Oh, Just One More Thing...

Lost and Found for iPhones

2009-06-28T12:18:00.000-04:00

You’re having “one of those days” in which you are rushing from one thing to another and barely have time to think. At some point in the day, you reach for your cell phone and it’s not there!

Panic ensues. Did you in your haste to get out the door in the morning simply leave the phone at home? Is it sitting in your car attached to the charger? Did you put it down at one of your stops and forget to take it? Did you drop it somewhere? Most important is it simply lost or has someone walked away with it?

Apple just created a solution as part of its recent iPhone 3.0 software update: “Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe.”

It does just what the name says: it will locate your iPhone and if necessary wipe all your private data from it. It also allows you to send a message to your iPhone that will cause the unit to sound an alert and flash the message (typically you would use it to provide information on how to return it to you).

The service works via Apple’s MobileMe Internet network and uses the iPhone’s built-in GPS capabilities. Aside from its practical values, it also has great show-off capabilities because the process is highly entertaining.

Users log into their MobileMe website, navigate to account settings (as an extra security measure, they will be required to supply their passwords a second time), and then click on the Find My iPhone button. That brings up a Google map in which a circle shows the phone’s location. Apple refines the GPS data so the experience is that one usually sees the circle centered somewhere in the general vicinity of where the phone might be; then the circle nudges itself into a more exact position.

When I tested this from my home, which is near the Charles River, the first data placed the phone on the other side of the river. Then the refined information slowly moves the location across the river, then moved through some adjacent property, and finally although not pinpointing my exact apartment does center on the building’s front door – which is close enough for me. In fact, any closer and I would start to worry about Apple taking the microtargeting concept to grave extremes.

Curiously Find My iPhone was little publicized in reviews of the 3.0 software update and latest generation of iPhones. Perhaps this is because the MobileMe service cost $99 per year and had major glitches when it was launched a year ago. But many of the new features that got more attention, such as cut-and-paste text capabilities or video cameras on the new iPhone 3GS aren’t especially innovative. BlackBerries and other smartphones have had those features for years.

Find my iPhone is an important innovation, one that will become even more important as people and companies fully appreciate how much sensitive data we actually carry around with us on today’s cell phones. I expect this to be a trend setter and the odds are high that other cellphone makers and cellular service provides aren’t even now as we speak kicking themselves for having failed to think of it first.

Expect MobileMe to be challenged quickly by Me, Too.

Tuning in on HD Radio

2009-06-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

Cellphones went digital. Broadcast TV is going digital. So where’s digital broadcast radio?

Well, it’s here. But you might not necessarily notice it.

Four AM and 20 FM channels in the Greater Boston area are offering HDRadio, which provides digital signals. But unless you have radio equipped to receive them, you wouldn’t know they are there.

HDRadio came to my attention only because a receiver was bundled with the navigation package in my car and because of a David Pogue column in The New York Times. (Disclosure: I mention Pogue mainly because I don’t want the Plagiarism Police to pounce on me for observing some of the same things that he did.)

For example, I, too, am bemused by the fact that the “HD” in HDRadio doesn’t actually stand for anything. Indeed, iBiquity Digital Corp. – the electronics company that invented it – takes the unusual step in its PR materials of pointing out that the designation does not mean, as one might guess, “high definition” or “hybrid digital.” It’s just a brand name.

The way it works is that digital information is embedded in a HDRadio station’s standard analog radio signal. The overlay can simply be a digital version of the normal programming or may contain up to two additional channels. A HD receiver will detect and decode the information and switch over to digital mode. This means that with a home or office radio there is a discernable delay before the digital broadcast kicks in. When the radio is in motion, as in a car, your broadcast will shift back and forth between modes depending on how good the signal is.

Polk Audio loaned me one of its iSonic ES2s, a combination HDRadio and iPod speaker system, for this test. Like all one-piece systems, its stereo separation is limited to its width. Polk engineers decided to work around that by mounting speakers front and rear to create a 360 soundfield that would sound OK no matter where in a room you listen. I give them partial credit – the 360 effect is there, but the sound lacks some depth. At its original list price of $500, the ES2 was frankly not a good value. Recently the price has gone down to $400, and you can find them for a more reasonable $350.

The combination of HDRadio and iPod docking adds another feature: iTunes “tagging.” Information about the song that’s being played is also embedded in the radio signal. When the song is one that’s in Apple’s iTunes Music Store and you have an iPod docked in the device, a button on the radio illuminates. Push the button and the song information gets stored on the iPod. When you next sync it to your computer, a playlist of potential purchases is created in iTunes. While mainly a marketing ploy, this is an interesting marriage of modern music technologies that consumers likely will see more of in the future.

Polk’s PR representative warned me that antennas and antenna placement (two different kinds of FM and one AM antennas are included) were going to be a key factor in getting the HD signal. Indoor radio reception, especially in urban areas, always is a hassle. This is compounded, though, with HDRadio because the digital stream is pretty much all or nothing. As it turned out, the supplied antennas did just fine, and I was able to pick up almost all the local HD stations.

Alas the technology’s pluses do not rise to “must have” magnitude. The HD signal is clear and static-free, which makes for a nice improvement on FM and a spectacular one on AM. But it’s still the same old programming. Even when the station uses the multi-channel option, it’s usually just more of the same.

I found only two of the 24 local HD stations doing something that was worth noting. WBZ 1030, the AM news and talk station, truly profits from HD mode. The newscasts are clear and crisp instead sounding like they are coming from a closet. PBS station WGBH-FM uses all three possible channels and does so to good effect, delivering, for example, classical on one, jazz on another, and news on the third. Unfortunately they are the exception rather than the rule.

So while HDRadio may be the wave of the future, that future isn’t here yet.

Photo Pizzaz

2009-05-26T13:25:00.001-04:00

Usually this column’s concept of software “find” is a nifty bit of shareware (try-before-you-buy programs from small vendors) that offer a helpful function for small dollars. Alien Skin Software’s products are nifty enough, but not small dollar items. But they are so nifty, they are worth a look if you are at all serious about digital photography.

In recent months, the North Carolina-based company has rolled out three new releases of key products that have impressed me a lot:

- Image Doctor 2
- Blow Up 2
- Snap Art 2

These all are “filter” software that plug into Adobe Photoshop and also Photoshop Elements, both for PCs and Macs. Unfortunately they have list prices of $200-$250 each because they are aimed at graphics professionals, which puts them out of reach for most consumers. An Internet search for better deals will help you save some. But I don’t want anyone to think that this is an inexpensive undertaking.

Nevertheless, what the programs do is so helpful – in pretty much the order of priority shown above – that consumers might want to consider them.

Image Doctor (which I have seen priced a low as $125) is an invaluable retouching tool, which has a number of components that let you retouch old, scratchy photos (really, any physical print you have digitized) and cover-up blemishes and defects. Two functions I use the most are “JPEG Repair” and “Smart Fill.”

The former deals with the fact that to reduce file size, the JPEG format discards some picture information and as a result when you look at a highly compressed picture there will be visible defects in the form of visual “noise” – pixels that are the wrong color or are grainy. The repair tool extrapolates the JPEG data and produces a smooth image.

Smart Fill, which I use all the time, lets you select an offending part of your picture and make it disappear by covering it over with the adjacent background. For example, I came back from a trip to Arizona with a pretty landscape of the signature red hills of Sedona – with power lines cutting across the sky. To make it something I wanted to print and put on my wall, I used Smart Fill to hide the power lines and show only clear blue sky.

Blow Up, as you would guess, lets you scale up a picture to a larger size. It is not as essential a tool as Image Doctor, but if you are fond of buying poster-sized prints from your photo vendor, Blow Up helps a lot. If you only want to print a section of the original photo, you can very easily wind up with a cropped photo that does not have sufficient resolution to sustain acceptable quality for oversized prints. Blow Up 2 lets you crop and increase the resolution to fix the problem.

Snap Art, I must confess, is not a “must;” it’s just fun. Basically it takes a photo and converts it to look like artwork: oil painting, watercolor, pencil sketch, even impressionist painting. The new version 2 adds a much wider range of presets than the original and also produces much more convincing results. Turn your family picture into a family portrait. Make the landscape photos from your last trip into landscape paintings.

Maybe not the most essential thing on Earth, but it will transform mundane snapshots into something with more visual impact.

Trouble in medialand

2009-05-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

A major media organization is struggling with dismal financial results, expecting new rounds of layoffs, and it’s future is highly uncertain:

Yahoo!

Oh, did you think I was referring to The Boston Globe? Well, them, too.

Obviously, the newspaper business is going through hard times, which I take personally. One of my prior employers, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver just folded. My sense of regret there being compounded by my view that its owner, E.W. Scripps, has left a trail of dead newspapers in its wake for years – starting long before the Internet ever became a threat to traditional media.

The fact of the matter is that it is tough to make a buck selling content. Intellectual property is ephemeral and as a result companies tend to focus on some kind of tangible deliverable as their “product.” So it is the physical newspaper that newspaper companies sell rather than the words on the paper. Along comes the Internet and suddenly customers can get the words without buying the paper. Similarly, Yahoo! peddled its visible web presence rather than its mix of search results, portal (home page) content, and advertising. Along came Google, which blended those components more effectively and kept adding new products into the mix, and Yahoo! became an also-ran.

Different products. Same result.

We are so accustomed these days to think about how technology drives social and economic changes that we forget that the reverse is even more important: social and economic changes create a niche that new products and services will fill.

To stick with newspapers, my career dates back to 1969 when I started an evening shift general assignment reporter with The Patriot Ledger. While the Internet has been one factor in what has happened to the Ledger since then, it isn’t the only factor or even necessarily the most important one.

In 1969, the Quincy shipyards were still open (albeit troubled) and Massachusetts was still a manufacturing center. There were local department stores and local food stores. Auto dealers had one or two stores, not mammoth chains. The Ledger was an evening newspaper the delivery of which was based on the traditional sequence of delivery boys and girls getting out of school just in time to get the papers to the homes of workers, from the shipyards and elsewhere, who were coming off the day shift. Local merchants were the core of the paper’s advertising base. The story was much the same for The Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence and for thousands of other newspapers.

Then the world changed faster than the papers could keep up.

The traditional manufacturing industries went into decline while local businesses were bought up or failed. An increasingly white-collar audience preferred morning delivery to evening. Suburban papers had to fight more intensely with metropolitan papers for ad dollars. People’s lifestyles became fast-paced and they found it hard to make time for such things as long newspaper articles.

Technology for a time was actually the newspaper business’s friend as computerization eliminated many skilled jobs and generally cut costs. It also enhanced the product. The Eagle-Tribune, for example, led the region in the introduction of color printing for the daily paper – doing so long before USA Today was even created.

Now technology is seen as the enemy: a way to get newspaper content without paying for it. But, in truth, all the Internet really has done is make obsolete a business model that dates back to the 19th century: a product printed on paper that is financed primarily by advertising, with some share paid by the subscribers. Nothing says that this mix has to be immutable. Perhaps subscribers should pay more. Or advertisers should. Maybe cost structures should be based on using electrons instead of dead trees. Or maybe even a formula based on the special characteristics of the new medium.

In my last column I wrote about the tradeoffs between privacy and using the Internet as a data repository. Walter Bender, the former head of the MIT Media Lab, has theorized that tradeoff could itself be the basis of a new business model for the news industry. People pay more for content if they want anonymity. Or they can pay less but share personal information so that advertisers can more profitably target their ads.

Therein may lie MSM’s (“mainstream media”) last, best hope. Google has pretty much locked up the invade-your-privacy-so-we-can-target-advertising-at-you market. “Pay to play” (subscription only) has been a failure. The tradeoff approach is one that has yet to be tested.

And it’s not as if the newspaper business has any better idea to try.

Upgrade or downshift?

2009-01-10T10:32:00.001-05:00

An economic crisis can put many things in an entirely new light – even routine software upgrades. Consider, for example, some recent releases from Adobe and FileMaker.

Adobe’s flagship product is its Creative Suite 4 graphics, web design, publishing, and multimedia packages, which cost several hundred dollars each. However, it also offers a consumer collection, Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 for Windows, which has a street price of about $120. (The two are available separately, but the bundle is the best deal.)

No, the Elements software doesn’t do everything, or even most of the things, that the CS4 packages do. Photoshop Elements is a picture cataloging and editing program aimed at non-professionals. Premiere fits the same niche for video camera users. Most consumers – myself included – find that Elements fits their needs precisely.

There have been people, though, with a high-end camera or videocam who believed they simply MUST have the full versions of Photoshop or Premiere and perhaps even a CS4 bundle that includes them. In happier times, that was an uncomplicated indulgence. Today, not so much. Not when discretionary incomes are tight and – equally important – when the Elements package has evolved into very cool software.

The early editions of Elements were essentially copies of Photoshop or Premiere with key features disabled. The 7 versions have adopted distinctive and more user-friendly interfaces than the pro versions and automate some key tasks. In truth, Elements let you do your tasks much more quickly than the pro varieties.

The same principle applies to Mac users with FileMaker’s Bento database program, now in Version 2. The update adds a couple of features I find essential: the ability to import Excel files (which most users employ for databases until they step up to a dedicated database program) and to include mail messages in your database.

More to the point, it is a database that doesn’t look or feel like a database. Its look is intentionally modeled after iTunes or Apple’s mail and calendar programs, which set industry standards for ease of use. To create a relational database in Bento (a powerful database management tool that ties one set of data to another) you don’t do any complex programming as you do with more elaborate database software. You simply drag some data from one Bento file to another and – poof! – you’ve got a relational database.

Bento does not have anything like the power of the company’s professional FileMaker Pro 9. But then again its street price is $45 compared to $261 for FileMaker Pro. There are times for business use when I simply have to have FileMaker’s capabilities. For personal use, however, Bento has all the database capability most of us need.

In these times, taking a step down in software power can be a step up in sensible computing.

In the pink

2008-11-23T22:36:00.000-05:00

Speakers, like a baseball glove, need to be broken in before you get the best performance from them.

Simon Côté of Audio Plus Services, the North American distributors for the Focal XS system I recently reviewed, gave me a shortcut for doing that: “pink” noise.

No, I hadn’t heard of that either. But this is the Internet age and Googling “pink noise” not only gives you an explanation -- basically pink noise is a jumble of all frequencies -- but also sample pink noise sound files. Open a file in your computer’s music player, set the player to loop endlessly, and then head out the door because the static sound is awful to listen to. Do that for up to 48 hours and your speaker system will be broken in. You would get the same effect after using the speakers normally over time; this just speeds up the process.

Côté says what happens is that the suspension parts in the speaker loosen up and let the components that vibrate to generate the sound do so more easily. The practical effect with the Focal system was that its initial brightness (excessive high frequencies) went away, proper frequency balance was achieved, and the XS delivered smoother, more natural sound.

So now you know: pink is the answer.

Stick THIS in your ear

2008-11-23T19:42:00.000-05:00

Sticking things in your ear used to be something you outgrew somewhere between kindergarten and the first grade. But then along came the iPod and its earbud headphones, and the universe of in-ear audio devices expanded.

Apple’s standard earbuds (which rest in the users’ earlobes) deliver good sound. Doing better requires an audiophile earplug-type design which you put in your ear canal. Developed originally for musicians, in-ear phones both deliver high fidelity sound and also shut out outside noise.

A lot of people like that design, but I hated it. The feeling of something stuck inside my ear was uncomfortable and kept me from wearing them for any length of time.

Shure, which long has been a leader in this market, has changed all that.

Its magnificent SE530 earphones (above) set a new benchmark for the earplug-style design. These have three drivers (the devices that makes the sound) for impressive fidelity across all frequencies. They are one of the few earphones I’ve every heard that matches up to conventional over-the-ear headphones in sound quality.

But the Shures add something more: They set a new standard for comfort. Through a combination of smart design (the tube that channels sound into your ear is kept small) and smart materials (new foam tips that slip into your ears easily and then fit themselves to the ear canal), the SE530 can be worn a long time with full comfort. I even have drifted off to sleep while wearing them.

This Fall, in fact, they were the solution to my neighbor-with-the-loud-annoying-laugh problem. Said neighbor was routinely out on her balcony committing noise pollution in late evening when I was trying to doze off. I put in the Shures, which blocked out the annoying laugh and provided some lovely bedtime music.

Some serious comparative shopping is in order here. Prices on headphones vary widely from vendor to vendor -- and even at the same vendor. Just in the course of researching this article, I have seen prices swing up and down by 30% or more.

The list price for the SE530 is $500, but street prices range from $450 to as little as $275. If that’s still too steep for your taste, take a look at the Shure SE310 (above) – list price is $250, with street prices $50-100 lower. This is Shure’s top single-driver earphone. It delivers excellent sound and matches up well with iPods. Still too pricey? Then go with Shure’s SE210 or SE110, with street prices in the $130-140 and $75 range respectively.

Added bonus: Shure makes a Music Phone Adapter (street price is about $35) with a microphone that lets you use your earphones with BlackBerries, iPhones, and other major music-enabled smartphones. It also provides excellent voice clarity on phone calls. Users can answer calls by tapping a button on the adapter, which also doubles as a play/pause control when listening to music. There are two different adapters, so make sure you get the one that works with your phone.

There are various all-in-one earphone/microphone designs out there for smartphones (Shure even makes one itself), but they do not offer the same sound quality or utility.

And now, for your listening pleasure…

2008-11-23T16:45:00.000-05:00

Getting high-quality computer speakers at a relatively affordable price is always a challenge. Until now.

(I should note that I started the product testing for this piece before the bottom dropped out of the economy. So these items are markedly less “affordable” than they were earlier this year.)

There are an endless number of pretty good speakers for $100 or less. Then there are a few $400 systems from such companies as Bose that are somewhat disappointing – better than mainstream systems but not so much better that the extra expense seems worthwhile.

The past year, however, has seen the arrival of two alternatives to meet the needs of discerning listeners without being totally outrageous.

France’s Focal-JMLab has introduced the Focal XS system (above - $600), a sleek silver and black three-piece system (two satellite speakers and a subwoofer) that matches the styling of Apple’s current generation iMac computers and – just in case you didn’t get the idea – includes an iPod dock in the right-hand speaker. It has its own onboard audio circuitry, bypassing the noise of PC or Mac circuit boards, and plugs into your computer via USB.

California-based NuForce Inc. has produced its Icon component system, also USB-based. This one is a la carte – the Icon amplifier (below, right) is $250. You can use it with small bookshelf speakers of your own or with NuForce’s purpose-built S1 speakers (below, left -- $250 for the pair). That puts its price below Focal’s. But it does not have a subwoofer – and in my testing, the sound lacked depth without one. That adds about $100-$150, and NuForce also recommends an upgraded power supply ($45), bringing the total price up to nearly $700.

On the esthetics side, the edge goes to Focal XS, which is sleek and compact and complements most modern PCs and Macs. NuForce S1s have uncovered speaker cones (some will find that a high-tech look, some will see it as garish) and the speakers are large bookshelf-style designs that take up a lot of desktop real estate.

Sonically – which, after all, is the object of the exercise – it is an even battle. What you are paying for here is clear, accurate sound that reproduces a wide range of frequencies and does so at all volume levels.

Both systems deliver. Strings sound like strings. The twang of electric guitars and the punch of the drums are lifelike. You can hear vocalists who actually enunciate sound out their syllables. (A favorite test: in Bob Seger’s anthem “Like a Rock,” can you hear the emphasis he puts on the “k” in “rock”?) At low volumes, the clarity makes for a pleasing listening experience, and you also can crank up the volume to room-filling levels without distortion.

In reviewing audio components, I rely a lot on jazz recordings from Mapleshade and classical from Telarc -- both labels are known for their almost obsessive high fidelity engineering. These recordings have a you-are-in-the-room quality that is an acid test for good sound, and both speaker systems passed.

Which one sounded better depended entirely on the particular recording I was playing, in many cases on the specific track. If pressed, I would give the Focal XS a slight edge in clarity while NuForce had better sound staging (spatial placement of the music – you hear sounds coming from left, right, center, not some muddled mix).

As for added features, as noted the Focal XS has the iPod dock that allows you to sync with your computer as well as play from the iPod. However, it only has an iPod dock connector; there’s no auxiliary jack for other sources. It lacks a headphone jack, so users cannot benefit from the USB sound system when they want to listen privately. The Icon, in contrast, bristles with connection options: there’s a headphone jacks, plus in addition to the USB link to a computer, it will accept RCA inputs (to connect a stereo component) as well as an auxiliary jack (for music players). A large knob on the front lets you choose the input source.

All-in-all, the Focal XS is probably the better choice to set up next to your computer while the Icon is what you want if you need a multipurpose audio system.

Bear in mind that speakers of this caliber are a total waste of money if you do not have high-caliber audio sources to play. I converted a big batch of my CD collection to Apple’s “Lossless” format using iTunes. Microsoft also has a lossless format, and there is the free FLAC lossless format. All of these cut file size down to roughly 50% of a CD but preserve all audio information so the sound is identical to the CD. So a XS or Icon can show off a full frequency range. If you are using MP3 or like formats that compress files by discarding some data, however, that lost data can negate the speakers’ higher fidelity.

Is this the new look of "print"?

2008-10-07T17:59:00.000-04:00

The possible future of print turns out to be something that could have been the future of the print media.

Last holiday season, Amazon.com unveiled its “Kindle” reader – a trade paperback-sized electronic reader. Since then sales of the device and of content for it are, according to numerous published reports, growing at a solid pace. Amazon does not disclose sales figures, and a spokeswoman responding to my inquiries probably got a little tired of repeating that. However, she did provide an interesting factoid: “Of the 135,000 books available on Amazon.com as a physical book and on Kindle, Kindle books already account for over 12 percent of units sold.”

Therein no doubt lies the commercial success of Kindle where Sony and others have failed. Amazon brings enormous content resources to the reader – books, newspapers, magazines, specialty publications – without which Kindle would just be an expensive paperweight. The unit comes with a built-in high-speed wireless service (using Sprint’s network) for downloading content directly to the device. There’s also a USB cable for getting content from a computer.

The $360 device will not win any design or beauty contests. It’s a slab of white plastic with a mini-keyboard at the bottom, and big tabs on either side of the screen for changing pages, and a scroll wheel for working the unit’s control menus. It was not the most user-friendly layout of all time. The menus are clunky to use, and there is an extra “next page” button to the left of the screen (the main one is on the right) that I inevitably hit when I actually wanted the “previous page” button above it. It’s very much a “1.0” product. (In fact, gadgetry web sites have been showing pictures recently of a purported second generation Kindle that’s a little sleeker looking.)

Limitations aside, I tested one for a couple of weeks and found it to be a very capable book substitute. The experience was little different from reading a paper version, with the added advantage of being able to blow up the text size when I didn’t feel like using my reading glasses. Content delivery by the wireless service was fairly reliable. (Like anything cellular, there always are dead spots somewhere.)

Kindle was less successful for newspapers. The 6-inch (diagonal) screen seemed cramped for that use, navigating through sections was awkward, and the newspapers’ Kindle versions were short of graphics. Magazines fell somewhere in between – heavy text publications came closer to matching their print versions that such periodicals as newsmagazines that have more photos and graphics in print.

Still, Kindle was a very attractive alternative to lugging a stack of books around on a trip or finding a place on your bookshelf to store books after you’ve finished reading them. The unit has a slot for postage stamp-sized SD cards, which can be your “bookshelf.” Another enticing feature is that you can sample the first chapter of books or get a short subscription to periodicals so you can try before you buy. It isn’t hard to imagine that a couple of evolutions from now, this kind of device is the way you read “print” publications.

At the heart of a Kindle is a screen made by Cambridge-based E-Ink Corporation. It uses encapsulated pigment particles to form text and images. Unlike conventional computer displays such as LCDs, E-Ink’s “Electronic Paper Display” consumes much less energy and, equally important, remains highly visible in bright light.

Equally as interesting as the technology, though, is E-Ink’s back-story. In the ’90s, a consortium of major news organizations partnered with MIT’s Media Lab to create the “News in the Future” program intended to help publishers and broadcasters adapt to the challenges of the then-nascent Internet. In retrospect, the project developed a lot of technologies that did help commercialize providing content on the Web. Unfortunately for the news business, it was companies such as Google and Amazon that commercialized them.

E-Ink came out of MIT Media Lab research, and some of its founders were researchers and officials at the lab. Of the many media partners who might have wanted a piece of this action, the only one that is currently an E-Ink investor is the Hearst Corporation, whose properties include WCVB, Channel 5 in Boston.

One issue the News in the Future project grappled with was finding some kind of electronic substitute for paper.

For newspapers at least, one of the considerations was whether it made any sense in the electronic age to undertake the costly capital expense of building new presses or replacing existing ones. Lab experts calculated that it could well be less expensive for a paper to instead supply its readers with some electronic device instead.

I attended a few meetings of the consortium on behalf of my then-employer the Times-Mirror Company (now part of the Tribune Corp.) and saw researcher struggle not only with the technological issues but also with resistance from its media industry sponsors to major departures from their business models.

That Amazon is the company profiting from E-Ink and Media Lab wizardry while my former newspaper company is defunct speaks volumes to me about the state of the news business today.

Being played for a sucker

2007-09-07T17:56:00.000-04:00

I have mixed thoughts about the flap over the sudden $200 price cut for the iPhone. It is yet another case of Apple's arrogant streak right up there with its heel-dragging in responding to iPod battery life problems.

However, I would also say to those early adopters who rushed right out to buy an iPhone the very second it hit the market: serves you right. Understand here that I usually am in the early adopter crowd. But I do so knowing that the product I am buying likely will be cheaper and improved very shortly after I have bought it. Admittedly a $200 price drop only two months after a product's introduction is a bit in-your-face even for consumer electronics or cell phones. But it's not that far off the norm.

In high tech as in all commerce: caveat emptor.

IPhone Owners Crying Foul Over Price Cut - New York Times

Getting Creative After a Merger

2007-07-12T22:21:00.000-04:00

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, software mergers are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. When Adobe Systems swallowed up its graphics and multimedia software competitor Macromedia, there were considerable concerns about what would happen. With the massive rollout of Adobe Creative Suite CS3, the reassuring answer is that the two product lineups actually have resulted in the much claimed, but rarely attained, objective of “synergy.”

Note upfront: CS3 is a product aimed primarily at professionals. It comes in a multiple versions organized around the needs of creative shops and has pricetags north of $1,000 in full versions. There are lower cost alternatives, some of which are from Adobe and some even are in the CS3 arsenal (more on that later).

Macromedia was strong in web-oriented products: its Flash animation/programming tools and the Dreamweaver web-site creation and design application. Adobe has dropped its equivalent applications, while retaining its own industry-leading software – Photoshop and Acrobat, of course, plus Illustrator (graphics design), InDesign (print layout), Premiere (video editing), and others.

After the merger, Adobe quietly upgraded its existing creative suites to include the Macromedia package, but CS3 moves to merge them all into a unified bundle. The suites include special software (VersionCue, Bridge) to expedite sharing design elements throughout a project. The application interfaces are now more consistent – but only to a point. The company very clearly took care to make sure that the professionals, who are the core customer base, didn’t face any steep learning curves.

Consumer sales likely will be limited to hardcore photo, movie, or web enthusiasts, or to small businesses needing specific components of the package. If you are one of them, I recommend you do extensive shopping research on the Internet to work your way thought the dizzying array of versions and upgrade options to ensure you find the best price. As a general rule, if you need three or more (and sometimes as few as two) of a suite’s component applications, you will do better on price with the suite.

This look at CS3 products, therefore, is organized in rough order of consumer and small business interest:

•        Acrobat 8 Professional: Released on its own at the end of last year, it is part of about half the CS3 bundles. Acrobat Pro carries an intimidating $400+ pricetag, but is very much a must-have for businesses and free-lancers who need to distribute documents that retain their formatting and design. An impressive new feature in this version is its ability to printed or PDF forms into electronic versions that can be filled out on your computer with the results fed into a database.

•        Contribute CS3: This web-content editor gets a modest update. It remains one of the easiest tools for revising pages on an existing site.

•        Dreamweaver CS3 is now the definitive tool for building web sites. I don’t find it especially easy to use, but webmasters love it.

•        Photoshop CS3: what can you say when the product’s name has entered the vocabulary as a verb? More complicated than most users need, it’s the serious photographers’ darkroom in the digital age.

For those of us, however, don’t quite have pockets deep enough for CS3. But there are a variety of alternative choices. A long list of both free and low-priced Acrobat creation and editing tools, for example, are just a Web search away. I previously recommended RapidWeaver (Macintosh) and Site Studio (Windows) for easy web creation. And Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements continues to be more than adequate to meet the graphic needs of most consumers. For creating print materials, Microsoft Publisher pretty much owns the Windows market while Mac users can chose such options as BeLight Software’s Printfolio bundle, which offers a big range of features (including mass mailing and CD/DVD label tools) for a small price ($85).

Also, consumers should know that most of the third party add-on enhancements for Photoshop also work with Photoshop Elements. These can be pricy, but in many cases they are a better investment than upgrading to Photoshop CS3 might be.

Alien Skin has at least three that consumers can benefit from: Image Doctor lets you easily eliminate the speckles (called “artifacts”) caused by JPEG compression, remove photo imperfections – and above all, retouch out unwanted picture elements (e.g., making power lines disappear from that otherwise scenic landscape shot you took or getting rid of a trash barrel in a lovely vista.) Its new Blow Up package lets you scale up a snapshot to large print or even poster size. The third, Snap Art, isn’t a must. But I am a sucker for tools that let you take photos and turn them into pseudo-paintings, so I think this tool is a lot of fun.

Where’s the Other Half of Your Music File? - New York Times

2007-05-31T11:32:00.000-04:00

Where’s the Other Half of Your Music File? - New York Times

The New York Times had good article explaining bitrates, which is worth reading.

I largely agree with the findings. It has been long established that Apple's AAC format and Microsoft's WMA both give better sound quality than MP3. While MP3 remains the most interchangeable format, it is definitely showing its age. I am not the most "musical" person on earth, but I can hear the difference.

Second, to my ears AAC its highest quality settings (256 or 320 kbps) is nearly indistinguishable from CDs -- in the typical personal listening environment. You can hear a difference. But it's not one that leaps out at you, and it's magnitude will vary depending on how high end your audio equipment is.

Finally, while compressed formats still are needed for efficient use of portable music players, these days the cost of adding addition storage to a computer is cheap enough that lossless formats are a practical choice for home use. I expect multi-disk CD changers to go the way of eight-track tapes, replaced by lossless formats on hard drives.

Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia - New York Times

2007-05-29T12:09:00.000-04:00

Apparently the scare stories aren't overblown after all...

Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia - New York Times

Minimalist Schlepping

2007-05-20T13:52:00.000-04:00

Then again, you can simply lighten your load by carrying less.

WaterField Bags’ (sfbags.com) Vertigo takes the minimalist approach. It will hold just your notebook and a couple of accessories. As the interior picture on the right below shows, the bag has a couple of pockets for a few small items. But mainly it will accommodate your laptop inside one of WaterField’s protective sleeves and one of the company’s pouches for power chargers and like accessories.

(Best way to buy is to get the bag, sleeve, and pouch as a bundle, which WaterField calls a “mambo combo.”)

You can get in your iPod and maybe a couple of pens. But don’t expect to be able to take files and books along. WaterField has other bags for that purpose. You also really don’t want to use this for larger notebooks. It works best with the kind of thin laptop pioneered by Apple and Sony and now made by practically everyone.

Vertigo holds the laptop vertically (doh!), which gives it an even smaller profile. By holding its width to the narrow side of your laptop, it minimizes the number of “oops, sorry about that” moments you have when the usual horizontal bag bumps into a bystander.

With this bag, less is more.

X marks the new format

2007-03-21T12:43:00.000-04:00

DOCX. XLSX. PPTX. XPS. Microsoft Office 2007 has ended the freeze on file formats it has maintain since Office 97 and introduced these new XML-based ones. The first three are the new file extensions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively. XPS is a new Microsoft attempt to compete with Adobe Acrobat PDF (the result, according to industry gossip, of a dispute between the two companies over licensing terms for PDF in Microsoft programs.

You and I haven’t been demanding XML-based file formats, but the IT community has. XML is a formatting language that can be used interchangeably for documents and web pages. Plus it also is the format for the RSS news feeds that are spreading like wildfires. Putting information in XML allows for wide distribution options. Plus the new Microsoft file formats are zip-compressed, substantially reducing their size.

The open source world already is on board with XML via the OpenDoc file format used in OpenOffice. But Microsoft, as it always does, wanted its own standard, which it calls Open XML. I have little or no interest in getting into the tedious debate raging between supporters of the two standards.

From a practical, real world perspective the key issue is this: virtually everyone uses some flavor of Microsoft Office or uses the existing Office file formats – and no version of Office except 2007 can read the new format natively. Furthermore, the new formats are turned on by default in Office 2007, which means that sooner or later someone with a new PC will send you one of the X Files.

Microsoft has released a conversion package ( HYPERLINK "http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en) that will allow users of older version of Office to hand the new files. You probably ought to install it now. Mac users, though, will have to wait a couple of months because converters for OfficeMac won’t be released until March or April.

As for conversion between Microsoft Office and OpenDoc, Microsoft has started an open source (!) project – HYPERLINK "http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter" http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter – that so far has yielded only a converter for Word 2007. However, this is a dramatic reversal for Redmond, which previously vowed it would never support OpenDoc.

XPS, though, I wouldn’t worry about much yet. Only a PC with both Windows Vista and Office 2007 (and then only if the Office 2007 user installs an add-on) will be fully capable of creating or viewing such documents. The software to work with other versions is not yet released.

HTML is the winner

2007-03-21T11:52:00.001-04:00

An online poll of TNPC Newsletter readers found that by a 4-1 margin you wanted to receive the newsletter in HTML format instead of plain text. Verily, times have changed.

One hates to give away the fact that one is an old fogie, but back in the day when the network of computing enthusiasts who ultimately set this publication in motion were first getting acquainted, we relied on the old CompuServe network. And I do mean the old CompuServe network: not just dialup, not just 2400 baud, but pay-per-minute of use.

From that came the First Commandment of Netiquette: Thou Shalt Not Waste Bandwidth. Among the corollary principles was that knowledgeable users sent email as plain text. To resort to HTML or rich text formatting would make one a Philistine – or even worse, an AOL user.

Of course, once AOL's all-you-can eat pricing model caught on and connection speeds escalated, there was little reason to maintain the plain text standard. You weren't costing anyone either time or money, and you were making your messages more readable. With the widespread adoption of broadband, in fact, plain text became frankly a sign of Babbittry.

Technology is a funny thing, though. Of late there have been increasing security concerns with respect to rogue code hidden behind HTML messages. Plus so many people now are using portable messaging devices such as BlackBerries, Treos, and the like, which do not display HTML messages well. The upshot: plain text is making a comeback.

Requiem for a floppy

2007-03-21T11:52:00.000-04:00

A major computing milestone passed by not too long ago and no one noted it: the effective end of the floppy disk.

As computer devices go, the 1.44 MB, 3.5”, double-sided floppy was a veritable Methuselah. It came into widespread use in around 1990 (when IBM adopted it for its latest PCs; Apple much earlier had adopted a 720 KB, one-sided variety for the Macintosh), and it remained an industry standard for roughly 15 years.

Curiously, the 3.5” floppy kept the “floppy” nomenclature even though it encased its magnetic media in a hard plastic case. The old 5.25” disks used in the original IBM PCs actually were floppy.

In any case, the disks were all-in-all a pretty handy medium. A PC could be booted from one. It could hold a fairly large number of word processing documents and spreadsheets. Long before users set up home networks, file transfer via “sneaker net” – copying from one PC to floppy and then copying from the floppy to another PC – was a well-established practice.

Ultimately, of course, multimedia and escalating file sizes did the floppy in. CD drives and flash memory sticks with the capacity of scores of floppies now are the favored medium for physically transferring files. At some point – I would guess it was some time in the last two or three years – the number of computers sold without floppies exceeded the number sold with them, and that effectively marked the end of the floppy as a standard.

Aside from marking the end of an era, the end of the floppy also marks a particular computing problem: what to do with the data on your old floppies. Remember, once your last PC with a floppy drive is gone, those disks are effectively unreadable. So now is the time to take your floppies and burn them on a CD.

Which in itself is a lesson: One CD will take the place of about 485 floppies.

All for nothing

2007-03-21T11:51:00.000-04:00

TNPC Newsletter likes to point its readers in the direction of free software, so here is a place well worth visiting: SoftwareFor.org.

Their gimmick is “Software for Staving Students” – a bundle of free apps that comes in both Windows and Mac flavors. It can be obtained as a normal download, but you will get it much faster if you use the Bittorrent peer-to-peer network. (Plus it gives you a rare opportunity to download something from Bittorrent legally.)

You'll find a lot of the standbys often mentioned in TNPC: OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, and the like. But it also includes graphics, sound, and video software, security tools, system utilities, and even some games.

Included is my favorite multimedia player: VLC. An open-source program, it has proven itself capable of being able to play almost anything. Media streams or files that flummox most players will run in VLC.

Even if you aren't a starving student, the bundle could be well worth your while. Because of activation and other anti-piracy features in commercial software today, moving your apps to a new PC is no longer just a matter of reaching for the installation disks. You need to deactivate the software on the old PC first, leaving it useless. A free applications bundle will let you restore functionality to your old PC.

The striking thing about the Starving Students bundle is that the retail equivalents would set you back a sum well into the four-figure range. It demonstrates that the open source and freeware movements have generated some interesting alternatives to commercial software. To be sure, the free programs aren't as slick as their commercial counterparts. But you can't knock the price.

More Than Peripheral Interest

2006-08-26T16:18:00.000-04:00

One measure of Apple's apparent resurgence is that high-volume peripheral makers have decided that the market is big enough to warrant Mac-specific desktop sets.

Admittedly, it's not that much of a step. Most Windows keyboards and mice long have been Mac compatible. It always has been a source of amusement that Microsoft hardware did a better job of accessing Mac features than Apple's own products did. Cupertino stubbornly insisted until last year on offering only single-button mice even though the Mac OS long has had right-click options (accessible as an option key/mouse click on single button mice).

Still, keyboards and mice are not Apple's strongest suit. falling short in both usability and ergonomics. Apple's venture into multi-button mice, the Mighty Mouse and it new cordless version, rates as just so-so. Options are nice, especially when they are available from the market-leaders, Logitech and Microsoft.

Logitech was first to unveil a new Mac offering, with last year's roll out of its Cordless Desktop S 530 Laser for Mac (below). It's basically the company's S 510 Windows desktop redone in Mac white and silver, but with Mac-specific keys and a matching-color version of Logitech's MX 610 laser mouse. The keyboard uses Logitech's "zero-degree tilt" approach to ergonomics -- which is a fancy way of saying that the keyboard is very flat (the bottom row of keys is only slightly lower than the top) so you can keep your hand and fingers relatively straight. The mouse is a right-handed item that molds to the hand. A nice touch is that the wireless transmitter is a stick that can go right in the USB port of a desktop or laptop. An extension cord and stand for the transmitter is provided if you need to fiddle with placement.

One thing that makes the Logitech product a big deal is that the company for a time had discontinued its support for the Mac and stop updating its Mac drivers. But now the company is fully back into the Apple peripherals market.

Microsoft followed suit this year with its first Mac-specific product -- its Wireless Laser Desktop for Mac (below). This one is a straight out copy of the Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 for Windows with the addition of Mac-specific keys and new Mac drivers. There was an amusing little flap over the fact that Apple did not grant Microsoft rights to use the Apple logo on the keyboard's "command" or "Apple" key -- where the "Alt" key is on Windows boards. (Logitech's desktop has it.)

As with the Logitech bundle, the mouse is a right-handed multi-button laser unit. The keyboard is Microsoft's "comfort" design. It's flatter and less curved than its full-tilt ergonomic designs (such as the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000) and seems to be intended for those who find the ergonomic keyboard's curved and shaped approach too radical. Color scheme for the desktop set is silver and a translucent white. It comes with the basic oval Microsoft wireless transmitter in matching color.

One of the most important aspects of the Microsoft set is the updated drivers, which now allow users to custom map virtually all the keys and buttons on the mouse and keyboard.

Current street prices are under $70 for the the Logitech and around $80 for Microsoft.

Of course, true Mac support would mean making the desktop sets Bluetooth compatible to take advantage of the Apple's built-in support for that wireless technology and eliminate the need for giving up a USB port to a transmitter. A Logitech spokesperson acknowledged that cost considerations ruled out Bluetooth. Neither Microsoft's nor Logitech's Bluetooth desktop sets for Windows will work with a Mac.

The best you can do in the way of a Bluetooth input device is a mouse from Kensington -- the full-sized PilotMouse (below top) for desktops and the PilotMouse Mini for notebooks (below bottom).

Both are ambidextrous designs, which I favor and both have a rubberized coating on the grip areas to make them easy to maneuver. Downsides are that they use the cliche blue color scheme peripheral makers seem to love for Bluetooth input devices and neither is laser or high-resolution. That may be an issue for gamers, but I had no problem using them. I recommend them, especially to Apple notebook users.

Acessorize Your Treo

2006-08-20T14:27:00.000-04:00

Three things can help enhance your Treo 700p experience: an adapter plug, a leather case, and some software.

First off, although Treos come with music player software and use SD flash memory cards to allow flexible storage of music files, the headphone jack is inexplicably a 2.5 mm microplug rather than the standard 3.5 mm minijack used on virtually all player headphones. Palm will sell you an adapter for 10 bucks to let you use regular headphones.

Nuts to them.

If there was some technical reason requiring the odd-sized jack, on an item with a list price of $500 ($400 with a cell phone contract), they could bloody well have included the adapter as a standard feature. Head off to Radio Shack or any other electronics parts store where the adapter will cost you only three or four bucks.

On the other hand, given the lofty price, you can pretty much justify a high-end leather case. I have two suggestion: Argentina's Vaja and California-based Sena.

Vaja has the ultimate item: its i-Volution T7, priced at $94 (and higher if you add options). This series of cases (which also includes ones for the iPod) is a protective plastic shell wrapped in fine leather -- so you get both the protection of a hard case and the elegance of a leather one.

Vaja also makes a more lower priced case all-leather Treo in its Classic line (starting at $64). Sena makes a $40 clone of this called the LeatherSkin. It lacks some of the Vaja's touches (for example a simple open hole over the speaker instead of Vaja's mesh covering), but the price is attractive and the quality is good.

There are downsides to these designs, though. Unlike the i-Volution, they offer minimal protection from the dropsies and require a strip of leather below the screen to hold their shape, which interferes with the Treo's navigation wheel. Further, one annoying design feature of the Treo 700 is that the reset button is inside the battery compartment, which means to do a reset you have to take the Treo out of a case, open up the battery cover, then reverse the process -- and these tight skins can make that a chore.

You may do better, then, to leave your Treo "naked" and keep it in a horizontal or vertical pouch in standard cellphone style. Here Sena has the edge with pouches of both designs ($40 for the horizontal; $50 for vertical). And if you are totally indecisive, there's a $60 combo package of a horizontal pouch and a matching LeatherSkin.

Last item on the accessory list is for Mac users. Palm's software for syncing data between your computer and handheld (this applies to all Palms, not just the Treo) is fairly decent for Windows, especially if you use Microsoft Outlook to keep your contacts, calendars, and tasks. However, the Mac version is pretty lame.

A better choice is Mark/Space's Missing Sync software ($40 download; $50 on CD). It provides integration with iTunes and iPhoto to let you put music and pictures on your handheld -- plus it lets you get around Palm's limitations on multiple addresses and multiple emails for your contacts.

Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue - New York Times

2006-05-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

A particularly interesting passage is:

At first glance, some of the company's moves seem, in stark financial terms, to be costly indulgences. Almost half of the store staff is there not to sell but to provide free help on how to use Macintosh computers, iPods, software and third-party accessories like digital cameras. Nearly all of the computers have Internet access, and the stores are crowded with people checking their e-mail, browsing the Web or listening to music on the iPods."

In my view this speaks to one of the key reasons why Apple is reasserting itself with individual users: better customer service. You can go to an Apple store and talk to an actual person about problems with your computer. Dell used to own the support market. Arch rival Compaq (now part of HP) traditionally had more sophisticated technology, but you could count on Dell support. Then Dell started cutting back and outsourcing support, leaving consumers and small businesses to fend for themselves.

Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue - New York Times

Succumbing to Apple's Allure

2006-05-09T17:17:00.000-04:00

One of the trade secrets for writing a newspaper column is: all life experiences are fodder for potential topics. (This is the very basis of blogging, of course.) Thus: how to switch to a Mac.

My current dabbling with Apple started largely to research a column when MacWorld briefly returned to Boston and was the opening act at the new Convention Center in South Boston. It progressed beyond dabbling when over time I found Macs really were less annoying to use than Windows PC. Finally, when in the course of my day job, I prepared a presentation on the Mac and realized it handled that job much better I was sold. And so this spring an iMac (the one-piece desktop where the circuitry in hidden in the monitor) became my primary computer.

Judging by Apple’s quarterly financial reports, I am not the only one making the move. Apple’s market share has been growing for more than a year (although bear in mind that with a starting point around 5 percent, we aren’t exactly talking world dominance here). One sign that the platform is gaining ground: leading peripheral manufacturers are developing Mac products again. Logitech, which had dropped out of the Mac market, recently introduced a new Mac keyboard and mouse set, and Microsoft, whose Windows keyboards and mice have always been Mac compatible, now has its first set customized for the Mac on the way.

Making the change wasn’t very hard. Apple has a series of “Mac 101” lessons on its web site to guide you through it (http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/) and (http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/). I will focus here on some of the things you don’t read in the standard how-tos.

First of all, you need to get your data from your PC onto your Mac. Apple is largely correct that this a piece of cake. Most PC files including document, spreadsheet, and multimedia just simply need to be moved from one machine to the other via a network or removable media such as CDs. But there is one huge exception: if you use Microsoft Outlook, all its mail, contacts, calendar items, and so on cannot be directly transferred to a Mac, leaving you bereft of crucial information.

Fortunately, you can remedy that for 10 bucks with O2M (formerly “Outlook2Mac”) from Little Machines. Install it on your PC and it will convert your Outlook data into files that can be imported into the Mail, iCal, and Address Book applications that come with Mac and also with Microsoft Entourage, the Mac counterpart of Outlook. If you are an Outlook power-user who employs its more sophisticated features such as categories, groups, and custom fields, you may want to invest an additional $20 in Paul Berkowitz’s Export-Import Entourage AppleScript (a Mac programming tool) package, which will capture pretty much everything.

The second point on switching to a Mac is that you are going to need new software. Windows programs won’t run on a Mac. (Well, that’s no longer entirely true, but let me leave this to the blog.) The good news is that most of your familiar programs from Windows exist on the Mac – or the Mac has better alternatives. The bad news is that there are no “trade-in” deals; you will be buying new software. The cost of replacing your software may be the biggest practical obstacle to making a move from Windows to a Mac.

Apple’s iLife suite, included on Macs, provides the iTunes music software, plus video, photo, DVD, and web tools that cover most of your multimedia needs. For the writing and numbers crunching tools provided by Microsoft Office in Windows, your Mac option is – doh! – Microsoft Office, which on the Mac consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the aforementioned Entourage.

Apple’s iWork suite is not a true alternative because includes only Pages (a word processor) and Keynote (presentations), but no spreadsheet. However, iWork is worth taking a look at (trial versions are included on Macs) because, unlike Office, the templates were created by designers who actually have good taste. Apple needs to either take the next step of creating a full office applications suite or just turn this bundle into a set of templates for Microsoft Office.

Microsoft’s Access database is not available for the Mac, but then, Access is impenetrable to users without an IT department to support them. The “real people” alternative is FileMaker Pro, which is cross platform. The new iWeb component of iLife is workable substitute for FrontPage, or you can go with the higher end solutions from Adobe: Contribute and Dreamweaver, also cross-platform.

The OmniGraffle business drawing program from the OmniGroup nicely fills in for Microsoft Visio while OmniOutliner is the counterpart of Microsoft’s OneNote program, and both are less expensive. In the later category, though, I personally prefer Mariner Sofware’s MacJournal – OmniOutliner works best if you prefer to keep your notes in a hierarchical outline form; MacJournal is more free-form and also supports blogging and podcasting.

Among other key commercial software products: Toast is Roxio’s Mac version of its DVD/CD burning software. Adobe’s Photoshop Elements comes in a Mac version that integrates with iLife. Allume Systems’ Stuffit, another cross-platform product, is the leading Mac archiving and compression program. Fetch is a very nifty Mac-specific FTP program (for uploading and downloading to web sites, among other things).

There also is a rich variety of shareware and freeware programs for the Mac, which will greatly ease the financial drain of switching. For example, Stunt Software’s On the Job handles the always-critical job timing and billing function for a budget-friendly $25. HairerSoft’s $30 Amadeus II is a great value for audio editing with features that match software costing three times as much. WireTap Pro from Ambrosia Software will capture audio from any source that plays on your Mac and is a valuable tool for recording from a Mac’s built-in microphone. Utilities for the iPod are a huge segment in themselves; the latest and greatest is PodUtil, which is available for Mac and Windows and – a nice touch – can be installed on your iPod itself to allow you to access your music on any computer.

There is even rich fodder for geeks like me. Naratt Software, for instance, offers Lauch Items X and Move Items X, which cures one of the few deficiencies of the Mac interface compared to Windows: a lack of file manipulation options when you right-click on a file. Naratt also makes Iconizer Pro and Folder Icon X, simple little tools for creating custom icons for programs and folders on your Mac.

Lastly, AppleScript offers users a vast array of ways to add custom functions to your applications. Good sources to check: MacScripter and, for iPod tools, Doug’s Scripts. Plus, check in with Apple’s own software catalog.

There may not be as much software for Macs as for Windows PCs, but not so you would notice. Your biggest challenge in making a switch is more likely to be limiting your software purchases to suit your budget.

WinMac: Who Wins? Who Cares?

2006-04-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

Suppose a computer company announced that it was making available a beta release of a dual-booting tool. Your reaction would be: (a) Oh wow! (b) It will change the face of computing! Or (c) Huh?

It can be safely guessed that somewhere between 95 and 99 of all computer users would go with “Huh?”

Yet when Apple announced on April 5 that it was releasing a beta of “Boot Camp,” a tool to allow users of Macs with Intel processors, it made worldwide headlines everywhere from The New York Times (on the front page, no less) and Wall Street Journal down to the smallest blog. Theories were flowing freely ranging hand from the assertion that Apple might eventually move to Windows all the way to the exact opposite: that this is a key step toward the resurgence of the Mac platform. There is such a thing as over-analysis -- and this looks to be a case of just that.

In the immortal words of Joe Friday, “Just the facts, ‘mam”:

• Dual booting has been largely a geek thing, and is likely to remain so. So is beta testing. Boot Camp is unlikely to loom large in the marketplace until it is incorporated into the next version of the Mac OS, expected some time next year. Even then, it is hard to see it as a mainstream product.

• That said, the traditional advice tech writers give on choosing between Mac and Windows is that for most common tasks, Macs are generally easier to use and a good choice for individuals and small business that don’t have IT departments to support them. BUT if you use specialized applications that are Windows-only or are a hard core gamer, you need to go with a Windows PC. Clearly, Boot Camp does change that equation dramatically.

• Edgar Allen Poe was right -- the best way to hide something is right in plain sight. At MacWorld in January, Microsoft and Apple announced an agreement under which Microsoft would continue to make Mac versions of Office and -- little noticed at the time -- Apple would not obstruct efforts to run Windows on Intel Macs. Apple also has lined up commitments from a long list of key software vendors that they would continue to produce Mac versions of their software. Accordingly, for at least the next release cycle or two of applications crucial to the Mac market there should not be any retreat from the Mac platform.

• There are, however, some applications for which a Mac version will never make sense. Apple’s current market share is around 5 percent. Even were the share to double, Windows PCs will outnumber Macs about 9-1. If you are making software that is a small niche product to begin with, you are unlikely to recover the cost of creating a version to be a niche of a niche. And if you are a big company (e.g., Microsoft, whose Access database and FrontPage web site tool are Windows only), titles that are unlikely to be popular with Mac users are unlikely to be profitable. Thus, a Windows-on-Mac solution does expand the range of software available to Mac users.

• The idea that someone would purchase a Mac with the intention of using it as a Windows machine seems silly. Apple isn’t going to undersell Dell. There might be a few people who love Apple’s designs so much, they would want an iMac or MacBook as their Windows computer. But let’s face it, if cool design was such a big deal in the marketplace, Mac’s market share wouldn’t be in single digits, would it?

The Bottom Line: Apple wants to sell Macs. Microsoft wants to sell Windows. Anything that accomplishes both is likely to be agreeable to both sides. At this point, making anything more of the situation than that is reaching.

Backdoor Price Hikes

2006-02-26T17:44:00.000-05:00

Here’s one way to create a niche product: redesign or repackage your old unit so that a key feature is missing, then sell it as an extra-cost option.

In giving Bose’s new Wave radio an otherwise favorable review (July 10, 2005), I worried that the minimalist design – no control buttons on the unit, only a credit card sized remote control – would be a problem when groggy users were groping for the “snooze” button. Long-term experience proved just that: a tiny button on a miniature remote is not an ideal control when you are half asleep.

It seemed inevitable that some enterprising company would come along and solve the problem by making a remote control with nice big buttons, including a prominent one for snooze. A company did: Bose.

It now offers the $40 Wave Music System Premium Backlit Remote Control. It’s a nicely designed, silver toned unit that includes a handy cradle for placing it conveniently at hand on your nightstand. Perhaps I am being a little churlish, but I can’t help but note that Wave owners now pay extra for the same kind of buttons that used to be built into the chassis of the original incarnation of the clock radio.

Bose has some history on this score. The original version of the Wave did not have a headphone jack (the new ones do). When the first Wave was introduced, Bose had not yet begun to sell its upscale Quiet Comfort and Tri-Port headphones. Coincidence? I think not: when Bose headphone sales took off the company released an adaptor that let users hook headphones up to the old Wave.

Apple is another company prone to this kind of behavior. Several generations of iPods shipped with an a/c adapter (for charging), docking cradle, a wired remote control, and a moderately useful carrying holster. For the new “5th Generation” video models and the Nano, those now are extra cost options that add more than 100 bucks to the pricetag, and a chintzy plastic sleeve has replaced the holster. Nor is there any special “bundle” deal if you want to buy these accessories along with a new iPod. Mind you, you do get extra features for your money. The remote adds FM tuning capabilities while the new cradle is a “universal” design that can be used with all the various flavors of iPods. But there is no excuse for failing to include a charger.

Saying, as Apple does, that you get video with the 5G at no increase is flat-out deception.

In its computer lineup, Apple has pulled the built-in dial-up modem from its sleek iMac desktops and substituted a $50 USB modem. OK, you can make a case for that, everybody else makes modems extra cost. However, Apple is now doing the same thing on its flagship MacBook Pro notebooks, and you can’t make a case for that. Steve Jobs may think the dial-up era is over, but business travelers would beg to differ.

Where an accessory adds a feature to a product, then it truly is an extra. For example, cables to hook your iPod to a stereo or to play the video on an external TV legitimately fall into that category. Also, there are third-party products in most of these categories to give Apple and Bose a little price competition. However, when a standard feature ceases to be standard, what you have is a backdoor price increase.

Bose and Apple are two of the most innovative consumer electronics companies around in terms both of developing new product concepts and stylish design. Unfortunately, however, both companies also have a certain institutional arrogance. There is a fine line between legitimately improving corporate economics and ripping off your customers. Too often these companies are on the wrong side of that line.

Neither company is by any stretch of the imagination the worst offender in the marketplace. But both companies make their independent, creative identities a key part of their marketing. And both companies charge a price premium for their goods. Consumers legitimately can expect better from them than we get.

Some Strings Attached

2006-01-15T17:07:00.000-05:00

There is something new in the world of input devices these days: cords. You know, those things with wires inside plastic coatings that used to run from your mouse and keyboard to your computer. Wireless connections became all the rage and most premium input devices used that method. It appeared that wired devices were going the way of floppy disks.

But while it was convenient to get rid of some cords from the tangle surrounding your computers, there never is a free lunch in technology. Wireless keyboards and mice use the same frequency as WiFi wireless connections, wireless telephones, and other electronics. So the input devices can cause, or be subject to, interference. Plus they don’t respond as quickly as wired units, and they cost more (generally, a 20%-30% price premium).

Lo and behold, when Microsoft’s hardware division unveiled 10 new keyboards and mice recently half of them came with cords, including top-of-the-line devices such as the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, the Laser Mouse 6000, Comfort Optical Mouse 3000, and Notebook Optical Mouse 3000. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, bringing back cords allowed the company to offer a wide range of features and lower purchase prices.

Of course, cords aren’t the only feature of the new units. The 4000 keyboard is the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s curvy keyboards with the most sculptured shape so far. It looks a little weird when you first try it, but in use is very comfortable. The desktop mice are now have higher resolution optical sensors (making mouse strokes more precise, important in working with graphics) and incorporate a convenient screen magnification tool.

Some companies always have been faithful to corded devices. Kensington, which makes the definitive trackball – the Expert Mouse – has offered consumers the choice of corded or wireless versions of all the trackball’s various incarnations. The current version is a stylish black with four customizable buttons and a ring around the trackball that serves as a scroll wheel. The previous generation Turbo Mouse Pro, also corded, still is available as well.

But it is good to see that other manufacturers are also going back to bases. Choice is good for consumers – even when there are a strings, err, cords, attached.