iTodd Central

'Apple TV' like an iPod

2007-04-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

The Apple TV device won't download movies and songs directly from the Apple iTunes Store, acting more like an "iPod for your TV" according to reviews this week, including this MacBreak Weekly episode. Instead, the device can sync with a Mac or PC running iTunes, downloading predetermined content to the Apple TV. It can also stream shows and audio from a number of machines running iTunes, as long as they are "paired" with the Apple TV in a way that's similar to the way Bluetooth devices are paired with computers.

Crossroads Trailer

2007-04-12T19:24:00.000-05:00

Some of my friends and colleagues in the Crossroads Film Society have put together this commercial for our spring festival. Enjoy:

JFP on WLEZ: 4.6.07

2007-04-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

Listen to the new show, or subscribe to this blog's feed in your favorite podcatcher (iTunes, Juice, etc.)

http://www.wlezfm.com/podcasts/jfp4_6_07.mp3

Trying some Podcast Stuff

2007-04-10T16:35:00.000-05:00

All you gotta do is link?

Windows Vista...Wow.

2007-02-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

Hilarious observation by Seth Godin regarding the look-and-feel of M$ executives at the Vista launch. Sez Seth:

I absolutely adore this photo from the Times. Not one smile in the bunch, never mind ebullience, mania or even pleasant anticipation.

View the image: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/wow.html

Apple to Outgrow Microsoft?

2007-01-31T10:28:00.000-06:00

Interesting blog entry over at 10 Layers.

Call it ambitious math, but the idea is that if Apple and Microsoft stayed on exactly the same revenue-growth arcs that they're currently on, Apple would overtake Microsoft in the next five years. Some comments have pointed out that Apple is unlikely to sustain the growth that it has experienced from the iPod, as it would require a revolutionary product of that same scale...iPhone is certainly nice, and could propel the $21B Apple into a $30B or $40B Apple in the next few years, but it doesn't quite open up an entirely new market segment the way the iPod did.

Another thing that I'd add is that Microsoft remains wildly profitable because their software offerings and considerably lower margins than Apple has on its hardware. If Apple made exponentially more money off of services (music, movies, TV shows, .Mac) and software, then it might be able to give Microsoft a run in that arena as well.

I'm concerned that Apple isn't in the Internet services game the way Microsoft and Google and Yahoo! are...the truth is that .Mac was launched years ago with that intention, but has lost the game to the ad-driven services offered by Google, et al.

What Apple needs to do on that front is shore up its .Mac offerings to make them exceedingly compelling to Mac users -- faster, more reliable, perhaps secure and your-own-domain driven services with some differentiators. For instance, what if Apple offered streaming audio to its .Mac subscribers, or uber-easy secure e-mail or 1-click shopping or a Blogger-type tool that focuses on podcasting, complete with a special licensing arrangement for podcasting songs or videos out of the iTunes store...?

Salon: The Readers Strike Back

2007-01-30T12:39:00.000-06:00

A great piece by Gary Kamiya in Salon today discusses some of the trials and tribulations of media outlets that allow and/or encourage comments on their sites and blogs. Within the alternative newsweekly world, this is a point of consternation among editors and writers who traditionally have relied on strong Letters to the Editors pages to get feedback from their readers while maintaining a certain aloof journalistic superiority. Our experience at the JFP has been that conversations can devolve into ad hominem attacks and worse, and the result has been a registration process for comments and a relatively short leash by our online editors. One concern for alt-weeklies in particular is that the more no-holds-barred tone of the editorial can lead readers who want to comment to have the same sort of attitude in comments, which can make for lively discussion, but can also muck it up for everyone who wants to take a topic seriously.

Two interesting points Gary makes:

For a writer, this huge, suddenly vocal audience has some significant advantages. For one thing, it serves as an enormous fact-checker. If you make a mistake in a piece, some eagle-eyed reader will let you know, often within minutes. But a far more important effect of the reader revolution is that it has forced writers to immediately deal with substantive arguments and critique. Like most writers who publish a lot online, I've written pieces that a letter writer has sliced up so surgically, with such superior logic and style, that I began searching furtively for a "do over" button on my computer. And the sheer quantity of even less sophisticated arguments, like water poured onto a leaky roof, reveal a piece's weak points. Many writers have told me about extraordinary e-mail exchanges with readers that sometimes develop into ongoing relationships.

We've seen that in spades, with the leads and expertise leading directly to new, informed pieces for the paper and the site.

The other, less appealing side:

Open letter forums create and abet an insider-ish mentality where a certain species of poster can flaunt their egos and sense of superiority. These worthies may see themselves as keen-witted literary arbiters, but in fact they more closely resemble the extras who play outraged townspeople in low-budget vampire movies, oafs in lederhosen milling around angrily and waving burning torches. Besotted with their petty power and egging each other on, they often gang up on a single demonized writer.

This happens, too. And in the interest of democratic media, you don't want to take this stuff down unless you have to, even if it's attacking you or your writers, because you want to be open and democractic, etc.

The answer? So far, our answer has been to *do it* and *police it*. Give readers the forums for semi-anonymous posting -- they have to register with a valid e-mail address -- and then let them know when they're breaking the terms of your reader agreement. Ours is pretty simple -- no ad hominem attacks, stay on topic, add to the discussion. It's our site, and while we don't have an obligation to take something down, we can if we must.

And then there's the TrollBlog which we created to move particularly egregious trolls to their own little corner of the site for people's consideration and/or amusement. We haven't had to use it much, but it's seemed to have something of an effect on the level of discourse we can get on the site.

Google Creep

2007-01-28T13:10:00.000-06:00

Yes, yes, yes...of course it concerns me that Google is trying to take over the world. But I can't seem to help it -- I keep using Google products. Me, the guy, for political reasons, who has stepped foot only twice in a Wal-Mart over the past eight years -- once to return items bought by a project manager I was working with, and another time to buy a microwave pizza for my hotel room in Natchez, MS. That's it. I understand they have great prices on tires, but I just got a pretty decent price from the guys at the locally-owned Texaco station down the street. (I suppose they have to get their gas from somewhere.)

And, yet, here I am posting documents and spreadsheets to Google Docs. Why? Because of the collaborative features; one of them is an outline for the book I'm working on that the editors back in the home office can check in on so that they can see the lack of progress I'm making toward my deadlines. (I've had two good days this weekend, however.) Another is a cash budget spreadsheet we're using to follow the cash flow of our local film festival, so that the Festival Director, Coordinator, and board members can see what we plan to spend, what we're spending and what we need to raise. That budget started as an Excel sheet that was mailed to me; in my Gmail account, there's this handy little link that says "View in Google Spreadsheets."

I'm weak. I clicked it.

So, yeah, taking over the world, etc. If they just put a dent in Microsoft, though, that would be a start. And I gotta say, the whole "free office applications" thing is mighty tempting to a small business owner...

Blackberry 7250 as Tethered Modem

2007-01-13T10:21:00.000-06:00

Something extraordinary happened yesterday -- I called tech support and actually got help that was more helpful than I was able to find through Google reading messageboards and whatnot. The end result was that my Blackberry 7250, which I was trying to use as a tethered modem for the HP laptop that I've been using to write my book, actually started working as a tethered modem for the HP laptop. Amazing!

The speed isn't great -- when it connects it reports about 115kbps, but I'm not sure I believe it. Actually I haven't tried to download anything, so that might be accurate, but if so then the Blackbery suffers from some latency problems even when compared to a dial-up modem. (There are at least two "speeds" to consider when it comes to Internet connections, and the one we talk about isn't really speed, but rather bandwidth. The larger the "pipe" in terms of bandwidth, the more data can get through it at once. But if a connection has issues with latency in terms of sending and receiving small bits of information, that can affect the perceived "speed" of basic browsing as well.)

Anyway, the point was to get any sort of connection out of it at all -- and we did. The trick was actually to go into a buried network setting on the phone and reset one of the usernames for a network connection...I'll tell you how, but I don't actually remember. (You go to the phone screen, dial a crazy # code phone number and then delete one of the usernames. The Blackberry resets in a mode that is compatible with the network for modem mode.)

The other bit that was funny...due to some sort of litigation, the support guy (Eli) was not actually allowed to walk me through the setup procedure for creating the Internet connection over the Blackberry. He said it was an issue with RIM, the company that makes the Blackberry, and that his only option was to e-mail me the instructions. When he did, I noticed that the instructions were different from those posted on RIM's Blackberry website...oddly, both worked, but the e-mail instructions seem to make for a slightly faster connection.

I was also told that here in Jackson, Mississippi we don't yet have EVDO support (higher speed "broadband" over the data network) on the Alltel network, but it's due in Q1 2007, which will also mean getting an EVDO compatible phone such as the Blackberry 7130e. I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, kudos to Alltel support. I was pleasantly surprised. Here's hoping my $45 Blackberry data plan will also be useful for something approaching broadband surfing on my laptop in the very near future.

The iPhone Arrives...In June

2007-01-10T19:04:00.000-06:00

Cross-posted from Jackson Free Press:

You’ve got to feel as sorry as you possibly can for the richest man in the world. After all, here’s Bill Gates on Monday, giving the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest technology shows on the planet, and he’s one of the most important people in the history of modern computing. He’s amassed a fortune by being perhaps the person most instrumental in shaping our experience of computers in homes, businesses and governments around the world.

And what is everyone talking about? What Steve Jobs has announced from Apple. Of course.

But let’s talk Microsoft briefly. After all, this year is the year of Microsoft Vista, the first major update to the Windows operating system in five years. Frankly, it was starting to feel like it—Windows XP offers some fine features, but it’s long in the tooth, with some reviewers saying that Vista is largely about catching up with the Mac OS.

With Mac OS X updating every 12 to 18 months, and with Apple now completely transitioned to the Intel processor in its products, more and more companies are considering Apple computers for their employees. According to BusinessWeek, Google has begun offering a Mac as an option to nearly all of its incoming employees—which platform you use is your choice. And when the Mac version of Lotus Notes appeared last year, it opened some business doors to Macs as well, offering cross-platform capabilities for offices that live and die using Lotus Notes.

Oops. See, I just did it. I talked about Apple when I was trying to talk about Microsoft.

Vista will be huge, of course, since Windows-based PCs make up the bulk of computers worldwide. But Linux running on Intel and Intel-compatible processors has already loosened up some corporate IT departments, and Mac OS X, after all, is ultimately a Unix-variant, based on open-source FreeBSD. Along with that, Mac OS X offers Microsoft Office applications, tons of cross-platform creative applications and the ability to boot into Windows using Apple’s BootCamp or run Windows applications in a window using virtualization through Parallels (www.parallels.com). So, more desks may have Macs in the near future.

The fun news, of course, is what Apple announced this week. First, there’s Apple TV. It’s pretty much what Steve had said it would be a few months ago when it was announced—it streams video from your Mac or PC, and will sync with your main machine, storing 40GB worth of data on its hard disk. So, if you’re buying movies or TV shows from iTunes Music Store (which is, for instance, how I’m watching “Battlestar Galactica” this season), then you’ve got a nice $299 way of getting them to your high-definition TV (in 720p) without having to move cables around and set your laptop next to your TV. It’s a nice gizmo, although I still say I think it should be able to download and stream TV and movies directly from the iTunes Store so it can be used as a totally standalone device. Until then, it’s an accessory.

The big news is, of course, iPhone. (It’s even news that they’re calling it “iPhone” being that Cisco had previously trademarked the name.) It runs Mac OS X, and with that Steve tells us that we’ll be able to run desktop-caliber applications. It offers Multi-Touch, the new interface technology developed by Apple that Steve tells us is as revolutionary as the mouse was 20 years ago. And it syncs with all of that happy Apple stuff that Mac users like to use, including iTunes, iCal, iPhoto, bookmarks and e-mail, with an interface that works through iTunes. It has a two-megapixel camera built in, a 3.5-inch high-resolution display and—a Steve Jobs trademark—exactly one button.

Using the Multi-Touch technology, the phone reacts a lot to you waving and sliding fingers across the display. Of course, the iPhone is an iPod, with all the same functionality (and 4 GB or 8GB for storage), but the interface is a little different—you move your finger across the screen to scroll through music, video and photos. As a phone, it gives you “visual” access to your voicemail messages, so that you can listen to them in any order, play the messages that are most important to you and manage them like e-mail messages. Jobs calls it “last century” to actually dial numbers, so your address book and “favorites” are front and center for the dialing interface.

Some of the big news is that the iPhone features Wi-Fi technology, meaning your surfing can happen at higher speeds when you’re within access of a wireless Internet hotspot. The Safari browser on the phone can show entire Web pages, or Mac OS X style widgets for Internet information. As Jobs puts it, it’s the first time you can have the whole “Internet in your pocket.” Support for IMAP e-mail means you can read e-mail right from a server account, the way many Gmail users do now with Treos and Blackberries. Or you can access your Web mail interface for your company’s server via the Web.

It’s a Cingular exclusive, it will cost $499 for the 4GB version or $599 for the 8GB version and it won’t ship until June 2007. The future of phones is still out there in the future. And it will be interesting to see what that does to the rest of the market.

It’s often bandied about that Apple Computer might become the next Sony or the next Disney or whatever it’s supposed to be the “next” of. In what was perhaps both an acknowledgement of that and perhaps a challenge to it as well, Jobs announced one other thing at the keynote—something that Apple has done in practice for a while. The name Apple Computers Inc. is no more … the official name of the company, for its second 30 years, is now Apple Inc. Apple makes more than computers, apparently, and maybe it doesn’t make as many products as Sony, but Apple is gambling that its products are more defining and world-altering than anything its competitors do.

Even Bill Gates probably has to admit that at this point.

My Macworld WAGs

2007-01-07T23:44:00.000-06:00

After a cursory glance at the Mac rumor sites, I have the following WAGs (Wild Ass Guesses) to make about what's coming to Macworld this week. The hype from Apple suggests it could be good, so we'll see.

- iTV (100%) Obviously since it's already been announced then Jobs will at least talk about it more, if not roll it out as available. Again, if it downloads and stores video directly from the iTunes Store, it's a killer product. If it just streams existing media from your Mac, then it's a niche product. (If it's also DVR, I'll once again wonder why I never bought Apple stock back when I used to have some money.)

- iWork '07 (100%) And it'll have a spreadsheet. Is it odd that, to this day, I still use Microsoft Office exclusively? Apple may have to overcome that in more loyal Mac users than just me -- they could start by not making Pages seem more like a Microsoft Publisher competitor. I even use PowerPoint instead of Keynote. Weird, huh? (Of course, as I mentioned, I'm typing this on a PC laptop, so maybe I've been slipping to the dark side for years.)

- iPhone (90%) I think the hype is about Apple's phone. Smartphone/PDA/portable media center. I see people on planes watching iPods and I'm thinking that Apple could take the "ha ha, we made people care hard disks in their pockets" brilliance of the iPod two or three steps forward by giving us something that we don't even quite know to ask for yet. It'll have to browse the Internet, get e-mail, access the iTunes store and have enough storage for all that media...but if it does, it'll be the Next Small Thing.

- Server Mini (25%) I might be the lone holdout for this -- frankly, if Apple would do what I'm asking with the iTV, then it's basically already a home server. (Make it also an AirPort base station and let it act as a file server as well as a multimedia repository and you've got a Server Mini.) For the small office, a Server Mini with a fast hard disk, wireless base station capability and perhaps a built-in printer server would be a very nice option. (I've just installed a Lacie Ethernet Mini Disk in my office this weekend and still can't get the damn thing to work. Apple?!)

- Mac Tablet (10%) Maybe not even that likely. I've seen a few rumors and it'd be an interesting thought, but unless they've gone somewhere with handwriting recognition that no one (but Apple, really) has ever been before then I'll believe it when I see it.

I'll post more WAGs if I hear anything interesting.

Stranger in a Strange World, Part 0

2007-01-07T20:16:00.000-06:00

I plan to blog over the next few months about the fact that I'm currently doing a fair bit of my freelance work on a Windows PC. It's a short story -- my PowerBook G4 ran into a little snag a few days ago, forcing me to transfer the drive from my PowerBook to a Mac Mini in my office. That's what I'm using now for newspaper business.

Unfortunately, that left me without a laptop, and I need something to work from in the house, particular when I'm trying to write a book. So, I borrowed an HP Pavillion zt3000 from a friend of mine. I'm typing on it now. What I'm finding so far is that Windows is usable; I'm able to get some work done and, once I'd set the display preferences to my liking, the OS doesn't look too bad. And I'm slowly learning some of the short-cuts to move around in the OS, although it's surprising how many things look like they're from about 1997 -- I guess that's one difference between the constant march of updates to Mac OS X vs. the every-five-years-or-so updates by Microsoft.

I'll get deeper into my experiences a little later on, but let me just ask this one question...why is it that PC people don't take the stickers off their computers? What does it mean that this computer, after two years, still has the Intel and Windows stickers on it?

Can you imagine a MacBook with little Intel stickers on it? :-)

I Dub It: 'The Calls'

2007-01-02T00:50:00.000-06:00

Those of us who watch a little too much football between teams that don't matter to us personally are probably doing it so that we can witness a game like the Frito-Lay Cool Ranch Tostito Dippers Fiesta Bowl that I just watched between Boise State and OU. OK, so I hate OU from my childhood in Dallas and for them having foisted, indirectly, Barry Switzer on my once-beloved Cowboys.

If you didn't see it, you'll see it again anyway...on YouTube, on highlight reels. I've finally gotten to see my "The Play" or "The Drive" moment in living color as it happened. If it doesn't end up dubbed "The Call" (or "The Calls"?) then I'll eat my New Orlean's Saints ballcap. Amazing...

... Who calls for a 15-yard pass and a designed hook-and-ladder lateral on a 4th-and-18 with the season on the line?
... Who sends the quarterback in motion on a 4th-and-Goal play in overtime with the season on the line?
... Who goes for 2 points in overtime instead of getting the certain 1 point and relying on your defense to hold the other guys...with the season on the line?
... Who calls a modified "Statue of Liberty" -- after the other team has taken a time out in order to line up everyone they need to stop you -- to get those 2 points and end a perfect season with a BCS bowl game victory?

I'll be telling my grandkids about it. Heck...anybody's grandkids.

Product Placement 101 and the Sidekick III

2007-01-01T17:32:00.000-06:00

We watched "The Devil Wears Prada" a few nights ago (another Hollywood video pickup at the behest of Ms. D. because I'd failed to get it into my NetFlix queue in time for the weekend) and I couldn't help but notice that our heroine, throughout the story, is carrying what looks to be a Sidekick III. I, of course, immediately upon seeing the film decided that it'd been too long since I'd obsessed over the possiblity of trading in my Blackberry and proceeded to spend ACTUAL TIME this weekend looking again the T-Mobile pricing plans for the Sidekick III, including the rather appealing prepaid plan (appealing if only because that seems like the easiest way to get rid of it after a few months).

I KNOW that the Sidekick III is too heavy. I feel fairly strongly that it isn't really Mac-friendly enough, although I haven't played with the online tools scheduling tools much. I know it's a toy.

I got a chance to evaluate a Sidekick II a year or so ago when I was working on a book (I think it was the Leo Laporte Mac Gadget Guide) and enjoyed playing with it. I used to tell people that the coolest thing about it's always-on access for AIM messaging was the fact that I could literally tell if co-workers at the JFP were at their desks by glancing at my Sidekick to see if their messaging was up and running. It also let me "peek in" over their shoulders and drop a quick message from home or lunch or the post office if I had something to mention to them.

Of course, a Treo or Blackberry or pretty much anything could probably do that. The camera is nice but not completely necessary and seeing as how my PRIMARY requirement of any smartphone is that it fits comfortable in the front pocket of my chinos -- not weighing the pocket down unnecessary and not fitting into a Bat-holster, since I refuse to wear a utlity belt so as not to reveal my secret identity -- then it's utterly fatuous that I'm looking at the Sidekick III at all.

So what' the verdict? Prepaid Sim cards are running about $40 on eBay with the phones themselves hovering around $250. The service is $1 a day flat for all online services and $0.15 per call prepaid. There's something I love about the straightforward pricing. Or, maybe a Sidekick II...cheaper at around $100 on eBay...

Will iTV Connect Directly to iTunes Store?

2006-10-18T18:28:00.000-05:00

Is it conceivable that, just maybe, Apple hasn't given us the whole story on iTV yet? Sure, it's cool if it's sorta a streaming network hub that connects to your TV so you can play back downloaded videos. That makes it an AirPort Express with video out ports right? (And, presumably, a processor that's needed to do some decoding for H.264 on the fly.)

So why does it have a USB port? For a keyboard and mouse? A printer?

My guess would be external storage -- if it's a wireless hub with a processor, why not allow it to be a home file server, too? It would be handy to let you store images on your iTV and call them up anytime, whether or not your Mac is close by.

Of course, that would also be nice for audio and video, wouldn't it? In essence, whether using internal or external storage, the iTV could easily become an essential home entertainment component, capable of calling up and playing back tons of stored material to the TV -- or to any Mac or PC -- in your household.

Which, if true, leads to another logical extension of the iTV concept -- why couldn't it function as a standalone interface for iTunes Store, enabling you to download music and movies and TV shows for direct display on the connected TV -- and then, if desired, allow you to sync with your Mac or iPod?

Wouldn't that make sense?

In theory, I guess all of those things would be possible with a Mac Mini connected to a TV, although you'd need keyboard and mouse to navigate. But picture a Mac Mini slimmed down enough to run just Front Row, Darwin and a special TV-centric version of the iTunes Store...and you've got a device that enables you to buy last night's Battlestar Galactica for $1.99 and watch it as it streams in on the fly.

And games would be nice, too.

That wouldn't just be an interesting box for Mac users, but it could be a salvo at NetFlix, DVRs and an incredibly smart implementation of the Windows Media Center solution. It'd be a very Apple thing to do, IMHO, as it would be the sort of solution that might sell in the tens of millions of devices, not just the hundreds of thousands. Translation: Sony would be jealous, and I often wonder if that's Steve Jobs' primary passion.

Or am I dreamin'?

Apple Ships 1.61 Million Macs

2006-10-18T18:18:00.000-05:00

As you've no doubt seen, Apple shipped a record number of Macs in its fourth quarter, which, aside from the education buying season, is often a slow one for Mac sales. By all accounts, the move to Intel processors is the deciding factor, with other reports showing that increasing numbers of buyers are considering Macs because they have Intel chips and, thus, a perceived compatibility with the rest of the personal computing world. The demand is driven by notebook sales, which hit 1 million in that quarter with a U.S. market share estimated at 12 percent...and there's no particular suggestion that notebook sales are slowing going into the holiday season. (I'm gonna get me one, for instance.)

Black is Beautiful?

2006-10-18T18:06:00.000-05:00

I've decided that I'm in the market for a new Mac of some sort...the PowerBook G4 1GHz 12-inch model that I have right now has been servicable, but I'm starting to notice the slowdowns a bit more prominently. Plus, I've got a new book to start working on that will require a cross-platform approach -- meaning screenshots in both Windows and Mac OS X -- so an Intel-based Mac would be darned handy.

As I've pretty much used a Mac laptop as my main computer for the past 10 years or so, that's the direction I'm looking. The budget is tight, though, so while I occasionally find myself glancing over the MacBook Pro offerings, most of my eBay/Apple Store window shopping is for a regular ol' MacBook. I only look at models that offer 1GB of RAM or more...I've seen that Intel processor running with only 512MB, and it ain't pretty. And I'd love a slightly used model that already has Parallels and Windows XP installed so that someone else takes the hit from M$.

But something about this is bothering me. In spite of my keen eye for a scam, I keep gravitating back to the black MacBook model. Not that I don't like the white version -- although I am a little concerned about the discoloration on some models that seem to have gotten relatively little use. (And, yes, I've already got enough white iBooks floating around the office to make them seem passe.) It's just that I...like...the black MacBook. There's a certain way in which the Apple logo just gleams from the matte black finish that seems very retro future. And I chide myself constantly for even thinking of paying an extra $200 not only for the mere image of the thing, but also because...well...PCs are black! I mean, most laptops for a long time have been black. How is it that Jobs and Co. manage to make it seem so cool?

I generally pride myself on being outside the reality distortion field -- after all, I'm far enough away from California that it's tough enough for it to reach anyway. And yet, here I am, looking for the perfect deal...just the right used price on eBay that makes it seem OK to take the plunge. If I can only pay $150 extra for the privilege of having a Mac that is the color of 90% of all laptops in the world...then...just maybe...I deserve it! {sigh}

iTV = Console Gaming?

2006-09-26T18:05:00.000-05:00

Businessweek asks the burning question as to whether Apple's recently pre-announced iTV could be a trojan horse designed to get Apple into the living room so that it can take over the gaming console world. The question: "Could Apple Become Games Console King?" The answer: "Sure, but probably not." While iTV may in fact be the answer to a alot of questions, those answers are in Steve Jobs continuing to figure out how to make more and more download-for-dollars content available over broadband to American consumers. That's clearly where they're spending their time.

It's conceivable, of course, that Apple would offer gaming downloads from the iTunes Store that could play on the iTV -- and I certainly hope they turn the iTV in a family/home server for files and home folders as well as for multimedia. But it seems unlikely that the iTV would be engineered to kill other gaming boxes...not when the real trick is going to be pushing high speed data through the thing and decompressing data feeds into video streams. Those are core competencies for Apple, whereas, as of right now, gaming APIs and high-end graphics card support isn't.

Of course, they might be working all that stuff in secret, but why jump into a cut-throat market like console gaming when there are entire pioneer markets waiting for an easy, reliable, downloadable movie solution?

Google CEO on Apple's Board Means...What?

2006-09-01T17:53:00.000-05:00

Apple announced today that Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was joining the board of directors. GigaOM suggests that the move is something of an informal alliance between the two companies, which could spell headaches for Microsoft. One interesting observation is the idea that Google is getting close to releasing a suite of office tools online, including the already-beta Google Spreadsheets and the upcoming Writely transition from a standalone tool to part of the Google suite. Apple is anything if not interested in something that can keep the Microsoft Office albatross from around it's neck, and the death of its own AppleWorks suite a while back suggests that a lower-end office solution might be something it would bargain for. Google would be an interesting partner in another respect...the anemic 2.0 offerings of .Mac, once a shining light of Web application offers. An alliance between Google tools and .Mac could breathe a little life into that offering. In exchange, Google and Apple could be working up something on the partnership front to take advantage of synergies between Google initiatives and iTunes.

Or, Dr. Schmidt might just be a cool cat in Jobs' eyes, and he invited him on the board so that he could say, whoa, I'm on the Apple board. Hey, look...there's Al Gore.

Core Duo 2 MacBooks Announced

2006-08-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about Apple moving to an Intel-based architecture is the names of the processors; I suppose I'd grown used to the idea of a PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5 being a simple moniker for processors based on generational technology shifts. In any case, it's now important to content with the news that the move to Core 2 Duo processors for a number of PC notebook manufacturers affects Apple's competitiveness in the overall notebook market, where Apple has recently seen a strong uptick in sales. Is it a net positive or net negative that Apple's offerings can now be compared directly to Windows offerings -- as MacRumors notes, it may be time for Apple to ramp up its development and update cycle to match Intel's penchant for releasing newer, faster processors much more quickly than Motorola/IBM did with PowerPC processors.

How Big Should Apple's 'Niche' Be?

2006-08-26T17:03:00.000-05:00

A recent story at MacNN quotes anaylst Carmi Levy as saying that Apple will "always be a niche player."

Well, duh.

The move to an Intel-based architecture and the availability of Boot Camp and other solutions for running Windows on new Macs might grow that niche somewhat within corporations, particularly where employees or creative departments who insist on Macs can get a break from IT because the IT folks feel the hardware is more familiar. But Levy feels that the Mac will never eclipse Window's hegemony, which he's right about, except that, in some ways the Mac has a hegemony over Windows PCs that probably won't be supplanted anytime soon, and which Apple can exploit to grow into a "niche" player that also happens to be a household name.

I remember the dark days of the Apple's smallest market shares, circa 1997, when Apple was having trouble getting even CompUSA to sell the machines at retail. At that time, Mac fans would make comparisons to BMW or Porsche, saying that the Mac may not have much market share, but it's a premium brand -- a niche. Looking back, it may not have been a large enough niche to survive without some solid innovation and some marketing magic, so it was fortunate for the company that Steve Jobs and the Next OS came along when they did.

Fast forward to today. In my little piece of the world, Macs are everywhere. I work in newspaper publishing on daily basis and dabble in filmmaking. In the Jackson Free Press offices, the PCs are redheaded stepchildren -- we even do our accounting, invoicing and publication management using a combination of MYOB accounting software and a special (and not inexpensive) FileMaker Pro application written specifically for weekly newspapers. And that's in addition to the obvious InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator machines that we have for design and production.

Last winter I spent a few months working in the production office on a feature film shoot -- and, again, Macs reigned on the crew...and not 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 -- but 20-to-1. Everyone had a Mac, whether they used it primarily to do their jobs -- many of them working with film industry databases or templates -- or if they used them mostly for hanging out after the shooting day was over, watching DVDs or synching with their iPods.

And I'm not talking about filmmaking and publishing in San Francisco or LA, either. All of this is taking place in Mississippi. I'm surrounding by Macs.

The flip side, though is the notion that if Macs reach, say, 10 percent of the market (at least in the U.S., where Apple's notebook market share is already 12%) then it's a pretty decent niche, right? After all, in the oft overused automotive metaphor, 10 percent is analagous not to BMW or Porsche, but to Honda, which has 10.2 percent of the U.S. market. Macs and PCs, on some levels, are becoming more and more like automobiles -- evolving such that they represent less dramatically different ways of doing the same things. Indeed, with the switch to Intel processors, Apple is competing more directly with the high-end of PC manufacturers, turning in impressive numbers and well-crafted machines using largely the same components.

All the "niche" really needs to do, then, is remain large enough to be profitable for developers and compelling for users. And, for many die-hard Mac users, we wouldn't mind seeing the Mac market stay small enough that the bulk of malware and spyware is written for that other platform. Mac OS X is something to be proud of -- a lot of open source geeky goodness with a strong GUI and plenty of high-dollar apps -- and keeping it thriving and healthy is something that a lot of Mac fans would love to see. We also like the idea of clever freeware apps and Mac-only versions of open source projects (like the Camino and Shiira Web browsers or the OpenOffice/Gimp-class of Unix apps) which requires a certain share of the market to maintain developer interest.

Where I think Apple could see some long-term growth is in small offices...particularly if they could solve a problem that my small office has -- the need for an affordable, robust file server. The Xserve is nice, but it's overkill...leaving me with the option of either buying an Ethernet-based network hard drive (a little pricey for as little as it does) or running a regular Mac with Mac OS X's File Sharing enabled (which is what I do). With an Xserve mini or some similar solution, Apple could open up some small offices to the Mac platform by offering the advantages of less time spent troubleshooting, Windows compatibility via BootCamp or Parallels, user-friendly options for higher-end server functions and integrate some of the stuff that Apple is famous for -- sharing iTunes music, printers and other devices with tech based largely on Apple's ZeroConf implementation, Bonjour.

They could roll that same thinking into a "home server" that would provide a lot of the same benefits to homes that have multiple Macs in them, going so far as to allow for Open Directory access, so that when users logs into any Mac in that home or office, they see their own home folder and personal documents.

But even without a small office/home server solution, as long as Apple can crank out powerful machines with a good overall cost-of-ownership, developers remain interested in the platform, malware authors remain less interested in try to exploit it and a lot of the "cool kids" keep buying Macs, then it probably won't be hard to decide to stick with the Honda of personal computers.

No, MacTel Will Help Mac Gaming

2006-08-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

I wrote about MacTel Killing Mac Gaming a few weeks ago, then I came across Cider a technology designed to quickly port to the Intel-based Mac games written for Windows API. So, it appears I may have been mistaken...assuming developers decide to take advantage of tools such as Cider and not just fail to release Mac versions, expect Mac gamers to own Windows as well. After all, Windows is an expensive add-on, although I wouldn't be surprised if big-time Mac gamers have a copy of Windows in their gaming toolbelt anyway.

MacTel Is Gonna Kill Mac Gaming, Right?

2006-08-01T17:54:00.000-05:00

I guess it seems obvious...putting an Intel chip in a Mac and allowing it to dual-boot into Windows will kill Mac gaming, despite some see-sawing from game developers. I know that from experience -- in particular, the experience I had playing the game Goldeneye: 007 a few years back.

I remember when the game first came out for Mac and I was surprised at the announcement, because it seemed to me that I'd already played the game. Then it hit me -- it was a time when I was writing a few cross-platform Internet books and I had both a PC and a Mac on my desk at once. When that happens, I tend to do more gaming -- blowing off steam when I'm trying to rip through chapters of a book -- and I'd actually gone to CompUSA and bought myself a copy of Goldeneye for PC. (Usually I just download demos and play a level or two...around that same time I remember playing the first 60 seconds of Starsky and Hutch over and over again.)

So when the announcement came around, it was an odd feeling for a 15-year Mac/snob/veteran -- it was exactly the feeling that PC gamer/snob/types must get all the time when they see a big-time Mac game release. "Been there, played that."

I imagine a few companies will continue to offer some Mac games -- particularly card games and 2D shooters that can be played in a Mac window when you're supposed to be working, but it seems like it'll be a hard sell to get companies to continue to port high-end games -- those with movie ties-ins, serious Doom-style action and so on -- to the Mac OS when the alternative is to simply release the Windows version and tell Mac gamers that the cost is a copy of Windows XP Home or whatnot. Even dual-booting wouldn't be that painful for gaming, although it may not be necessary with Parallels and similar solutions that allow Windows and Mac OS X to run side-by-side.

Yeah, there are still a lot of G4 and G5-based Macs out there, so maybe it'll be a viable market for 6 months or so. But on the cutting edge of gaming, the ports...in my guestimation...are history.

I Know It's Dorky, But...

2006-07-27T20:43:00.000-05:00

I imagine I've got the same basic fetish for the movie "Back to the Future" as does the guy who runs Delorean Mac Mini, although I must not have as advanced of a case. (Check it out...he's mounted a Mac Mini in his Delorean, which he uses to project a wide-screen DVD version of "Back to the Future" onto the inside of the car's hood at car shows. Talk about having time on your hands.)

I remember visiting the "old" Universal Studios (back all they had was the tour and some stunt shows...AND WE LIKED IT, YOU DERNED WHIPPERSNAPPER), where I actually got to be near a Back to the Future Delorean picture car. (My little brother was more intrigued sitting in K.I.T.T., but sometimes there's no accounting for taste.)

What's worse, though, is that I'll admit that every once in a while I endulge in some eBay surfing in the fantasy pursuit of putting an actual Delorean in my actual driveway. (I'm always a little surprised at how relatively inexpensive they are.) I generally come to the conclusion that actually owning and driving one would, ultimately, be too dorky. I mean...it's got rear louvers for crispen glover's sake.

But, then again, maybe 25 years is long enough (ouch...it's been that long) and the Delorean is moving into the classic status. After all, from certain angles...hmm...nah...I probably couldn't pull it off.

Used Mac mini = nice price?

2006-07-25T15:07:00.000-05:00

I've decided I'm in the market for a MacTel Mini if only because I'm going to need to be writing about that Intel processor in the near future. Not thrilled with the prices in the Apple Store, I decided to surf eBay a bit; of course, I'll probably convince myself that I have to go with the more expensive Intel Duo Core model because of the performance issues I've experienced with Intel Single Core processors. I have a feeling that the Single Core Mini is one of those transitional machines that Apple will quietly disown in a few more months.

But, meanwhile, I realized what I could get if I wasn't Intel focused; how about a *very* serviceable G4 machine for $320, including a SuperDrive. Yowza.

And why not? The G4 system seems faster than the Intel Single Core, particularly with older, non-Universal applications. And, those older Minis have better graphics subsystems and they use less RAM for day-to-day tasks. If you don't need a MacTel Mini to run Windows -- and you've got keyboards and monitors hanging out, like I do -- then you might just have quite a bargain machine in one of those used G4 Minis.

Cooler Than Camino?

2006-07-25T10:53:00.000-05:00

Just stumbled across Shiira, a Mac-only Web browser that uses the same Web Kit engine as Safari, but offers some fun extra features. First of all, it's written in Cocoa and it's a Universal Binary -- might be a welcome addition to your browsing arsenal if you've got a MacTel machine. Shiira is designed for heavy-duty browsing, with a number of features (such as "Bookmark All Tabs") that work well for surfers who tend to open a lot of windows and tabs and switch among them. Shirra also uses a sidebar/drawer interface element for History, Bookmarks, Page Holder (haven't seen that one in a while) and RSS feeds. The Google box can be changed to search all sorts of engines, including MacUpdate...all in all it's a very interesting package that seems to have been lovingly crafted. I'll let you know if I end up making the switch...or if I stick with Camino (currently running 1.0a1 and hardly a hiccup).

Does .Mac Need to Go '2.0?'

2006-07-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

GigaOm is recommending updates to .Mac to make it Web 2.0-compliant, so to speak, including some interactivity for iCal calendars, a better Webmail interface and faster iDisk service.

I agree...I use iDisk only for occasional backups at this point, where at one time I thought it would be useful for file sharing in my office. Too slow...we got a dedicated FTP service. I use my .Mac e-mail account almost exclusively by POP downloading it to Apple Mail -- not only is the Webmail interface clunky, but Apple doesn't give me enough storage space (and I pay for *extra*) to use Apple Mail as my main account. And I use Apple Mail all the time to reply from different e-mail accounts from which I receive e-mail, etc -- something that Gmail, for one, can handle online. I'm a little wary of Gmail (I still bristle at the idea of storing my whole e-mail existence on Google servers), but I'm leaning more and more toward it, if only because Google offers the most elegant solution I've seen so far for Webmail via my Blackberry.

Apple might take a page from Google and Yahoo! and notice that people seem to be spending more time in their browser, accessing e-mail, reminders, calendars, address books -- even office apps. (To see Google's strategy in action, just stop by Google Spreadsheets and Writely, which Google recently bought...warning: not Safari-friendly.)

I noticed the other day when I was stopped by the Apple section at CompUSA that it seems MacBooks and Mac minis no longer ship with AppleWorks...maybe it's time for Apple to put an AppleWorks Web edition online?

eMac Gone, Replaced By Low-End iMac

2006-07-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

PC Magazine is reporting that Apple has announced that the eMac is no more, marking the end of the CRT era for Apple. Instead, Apple is making a special edition of the iMac available to Educational customers for $899. The lower-cost model uses the same GMA 950 graphics system used in the Mac mini, which shares main system RAM for its graphical needs. It also has only an 80GB hard drive (standard iMacs have a 160GB drive) and instead of the 8x SuperDrive standard on other models, this iMac has only a 24x CD-R/DVD playback combo drive. The new iMac does retain the standard 17-inch LCD display, along with the built-in iSight camera and other perks of the latest iMac models.

The new low-cost iMac shows up in the educational Apple Store only, not the regular store, which still lists the lowest cost iMac at $1299. No doubt the low-end iMac will be available on eBay, etc., in a short period of time.

eWeeks Reports Tiger Fixes to Networking

2006-06-28T15:43:00.000-05:00

It's about time. We've got a Tiger-based file-sharing network in the Jackson Free Press office (not running Mac OS X Server, just a dedicated machine with File Sharing turned on), and that gives us some headaches at times. I've been thinking for a while now that Mac OS X should be mature enough that the networking works a little better than it does...we've been at this close to seven years, right? Anyhow, the eWeek report says that Mac OS X 10.4.7 -- which should be available in both PowerPC and Intel flavors via Software Update as you read this -- addresses some long-standing issues such as problems that InDesign and Quark have when accessing files over a network. (Can I get an 'Amen'?) Plus, fewer dropped connections, some improvements in AirPort networking and it sounds like some tweaks to QuickTime.

New Netscape.com = Digg.com Plus

2006-06-16T08:29:00.000-05:00

AOL, owners of Netscape.com, have approved a retool of the portal that will have a Digg.com look-and-feel, but cover a broader range of topics than the tech-focused Digg. (Although Digg itself announced it was broadening a bit just last week.) The new Netscape is in public beta right now, just reaching 1,000 members as I'm typing. Users enter small blog-like entries to interesting news stories, which can then be voted on by the community. Those with the most votes hit the home page. Jason Calacanis, who sold AOL Weblogs.com, Inc. a while back, is running the new Netscape and says he'll have a team of bloggers who follow the most popular stories with interviews and on-the-street reporting.

Clever Tweak Alters Mail

2006-06-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

While I'm not blessed with my own, personal widescreen Apple monitor (toiling away as I do on as 12-inch PowerBook G4), I have always thought that the Mail interface isn't fully utilized on wider screens. Some enterprising Mac nerds have cobbled together a plug-in for Mail that rearranges the interface so that a full top-to-bottom list of e-mail can be viewed and the preview pane, now on the right side of the Mail Viewer window, can display nearly a full page of text.

http://harnly.net/software/letterbox.html

(Now if only the damn Paste and Match Style command actually worked.)

ubuntu: Linux for Newbies

2006-05-29T15:16:00.000-05:00

I just spent half a day looking at different Linux options and then settling on one -- the back story is that I'm trying to set up a server in my office, and I thought it'd be fun to make it an NFS server. I'm starting to have my doubts about exactly how much "fun" that is...I might just blow all this off and let people in the office log into the server using Personal File Sharing...but, it was a diverting use of a Saturday afternoon.

And, one of the definite "finds" during this quest is ubuntu, a PPC Linux distribution that couldn't have been easier to get set up and running. You download a single CD volume, burn it (using Disk Utility so that it's an ISO standard CD) and then start up the Mac where you're going to install Linux with the "c" key held down. From there, you configure the installation and let it do some heavy installation and downloading.

Of course, it helps if you have the luxury of installing onto a freshly formatted hard disk, as you'd otherwise have to deal with creating partitions and restoring a great deal of Mac data from backup. For my "server," I'd just installed a 160GB drive in a Power Mac G4 tower, so I was set for the installation.

Anyway, the ubutu installation was a snap, it loaded an attractive, well configured version of the Gnome desktop manager and even installed OpenOffice applications and Evolution, an Entourage/Outlook clone. If feels a little like running the BeOS of yore -- quick, a little weird (compared to a Mac) but self-enclosed and functional, including a built-in application manager (for getting ubutu compatible apps, like the blogger.com app I'm using for this entry) and an update manager for the system.

Overall, a fun and painless entry point for Linux, including access to some great free applications. Now, if I can get the NFS sharing to work...

Mac Mini Intel - Waaaaay Slow?

2006-05-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

I had my first hands-on experience with a Mac Mini Core Solo with 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive -- in other words, the low-end of today's modern Mac Mini. And I've got to say, it was extremely underwhelming performance-wise. Most disconcerting to me were some slow startups of applications -- Microsoft Word is a bad culprit, although neither Safari or Mail seemed to fly -- and I saw some bizarrely slow window re-draws when switching between various apps. Photoshop took *forever* to get started up, although it draws and paints fine once launched. (I didn't do anything high-end.)

I say this because in the same client's office (I'm their "Mac guy") we have a Mac Mini G4 1.25GHz machine that very nicely drives an Apple 23-inch display, happily running Quark 7 and a host of other apps. I had to pry it open with a crowbar to get the RAM in it...it may have a full Gig, if memory serves, which could account for some of the difference...but, still, that Mac Mini is a perfectly serviceable machine for office work.

Perhaps this is to be expected as the Mac OS and its applications once again goes through a processor-bridging period, but I'm curious since I haven't had much personal experience with Intel-chip machines -- is everyone living with some *bad* slowdowns and sluggish experiences on Intel-based Macs? Or are MacBooks and iMacs better than Mac Minis?

update: Over at Barefeats I came across a Mac Mini shootout that might explain some of what I was seeing -- it sounds like the graphics subsystem is pretty poor on the new Mini, including the fact that it uses system RAM (sometimes upwards of 80MB), which makes 512MB kinda anemic. Sigh.

Cool Site: BlueRectangle

2006-04-10T16:47:00.000-05:00

Got old books you'd like to sell for a little money? BlueRectangle offers to buy them from you (at what looks to be an extremely low price, of course) and they pay the postage. It's an interesting way to get rid of a stack or two of books...assuming they want to buy your books. (I won't mention how some of my older computer book titles fared. Ahem.)

http://www.bluerectangle.com/

Does Steve Jobs Want to Run Disney?

2006-01-25T19:55:00.000-06:00

Speculation from C-Net's Charles Cooper:

If Disney falters, will Jobs be able to resist the temptation to meddle? If Iger fails to deliver, would Disney's board be able to ignore the presence of a superstar CEO waiting in the wings (not to mention one who will become Disney's largest shareholder)?

In some new era of technology-entertainment-delivery, could Disney ultimately buy Apple with Jobs at the helm? How convergent can convergence go?

PowerBook and iBook Field Guide

2005-11-02T16:55:00.000-06:00

It's out! The PowerBook and iBook Digital Field Guide is the culmination of some hard work over the spring and summer months, with a great deal of help from my co-author, Dennis Cohen. I've looked forward to writing this book for a long time -- I've been pitching the concept for a few years now -- because I think it's great to have a companion book for your Mac portable that focuses exclusively on what you *need* to know and keeps the size down so that it fits in your bag.

This book skips most of the "basics" of the Mac OS and discusses, instead, issues like data security, working with a portable as your "desktop replacement" and getting acccess to data while you're on the road. There's also troubleshooting info, a guide to portable bags and accessories and more. Plus, the publisher makes it pretty easy to buy this book, thanks to a coupon good for two Audible.com eBooks that are worth the cover price.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that Amazon gives you 32% off!

Slate Has Cred-Gap Bashing Apple Reporting

2005-10-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

To be honest, there are some item in this story that make sense. Apple does get an inordinate amount of press when it releases products that others have already released. I think the author of the piece fails a bit in understanding the elegance of the products that Apple makes -- watching Ms. D figure out the iPod, iTunes and Podcasting in the course of about 20 minutes on her birthday last week is proof of some of the power of Apple's interface design. And while Apple doesn't always make the perfect interface choices, the author has to understand that enormous odds _are_ against Apple because the world doesn't want to hear that there's a better way to do things than the Microsoft way.

But the funniest bit is Slate's little ad-copy blurb at the top of the piece, breathlessly touting the fact -- in bold lettering -- that the story is "iPod-ready" and part of Slate's line-up of daily podcasts. ...You know, right before the author bashes Apple's influence on the market as smoke-and-mirrors. Priceless.

Apple Mail Broken

2005-10-11T17:57:00.000-05:00

Has anyone else noticed that every since Apple "upgraded" Mail in Tiger, it seems like the "Paste And Match Style" feature is broken? For years this has been something that I always thought was cool about Mail, and it's very useful for a writer, as I'm often correcting or editing small pieces in e-mail. It's handy to copy something that is an e-mail "quote" and then paste it as original text, without the quote levels. Anyway...if anyone knows how to get the original functionality back, I'd appreciate a heads-up.

My New Browser: Camino

2005-09-26T21:14:00.000-05:00

I can get a little obsessive about eBay, now and again, as well as Cars.com, Edmunds.com and Autotrader.com -- I end up with a whole little Mission Control of browser windows open when I'm car hunting. And when I'm doing that, I like to use the heck out of tabs in my browser window; command+click a link and it opens in a tab in the same window, preferrably in the background until I switch to it. That way I can keep clicking links (from, say, an eBay results page) and have their pages load in the background until I click over to a tab to check out the resulting auction entry or review.

Put simply, Safari chokes on this little plan. For some reason, opening tabs in Safari windows seems particularly resource intensive, and after I've got about 6 windows open, each with 5-7 tabs, it starts to crawl so much so that I'm waiting for mouse clicks, then I'm waiting for Expose to kick in and so on.

With Camino, I've had no trouble surfing multiple pages with multiple tabs and then switching, say, to a live online game of Texas Hold 'Em. Camino isn't bullet-proof -- it will slow down, too -- but no where near as quickly as Safari. It's also not as buggy as Firefox, in my experience, which tends to go down once every 18 hours or so.

Camino is Mozilla technology based on the Gecko engine, but it's Mac-only, meaning, perhaps, a better product if only because they're more focused than the Firefox team. True, it doesn't sport as many fun features as Safari (for instance, it appears to do nothing native with RSS), but it's sprightly, slim and it gives you that designed-for-a-Mac-and-therefore-just works kinda feeling.

Mastering Mac OS X, Fourth Edition

2005-09-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

I actually got my author copies a few weeks ago, but haven't had much time to blog about the book I was working on for a good part of the spring -- the book is out, and it looks great. The Sybex team has done a great job on it, as has Kirk McElhearn, my co-author, who shouldered even more of the burden this time. This is a fun project -- it's only the second book that I've ever had go four editions, and I'm proud of its breadth -- I also hope it's a fun and useful read for those who buy it. Please feel free to ask me any questions about it on the thread.

See Amazon Page

ML-1710 and Tiger

2005-08-11T14:07:00.000-05:00

My favorite little $50 printer suddenly stopped working when I upgraded Donna's Mac to Tiger (actually, I upgraded Donna's Mac completely; she now has the iBook G4 I talked about a few posts down, while I've since acquired a PowerBook G4 12-inch), and went hunting for answers. Found it here:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/foomatic/

a tip I got from here:

http://www.macosx.com/content/faq.php/q4597/Printer-Not-Werking-In-Tiger.html

Once installed, the trick is to set up your ML-1710 (in Print Utility you should double-click the ML-1710 and then select the Print Using menu) so that you're using the Samsung 4500 Foomatic+gdi printer driver. There isn't a 1710 driver, unfortunately, but the rumor is that the 4500 driver works fine.

(Actually, there is a 1710 PPD out there, but rumor has it that it's Windows-focused, and it doesn't actual lead to any printerly behavior...something I learned the hard way.)

Mac Mini Now Worth It?

2005-07-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

I made a fool of myself this afternoon in an e-mail to a colleague in which I lambasted Apple for shipping the Mac mini with only 256MB of RAM. If I'd checked the Mac news this morning, then I would have known that I stood corrected.

I've been working this week on my new-to-me PowerBook G4 12-inch 1Ghz model and enjoying the process. (I got it because I needed a cheap portable with a SuperDrive; it's also got an 80GB hard drive which is handy.) The eBay description said 768MB of RAM, which is one reason I jumped on it... when I got the machine, however, it only had 256MB. Grr. Nothing sucks like feeling ripped off on eBay.

My seller has what sounds like a good excuse -- CompUSA had done some AppleCare work on the PowerBook and might have left the RAM out -- so I'm trying to be patient.

Meanwhile, however, I'm in 256MB purgatory, a place that many a Mac mini owner is probably, too. Running Tiger and, say, one or two other applications works OK...any real, regular computing, though, and I get some...pregnant...pauses...when I switch around or even sometimes when I don't.

It's not pleasant, and it makes my PowerBook G4/500 feel like a workhorse by comparison. I need my RAM.

As would a Mac mini owner. I just did this upgrade for a consulting client of mine the other day -- he got a Mac mini and a 20-inch Apple LCD, the lucky guy -- and upgrading that Mac mini is no small feat. I had to wrench it apart with thin putty knives, then pull the 256MB and drop in his 1GB stick. Now he's got a relatively useless 256MB module that I would imagine eBay is flooded with these day.

So I'm happy to see that Apple has not only upgraded to 512MB, but also offers a BTO option for a clean gig of RAM. Good move. Now the Mac mini is enticing enough that I'm starting to wonder if there wouldn't be another machine in our newspaper office that deserves a little upgrade...

Another Widget

2005-07-25T21:45:00.000-05:00

I'm using DashBlog right now (on my used-but-new-to-me PowerBook G4 12-inch, I'll have you know) to tell you about The Backpack widget by Chipt. If you haven't yet experienced Backpack, you might want to try it.

Backpack is sort of a riff on the idea of a wiki, but with a number of specialized tools. You can create pages in your Web browser, then add to them using various forms, notes and checklists. You can selectively share your page with others or use it for display to the public. (My book page, clickable at the left, is a Backpack page.) Backpack also has special Reminders that work in a number of ways -- head to the special Reminders page and enter a reminder; you can then have that reminder e-mailed to you, you can subscribe to an iCal calendar file that includes the remind and so on.

Well, with the Backpack Widget, you can also access those reminders right from within Dashboard, and you can add new ones. You can also work with your personal lists and notes from within the widget interface. You can exactly edit full pages but, then again, that would pretty much make Backpack totally redundant.

If you're not using Backpack, check it out. If you are using it, check out the Backpack Widget. This is fun stuff.

CompUSA...Sucks

2005-07-01T19:17:00.000-05:00

I went to our local CompUSA to pick up two things for a very high-end video editing Power Macintosh G5 setup that I've been privileged to be working on recently, and found it woefully lacking in some amazing basics. I wanted two things -- something to translate from a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 connection (ideally a cable) and a FireWire hub. Well, CompUSA had *none* of the former, even in the Mac section, and only one single FireWire hub; a small Belkin model they were willing to let go of for just shy of $50. In other words, not a great deal, and no selection to speak of.

Most frustrating is how little "computer stuff" seems to be left in CompUSA -- maybe I'm more of a Radio Shack guy or something, but our CompUSA offers three aisles of wireless cards and routers, two aisles of iPod stuff, four or so aisles of DVD movies, but only one Firewire hub and no 400-to-800 translation cables. At all.

Apple Goes Intel

2005-06-06T15:59:00.000-05:00

According to Apple PR and reports from the WWDC 2005 SteveNote this morning, Apple is going to make the switch to Intel processors beginning in June 2006. My first thought is that it could make for a very interesting future for the Mac -- in a good way -- it sounds like the transition will work pretty well if they've got their coding ducks in a row.

The question of the year, however, will be this -- with an Intel Mac dual-boot into Windows? If it does, then will application developers continue to write Mac versions of their software?

My assumption is a Mac will still be a relatively-closed-system Mac, just with a different processor. But exactly how different is an Intel-based Mac from an Intel-based PC? Isn't someone going to figure out how to get Windows to run on one?

Of course, there's a flipside to that, too...it's called world domination. What if the Mac OS could run on PCs -- and have many fewer viruses? It's possible, I suppose.

Is Apple taking on Microsoft? Think about it -- all the sudden there's an open source-based, standards compliant, highly secure operating system running on Intel processors...ouch, my head hurts!

Of course, along those same lines is a down-side -- there's the issue of how extremely difficult it's going to be for Apple to justify any price difference from PCs if they all run Intel chips. They'll be selling user experience -- and superior craftsmanship -- on its own.

For so long an Intel-based Mac has seemed like such a bad idea that actually reading about the announcement is hard to fathom. I guess all there is to do this that now is wait and see what Steve's plan is.

It's certainly an interesting world all the sudden.

Testing Dashblog

2005-06-05T01:12:00.000-05:00

Dashblog is a Dashboard widget that interfaces with the Blogger API, enabling you to add entries quickly to any blogging solution that supporter that API, including, of course, Blogger itself.

This is cool for two reasons. One, it's always cool when there's a new way to add to my blog, because them I'm more likely to do it...at least for a little while.

Second, I like Dashblog because of the Dashboard's translucent look -- I can see a web page I want to blog about, copy the URL and then switch directly to the Dashboard and start in, while still seeing most of the browser window in the background. In other words, it's a nifty idea that builds on the nifty idea that is the Dashboard in the first place.

Just don't click the Info icon while you're editing; entries don't appear to be saved as you're typing and I don't see a Save Draft option. Nor can you edit existing entries or manage your blog from the widget -- it's strictly about sending up quick and dirty Blogger entries. But the software is still in an early beta, so expect improvements.

Cool Little MiniMate

2005-05-25T01:00:00.000-05:00

Just came across the Mini Mate and felt like it was worth saying something about. I've been surfing tonight thinking about (a.) my next video editing machine for home and (b.) a replacement machine for the office that needs to do some light production work but still be affordable. The Mac mini keeps coming up in my head as a possibilities, but then I realize I'd need some additional storage and end up thinking along other lines.

This little add-on is a pretty interesting item. Not only does it look like it's a match for the Mac mini, but it a fairly reasonable price (250GB is $279) and it includes both a FireWire hub and a USB hub, so that you have a few more ports that the anemic little Mac mini offers you.

And I have to wonder if the fact that they're building knock-off peripherals for the Mac mini isn't a good thing -- it suggests this little guy might be here to stay for a while.

Why Apple Should Already Offer a PDA

2005-05-17T23:37:00.000-05:00

Apple should have released the LifeDrive before PalmOne did, not because the LifeDrive is going to be much of a challenge for Apple, but because Apple is going to look like a copy-cat if they come out with something similar to it in the next few months or years.

I've said for a long time that what was most interesting about the iPod was the fact that Apple had made it cool for us to carry a hard disk in our pockets or bags. If it wasn't for the whole digital music thing, relatively fewer of us would be willing to walk around with hard disks in our pockets.

The LifeDrive takes that concept to another level, adding a nice screen and support for wireless technologies. Now you can have a hard disk in your pocket -- which means you can carry a non-trivial amount of data, documents and multimedia files with you -- as well as your contacts, e-mail, calendar, photos, music and so on. Plus...with the wireless access built in, you've got a big enough display for serious Web surfing using near-ubiquitous WiFi service. (Que Sera Sera, the cajun restaurant and bar across the street from my office, is advertising free WiFi.)

This is a cool trick because it's more than just a gimmick -- it's a near-complete desktop replacement. Right now when I go to a film festival meeting in our local indy-movie-rental-store-slash-coffee-and-sandwich-shop I take my PowerBook in order to connect and look things up. With the LifeDrive, no need. Plus, someone can ping me with e-mail. Very nice.

If it were an iPod, all the better, as I'm constantly striving to replace my current pocket and portable devices with one all-in-one (or, at the most, an all-in-one and a mobile phone), and I haven't gotten there yet. Palm makes good stuff, and the LifeDrive looks like a neat move in the PDA space. Apple could so pull this off, and with a larger disk and more Apple-friendly stuff, to boot. Oh -- and let it stream tunes to an AirPort Express. Yowza.

The only thing would be what to call Apple's version. The iPod PDA? iPod Life? iPod WiFi? The iPod AirPort? The iPod Everything?

Site News: My Books Page, Wikified

2005-05-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

I'm constantly struggling with the issue of keeping this site up to date vs. working for a living. You may have similar problems. Obviously, it would help to blog more, but that's not the only issue.

One of the things I fret about it keeping good information about the books I'm writing up-to-date. I've felt for the past few months that if I could get a good-looking wiki solution, I'd do better at the managing-my-books thing. I could log right in and edit the pages, add notes, talking about changes or updates or whatnot. And I'm loving wiki tools right now, for pretty much the same reason that I hate HTML and FTP.

Enter BackPack (http://www.backpackit.com) a very cool service that I've just stumbled upon and will probably start paying real money for here in a little while. What BackPack does is enable you to selectively make wiki pages public or private, using them for a variety of reasons. Already I've got a page for my current to-do list, one for a film festival subcommitee that I'm a part of, one for advertising sales at our newspaper and one where I'm gathering info about my books. That's the only purely public page in my "backpack" -- the others are either my-eyes-only or designed for small workgroups, which can be automatically invited by e-mail and managed by the application.

Let me put it this way -- this is flickr, or Blogger, or MeetUp in terms of the level of Really Good Web Idea that Backpack represents.

I'm not done with my book page(s) -- and knowing me, it could languish a bit now that I've started -- but so far I'm almost giddy over the potential that my Backpack offers. So far. We'll see if that continues...it's up to me, I suppose.

'My' New iBook 12-inch

2005-03-29T13:03:00.001-06:00

OK, It's not really mine. One of the reasons I've been slow to post recently is because I'm buried up to my neck in books, which often happens around the time that Mac OS X is ready for a revision. I'm working on some fun and exciting stuff and, along with trying to publish a weekly newspaper, it leaves little enough time for blogging. But you probably don't care.

The iBook in question is a 1.2GHz, 12-inch model that Apple was kind enough to send me as a PR review unit since I'm doing quite a bit of coverage of portables and haven't had much experience with new-generation iBooks. As a long-time PowerBook user/owner -- my current PowerBook G4/500 has been a workhorse for three years now -- I'm intrigued but the possibility that I could switch to something smaller and, yet, more powerful than anything I've had on my desk on a regular basis.

The iBook is small -- I'm struck by that anytime I swing back to my PowerBook, which sits up on my desk on a neat little Ikea shelf that's connected to my computer desk -- you'd have to see it, but it enables me to use the PowerBook as a desktop, will a full-sized keyboard and mouse. The little swivel shelf brings the height of the PowerBook higher so that my ergonomics are a little better. Compared to the iBook, the PowerBook's 15-inch display looks enormous, if much less bright.

The other quibble -- and it took me a while to figure this out -- the trackpad on the iBook is too big. Seems an odd thing to say since everything about the iBook is small, but the problem is that the trackpad is just large enough that I end up with a second finger (my middle finger) often poised just on the edge of the trackpad and, if I accidentally touch the trackpad with both fingers, the mouse pointer goes shooting off wildly. I've never had that problem before with a PowerBook, and it took me a while to stop simply blaming the iBook for having a "cheaper" mechanism. That may or may not be the case, but it's the size that's the problem. (The trackpad button is also a little "clunkier" than my PowerBook's, but it works fine.)

Aside from that, the iBook is a wonder to me. It's definitely easier to pull in and out of my bag, it's got AirPort Extreme built in (something I'm not used to with my PowerBook) and Bluetooth, which I haven't yet used -- although I just remembered that I have a Bluetooth headset hanging out in a box around here somewhere. Hmm.

One of the most amazing little details to me is burning CDs from a portable. Like I said, I've had my PowerBook -- with a CD/DVD reader only -- for a long time. I'm used to thinking that burning is something that desktops do, then you transfer to your portable. Having this little iBook whir up and start burning a CD was fun to watch.

I find myself squinting at the screen a bit and, for the first time ever, I set a Microsoft Word document to 125% to see the text (something I always used to make fun of PC owners for doing because their display resolutions had no relationship to WYSIWYG sizing the way Macs, er, used to). But overall it's a fun, powerful little package and I like that it feels a bit more rugged than my PowerBook ever has.

I don't know yet if I can live with the 12-inch display and the trackpad drives me a little nuts, but after this little loaner period, I may just find myself with a new 14-inch iBook G4 as my next generation desktop replacement. Stay tuned.

Rick and Dave - Head2Head

2005-03-13T16:35:00.000-06:00

I just came across the Blogger site featuring Rick and Dave, two guys that I've occasionally written with. Dave and I used to do a radio show together in Denver that Rick was a featured guest on; we all wrote for the same magazine in Colorado Springs.

All that is to say, it's depressing to think how old these guys are getting now, and they're still at it, fighting over things like Battlestar Galatica vs. Enterprise.

In public, no less. :-)

Rick and Dave - Head2Head

Apple Should Buy TiVo?

2005-03-12T10:38:00.000-06:00

I've felt for a long time that a natural extension of Apple's current success with iTunes, the iPod and AirPort would be some sort of "home" server. That server would most likely be located near your television and your stereo, so that it could serve video and audio to those appliances. I also envision it being an AirPort base station and being able to stream audio and video to your Macs.

The trick to the iPod is simple -- Apple got us to carry a hard drive in our pockets by making it cool looking and getting it to play music. So, what benefits could be derived from getting us to put a hard disk with a broadband Internet connection near our home entertainment system?

It looks like the dwindling fortunes of TiVo have some pundits calling for Apple to buy TiVo figuring that TiVo has great technology that needs Apple's genius and marketing muscle. It seems to me that the mere fact that industry analysts are calling for Steve Jobs to do something means he definitely won't do it, but it's an intriguing prospect.

Somehow I think Apple has to get a box onto the television -- and at the "heart" of our homes and maybe even small businesses -- and the Mac mini seems like a good start. And there's no question that Apple needs to pioneer a $9.99 movie purchase solution (or whatever) for downloadable movies they way they have for downloadable music. Frankly, I'm not sure they need to buy TiVo to make it happen, but I'm still waiting on my iHome or iHub or whatever it's going to be called.

Firefox for Mac? Works for Me.

2005-02-24T19:10:00.000-06:00

It was with skepticism that I first used Firefox -- a similar skepticism to when I first used Safari -- because my experience with third-party Web browsers for years has been that it doesn't feel like they really work. The Mac's third-party offerings have always had something enticing about them -- iCab, Mozilla, Omnipage, Opera -- but I would also gravite back to Internet Explorer, because it offered fewer hiccups, even if it was slower.

Then came Safari. Written and published by Apple, it seemed like Safari stayed on top of things better than any "non-IE" browser since IE had taken the crown from Netscape. Since somewhere around Mac OS X 10.2, I haven't looked back.

Now there's Firefox. And it's the first time I've been to a true third-party browser that I felt I was likely to stick with. I was reading this Your Tech Weblog entry the other day and shaking my head -- so far, I feel that Firefox is quite a bit faster than Safari in my day-to-day use. It is slightly more crashprone (every once in a while the interface seems to give up and quit responding to mouse movements) and I've not yet utterly tested it with multimedia plug-ins and so on. But there seems to be enough of a groundswell around the product that I think it'll be a player and get the attention it needs so that those plug-in type things work.

I'm also impressed at the Mac-like feel of the browser; even though it's a crossplatform application, the Mac version seems to use Mac interface items very nicely, and I rarely feel like I'm in an app that's not a ground-up Mac app. (As far as I know it is -- I haven't really studied the way the different platforms were versioned and coded.)

That Your Tech Weblog entry did have one fun clue that I've taken advantage of -- apparently Firefox has been built into a few different versions that are specifically optimized for the G4, instead of the G5. Those versions can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/ -- I've installed one and so far I'm pleased with the performance on my PowerBook G4/500 -- it feels faster than Safari.

One thing I've grown to like about Firefox I've never used in other apps -- a tabbed interface. I guess the default [cmd]+click opens into tabs (instead of new windows), which is what got me to switch. In a way it's like going from Classic Finder to Finder windows in Mac OS X. Tabs make a lot more sense than a mess of windows under almost any circumstances.

So FireFox has grabbed a coveted spot on my Dock and home and on my PowerBook, and I've even switched it to the default browser. We'll see how long that lasts -- from what I've read on Apple's site, I might switch back to Safari for the RSS reader that's coming in Tiger, or maybe Camino...which is downloading in the background as a write this...will be worth a look.

Apple Announces Two-for-One Stock Split

2005-02-12T15:07:00.000-06:00

Interesting news from Apple. I figured that with the price of their stock heading upward so precipitously that it would likely split in the next little while, although I didn't imagine it would happen so immediately. While buying Apple now probably isn't a "grandma bought shares of a company called IBM in the 1930s" proposition (or whatever), it certainly doesn't seem like a bad idea. Not that I can afford it (nor do I or have I ever owned any Apple stock).

Choosing My Wiki Way

2005-02-07T22:06:00.000-06:00

Just a few weeks ago I decided to spring something new on the staff of our newspaper -- a wiki. Currently, communication around our office is a mish-mash of e-mail and iChat, with an FTP server and posted signs on the wall completing the picture. While we use blog technology extensively for the site that we offer the public, internal blogs have failed as a way for us to communicate with one another.

After only about a day of explaining what a wiki is (everyone liked that it was based on the Hawaiian word for "quick"), I set one up for them to use. The idea with a wiki is that you can easily create and edit simple website simply by typing into HTML forms.

On the editorial side, they took to it like wildfire. All of the sudden we had an entire quarter year of issues tracked, with special entries for the office supplies they needed, the phone numbers and e-mail messages of the photographers and a few angry missives from the editor about how everyone is missing their deadlines and needed to stick to the style guide.

The wiki was a hit.

The problem was: Swiki, the service that I decided to use because it was (a.) free and (b.) offered secure wiki sites, only available to people with a password. Apparently Swiki is notoriously unreliable, and, soon after the editors had taken to it like flies on spit (yes, I know the real saying) Swiki up and disappeared.

Since then I've been looking for an alternative, but the editors haven't quite taken to a new wiki with the same gung-ho attitude. In particular, I'd settled in with XWiki, which the salespeople and I have been using to track our calls on advertisers and to note what ads need to be designed. XWiki is great stuff and getting better all the time. In particular I like that you can turn pages into PDFs with the click of a button, and I like the way each page could handle comments.

Then, today, I finally got my codes for a beta test site at Jotspot, the "latest and greatest" think in wiki-stuff. I'd have started with Jotspot if they'd have gotten me a beta site sooner, but apparently they're doing it by hand. (JotSpot is a cool startup that's got original Excite developers involved.) The reason I wanted to try it so bad is that Jotspot is going further with little WikiApps than anyone else so far, enabling you to create forms and accept input, keep track of events in calendars, track your contacts and generally do some cool stuff. There's even a Customer Relationship Manager, which is a whole other quest I've been on for our sales office.

So there I was, tooling around in Jotspot, when I got an inspiration to check Swiki. Lo and behold, it was up again! I quickly cut and paste page after page from the old EditWiki to a new one I'd established at JotSpot. Then I created accounts and invited the editors to the new incarnation of their old wiki. So far, they're pretty excited.

The question at this point will be -- JotSpot or XWiki? Jot is slick -- you can add to a wiki page by e-mailing to it, which is interesting for, say, adding items that editors should read from the local paper or for writers to send in stories. It's also not clear how much it's going to cost when they get out of beta mode. It'll probably be more than a few pennies rubbed together.

XWiki, on the other hand, is more home-grown, but it offers page commenting, attachments to pages and other impressive features. It's still one of the better-looking wikis, and in a few short days I've gotten used to its syntax and some of its idiosyncracies. (It's one of the few wikis I've come across which doesn't use WikiWords. WikiWords actually lose their charm after a while, but they are handy for quickly creating new links and pages.)

More than likely it'll boil down to cost. If JotSpot ends up too expensive, or if the applications simply aren't worth it (so far I'm actually less than dazzled by the CRM, although there isn't one that has dazzled me enough to keep using it) then I'll probably switch back to XWiki. But I'm going to play with Jot for a little while longer and see if it takes with the rest of the crew.

Regardless, there's something to this wiki thing. If you've got a reasonably tech-savvy group that needs to share some text, plan projects and track changes to things, then a wiki might be worth a look.

Bloggies Posted

2005-02-06T17:00:00.000-06:00

So, I'm already thinking that the lack of categories in Blogger sorta sucks. I should have noticed that -- I mean, really thought about it -- before switching over. Because I like categories. This entry, for instance, would be in the "Blogging" category instead of one of the Mac-related (or politics or beer-related) categories. Ah, well.

So, the 2005 Bloggies Finalists have been posted and announced -- I just came across them, actually. Some interesting options. The winners will be announced in March, but, for now, you can page through the finalists and see the prizes that each category can bring.

Man, I could really use "A large olive oil gift set from Alejandro & Martin." Seriously.

Back in the Saddle

2005-02-06T16:15:00.000-06:00

I've been humming that song for the past few days now, but didn't fully realize it meant I was going to be working to put my blog back up. It's been down for a while -- after a blow-out with pMachine (not the software's fault, but a bad upgrade and not enough of a backup strategy on my part), I've decided this is as good a time as any to play with some other solutions. If you've stopped by in the past few weeks you saw a iBlog-based site. I enjoyed that (and the idea of killing of my current ISP and putting that $99 .Mac space to good use) but got sick of the idea that I had to use iBlog from a single computer to make my updates.

So, I'm going to try Blogger for a little while. There's almost no guarantee that I'll stick with it -- I'm already feeling the crunch of limits in terms of categories and layout -- and I'd like to included a forum feature here on the site, but I'd prefer to have the whole system integrated.

But, in the meantime, it'll give me a chance to play with Blogger and let you know my reaction. And I can get back to talking about some Mac stuff!

Blog On

2005-01-01T22:23:00.000-06:00

"This is a truly remarkable book. It is both a detailed primer for weblog novice and serves well as a reference for the experienced blogger or one desiring to attain that level." - Jerry, via Amazon.com

"I wish I'd had this book when I was building wilwheaton.net!" - Wil Wheaton, actor/writer

Blog On! is a comprehensive look at how-to create and maintain your own blog. It takes a look at the basics of blogging and the phenomenon that has been created by the tools, then walks through both hosted and server-side solutions for creating your own blog. Blogger, pMachine, Movable Type and others are covered. The book concludes with chapters that discuss HTML, style sheets and a final chapter on using blogs in organizations for project management and for capturing knowledge.

Amazon includes a sample chapter and a look at the front and back cover. If you bought and like the book, please post a review!

Update: 2/25/05
I've moved this page into Blogger for quick access and, hopefully, to make it a bit more handy and accessible.