Oh, Just One More Thing...

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.

A real find

2005-12-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

Canary Wireless (http://www.canarywireless.com/), a Chicago company, has made its entrance into the gadgetry market with a clever new tool for checking for WiFi networks, the $50 Digital Hotspotter.

The innovation here is that the device has a LCD screen that not only gives you a signal strength rating, but also the name of the the network and -- most crucially -- whether it is encrypted.

The typical $20 keychain-type finder gives you a string of LED lights to let you know that there is a wireless signal and how strong it is. If you are in your local coffee house or at an airport, that might be enough. If you pick up a signal there, it most likely means there's a public network. But in many locations -- a hotel lobby, for instance, or a conference hall -- you might actually be picking up the company's private network. Digital Hotspotter will let you know whether there is an open network around you.

A tap of a little button on the front of the device turns it on; it shuts off automatically. Tap the button again and it will re-scan to see if there are other networks in your vicinity. Each tap cycles you through all the networks it can detect. It is not uncommon in these days of WiFi congestion for another network to mask the signal of the network you actually want to use.

Digital Hotspotter is a little bigger than I would like -- it's larger than most mini-MP3 players -- so it is going to have to be stashed in a gadget pocket on your laptop bag rather than in your own pocket. But if you are dependent on WiFi to stay in touch on the road, Hotspotter is a valuable addition to your road warrior's tool kit.

More gift ideas.

2005-11-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

Not the most romantic gift all of all time, perhaps, but Kensington’s MicroSaver Alarmed Lock, a cable with alarm for notebooks will give road warriors protection for their laptops when traveling. Kensington pioneered the notebook security lock -- which is why that slot on your laptop is called a "Kensington slot" and by now they have the concept down pat.

Convenience and time-saving can be a good gift. The IRIS Business Card Reader II – a small scanner and companion software designed to – surprise! – read business cards is the answer to the age-old problem of what to do with that stack of cards you have been collecting over the years but didn’t really want to take the time to transcribe into your electronic address book. It’s available both in Windows and Mac flavors, and if you do careful comparison shopping on the Internet, you should find both for under $100. For those who are constantly searching for WiFi sources to connect to, Iogear has a keychain sized finder device that tells you whether there is a signal in your area. The finder won’t tell you if the WiFi network is open to you, but it will tell you whether there is any point in taking out your laptop to try.

And while you are shopping for others, you probably ought to give yourself a gift also. I recently discovered the most useful 30 bucks Microsoft Outlook users can spend: Anagram (getanagram.com), nifty software that lets you select text in the e-mails or on web pages and instantly convert them to Outlook contacts, tasks, notes, or calendar items. A real time-saver.

The Supremes lay down the law -- sort of

2005-07-07T21:31:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Supreme Court, which was deeply divided in multiple ways on the Ten Commandments, has been perfectly clear on one of them: "Thou Shalt Not Steal" copyrighted material.

In MGM vs. Grokster, a unanimous court found that the peer-to-peer ("P2P") networks established by Grokster and StreamCast Networks encouraged illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted music. The high court declared: "one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

The Supremes went through some pains to do their homework on the nuisances of the technologies and marketing techniques at play, But more than anything their decision brings to mind the late Justice Potter Stewart's famous observation in a 1964 pornography case: Stewart noted that while the legal definition of pornography was convoluted, "I know it when I see it." In this case, the high court looked at the Grokster and StreamCast products and what they saw was theft.

Intellectual property rights in the digital age, in fact, bears a striking resemblance to pornography law in the '60s -- the nature of the problem kept shifting faster than the law could keep up and the line between legal and illegal grew increasingly murky. Tiring of the seemingly endless parade of cases on the issue reaching the high court, the justices finally set up a standard under which some of the decision-making on porn was left up to trial juries while broader principles were left to judges and appeals courts.

At the time, neither civil liberties advocates nor anti-pornography activists were happy with the ruling -- and they still aren't -- but the flood of litigation reaching the Supreme Court slowed. (Admittedly, in recent years that may be more a factor of Internet porn replacing the local smut shop.)

In Grokster, lower courts had thrown out the lawsuit citing the 1984 Supreme Court "Sony" decision that had OK'd VCRs on the grounds that technology that has a legitimate use cannot be banned. The Supremes upheld Sony but rejected its use as a blanket legal defense and added the new test of whether the company is marketing the technology in a manner that encourages illegal use. Again, this is the same path as obscenity law where a 1965 ruling held that the publisher of material that was not necessarily obscene itself nevertheless could be convicted because he promoted the material as smut.

One wonders, given this parallel legal evolution, what the court would rule in a case in which someone developed technology to let users hack into a pornographic web site.

But I digress. There is more than whimsy in the porn-P2P analogy. "Adult Entertainment" is the one branch of show business that not only has adapted to new technologies but has prospered because of them. Videocassettes, DVDs, cable TV, and now streaming video have generated returns far beyond those possible from showing dirty movies in seedy theaters or at stag parties. Digital video has sharply reduced production costs and increased profit margins. The Internet has proven to be a far more effective distribution system than sleazy bookstores.

One lesson here, of course, is that sex sells. No doubt when technology reaches the point where media disappears altogether and content is beamed directly to the brain, the porn industry will be the first kids on the block to cash in.

But the other lesson is that technology can be a boon to the entertainment business, not a threat. XXX producers went after the video and Internet marketplaces themselves and put a stranglehold on it while their more respectable brethren sat back and let the pirates make the first moves.

Apple Computer with its iPods, iTunes Music Store, and aggressive marketing of them has done more to build a legal digital music business than the music business has done. Record companies, in fact, have forgotten the tricks of their own trade. In the days of vinyl records, customers would happily pay disproportionately more for a single than for an album just to avoid being stuck with filler tracks. This is, after all, how "one-hit wonders" came to be. The music industry could have recaptured the singles market by embracing digital encoding and the Internet. Instead they are trying to put the digital genie back into the bottle.

When the dust settles from the Grokster decision, the music and movie industries are left with two fundamental realities: first, the high court has only ruled against blatantly illegal behavior; legitimate technologies still are legal. Second, the music industry is still looking at poor sales while the movies' box office receipts are in a slump and at the end of the day the Grokster decision isn't going to change that.

What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance - New York Times

2005-06-11T23:37:00.000-04:00

Face it, until MacIntel machines actually ship, everyone is just reading tea leaves. The Tea Leaf Reader of Record has a couple of useful clues here, though:

-- Confirmation from IBM that it wanted Apple to pay more for developing its chips. This supports the view that a key incentive for Apple to make the move was a better financial deal from Intel.

-- Analyst expectations that Apple will move to 64-bit Intel chips. Current processors handle 32 bits at once, 64-bit chips, as you would guess, chomp 64, thereby increasing computer performance. The technology is supposed to be the Next Big Thing in personal computers, but Intel's efforts have not be especially successful to date. Driving sales of 64-bit chips looks like Intel's motivation for courting Apple.

What's Really Behind the Apple-Intel Alliance - New York Times

A camera in your pocket

2005-06-09T17:49:00.000-04:00

As a writer, I have never been fond of the old "a picture is worth a thousand words" thing. But, after all, the column was about digital photography.

These should illustrate a few of the points.

Here is the skyline of Boston shot from a balcony along the Charles River:

Lots of foreground, and not much of the skyline. So, let's crop the photo and blow it up, so we get a better look at the Citgo sign:

But as I said, eventually if you blow a digital image up too much, the picture breaks into individual pixels, which looks like this:

A camera with more megapixels helps you get higher quality blow-ups. This is the Canon SD-500 reviewed for the article:

Note the slight wedge shape and rounded edge on the left. That, says a Canon spokesperson, is to make room for the 7.1 megapixel sensor.

A smaller and less expensive alternative is the 5 megapixel SD-400. Note that it is perfectly rectangular:

Speaking of fried laps...

2005-06-09T15:17:00.000-04:00

A little personal experience entered into my thoughts about Apple's processor needs. When shorts-wearing temperatures abruptly arrived in Massachusetts, I discovered that resting my PowerBook on bare skin was not a happy combination. A couple of "yelps" and "ouches" later, I was surfing the Web looking for a solution.

Found a good one, as it turned out. Rain Design in San Francisco (www.raindesigninc.com) makes a terrific lap stand called -- inevitably -- "iLap." It comes in sizes for 12, 14, 15, and 17 inch notebooks, as well as 15 and 17 inch widescreens. Prices range from $50-$70 -- it's not inexpensive, but sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

iLap is made of substantial aluminum stock, a sharp contrast from similar products I've tested that bend and crease at the slightest movement. At the back, iLap has a padded and hinged u-shaped arm at the back, which props your laptop up at an ergonomically correct angle. Used in your lap, the padded arm sits comfortably around your knee.

At the front, there's a thick, rounded cushion that does triple duty: cushions your lap, positions the keyboard properly with respect to your hands, and acts as a wrist rest. This will work well for most users, although if like me you are, ahem, waistline-challenged it may push your laptop a little too far from your body.

The cushion is attached with Velcro and can be detached to let you use the iLap on your desk. There are cheaper solutions for the desktop, though. To justify an investment in an iLap, your primary need should be as a lap desk for a laptop. Think of desk use as an added bonus.

As for me, I'm heading out to my patio and taking my iLap and PowerBook with me.

Why Macs will have Intel inside

2005-06-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

Here's what the much-ballyhooed decision by Apple Computer to switch to Intel processors really means to you: future PowerBooks will be faster without scorching your lap.

There may also be quieter Mac desktops and an outside possibility that the price gap between Macs and Windows PCs may narrow. Moreover, you might want to think twice about buying a new Mac until the new hardware hits the market. But pretty much everything else is of concern only to the companies involved, their shareholders – and those of us who write about technology and always are pleased to get a new issue to cover.

Apple's decision on processors is an issue that truly can be said to have resulted in "heated debate."

Computers are like glorified toaster ovens: turn 'em on and they generate heat. Processors in particular gobble up energy, with heat as the inevitable byproduct. That heat, meanwhile, is an enemy of the circuitry and can cause operational glitches.

Hence when you look inside a desktop PC, you will find multiple cooling fans, heat sinks (metal devices that pull heat away from a component), and ducts to manage airflow. For notebooks, the problem is even more serious because there isn't room for all those heat-management components. Plus, high energy consumption in a laptop means battery life takes a big hit.

Heat is a particular concern to Apple because many of its best-selling desktops such as the iMac and Mac Mini use small form factors that make them more like notebooks. In addition, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs famously disdains cooling fans because they are noisy and he wants Macs to be whisper quiet.

Apple's problem in a nutshell is that the PowerPC chips that drive its computers are too hot to handle.

While its leading desktops run IBM-produced "G5" (fifth generation of the Pocket PC) processors, the chip is too hot and too power draining to use in a notebook. So Apple's PowerBook and iBook notebooks are stuck with the older "G4" processors made by Freescale Semiconductor Inc., a Motorola spin-off. Even so, heat is such a problem, especially with the metal-cased PowerBook, that an entire category of computer accessories has grown up around the need to keep Mac laptops from frying users' laps.

Tim Cook, Apple's VP of worldwide sales and operations, was widely quoted earlier this year when he called a G5 PowerBook, "the mother of all thermal challenges." Given that Apple is paranoid about leaks of its product plans, it is clear in retrospect that the company was going public with its displeasure with IBM for not making a laptop-capable G5. According to published reports, IBM had little interest in doing so because the company is losing money on its Apple sales and is focusing its processor efforts on the more lucrative game console market.

If all that weren't enough, the whole rationale behind the PowerPC was that its design made it inherently faster than Intel architecture. But instead PowerPC chips have lagged behind Intel's in speed, forcing Apple to put two processors into its flagship Power Mac G5 desktops, which of course makes them run even hotter.

With neither IBM nor Motorola/Freescale interested in building a new processor to keep Apple's products competitive with Intel-powered units, Apple didn't have a lot of options other than to switch to Intel. (These being publicly traded corporations, it would be more correct to say that there was no interest on terms acceptable to both sides.) Some analysts have called this a risky move. Perhaps, but hardly less risky than trying to sell new PCs without new chips.

The transition to Intel processors is really much more of a marketing problem than a technical one. Apple's OS-X operating system is based on Unix, a corporate OS that is regularly used on Intel PCs. Moreover, Jobs confirmed that the company has already produced Intel-compatible OS-X versions. The company announced a utility called "Rosetta" (as in "Rosetta Stone") to allow software designed for the PowerPC to run on Intel Macs.

This still leaves Apple with three problems.

First, what kind of software support will the new platform get? Rosetta may or may not be adequate – often such utilities degrade system performance – and software vendors will need to rewrite their applications. Microsoft and Adobe, the two biggest vendors of Mac software, both announced that they will produce "MacIntel" versions of their products. But smaller companies may not be able to afford to do that. Mac's base of software developers already is much smaller than Window's, and this might not help. There could be counterbalancing gains, however, from Windows-Intel software manufacturers finding it easier to do Mac versions of their applications.

Second, the Mac mystique may take a hit. Already jokes are appearing on the Internet suggesting that Apple should change its slogan to "think not-so-different." In recent years much of the hardware in Macs such as video cards and expansion slots has moved to Wintel standards. With the adoption of Intel processors, an Apple box will be little different from a Wintel box. Apple will have to demonstrate that, with equal hardware, it still has advantages over Windows. Note, though, that the devil always is in the details – Apple and Intel did not specify what chips were involved in the deal, and it always is possible that Intel might whip up something special for its new customer.

Third, in the short term Apple faces the tough prospect of moving product that it has just declared obsolete. The first units are due to hit the market within a year, with full conversion by the end of 2006. Some current Mac users may rush to buy up the remaining PowerPC units either to protect their current investment in software or to be sure that they get a "real" Mac before they are all gone. Most users, though, will hesitate about investing in lame duck equipment.

My advice to consumers for now: wait and see.

All personal computers are obsolete the moment you buy them; it's the nature of the beast. Typically, you would expect a PC to keep up with performance standards for about two years and be adequate for most purposes one or two more years after that. The 18-month timetable for MacIntel falls far short of that. On the other hand, a platform shift such as this rarely goes perfectly and you rarely want to be the first kid on your block with new designs.

Neither Apple nor the major software vendors have disclosed any information about their upgrade paths and policies. Also it is hard to imagine that Apple will be able to avoid discounting the prices on existing hardware.

I don't see any huge danger that if you do buy a Mac now you will be stuck with unsupported hardware and software. But it's like when a car is in the last year of its run and is about to be replaced by a new model. You want to keep your eye out for the “Limited Edition” package or the “Special Incentive” offer to be sure you get the sweetest deal.

Satellite radio equipment

2005-05-21T00:11:00.000-04:00

Here's what the units look like.

This is XM's MyFi:

And here's the Sirius Sportster:

Welcome

2005-05-20T23:07:00.000-04:00

Sometimes there is more to say about a topic than my column's space allows. That's what they make blogs for. So please look here for more details.

The blog's title, if you are wondering, is Peter Falk's famous line in his role as the deceptively disorganized TV detective Lt. Colombo. Murderers abruptly realized they were in trouble when the sleuth asked his "one more" question.