Apple Pushes e-Book Price Hike

First marketplace impact of the iPad, apparently, is to raise the cost of e-books for consumers. Curiously, the deal Apple struck with publishers also costs the publishers money. The losers are Amazon, which had been selling e-books at a loss to boost acceptance of its Kindle Reader, and consumers, who will see price increases of 30-50%. The New York Times explains:

Amazon Accepts Macmillan’s Demand for Higher E-Book Prices - NYTimes.com

The Apple iPad: First Impressions - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

Notwitstanding that David Pogue of The New York Times is famously an Apple enthusiast (and writes books about Apple products), his early reaction to the iPad captures the key point: it will live or die based on whether there is compelling content for it... The same way the iTunes Music Store made the iPod more than "just another music player" and the App Store made the iPhone more than "just another smartphone."

The Apple iPad: First Impressions - Pogue’s Posts Blog - NYTimes.com

Featured Speakers

Two of the cooler iPod speaker systems now on the market couldn’t be any more different in size or price, but they have one thing in common: they aim at a specific target and hit it.

At one extreme is B&W’s awesome $600 Zeppelin audio system. At the other, SkullCandy’s “Pipe” portable speakers, which cost one-tenth as much.

Can you compare them? By no means. You need to look at each in the context of the specific purpose for which they are designed.

Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), the British maker of some of the world’s highest end speakers and a leading choice of recording engineers, clearly set out to create the ultimate iPod speaker dock. And they did it.



B&W is famous for the elegance of its sound. Crisp and clear, but never harsh. The ambience is of a warm concert hall or intimate club. Lots of detail and broad frequency response. The B&W sound is instrumental or vocal, not electronic.

Capturing that in a single-piece iPod dock took some doing. The 25-inch wide spheroid holds five drivers -- two tweeters (high notes), two mid-range (what it says), and one bass (lows). B&W used high-tech composites in the construction to control vibrations. A chrome arm extends from the device to hold the iPod dock, and the system integrates with the iPod’s controls so that you adjust tone and other speaker settings through your iPod.

The look is perhaps controversial (I thought it was highly stylish but my wife hated it), but there is nothing to dispute about the sound. Sheer excellence.

If there is a nit to pick, it’s that the matching spheroid remote control has only minimal functions and cannot navigate through the iPod’s menus, as the remotes of many more modest devices (include the Pipe) can. A B&W spokesperson says reason was to maintain a simplicity to the design. But with a unit this big, you are probably going to put it someplace a little out of the way. So a multi-function remote would be a good idea.

Now, why would you want to spend $600 for an iPod dock? You probably wouldn’t if that was you only intent. B&W effectively has admitted as much by introducing a $400 Zeppelin Mini, a more conventionally designed system that is priced closer to competing audiophile docks. The real value in the Zeppelin is that if you combine it with an iPod Classic loaded with music in lossless format, you wind up with a valid competitor to a traditional component audio system that would cost much more.

Think of it as a home stereo system redefined for the digital age.

If B&W is all about British elegance, SkullCandy is about skateboards, surf, rollerblades, and a slightly punk attitude. Its primary product line is headphones and earphones aimed at a young, active audience.

The Pipe is an 8-inch tube (essentially a smaller version of the cardboard roll inside a roll of paper towels) with speakers firing out of each end and an iPod docking port in the middle. The company’s skull logos are on the speaker grills, making it a dock with Attitude. I doubt that the audiophile market figured at all in the designers’ calculations.

Nevertheless for those who regularly take iPods and iPhone on the road, the Pipe has hit the sweet spot between size and sound that makes it one of the best “packable” iPod speaker systems I’ve used. Sound is good on a wide range of music -- it handles classical and jazz just as well as it does rock. It can crank up high volume and can also provide pleasing sound at lower don’t-antagonize-the-people-in-the-hotel-room-next-door levels.

The Pipe is available in black or chrome -- depending on what kind of style statement you want to make. It slips easily into a briefcase, backpack, or suitcase. A full-function remote is included as is an AC adapter. (Batteries are NOT included; four AAA cells are required.) There’s even an extra rubber leg included that attaches to the latch of the battery compartment to provide extra stability.

In their own ways, the Pipe and the Zeppelin prove that sometimes one size doesn’t fit all.
​

Is it real or is it Photoshop?

Contemplating the metaphysics of reality probably wasn’t on the minds of Adobe’s product team that developed Photoshop Elements 8. But nevertheless, the new feature set raises some interesting questions about what is “real” when it comes to photography.

Ever since “photoshop” became a verb meaning digital photo enhancement, there has been a lingering question about what is a legitimate fix and what is dishonest manipulation. Back in the pre-digital days of chemical film, a skilled darkroom maven could do a lot to transmute mediocre shots into good ones by fixing exposure, contrast, and the like. But mainly with black-and-white film -- and certainly not to the extent possible with today’s digital technology.

News organizations frequently grapple with the issue. Generally the policy is that only limited adjustments are allowed. Anything more than that is considered to have been faked. The term of art “photo illustration” even was coined to describe more extensive manipulations, which are allowed in some circumstances. (An example would be a collage of people mentioned in an article, which was compiled from individual photos.)

Even so, controversies erupt all the time about alleged violations. So clearly even the pros are having issues with the issue.

Meantime, Adobe keeps on refining Photoshop and its consumer counterpart, Photoshop Elements.

The company has released its latest update, Elements 8 for Windows and Mac -- a source of cheer for Mac users as the two platforms now are at parity (there was no Elements 7 for the Mac). The street price is $75 for Windows; $83 for Mac. As in the past, I recommend that Windows users buy the $100 Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle as better buy. Premiere is a well-featured and user-friendly video editor that is a valuable tool on a PC. Adobe doesn’t make a Mac version of Premiere Elements because it would be redundant with the iMovie application that is standard on Macs.

One of the hot new features in Photoshop Elements -- the one that led to this musing on reality -- is the “Smart Brush.” It’s a tool that lets the user select a portion of a photo and make a specified modification to it. The options include making skies bluer, grass greener, and teeth whiter. Literally. There are also a few special effect such as sepia tones and black-and-white conversion. The later makes it absurdly easy for casual users to duplicate such fancy pro tricks as creating a photo with a mix of color and B&W sections.

I was working with a recent travel photo shot with a point-and-shoot digital camera of a seaside city taken from an adjacent hillside. A large percentage of the shot is sky or sea, which pose more lighting challenges than a typical point-and-shoot can handle. So I used the sky brush to darken the blue (and differentiate it from the sea), enhanced the green vegetation on the hill, and made the skyline come to life with the contrast adjustment.

The resulting photo was dazzling. But is it “real?” It certainly does not represent what the camera captured. On the other hand, the retouched version is closer to what my eyes saw on the scene.

Perhaps reality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Google Ups the Stakes in Computer-Phones

Verizon’s new Motorola Droid computer-phone is one of the best challengers yet to Apple’s iPhone. Which probably misses the point.

Mind you, Verizon, Motorola, and Google, which makes the Android operating system for the new device, have invested a lot in the comparison. An “iDon’t” ad campaign in print and online make the case that the Droid has capabilities that the iPhone lacks. There’s even a militant TV spot in which stealth warplanes bomb bystanders with Droid cellphones.

However, the really big aspect of Droid and Google’s 2.0 version of Android is that it gives birth to a new ecosystem for computer-phones.

(I use the term “computer-phone” to describe the class of devices that are small handheld computers married to cellphones. As David Pogue of The New York Times has noted, the old term “smartphone” isn’t really adequate to describe the latest technology.)

Android phones are married to Google’s online services. One of the first things you must do when you set one up, in fact, is either sign into an existing gmail account or create one. The phone links up its contacts and calendars to Google Contact and Google Calendars. While you can add support for other forms of email and corporate users can plug into Microsoft Exchange servers, Google is the only way for “civilians” to sync contacts and calendars. (One annoyance: calendar sync is limited to only the first Gmail account you set up, so if you have more than one account and calendar you are out of luck on syncing the rest.)

Uniquely among computer-phones, the Droid does not ship with desktop data transfer software. There’s no equivalent of iTunes, BlackBerry Desktop, Windows ActiveSync, or the like. To get photos and music on or off the Droid, you plug it into your computer with a USB cable, pull down a menu on the Droid’s touchscreen and “mount” the device on your computer. The Droid -- actually, its MicroSD memory card -- then shows up as a drive on your computer and you transfer files the same way you would with, say, a USB memory stick.

I recommend a free download of doubleTwist (doubletwist.com), available for both Mac and Windows to manage photos, music, and videos. It will simplify the transfer process and make it easier to create playlists.

But the essence of the Android concept is that your data lives on the “cloud” of Google’s services.

Google owes its explosive growth in part to its recognition that in the digital age data is more important than devices. It has expanded from its search and advertising core functions to attract more and more information into its servers. Contacts. Calendars. Documents. Photos. Video. And the list keeps growing. In return for hosting this information Google does two basic things for you: It gives you services for free that other companies charge large fees for. And it lets you access your data seamlessly on any platform you choose -- your own computer, the computer at an Internet cafe, or the Droid. Your data is available to you where you want it, when you want it. (Provided, of course, you have an Internet connection.)

As I wrote previously, I have reservations about “cloud computing” -- keeping data on the Internet. You entrust a great deal of personal data to Google. While I believe Google’s founders are sincere in their “don’t be evil” philosophy, it defies human nature to believe that the massive databases in Google’s possession will never be misused. That doesn’t mean you should avoid their services -- I use them. But you should think a little bit about how much privacy you are willing to give away.

Those caveats duly noted, my experience was that the Google ecosystem generally works well. Data synced promptly and efficiently between the Droid and Google. Someone who uses Google services as his or her principal data repository will be well satisfied. However, those of us who use desktop apps such as Microsoft Outlook on a PC or Microsoft Entourage on a Mac (or the built-in Mac and Windows equivalents) will find that the tools now available to sync that data with Google are somewhat clunky. You sync the desktop data to Google, which then syncs to the Droid. I doubt that will improve in the future as neither Microsoft nor Apple are highly motivated to enhance Google as a competitor.

On the all-important “is it as good as an iPhone?” question, the answer is: “of course, not.” The iPhone is smaller, lighter, and more sophisticated. It has extensive touch screen capabilities that the Droid lacks. For example, while the iPhone has its celebrated pinch-or-spread your fingers ability to blow up or shrink the data on display, Doid users have to use a system of tapping a zoom function. The iPhone is a better media player, a better game platform, and can host more apps.

The Doid, however, does have some advantages of its own. It’s very fast, thanks to its powerful processor. It has a more sensitive camera. It mutlitasks. It has voice dialing, voice searching, and voice-guided navigation. With its MicroSD card, it has expandable memory. And -- most important -- it has a swappable battery. The only thing that’s truly off is the slide-out keyboard, which hard to type on accurately yet lacks the auto-correction feature of the Droid’s onscreen virtual keyboard. Still, all-in-all it’s a nice device.

But let’s be frank here. None of this is going to be the key factor in whether someone buys a Droid or an iPhone. The real issue is Verizon vs. AT&T.

As Verizon’s “there a map for that” attack ads note, it offers high-speed “3G” access more widely than AT&T, which has the U.S. exclusive for the iPhone. In my experience, Verizon also has many fewer phone call drop outs than AT&T does. Joking about dropped calls is one of the rites of iPhone ownership. There’s also the issue of tethering -- using your phone as a modem for your laptop. A spokeswoman for Verizon promises that tethering will be available on the Droid early next year. But even though the iPhone has had tethering capability since a July software update, AT&T has neither turned on the feature nor set a timetable for doing so. On the other hand, Verizon is notoriously the most expensive cellular provider so you pay for that network coverage.

The choice in a nutshell is whether to go with slickest computer-phone or the slickest network. If Droid can make customers at least debate the question, it will be a success for Verizon.

Operating Systems: Paying for Their Mistakes

You gotta love the software business. There are -- excluding Wall Street bailouts, of course -- very few industries where you can get the consumer to pay for your mistakes.

Case in point: this year’s new operating system releases from Apple (Snow Leopard) and Microsoft (Windows 7).

An OS is the basic underpinning of a computer’s software serving as a kind a middleman between the hardware and other applications. Both companies had pretty good operating systems on the market a few years ago. Microsoft had released Windows XP in 2001 and by 2005 a series of service packs -- the term the industry uses for major-but-free software overhauls -- had cured enough bugs to make it efficient and reliable. Also in 2005, Apple rolled out Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger,” which was highly regarded for user-friendly feature sets and good performance.

Then in 2007 things went wrong.

For Apple they went slightly wrong. Its 10.5 “Leopard” system added a variety of features such as built-in backup and (catching up with Windows) a center for playing multimedia. It also offered support for 64-bit applications -- the previous standard was 32-bit -- which allow computers to run faster if they have processors with that capability.

The problem was the Leopard supported both Macs with Apple’s old PowerPC processors and newer units with the new Intel processor technology. Leopard consumed a great deal of disk space and users who upgraded from Tiger commonly experienced degraded performance. Macs that had been zippy with Tiger were slow to boot up and sluggish in loading applications. In my testing, I found that PowerPC users should avoid it.

While Apple has never admitted that trying to bridge the two processor technologies had compromised the OS, the fact is that the Intel-only OS 10.6 “Snow Leopard” released earlier this year is a speedier and more reliable system on an Intel Mac. I recommend the upgrade, especially since Apple gave it a modest price: $30 for a single Mac; $60 for a family pack to upgrade five Macs.

Windows is another story.

Long delayed (to the point of forcing company reorganizations and a few executive resignations/firings), the Vista operation system appeared on the market in 2007 as well.

And bombed.

Reviewers panned it for being unreliable, buggy, and appallingly slow. It was a huge hardware resource hog, which made those who upgraded older computers regret that they had done so. Users found that applications or devices on their PCs were constantly at war with Vista. Corporate users, always a prime market for Microsoft but especially so for Vista because it was designed to fix major security flaws in XP, stayed away in droves.

New PC customers started ordering units with XP instead of Vista and continued even after Microsoft attempted to discourage the practice.

So in October, Microsoft released Windows 7, which is for all intents and purposes a debugged incarnation of Vista. Some major reviewers have given it glowing marks, which leads me to wonder if some of my colleagues live in a different plane of reality from ordinary users. In my testing, Windows 7 fixed the most annoying problems with Vista but was not as spectacular an improvement as some testimonials would have you believe.

In an upgrade installation, I found that Windows 7 ended the handful of software and hardware incompatibility woes that had cropped up over time in Vista, but didn’t make the test system noticeably faster. A “clean” installation of Window 7 on a wiped hard drive produced a little better performance -- but that’s pretty much true of any clean installation of any OS ever made.

While it boots up faster than Vista did, Windows 7 is still slow in launching applications. It has some nice interface touches -- for example, in giving you a preview of what’s open in other applications when you are switching from one to the other. It also supports touch-screen PCs. But the fact is that with respect to productivity, a PC running Windows 7 and Office 2007 (Microsoft’s other flagship product) offers very little advantage over the Windows XP - Office 2003 combo. This is not my idea of progress.

Windows 7 also has lawyer-inflicted quirks. Because of the various antitrust actions against Microsoft, the company does not include email and other small applications on the installation DVD. This is apparently to ensure that PC makers feel free to install non-Microsoft software. If you want the Microsoft versions, you need to download them from Microsoft’s website.

I would certainly recommend that purchasers of new PCs go with Windows 7. It is more secure and more modern than XP.

Upgrades are a more difficult call. Microsoft has set hefty pricetags on Windows upgrades. The current street prices range from just over $100 for the Home Premium upgrade (the version most non-corporate users will need) to $200 for the top-of-the-line Ultimate edition. Also, while Microsoft allows for “in-place” upgrades (that is, changing the OS while leaving data and applications undisturbed) for Vista, you have to start from scratch with XP.

My advice to XP users would be to stand pat until you are ready to replace your PC. But if you have Vista, get rid of it. Just don’t pay any more for your upgrade than you have to.

The Beatles sounded like THAT?

With the release of the remastered CD editions of their albums and singles the Beatles once more have broken new musical ground: giving fans the chance to experience updated recordings that sound dramatically better than the originals ever did.

As I did my listening marathon working my way through the stereo remaster collection, I kept thinking: “Hey, these guys really were as good as I thought they were.”

Back in the day, you never really could tell. A typical Beatlemania era concert was more about screaming crowds than the band’s music. The music systems of the ‘60s were primitive and stereo was then an innovation. (That’s why purists regard the mono collection as more definitive of the Beatles work.) George Martin, the Beatles’ justly celebrated producer, did great work with the technology of the times. But all in all Beatles recordings were a muffled mess and stayed that way through their march from LP disks and singles to tape to CD.

While their ‘60s rivals The Rolling Stones updated their CDs regularly to reflect updates in technology (and also stayed together as an act for all the intervening years), the Beatles catalog up until now has been frozen in time to the start of the CD era. The remasters for the first time use digital technology to restore lost frequencies, eliminate analog recording noise (such as tape hiss), and achieve proper stereo separation.

The result is a revelation.

For one thing, the traditional view of the Beatles -- great songwriters, but modestly talented singers and musicians -- is just wrong. Particularly on the early recordings which used to sound like a musical mush, the remasters now clearly define the four instrumental performances and vocals. Turns out, Paul McCartney and John Lennon had much more distinctive vocal styles than we realized at the time. (Come on, Baby Booomers, confess: you always faked it when you identified a song as a “John” or a “Paul” lead vocal.) Ringo did a lot more cymbal work and also played a wider range of percussion instruments than we ever knew. George’s guitar work was solid.

It is particularly fascinating to discover on the remasters that the Beatles accents were much apparent on their vocals than when we heard the originals.

Perhaps the biggest deal on the remaster is that their lyrics are now are crystal clear. If you work your way through them chronologically like I did, you can see them evolve from their early routine love songs with a rock beat into their later complex poetry with a sophisticated soundscape.

I periodically gripe that I have paid for the Beatles songs way too many times. But I don’t begrudge this investment. The Beatles never sounded better. Literally.