a major increase in capacity, you can expect to spend more time waiting for your Myspace profile to load. That means, of course, there is a greater chance of your boss catching you on Myspace. Now get back to work!

So enjoy your nice speedy connection while you can before it feels as sluggish as dialup, and go download some absurdly huge file!

If you want to read the whole report, you can (caution: it’s long). Me? I settled for the Cliff’s Notes version.

All-in-one desktop shootout

2007-11-19T06:00:00Z

All righty, it’s been a while since we’ve done a hardware comparison here.

Lately it seems that all-in-one desktop computers have seen their popularity rise. Since August, Apple has released a fairly large update to the iMac, Gateway unveiled their Gateway One PC (which is way sexier than the Profile 6), and the Dell XPS One.

In this article, I will compare one configuration of the Apple iMac, Dell XPS One, and Gateway One. And if you think you’ve seen this sort of article around here before, well, you’d be right.

First thing’s first

Before I start, I want to get a couple things out of the way. First of all, I am not framing this article to make one company look better or worse, so let’s not even go down that road. These prices are for models as configured on Sunday, November 18, 2007, and are what the manufacturers list on their US online stores (Dell/Gateway Home and Home Office and Apple’s standard pricing). All prices are in US Dollars.

Secondly, yes, I know you can buy a regular tower PC for less than you can buy an all-in-one. Yes, I know you can build a PC for less. Please don’t leave a comment telling me this. In general, all-in-ones are presented as mid-range to higher-end consumer desktops.

A method to this madness

For this little experiment, I set out with some basic specs in mind:

At least a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor
2 GB RAM
320 GB hard drive

I’ll try to get as close to these as possible. Let’s see what we end up with!

High noon at the OK Corral

Apple iMac	Dell XPS One	Gateway One
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo	2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (E6550)	2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo (T7250)
320 GB Serial ATA hard drive	320 GB Serial ATA hard drive	500 GB Serial ATA II hard drive
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM	2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM	3 GB DDR2 SDRAM
8x DVD+/-RW DL drive	16x DVD+/-RW DL drive	8x DVD+/-RW DL drive
20” display; 1680x1050 resolution	20” display; 1680x1050 resolution	19” display; 1440x900 resolution
ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO, 256 MB VRAM	ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO, 256 MB VRAM	ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, 256 MB VRAM
Built-in WiFi (802.11n) & Bluetooth 2.0	Built-in Wifi (802.11n) & Bluetooth 2.0	Built-in WiFi (802.11n); no Bluetooth
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)	Windows Vista Home Premium	Windows Vista Home Premium
Apple Remote, iSight camera	Analog/digital TV Tuner, 8-in-1 media card reader	Analog/digital TV Tuner, Wireless keyboard and mouse, built-in webcam, Media Center remote, 5-in-1 media card reader
1-year hardware warranty, 90 days telephone support	2-year in-home warranty, 2 years phone support	1-year limited warranty (parts and labor)
$1649.00 US	$1999.00 US	$1799.99 US

Note: the Gateway One model used here is only available through Best Buy.

Survey says...

The iMac wins in overall price and has a slight edge in CPU speed. The Gateway topped out at 2 GHz, and wasn’t able to reach to 2.2 GHz I had aimed for. The lower-end Gateway One models come with a 1.5 GHz processor, but I went with the higher end model to get as close to the 2.2 GHz goal I set out for at the beginning. For most users, however, the difference between processor speed shouldn’t be a huge deal. Also, the Gateway has a smaller screen than the Dell and the iMac. The Gateway claims an easy victory for hard drive space and RAM, and wins the silver in terms of price. All three include WiFi (Apple calls it Airport, of course), but the Gateway appears to leave out Bluetooth for some reason. Meanwhile, the Dell has a faster optical drive. The iMac has the venerable Apple Remote and iSight camera, but for whatever reason, Apple has yet to bundle a TV tuner with any of their systems (also, Apple doesn’t include media card readers). Lastly, the Dell XPS One includes a better warranty than the Mac or the Gateway.

Which one should you buy? That I can’t answer. By and large the three systems are fairly close, so I really can’t say one is significantly better than the other. Instead, I will put it this way:

If price is your top concern, the XPS One isn’t the one for you. Of course, if you’re most concerned about price, you probably won’t buy an all-in-one in the first place, but play along with me here.
If you want a built-in TV tuner, don’t buy the iMac. If you want the iMac anyway, take a peek at the eyeTV Hybrid.
If you need raw processing power, got with the iMac or XPS One.
If you value a longer warranty, consider the XPS One. Apple does sell their AppleCare extended warranty separately for an additional $169 US. I didn’t see any warranty upgrades for the Gateway One model I used.
If screen space is your priority, the Gateway is at a disadvantage.
If physical footprint is a concern, you can’t go wrong with any of them!

Remember that this article is just an overview of one configuration from each product line which best fits some criteria I set forth earlier. The Apple iMac starts at $1199, the Dell XPS One at $1499, and the Gateway One at $1299.

So I’m going to wimp out here and call this one a draw more or less. I’ll take one of each, thank you very much.

Updated: Dell officially unveils XPS One, Latitude tablet

2007-11-16T08:01:01Z

Dell. They’ve always had the reputation for churning out decent PCs at good prices. But let’s face it, their products have never seen incredibly unique. That may be changing, though.

Yesterday Dell too the wraps off their XPS One all-in-one desktop, and their very first tablet PC called the Latitude XT. Dell hasn’t said much about the XPS One yet, but there is a teaser page up on Dell’s site. The XPS One is the latest all-in-one desktop to come from PC makers; other recent releases include the Gateway One (yes, I know about the name--coincidence?) the HP Touchsmart, and of course, the iMac. Perhaps PC companies are noticing that there is a market for the all-in-one desktop?

The Latitude XT is the first tablet PC out of Dell, and it’s not an ordinary tablet PC. As Engadget reports, The Latitude XT sports a multi-touch display. Dell used a painting program and photo viewer demo app to show off the XT’s multi-touch capabilities. The big question: how will Windows and applications handle multi-touch input? That remains to be seen. Still, it’s nice to see some really exciting products come from Dell.

UPDATE: The XPS One is now available to buy on dell.com Models start at $1499 for a 20” display, 2 GB of RAM, and a 250 GB hard drive.

Jailbreak your iPhone in one easy step

2007-10-29T19:38:00Z

A group of hackers have released a web-based application that JailBreaks iPhones and iPod Touch devices running software version 1.1.1. The application also installs Installer.app. From TUAW:

To use it, open Safari and point your browser to jailbreakme.com (which we aren’t linking to so folks won’t install this by accident, but you are prompted to confirm). Once there, read the directions, scroll to the bottom, and tap Install AppSnapp. If Safari disappears and you return to the main Home screen, you’re good. Just wait a minute more for your unit to restart--don’t touch anything until you see the slide to unlock screen. If Safari hangs, just quit out (press and hold Home for 4-8 seconds) and try again.

Once you get to slide-to-unlock, go ahead and unlock your iPhone or iPod touch. You’ll return to your home screen which will contain a new Installer.app icon.

The application is based on a recently-released exploit for 1.1.1 which used a vulnerability in the open-source libtiff library found on the iPhone.

Instant Jailbreak for iPhone and iPod Touch [tuaw.com]
AppSnapp Installer [jailbreakme.com] (for iPhone and iPod Touch only)

Thoughts on iPhone’s third-party application support…

2007-10-18T08:01:00Z

The announcement this morning was as low-key as it was stunning. An innocuous posting on Apple’s Hot News page, signed by “Steve” read:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.

And just like that, one of the biggest criticisms against the iPhone disappeared. Just like that, the iPhone (and to a lesser extent, the iPod touch) has gone from being a pretty but ultimately limited gadget to an extremely exciting handheld computing device. Already blogs are brimming with wishlists for applications on the iPhone, and Mac developers everywhere are salivating over the prospect of finally being able to reach a mass-market audience with their apps.

But (and you knew it was coming...) My main worry lies in this paragraph of Steve’s announcement:

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

It seems clear to me that Apple will implement some sort of digital certification process for applications before they will run natively on iPhone or iPod touch. In and of itself, that doesn’t mean much. Most phones (with the notable exception of Windows Mobile devices in most cases) implement such mechanisms. I’m more concerned with how Apple will implement such a mechanism, and how tightly Apple will control it.

It seems likely Apple will charge developers to create applications for the iPhone, either by charging for the SDK itself, or by charging for the certificate the iPhone will require to run the application. But will certificates be issued on a per-application basis, or will developers be able to get a blanket certificate for all their apps? Will Apple handle certification by itself, or will it outsource it to a neutral third-party? Will the certification requirements and process be kept under tightly-guarded NDAs, or will it be transparent and available for any potential developer to review? Will it be cheap? Will the SDK be freely available to anyone (free or paid) or will developers have to enter into some sort of agreement with Apple to get it? Will Apple demand royalties for iPhone apps?

Then there’s the question of the iPhone’s environment for third-party apps. What will apps be able to do on iPhone? Which of its features will be accessible, and which will be off-limits? Will apps be able to access your media library? Your contacts list? Will there be a user-accessible (and user-manageable) filesystem? How will multitasking be handled? Will Apple allow certain apps to have greater access to iPhone features than others, or will it give the user the ability to decide?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is this: Will Apple certify or allow to be certified any app that passes its requirements, even if the app competes with Apple or AT&T’s offerings? If someone builds an alternative media player, will Apple certify it? If someone creates a wireless music download/purchase application to compete with iTunes Wi-Fi, will Apple allow it to run? What about an app that allows iPhone to sync with something other than iTunes on the desktop? Or an app that implements VoIP over Wi-Fi? What about applications of, shall we say, “questionable legality?” SNES emulators, BitTorrent clients, DVD image viewers and so on?

Until these questions are answered, Steve’s announcement is exciting, but it holds no weight. If Apple requires a cumbersome agreement to release the SDK, demands royalty payments, arbitrarily denies certification based on vague or secret criteria and forces apps to run in an environment as highly sandboxed as Safari, then what have we really gained? Not that I think Apple will go that far, but who knows.

What I do know is this: if someone releases a media manager for iPhone that supports Windows Media, DivX and Matroska, and doesn’t require iTunes, I’ll be all over the iPhone like a cheap suit.

Apple Hot News