My cousin’s daughter is 3 years old. As far as I know, her only interaction with Apple, and specifically with an iPad, was during a 30 minute session at a restaurant. I’d given her my iPad and a note-taking/doodling app to play with while we adults ate dinner. I recently saw my cousin a couple weeks ago and he mentioned that he’s going to have to buy an iPad. When I asked him why, he said that he’d been killing time with his daughter at the local Apple store. His daughter was playing an iPad game involving forming letter blocks into words. He hadn’t helped her with it, he hadn’t showed her how to use the app, he hadn’t actually done anything to get her oriented. Yet here she was using the iPad just fine and, more importantly, completely naturally. He said that a few days after that incident, he’d tried to show her a similar game on the computer but she couldn’t get the mouse to do what she wanted. Partly because her fine motor skills are still developing, but mostly because the mouse/keyboard paradigm isn’t natural. So Apple’s lodged another sale and they’ve just started a potentially lifelong relationship with a customer at the impressionable age of three. What’s the lifetime value of such a relationship? Pretty high, I’d bet.

So where am I going with this? Apple has been on a real tear lately. They’re killing it in the phone arena, they’re the defacto music distribution channel, they’ve pretty much redefined the tablet computer arena, and they are feeling out the TV space slowly but steadily. All this has had a halo effect on Mac computers, which are steadily increasing in market share. In short, they’ve become the ultimate consumer electronics company, leaving behind the low margin cutthroat PC industry. And not just any consumer electronics company – a premier company, much in the same vein as Sony and Pioneer used to be. But it wasn’t until their recent “Back to the Mac” event that I realized just how insanely brilliant their vision really is. I’m honestly excited and scared by their implied approach. It radically simplifies the computer experience while at the same time almost guaranteeing their dominance in the space for at least the next five years, an eternity in the PC space. Here’s why.

The Mac refreshes were minimal – a new Air (which is crazy/sexy, but not germane). The more important thing was their introduction of a Mac App Store. In one stroke, they’ve completely killed the need for a distribution agreement outside of Apple. Small software shops can now compete on equal footing with established companies – the marginal cost of publishing a title drops pretty much to zero. It also considerably simplifies the process of finding, reviewing, and buying software. No more hunting through messageboards. No more trolling the Internet and giving your credit card to small vendors with questionable data security policies. One account controls your music, video, book, and software purchases. Simple, secure, standard. Beautiful.

But speaking as the unofficial tech support member for my family, this approach also greatly simplifies support requests. First of all, I don’t have to tell my dad to go to some funky URL to download some free piece of software that supports itself with all kinds of weird banner and sidescroll ads. I know he won’t screw up by buying stuff from one vetted place. And I know that he and I will be using the exact same version of the exact same software because we’re buying the same thing and we’re updated to the latest version automatically. Can you see how straightforward that makes software recommendations? And how easy it is to troubleshoot potential problems?

The more time I spend in Windows, even Windows 7, the less enamored I am of the whole “flexibility” argument that Microsoft makes when it comes to their view of the OS vs. Apple’s. In the final analysis, Apple’s approach is just fine for at least 75% of the population, who don’t care if they’re running an “open” OS or not. They just want to be able to get stuff when they want it. And they don’t want to worry about rebooting every few days or making sure that all the downloads and patches are installed or accidentally loading a piece of software that completely screws up all their settings because every app wants to control your Windows PC (especially media apps). Of course there will always be a small population of people who want ultimate customization and flexibility – the jailbreak community. In the new MacOS Lion preview, Apple’s trying to straddle the middle ground, providing the tools power users need while presenting the simplicity that most normal users are happy with. I’m really starting to think that Apple’s got the right vision.

So what’s this all got to do with my cousin’s daughter? Well think about it – she’s being conditioned from age three that the Apple way is the right/only way She’s going to probably spend most of her formative years on an iPad, graduate to an iPod when she’s in her pre-tweens, then on to an iPhone in her tweens – by the time she’s able to make independent tech decisions, she’ll be so used to Apple that she’s going to pick a Mac. Customer for life. As far as she’s concerned, the tech war is over. Microsoft is going to have to come up with something pretty freaking amazing to counter this brandwashing, and unfortunately Windows 7 (whether PC-based or phone-based) isn’t it.

Was Apple crazy pursuing this strategy? Absolutely. It could have horribly misfired at any point. But now they’re so big and the approach is so entrenched that it’s almost running on inertia. It’s a beautifully elegant strategy worthy of Sun Tzu. My estimations of Steve Jobs’ brilliance has risen considerably. Bravo, Mr. Jobs, bravo. Well played indeed.

Guess I’ll have to tattoo the Apple logo on the other cheek.

Related posts:

1. Apple iPad 2
2. Apple to Unveil iOS5, OS X Lion, and iCloud at WWDC Monday, June 6
3. The Jesus Tablet Cometh

Now, mag publishers – can you PLEASE make the digital versions less expensive than the paper equivalents?  I’d gladly subscribe to a cheaper digital version.  If you can make money on a subscriber who pays $0.79/paper issue, surely you can make money on a subscriber who pays $0.50 or (shockingly) $0.25 an electronic issue?  I’d even be willing to commit to three years plus to get this price.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ipad-digital-magazine-apps-gain-print-subscription-option/

Related posts:

1. Alaska Airlines Replace Paper Flight Manuals with iPad
2. ParaJet SkyCar – Finally, A Real, Practical, and Legal Flying Car
3. In which I save the publishing industry

Well Jaybird recently released the SB2′s, the next generation of the SB1′s and they were kind enough to send me a pair to review.  I want to make clear that these phones were provided gratis, so keep that in mind while you read my review.  I like to believe that I’m objective enough to say a product sucks even if they send me a free evaluation unit, but I haven’t really faced that situation yet.  (I have been given free iPhone/iPad apps for review and I’ve passed up writing reviews in some cases where I thought the app was just bad, but even those cases are few and far between).

I received the headphones on a Friday (delivered in person by the lovely young lady in the packaging, naturally) and I’ve been using them ever since to really try them out in comparison to the SB1′s.  The headphones come in (relatively speaking) minimal packaging and the box it was shipped in was big enough to hold the headphones but not a lot bigger.  I’ve gotten a bit sensitive to companies that ship their products in way oversized boxes and/or packaging (Amazon, I’m looking at YOU), so it was nice to see some attention paid to minimizing waste.  In fact, one of my complaints about the SB1′s was the large amount of packaging that surrounded the headphones themselves.  Jaybird addressed this nicely in the SB2.

The headphones come with a minimum amount of accessories – a set of very simple instructions, the USB-based charging plug, and two pairs of replacement foam pads arrived along with the bright red (and I mean BRIGHT) SB2′s.  It was really nice to see the extra foam pads included – one of my dings on the SB1′s was the fact that those foam pads looked like they could wear with time, and without them, the headphones are kind of painful to wear.  I haven’t had any issues with them in all my wearings, but I tend to be very gentle on my equipment.  They’ve fallen off a couple times but I just re-seated them and they were fine.  Still, it’s good to see companies thinking about the long term use of their products.

I did a quick size comparison between the SB1′s and the SB2′s as well.  They are identically sized, in both thickness and shape.  In fact you really can’t tell them apart.  The big improvements come on the inside in the Bluetooth firmware, specifically the addition of apt-X.  apt-X, when paired with a compatible transmitter, provides CD-quality audio via the Bluetooth stream.  Since I am not an audiophile and since the iPhone 4 does not have apt-X built in (heck, we can’t even get Apple to give us skip forward/back controls via Bluetooth), I wasn’t able to test this part of the SB2′s.  Jaybird does sell a slim dongle that plugs into the dock port of the iPhone that will provide the transmission portion of the apt-X signal, but I don’t like adding dongles to the iPhone.  They almost always don’t work well with the wide variety of cases and protective gear, and the new iPhone is not a device I want to leave naked.

In terms of sound, the SB2′s sound just as good as the SB1′s.  I did notice that Jaybird made a slight tweak to the volume controls, because I was able to drop the volume down to a level lower than I had experienced on the SB1′s.  This was the other minor ding I had for Jaybird concerning the SB1′s – they didn’t seem to have a low volume that was really low.

I wasn’t able to test the microphone capabilities of the SB2 vs. the SB1.  I know with the SB1 I had some slight issues with pickup under windy conditions, but I have yet to use a set of Bluetooth headphones that didn’t have this problem, so that’s not something I would necessarily ding Jaybird for anyways.

The other improvement that I was able to find, and one I’ll be keeping an eye on for the longer term, is that the earpads are much stiffer when extending or retracting.  This is good – in my SB1′s, the right earpad was starting to become very loose through the daily wear and tear of extending and retracting it to fit my head.  I am hoping the SB2′s will not suffer that issue.  The SB2′s seem to be a bit “stickier” to my head as well, though I’m not sure if that’s actual or if it’s just perception because they’re new.  I will have to see what happens when the SB2′s are on my head as I am on the weight bench.

Overall, I strongly recommend the Jaybird SB2.  They’ve addressed the few minor shortcomings I had with the SB1′s, and the inclusion of apt-X will mean better sound for apt-X equipped devices.  At $99, they are in the middle range for Bluetooth headphones, and I’m sure that you will be able to find them for less online.  I’m planning to switch to the SB2′s for my day-to-day use, and am looking forward to the many stares I’m going to get as I walk to work in my business suit sporting a set of cherry red headphones shining off the reflected light of my shaved head.

By the way, all these pics were taken using the iPhone 4′s camera.  Note the significant yellowing in the bottom two pictures?  That’s a beige surface I’m shooting down onto.  Part of the issue might be bounceback of light from that surface, since the yellowing isn’t apparent in the top two pictures.  Interesting…

Jaybird SB2 Bluetooth Headphones

Related posts:

1. Jaybird SB1 Bluetooth Headphones Review
2. REVIEW: Sony DRBT160AS Bluetooth Stereo Headset
3. iPhone Amplifier by SoundClip

Given that Poly9 provides a solid map and Placebase provides map-centric layering, it seems logical to extrapolate that Apple is building a multilayer mapping client of some sort, whether that be a browser-based solution or an app-based solution (most likely both).  Maps is one of the most essential iPhone apps, one I personally rely on all the time.  The lack of a free turn-by-turn nav solution on the iPhone is a big differentiator between Android and iOS, and Google Maps is still probably one of the most robust mapping solutions available on the web.  Now that Apple has a location-aware advertising solution, they are going to want to supplant the Google-provided Maps data with their own version so that they can integrate iAds into Maps.  I can definitely see Apple providing an iOS update that supplants Google data in the Maps application with Apple’s own home-bought solution.  As of yet, Apple hasn’t bought a company to replace the YouTube app, but that app is pretty junky on the iPhone.

Heck before the iPhone 4 announcement, there was talk that Bing would replace Google as the search provider for iOS.  It didn’t happen but I’m expecting that that’s going to happen next year.  Or Apple is going to buy a search engine (say, Yahoo) and use their own search solution on iOS.  At this point, given how big a platform iAds is expected to become, Apple needs to get as many tendrils into location-sensitive search as possible, and rolling their own, controlled, solutions is a critical necessity.

Google is realizing the potential loss and moving rapidly to address this.  The new HTML5-based YouTube site and the new iPhone/mobile-optimized YouTube URL (m.youtube.com) are Google’s way of fighting back.  I’ve pretty much switched over to that version as my primary access point to YouTube and the default app has been relegated to a folder buried in my last homescreen.  Note that the new mobile-optimized site has a little reminder telling visitors how to add the site to the iPhone’s Home screens so that they appear as just another app.  Google Voice has a similar feature, and Google Mail is evolving rapidly on the web to match feature parity to the default Mail app.

Related posts:

1. AT&T, Google, & Apple respond to the FCC
2. Google crushes yet another technology with free Maps
3. Apple Finally Approves Google Voice App

On Protection.

Over the long weekend, I did a bunch of tech stuff I’d been meaning to do for some time. Most importantly, I installed a clear protector onto our new iPhones. For the first time, I used the BodyGuardz line of protective sheets rather than the InvisibleShield line. The BodyGuardz are a much better value. For $25 you get two sets of protective sheets that fully cover the iPhone’s front, back, and sides. Installing them was relatively straightforward but it conclusively proved why I would never be a surgeon.

There is a level of mental comfort in having these shields on our phones. But to cover up that amazing screen with anything is just a darn shame. No film application is ever perfect, and any bubbles are incredibly annoying. The liquid applicator they provide does create a thin glaze under the film which detracts from the beauty of the iPhone’s screen when it’s off. On the plus side, it does give a little bit more tactile grip to the iPhone. I also think it helps a bit with the attenuation issues people have been suffering when they touch the sides. The side films seem designed to exactly fit the phone but it is exceedingly difficult to apply them so that they run the full length properly. I ended up overlapping the antenna gaps just slightly, which seemed to act as a non-conductive layer between my fingers and the band. I don’t know if this is an intended benefit or not, but it’s relatively cheap to try out if you’re having major issues. I personally haven’t noticed a huge problem with attenuation or service interruption but that could just be me.

For now, I’m planning to keep these on the phone, at least until the cases I ordered come in. This phone is never going to be outside a case anyways so I may decide to remove the front film to let the gorgeous screen shine through.

And if anyone has a good case recommendation for the iPad, could they please contact me?  All the cases I’ve tried out so far suck.  I don’t want a sleeve and I don’t want a backside-only protector.  I need something that I can use on a desk as well as on the sofa, and it needs to support the iPad in portrait and landscape modes.  I like the Apple case, but it’s just a little too cheap-looking for me and I’d ideally love a case that has a latchable/securable front protector.

UPDATE (7/14/2010): I’ve had the Bodyguardz film on the iPhone for about a week now, and the glaze underneath has vanished completely.  The screen protector is still visible (you can see where the cutouts are for the speaker and the front facing camera) and it feels like there is more “depth” when hitting the Home button.  I gotta say that I am really liking the Bodyguardz.  I no longer think they interfere with the Retina Display and for all intents and purposes, they’ve disappeared from my perception, which is kind of the point of these things.  I’ve definitely noticed a decline in the number of dropped calls as well, though that needs to be heavily caveated.  First off, I don’t make a ton of calls so I’m not a great sample.  Second, since the issue has been covered to death in every tech blog and news rag, I’ve been more aware of how I hold the phone.  Finally, I could never consistently reproduce the issue, so I may not have been impacted.  Having said all that, I routinely hold the iPhone 4 in my left hand with the antenna gap perilously close to be covered by the base of my thumb and I’m sure I’ve covered that gap on calls, both before and after the film application.  Since I’ve applied the Bodyguardz, I have not had a single dropped call.  Period.  So perhaps the combination of the side protection plus my clumsy application have created a nice little insulated zone around the antenna openings that is helping my calling?  In any case, I’ve become a big fan of these things, and their customer service can’t be beat.  They were prompt to answer my emails about returning my extra films, and they were prompt about issuing me a refund.  Good on ya, guys – keep up the great work.  I am seriously considering buying a set of the iPad 3G protection skins to replace my InvisibleShield cover.  The InvisibleShield just seems to attract more dirt, though that could just be due to the increased surface area.  But definitely something I’m considering in the longer term…

iPad vs. iPhone

I’m fairly sure that if I had gotten the iPhone 4 before my iPad, I would have skipped the first gen iPad in hopes that the second gen would come with a Retina Display. Apple probably knew this, which is why they didn’t pull out the iPad as a “One More Thing” during the iPhone launch.  I still love my iPad but the iPhone is proving good enough for almost everything I need to do when I’m mobile.  I have used the iPhone for navigation, for checking newsfeeds, and for recipes.  It’s perfectly fine as a quick reference device, especially since the Retina Display makes it so much easier to read despite its small screen real estate.  But for consuming books and video, for gaming, and for productivity, the iPad is still the superior device.  Am I glad I have both?  Yes.  Should I have gotten the unlimited data plan for both?  Probably not.  I’m spending $60/mo on data access for the i-Devices, which is a bit much.  I’m seriously considering dropping my unlimited plan on the iPad, except that I’d still like roaming access, so I’d only be saving $5/mo (I refuse to pay for tethering, which is just AT&T saying “please bend over” while holding a very thick broom).  I’m really annoyed that Apple didn’t put a decent GPS chip inside the Wi-Fi only version, since that’s the main reason I went with the 3G iPad.

iPhone Antenna Issues

One of my best friends is a bigshot at M&M/Mars.  He was once asked to participate on a panel discussion at a telecom conference.  The audience consisted of telecom providers who wanted to know how to best sell into the large enterprise market, especially because things like data and messaging were just starting to become popular.  One of the audience members stood up and asked him what he looks for in a mobile phone.  In response, my friend pulled out his Nokia phone (which was at least 2 generations out of date) and said “I’d like it to work as a phone.”  Tech companies really seem to forget this basic concept – it’s a smart phone.  If it can’t make calls, it’s not a phone, it’s a mobile device.  Apple is being disingenuous when they blame the iPhone‘s attenuation problems on their inability to do math.  Too many people are complaining about a problem making calls, which is humorous if you’re not the one suffering from the problem.  But when you’re trying to call 911 late at night after you’ve witnessed a crime or been in an accident, it’s really not funny.  The bad thing is that I can’t rely on the iPhone as an emergency contact device, issues with AT&T service aside.  When I’m trying to call for an ambulance, I really don’t want to worry about whether I’m levitating the phone correctly to maximize signal strength.

It also means that every time I see one of those Apple videos featuring their internal designers talking earnestly about how hard they tried to create beauty and how magical the i-Device is, I’m going to just laugh and blow them off (even more so than I already do) as self-loving nerds.  No matter how good they think they are and no matter how pretty their end result, I know they failed.  Gizmodo had a great post about just how huge a failure this is on Apple’s part – they’ve fallen so in love with themselves that they are ignoring the fact that good industrial design means that it works, not just that it’s pretty.  If I have to think about how to use a product, something’s wrong, and Apple has only themselves to blame.  They’ve been promoting that mode of thought ever since they released the first iPhone.  Yet now here they are saying, basically, “yes always think about how you’re using your iPhone to make sure you’re not using it wrong”.

Luckily, phone calls are rare and far between in my household, and 90% of my calls are to my fiancée, who is also on AT&T, so those minutes buckets are pretty much unlimited.  I really hope, though, that she’s never stuck late at night on a bus coming home from work and trying to reach me.

iPad’s Video and iPod apps

These apps suck.  Suck suck suck suck suck.  No other way to put it.  Why they are split into two apps rather than the single iPod app that’s provided on the iPhone is beyond me.  There is obviously some higher design principle at work that I am too pedestrian to understand.  But when I can’t skip through a list of video podcasts using the CONTROLS PROVIDED FOR THEM, I consider that a pretty major design flaw.  The only way I can move from one video to the next without picking and choosing each one is if I create a playlist.  That’s just stupid, Apple.  Why should I create a playlist of video podcasts when the Videos app has a podcast section?  And is there any reason why you decided that TV shows don’t need to have any identifying information aside from a still image from the show itself?  Maybe I’d like to, oh I don’t know, see the SHOW’S NAMES?!?!?  You guys are starting to approach Microsoft levels of stupidity with these issues, and I sincerely hope that you fix them in the next version by providing an iPod app, rather than this craptastic Video/Music split function junk.

On the plus side, you seem to have fixed the issue with Smart Playlists not being synced when Live Updating is checked.  I think it’s only been about a year now since that issue’s been reported?  So I guess I should expect an iPod app on the iPad when you release iPad 3.0?

UPDATE (7/14/2010) – Yea, Apple, your Video app sucks hairy moose testicles.  What is the sense in showing one sequence of videos on the iPad and a completely different sequence in iTunes?  This weekend I was playing through some TV shows I’d ripped and I realized they were completely out of order on the iPad.  Since I’m a metadata FREAK, I quick checked the iTunes versions to see what I’d screwed up.  Lo and behold, the iTunes list was in correct order.  After much trial and error, I realized that the iPad sorts TV shows using the Track Number while iTunes uses Season and Episode Number.  Can someone tell me how the team that created the Video app thought this was a good idea?  It’s like they decided to remove the Video functionality in the iPod app but just do a half-assed job of it so that they could piss off as many people as possible.  So for those of you trying to figure out why the hell the iPad isn’t sequencing your shows correctly – either fill in both Track Number and Episode Number fields for each show, or just rely on Track Number to do your sorting.  Of course, if you choose the latter, I fully expect that one day Apple will fix this stupidity and then you’ll have to go back and re-enter the Episode Number data so you might as well do both now.

iPad memory issues

I’m running a jailbroken iPad, primarily because I can.  Now I understand that jailbreak tech is really young on the iPad and developers are still trying to figure out how to do it right.  But I’m seriously concerned about the iPad’s lack of RAM.  I think Apple made a bad choice when they went with 256MB in the iPad vs the 512MB in the iPhone 4, because when multitasking comes along, apps are going to be seriously memory constrained.  Apple’s limited implementation of multi-tasking in iOS (a name I predicted here on this blog well before His Jobs-ness announced it) is a lot more memory-efficient than traditional multitaskers a la Backgrounder.  But still  - I see memory leaks all the time running apps like Reeder and TweetDeck under the jailbroken iOS 3.2.  And I’m pretty sure that it’s not due to leaks in the jailbreak code.  TweetDeck reboots itself regularly on the half-hour, even when it’s the only app running on the iPad.  Running it on an unjailbroken iPad, the reboot periods are longer but I know they still were happening.

My guess is that iPad iOS 4.0 is going to be based a lot on iPhone iOS 4.0.  It’s a little aggressive to have the entire code base made common between the two platforms, but it’s inevitable that that will happen.  My guess is iOS 5.0 next year will be the first true common iOS base for all Apple platforms.  They can’t keep doing this multi-version iOS thing forever, especially if they release an iOS for AppleTV and for the Mac.  That would be four different fragments of the same base, which would make Android look like a bamboo shoot in terms of variety.

Multiple users on the iPad

The iPhone is intended to be a single-user device.  No bigs – it’s (marginally) a phone, it’s small, it’s got a fixed identifier (the phone number) attached to it – it’s very personal.  The iPad, for all its “magic”, is a multi-user device.  I’d like to share my iPad with my fiancée and a regular basis and my son has basically adopted the iPad as his own when he’s with us.  I’m totally cool with that, but it means that I’ve removed all my email accounts from the iPad.  I’d like some way to have user profiles and app sharing rules set up so that I can control what others accessing my iPad have access to.  I know user accounts are a big OS overhead issue, and there would be all kinds of complaints that Apple didn’t allow fast switching etc etc.  But basic user-level customization would go a long way to making the iPad a viable family device.  There’s no way I’m buying iPads for every member of the family and it’s stupid for Apple to think that people actually will do this.

And while we’re on the subject, Apple’s lack of controls on their Safari browser means that there is no way to control/limit kids’ access to the Internet.  Apple only allows binary control – either Safari is on or it’s off.  There’s no way to firewall or block access to non-approved sites.  Tools like OpenDNS’s Family Shield are a good start, but it’s relatively easy to circumvent.

So what do you guys think?  Am I way off base?  Spot on?  Comment up any of your complaints or compliments!

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Useful and Free iPhone Apps
2. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
3. NetFlix Streaming iPhone App Rumor

(I’m really sorry about the video quality – I was fully intending to take some decent video of the problem under good lighting but by the time I got home to get my car to get to my Genius Bar appointment, I had run out of time.  So the above was grabbed using my fiancee’s iPhone 4 while we were waiting at the Apple Store in Ardmore.  The lights there are like being under interrogation and the reflection off the shiny screen of the iPhone makes it incredibly difficult to capture what’s happening on the screen properly).

If you watch the above video enough, you’ll see that my screen has basically washed out – I had maybe 4 colors (if that) on the screen.  Furthermore, on the left hand side you can see vertical scrolling reminiscent of VHF reception issues on early television screens.  I had not dropped the phone and it had spent its entire two days previously either living inside my pocket (with nothing else in there) or on a flat desk surface.  You’re talking to a guy who has never dropped an electronic device and went through 2 years with his iPhone 3G having never suffered a scratch.  Suffice it to say I’m careful with my tech.  So you can imagine just how freaked out I was by this.

I have to say that I was very pleased with both AT&T and Apple’s response to this issue.  Since I’d ordered the phone from AT&T, I took it first to my local AT&T store.  The rep there was pretty impressed with the problem but they had zero spares on hand to do a swapout.  He recommended I go to the Apple Store to resolve my issue.  The Apple Store was able to give me a Genius Bar appointment the same day and they swapped out the phone without any problems.  The Apple rep was also pretty impressed by the error, having never seen anything like it before on any iPhone.  I walked out of there relieved and clutching a new Precious.  It was going to be a good day after all.  And I was able to use the Precious to do this:

If you want the full story on that, you’ll have to check out my personal blog!

Related posts:

1. iPhone 4G With Front Camera Multi-Way Video
2. New Apple iPhone 4G with OLED
3. From high to low. Details on AT&T’s new 3GS Upgrade Policy

Penultimate uses a notepad & pen metaphor to allow you to capture handwritten notes.  You can create notepads as needed, with each page customizable to be a grid, lined, or blank format.  You use your finger to either write/draw on the pages or to erase your musings.  You can add as many pages as you’d like and you can email individual pages or notebooks as desired.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why this is such a popular app.  I could not get the hang of writing notes with my finger, and I was very glad I had my stylus with me.  There is only one size pen and one size eraser.  You can undo or redo your last action.  And that’s about it.  Here are some screen captures of my notes.

I had several complains about the interface.  First, you can only see one page at a time, whether in portrait or landscape format.  I can understand why you’d have only one page in portrait orientation.  But to force that same limit in landscape mode seems artificially limiting.  Also, in landscape mode, you have to scroll down to get to the pen and eraser controls.  This is despite having  ample free space between the edge of the notebook page and the edge of the screen.  Furthermore, you can only flip the pages from the bottom of each page.  The notebooks are arranged based on last edit date and there are no other options.  It would have been nice to sort them alphabetically.  Finally, the pen and eraser action areas seemed excessively large.  It would have been nice to have at least a couple widths for the pen tool.  And the eraser seemed to erase a lot more than the width of the pen, which doesn’t really allow for fine erasing.  Usually, if I needed to erase, I ended up erasing everything or deleting the page and re-starting rather than just removing the section I wanted to.

If the app had been $0.99, then this might have been OK.  But for $2.99, I expected a bit more.

Related posts:

1. My iPad – Initial impressions
2. iPad Update – the Return
3. Google Wave Already Works With iPhone

The kit arrives in a short tube. That explains why S&H is a bit on the higher side, though overall reasonable. It also pretty much means your shield is going to be curled. I fixed that by rolling/unrolling it several times in the opposite direction and flattened it pretty well. The package comes with the two shields, plus a generous bottle of application fluid and the standard rubber squeegee.

The instructions are generic. How do I know? Because they recommend removing the battery if possible (hah!). Also note, that there is no cutout in the shield for the antenna plate of the 3G. Not sure if that was deliberate or not. In any case, I’m pretty well versed in the InvisibleShield routine, since I’ve had one on every iDevice I’ve owned since the company started.

The installation process is pretty standard. First, clean off your glass. Really rub out all the fingerprints and smudges using a clean microfiber cloth. Then the fun part of putting on the shield itself begins. This was, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. There’s no good way to put it. ANY sort of floating particulate matter will adhere to the screen. They give you a generous size bottle of fluid, which is good because I ended up using almost all of it.

I covered the front glass pretty easily, though aligning such a large sheet of sticky material is difficult even with the lube. The back shield was even worse in some respects and easier in others. The back shield is a bit larger than the front shield (or seemed to be) but I also didn’t care as much about any particles that might have stuck to it. I’m planning to keep the iPad in a case for its natural lifespan, so the back protection is kind of moot.

I ended up removing and reapplying the front shield about five times. Even so, there are still bits of fuzz and grit that are now bonded to the underside of the shield. Luckily, none of it impacts the usability of the iPad, but it’s annoying because I can see them in certain positions and under certain conditions. But I also don’t know how ZAGG could do any better. I wouldn’t want to use multiple smaller sheets to create a coverage surface, and you want the thing to stick to your screen, so you can’t make it easy to take on/off. The shield can be removed/re-applied for about an hour or so after you’ve put it on, but much longer than that and I’d be worried about stretching when you’re taking it off.

The shield does NOT provide side protection. The sheets are just big enough to cover the front and back plates only. I’ve not noticed any signal degradation due to the covering of the antenna plate, so that’s good. I’ve also not seen any issues resulting from the ginormous pools of fluid that were wiped out from between the glass and the shield during the multiple applications process. I think 95% of the lube I sprayed onto the shield ended up being squeezed out and I got a little panicky seeing my new iPad with so much liquid on it.

Now that I’ve had it for a day or so, I’ve enjoyed the slightly more tactile sensation that the InvisibleShield gives the screen. It does, however, impede the usability of my stylus. You have to push a lot harder to get the stylus to be recognized. Which is weird, since I don’t notice a similar issue with fingers.  Also, if you think the iPad has glare before the application of the shield, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  The screen seems much more reflective.

All in all, I’m glad I put the shield on my iPad. But I don’t know that it’s going to be as useful as it would be on an iPhone, since the iPad is not going to be spending tons of time in my pocket with keys and change. Also, I’d guess that the majority of users will put the iPad into a case of some sort, so the times that it will be naked in public are pretty small. But for peace of mind, it was worth the $25.

Related posts:

1. Zagg Invisible Shield
2. InnoPocket launched HexaPose Stand for Apple iPad
3. Penultimate for iPad

Related posts:

1. Windows 8: A step in the right direction?
2. How To Have A Web 3.0 Website
3. Apple vs. Google

Then come back and comment on what Steve Jobs is going to do to the poor SOB who lost it in the first place.  He’s probably run off to the same island that Lost takes place on.  Or hoping, anyways.

Related posts:

1. RIP Steve Jobs
2. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
3. Steve Ballmer grabs Apple iPhone from Microsoft employee and ‘stomps’ it into ground

When I first got my iPad, I honestly was not that enthusiastic about it. Sure I’d blown close to a G on this thing, but all in all I wasn’t giddy with techno joy. (By the way, do NOT buy the docking stand. It’s less than useless and I’m hoping that Apple will take it back for a refund even though I don’t have a box for it.) I purchased some apps, downloaded some free ones, loaded up a few gigs of music and videos, and set about using it. I carried to and from work every day. I used it on the couch and in the dining room and in the kitchen as my wife was making dinner. I used it with the kids. I took it with me when we went out. And yes, I’ve used it in the bathroom (don’t tell me you guys didn’t think of that use case when you saw the iPad!). And gradually it took over my life.

First off, the screen is freaking gorgeous. Pictures can’t really do it justice. Somehow, the fingerprints and smudges disappear when that thing is fired up and you just see this giant expanse of real estate. Switching between my iPhone and my iPad was painful because I just couldn’t bear looking at the tiny iPhone screen.  Videos are just incredible to watch on the iPad.  Everyone I showed it to thought the screen was amazing.  Pictures were popping off the surface it was so brilliant.  Of course it was absolutely worthless in sunlight or while wearing sunglasses, but still.

Second, the virtual keyboard proved surprisingly useful, especially for someone with my ladylike hands. I was able to almost touch type on that puppy, so long as I wasn’t trying to tab or use too many special characters. (Apple, you guys aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are – WTF is up with not including a Tab key on the virtual keyboard?). In landscape mode, I was probably at half my regular typing speed (and I’m not a slow typer by any stretch). In portrait mode, I was typically two- or four-fingering it, but still getting along pretty darn well. I can access my corporate email via Outlook Webmail using the iPad just fine, which just relegated my Blackberry to the “never have to look at you again” pile. In fact, I’m probably going to give it back to the company because I just never use it.

Third, I realized that I could use this as my primary music player, with the sole exception of the time I spend in the weight room. They sell dock extender cables that will allow me to plug the iPad into my Sony stereo at work. I can download maps before I leave for a trip (and download on the fly when I get the 3G version). I can watch videos. I can even use it in the gym to practice my group exercise class training videos. And it’s a lot easier to follow along using the iPad versus trying to squint at a tiny iPhone screen.

Fourth, a lot of the stuff I’d kept around but never got around to doing anything with are finding new life on my iPad. PDFs are a pleasure to read. Comics too. (Comics are good, but the iPad isn’t going to be the salvation of comics.  The page size of comics are just a little “off”.  Manga, on the other hand, may have met their secret weapon.) Even reading is more pleasurable because I can pull out a book anywhere and I can carry dozens at a time.  I’d been considering a Kindle but now I don’t have to.  I’m still split between the iBook and the Kindle apps, but just being able to read anywhere is great.

Finally, compared to my iPhone 3G, the iPad is FAST. Blazingly, gloriously, wonderfully fast. Apps load like lightning. I can switch between apps with minimal fuss. Screens scroll easily and quickly. Granted, my iPhone is old and jailbroken, but I am not running tons of apps on that puppy. The iPad puts it to shame. I’m sure the new iPhone will be as fast as the iPad, but until I have that replacement in my hot little hands, I’m loving the greater speed.

That’s not to say that the iPad is perfect. From a productivity perspective, the iPad is sorely hampered by the virtual keyboard. I can pound out emails and write simple blog posts just fine, but I’m planning to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for the thing. And I don’t recommend Apple’s Pages or Numbers apps. Both produce files that are basically unusable outside the iPad and both are incredibly frustrating to use on the iPad itself, so don’t have dreams of creating massive spreadsheets or novels using them. If a developer ever figures out how to provide Office compatibility however, this thing would rock. Heck, even Google Apps integration would be good.

Also, the inability to save and transfer files outside of the iTunes environment is a pain in the butt. And the lack of multi-tasking is also incredibly annoying. I’m really looking forward to iOS 4.0 because the addition of multitasking means it will make the iPad a lot more manageable from a productivity perspective.  Once task switching is available, I could easily write entire blog posts on the iPad.

As another annoyance, Apple needs to stop treating music and video as two separate apps on the iPad (and the iTouch). There should be a single app to manage my media, and I should be able to mix and match media in my playlists, regardless of whether they’re audio or video. I’m hoping they will address this in iOS4 as a reveal feature when they announce iPhone HD.

The Calendar app needs a to-do feature integrated into it.  I shouldn’t need a separate app to create to-do lists.

Customizable themes should be made available (adding this would remove a lot of the need to jailbreak).

Given my new love of this toy, I’m now stuck on the iPad upgrade cycle (and no that was not a sly joke!), which is exactly where Apple wants me to be. With my iPhone, the contract made annual upgrades too expensive. But with the iPad, I can let my iPhone get two or three years old without worrying about lack of features or speed, as long as I upgrade my iPad each year. Apple is going to make a ton of money off of me. The brilliant jerks.

Related posts:

1. My iPad – Initial impressions
2. iPad Apps
3. iPad’s Real Competition

Related posts:

1. InnoPocket launched HexaPose Stand for Apple iPad
2. Alaska Airlines Replace Paper Flight Manuals with iPad
3. ChargePod V1 (or how to be a hero)

In Philadelphia, sections of the city have city-owned pots of land that residents can rent out for a year.  On those plots of land, folks have planted vegetable and flower gardens.  The gardens are secured by fences and locks, but each resident doesn’t get individual access to their plots – they have to share the lock code with each other because there’s only one lock.  The rules are relatively simple and the renters tend to watch out for each other because they tend to be long-time renters, paying the nominal fee every year.  Importantly, they tend to follow the rules and they act to ensure that others follow the rules.  Every so often, the rules change and some people stop renting space because of those rules.  But that frees up a plot for someone new to come in, and they come in knowing the new rules and agreeing to honor them.

What Adobe is trying to do is pay the fee to access the garden and then passing out the combination to the garden’s lock to anyone who wants to pay.  In their best case scenario, they don’t even have to pay the fee for access – they just start selling the key and let the community sort out who’s supposed to be there or not.  Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.  For good or bad, Apple’s ecosystem is THEIRS.  They didn’t set out to build something on top of an already existing platform (like Google), nor did they try to make their ecosystem the biggest in the world by making development as easy as possible to as many as possible (like Microsoft).  Apple started out with a simple idea – let’s sell music.  Maybe they had this end state in mind all the time, maybe they didn’t.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s all theirs.  And because it’s theirs, they get to make the rules, and even change those rules, whenever they want.

Note that this viewpoint is not necessarily a conflict with the fact that I am using a jailbroken iPhone.  Since I’ve bought the device and own it, I think I should be able to do whatever the heck I want with it.   To not have that right is like buying a piece of produce from the community garden but being told that I can only use it in stir fry or fruit salad.  It’s stupid to even think that that sort of thing is possible, and just because it’s tech vs. produce doesn’t make it any less so.  However, once I change the parameters of the agreement of sale, I don’t have the right to request Apple’s support to fix my problems.  To extend the produce analogy even further, that’s like my buying a bell pepper, agreeing to use it only in stir fry, then putting it in fruit salad and complaining when people don’t like it.  I know and accept the risks of jailbreaking but by that same token, Apple shouldn’t be going out of their way to stop me.  Would I like Apple to be less restrictive in terms of what they do or don’t allow in the App Store?  Absolutely.  The main reason I jailbreak is to skin my phone and to get access to two apps that Apple won’t sell.  But those are the risks I’ve accepted because I’m choosing to go around the ecosystem.

Back to the topic at hand though – Adobe vs. Apple.  Whether or not Apple is right or wrong ethically is not the issue.  Apple is doing what it feels it needs to do to protect their investment in the iOS infrastructure.  Adobe is trying to grow their produce in the Apple garden and calling foul because they got caught.  Sorry, Adobe – you didn’t pay for the garden and you don’t get to access the garden and set your rules in the garden just because you pout about unfairness.  You want to build out your Flash platform, then you go out and build your own damn garden.  Otherwise, be happy with the pervasiveness you have on the Internet and pray that you can find a workaround to making money once HTML5 begins supplanting your fancy animations.

Related posts:

1. AT&T, Google, & Apple respond to the FCC
2. Flash For iPhone Coming
3. FCC Steps Into Apple and AT&T for Google Voice Removal

iPhone 4 (currently called iPhone HD)

• I predict that the hardware itself will probably not get an incredible form factor change. It will not have a slide out keyboard, nor will it transform into a little robot complete with rocket launcher. Apple has a great design – why mess with it? I recently took my iPhone out of its protective shell (first time in over a year) and the experience of holding the thing is just incredible, even though it’s two years old. No need to mess with great. Plus if it got any bigger, people would skip the iPad for the iPhone and Apple does not want that to be a possibility.
• I am in firm agreement with the rumors that indicate the screen will be exactly half the resolution of an iPad. Makes sense. Also makes sense that the OS will have hooks to auto-detect and auto-size apps (I believe Android has this already). Anything Apple can do to simplify development for third parties it will do. Plus it allows Apple to run a single code base for their entire iOS line. iOS – I think I’m going to trademark that.
• I would rate the chances of a Verizon enabled iPhone at 75% within the next year. I say this because Apple is starting to reach the limits of conversion. Just about everyone who wants an iPhone has switched to AT&T, and the universe of new cell users is not growing all that fast. If Apple wants to sell millions of these puppies, they’re going to have to expand the platform. Adding Verizon will immediately give Apple access to millions of new customers. The loss of AT&T subscribers is not a big deal because they’ll still be iPhone users. Maybe they don’t make as much money per sub on Verizon, but at this point it becomes more of a numbers game and making up the profits through volume. This theory is further confirmed by the fact that there were two iPhone models mentioned in the iPad’s guts.
• Front-facing camera? Maybe. Who cares? Are you really going to videoconference with this thing? I guess the market for amateur porn would skyrocket, and Chatroulette could have more interesting backgrounds. I’d rather hold out for a front facing camera on the iPad v2.
• I originally thought that it would feature a faster chip with more RAM. Required to support multitasking in iOS4 (see below). However, given that the iPad is apparently running with the same RAM as the iPhone 3GS and is performing faster, maybe all they need is a faster chip. I don’t think Apple’s going to go nuts trying to slot things into the iPhone that they can’t fit into the iPad with its much bigger size.
• The iPhone’s camera will get an upgrade, most likely to 5MP and add a flash. The motion capture rate will increase, mostly due to the faster processor. No front-facing camera, especially if that YouTube video of the supposedly new replacement screen is to be believed.

UPDATED 4/8/10 after the iPhone OS4 Release – I’ve updated the below predictions to reflect the announcements today.

iOS 4.0 (my new trademark!)

• Multitasking will be in iOS 4. It has to be for Apple to remain a credible contender. Android is barking up their heels in certain respects, and AT&T’s slow embrace of Android phones means that Android will be able to do simultaneous voice and 3G data (who the heck thought this was not a good thing for CDMA networks to be able to do? They should be hung in effigy. I didn’t even realize this wasn’t ubiquitous. And Verizon charges you more for this crapservice? Unbelievable.) I think most everyone agrees this is coming.  OK so multitasking wasn’t announced but what was announced is the next best thing, and quite honestly a heck of a lot more sensible for a mobile OS.  Most people don’t need true multitasking, and Apple again proves that they can think outside the box.  I love this implementation of multitasking, and I hope that it’s as flexible and as powerful as I think it will be.  Will it do everything the techies might want?  No, but it will do what 99% of what the rest of the people need.
• As much as possible, Apple is going to try to remove the hassles of having a single OS for three different multi-touch devices. The resolution change, the multitasking, the single inbox – all of these will make the iOS a seamless experience across the platforms.  Hard to tell, but I find it interesting that iPad won’t be getting OS4 until the fall.  My guess is that OS4 gets released with iPhone HD, and OS4.1 gets released in the fall to iPhone, iPad, and iTouch.
• Enhancements to the video management features of iPad (and probably iPhone). Why Apple thinks it’s not a good idea to have video playlists in the Video app on the iPad is beyond me, but fix it dammit. I figured out that the iPad video app is the same as the iTouch’s video app, and that the core behavior of videos on the iPad/iTouch is different than on the iPhone. This is rather annoying, especially for folks who have both an iPad and an iPhone. Consistency should be the watchword for Apple now that there are three different platforms with basically the same OS. As the iPhone’s capacity increases, the ability to store more video is going to mean that it should start to match the capabilities of the iPad/iTouch.  Can’t tell yet.  Though the mention of “create playlists” says to me that some sort of change to the media management feature is coming.
• Universal inbox and possibly multiple Exchange account support. Jobs has committed to a universal inbox, but allowing multiple Exchange connections support would allow folks to get push email from more than one source. Right now, I have three different Google Apps domains I maintain/participate in. I’d love to get all my Google Apps ID’s connected to a single inbox with push mail.  I was spot on with this.  And as far as I know, the idea of multiple Exchange boxes wasn’t really mentioned in other tech blogs so I give myself a big thumbs up here.  This will be awesome, and if they increase security, then the iPad/iPhone becomes a much more credible enterprise platform.
• Increased security. If Apple really wants to compete against RIM, they need to make the iPad/iPhone a much more secure device. I think the iPhone was hacked in under 2 minutes at the last hacker convention? That’s just sad. Say what you will about RIM but until Apple gets a credible security model and platform, they will never be taken seriously as an enterprise platform. With the iPad, they have a real chance to break into the enterprise, but not if every noob hacker can cut their teeth screwing with their neighbor’s iPad.  Still TBD, though I’m hopeful.
• New collapsible calendar view. Ok this is my own personal wish list, but why can’t Apple can’t do something like Palm’s “shrink non-allotted time” view of a day?  Can’t tell yet.  Might be saving this for iPhone HD announcement.
• Overall, my guess is that iOS 4 is a refinement rather than a radical advance. There’s just not a whole lot that it’s missing once you add in the multitasking. It won’t stop the hackers from jailbreaking the devices, but it will give a lot of people like myself a lot less reason to jailbreak.  It was a pretty big step forward overall, both fine-tuning the existing platform, while significantly expanding its capabilities.  I think iOS now resumes its place at the top of the mobile smartphone pecking order, and I’m really looking forward to iPhone HD.  I will also most likely not need to jailbreak my future iPhone, since this version has just about everything I might need.  Sure, skins aren’t there, but I can live without skins.
• Overall, I give myself a B+.  What do you guys think?

Future Apple Devices

• iPad 3.0 will have a front facing camera. It would be inefficent for Apple to put in a front and rear facing camera, and why the heck would you even try to take a picture/video with the thing? A front facing camera will allow web conferencing. I predict that in order for this to be a possibility for iPad 2.0, Apple would have to release a version customized to AT&T and Verizon because otherwise, the load on AT&T’s network will just slam them back to square one again like the early iPhone days.
• The iPhone will not get significantly smaller. Much smaller and it would require a customized screen resolution that wouldn’t play nice with the 2:1 scale iPhone HD is supposed to bring. Much larger and it becomes a miniPad and a lot less portable. (This is why I think Dell will fail utterly with their impending product whose name I totally forget with the 5″ screen, continuing Dell’s long chain of mobile failures.)
• The iPod classic is going to go away by this time 2011. SSD prices keep dropping and Apple buys in such quantity that they get incredible discounts. I could see a 128GB iTouch to top out the storage line from the current 64GB. This would make sense if Apple continues to increase the iPhone’s storage capabilities and offers up an iPhone with 64GB of storage. Quite frankly, though, I think the storage is getting way past what most people need. I’m having a ton of trouble filling my iPad now and that’s after I transferred over a ton of video content. Why would I carry around a 64GB iPhone when I have a bigger counterpart to watch videos with? Music doesn’t take up that much room for most folks unless they’re storing uncompressed files. I would top out at 64GB for the iPhone and just concentrate on keeping the prices the same or lower.
• Apple TV will be integrated into a 40″ Apple TV panel. I think they learned a lot from the 27″ iMac production process and that’s the last piece of the entertainment puzzle for Apple. I could picture a simplified iOS for a TV with just a few standard icons (or heck, they could put the whole iOS on a TV – the only issue would be mimicking touch and finger movement).

How about you guys? Think I’m crazy? Let’s hear it!

Related posts:

1. Apple Unveils iPhone 4
2. iPhone 4G With Front Camera Multi-Way Video
3. iPhone 3GS Running on iOS 5

I’ve posted the obligatory unboxing pics but they aren’t very good and I would suggest skipping over them just because every other gadget blog on the Interwebs have posted much better ones (though I did include unboxing pics of the Apple case just to be different).

I’m actually writing this post on my couch using my iPad. I’m using our standard WordPress blogging interface but via the HTML interface rather than the visual one. For some reason the visual interface doesn’t seem to like the iPad. I cannot stress how absolutely GORGEOUS this screen is. I haven’t changed any of the default brightness settings yet the colors and visuals just scream off the page. While the screen is on, you can’t see any of the fingerprints. It’s a totally different story when you turn the screen off however. It’s actually kind of cute – you can see where the keyboard keys are by the pattern of fingerprints. Surprisingly, you can almost touch type on the keyboard, especially in widescreen mode. In portrait, I pert much two-finger it but in landscape mode I can build up a pretty good head of steam. Combine the wider keys with the amazing Apple word recognition and auto-correction and I’m able to pound out probably 40+ words per minute.

The video quality is also incredible. Stuff that looks good on the iPhone look blocky and pixelated. But stuff I converted over to the ipad’s dimensions look amazing. I downloaded a few HD podcasts and the picture quality is crystal clear. Screen dimensions aside, this thing was MADE for video.

Response time is also lightning quick, especially compared to my antique of an iPhone 3G. Apps load quick, you can’t really overwhelm the keyboard or the screen with input, and pages load at computer speeds. In short, the thing screams. I love that aspect of it. Overall, I’m getting more content that I made the right choice in terms of buying an iPad and I’m getting more comfortable with having the non-3G version. The last thing I want is another monthly bill and I could easily see myself activating the 3G and never turning it off. This thing is horribly addicting in that sense. Apple does a great job of making their tech ubiquitous – once you buy it and star using it, you soon wonder how you got along without it. (Though damn this thing would bed an amazing GPS when mounted properly in the car…..)

The GoodReader app I purchased to read PDFs is incredible on the iPad.  This app makes the device about a thousand times more useful to me because it means I’ll be able to keep technical documentation close at hand instead of on a bookshelf.  Awesome.

And 64GB is a LOT of space.  I’m trying desperately to fill it up and I’m maybe halfway there.  And that’s only because I’m including a ton of music.  I am still planning on using the iPad to play music and video, but once the new iPhone HD comes out, I will probably switch the iPad to primarily videos and the iPhone to primarily music.

So because I’m a half-empty kind of guy, let’s get together the list of things about the iPad that have already started to annoy me.

• The biggest issue so far is that the iPad is not an iPod in the same way that the iPhone is not an iPod.  On the iPhone there is no differentiation between the videos and the music when you are using the iPod app. On the iPad, there are two distinct apps – the iPod app and the Video app. While you can get to videos via the iPod app, you can’t go back to the iPod via the Video app, at least not as far as I can tell. This makes it really annoying to switch between the two media kinds. It also means that video playlists don’t work on the iPad. You play one video and then it returns you to the main video screen. And there is only one view of the videos available. You get a screenshot of the videos and the title. You can’t sort it differently and you can’t group them in any way. It’s not how I organize my stuff and I don’t really like it. I mostly play podcasts and tv shows. I also play a lot of ripped video files that I use for learning my group exercise class and they have to be played in a particular order. The iPad doesn’t let me do that.
• Another problem is that the bookmark manager is not the easiest thing in the world to use. But that’s a problem with the iPhone OS overall. I just didn’t really notice it until I started using it on the larger screen.
• I’d love if Safari could be split screened so that I could get two pages on the screen at once.  I actually purchased on iPhone app that did this – I’m guessing they’ll be releasing a version for the iPad as well.
• A Google Calendar issue where only the primary calendar syncs to the iPad.
• It is heavy and the typing angles are tough to get used to. I tend to put the iPad on a flat surface rather than on my lap if I have to type for extended periods.
• The iPad does not fit into the dock when it’s in the case. Very very annoying especially when this thing cost so much.  I want to keep it in its case as much as possible.  I would not recommend the dock – there are other versions that will allow you to keep the iPad in its case while still allowing you to plug it into the charger.
• The iBook app does not seem to be as responsive as the Kindle app.
• The apps are a lot more pricey than the iPhone equivalents.
• Don’t buy the Numbers app if you are planning to use it with Excel.  As far as I can tell, many basic Excel functions and features don’t convert over to Numbers very well.  Numbers does seem like a pretty full-function spreadsheet and I’m planning to try it out in greater depth.  But as a guy who lives on Excel, I’m probably going to have to wait for Microsoft to do something for the iPad.

So am I happy with my iPad?  Yes, but not because I’m in love with the device.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible piece of tech.  But I think that its utility right now is way underrealized.  The iPad’s already been jailbroken so the thought of combining the raw power of an iPad with a legion of clever hackers and developers means that people will start pushing its capabilities sooner rather than later.  The preliminary rush of apps is a poor representation of what the future of iPad development will be like, and I’m hopeful that a slew of new and interesting apps will make their way onto the device either officially or non.

Related posts:

1. iPad Update – the Return
2. iPad Apps
3. Joystick-It iPad Arcade Stick

So some folks may have heard of this thing called the iPad that’s coming out soon?

I know, not a big deal or anything. Initial reviews of the maxiPod have been pretty much universally positive. The crowd that got the initial review units was rather diverse. Aside from the typical tech pundits, it seems that his Jobsness favored Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing with a review unit. This seemed to be a first (I don’t actually know, because I haven’t been following BB all that long. But I don’t remember her posting pre-release reviews of the iPhone or iPhone 3G. If I’m wrong, please correct me). Xeni strikes me as a woman who is willing to tell it straight, regardless of whether or not she’s an Apple fangirl. It was after reading her review that I started rethinking my interest in the Jesus Tablet.

I literally spend 80%+ of my waking day in front of the computer. Meetings at work are a relative rarity, even at my level, and my boss does a great job of letting me do my thing and trusting that I’m actually working rather than surfing the net or watching YouTube all day. When I get home, I’m still in front of the computer, not only to take care of the mundane (pay bills, update Quicken, download podcasts, etc) but also basically consuming the news I wasn’t able to read while at work. It means that I am bathed in the glow of phosphors way too much. It also means that we do not use most of the house I’m paying for because both my wife and I are in our study in front of our respective computers.

My wife is an incredibly patient soul who loves me way more than I probably deserve. Despite the fact that she doesn’t see me during my working day, she is totally respectful of the fact that when I get home, I do actually need some time to just do nothing (nothing being defined as random Internet browsings and the like). She allows me that de-stress time without complaint, but because she likes to be nearby in case I actually want a conversation, she spends time on Twitter and Facebook and the like. I think that the iPad might be able to change that dynamic.

By making content and browsing mobile, I can move my consumption from the study to, say, the kitchen. Or the living room. Or the back yard. Or the park. This would allow her to do other things (like watch TV or read) while I continue to do other destressing things.  Sure, I could do this with the iPhone but I’ve found that the screen is just too painfully small for long engagement. Plus I still have the 3G and it is painfully slow. So right now it’s either laptop or nothing. The iPad would change that equation. It would also allow me to do light content creation (like, oh say, blogging) away from my desk. That would give me a lot more chances to blog. I’d still have to do the picture inserts and such at my desk, but that’s fine. And once multi-tasking is integrated into the OS, it should be a lot easier to do full content entry.

So maybe I’ll be swinging by the Apple store in late April/early May when the 3G-enabled version comes available…

OK so I lied. I actually am finishing this post on my 64GB iPad. The wife and I decided to go check out the iPad at our local Apple store. We went around 5:30pm fully expecting a mob scene and a total lack of supply. It turned out to be pretty crowded but not terrible. And there was plenty of stock. We played around with the Jesus pad for about an hour and truth be told we weren’t that impressed. In fact we were chatting with another guy doing the same thing and he too was not impressed. And he was a fanboi so that said a lot.

So why did I buy it? Honestly I’m not sure. Now that I’ve been playing with the iPad for about six hours I’m equally impressed and annoyed. But that will be covered in my post later today.

Related posts:

1. ChargePod will charge your iPad
2. Apple iPad 2
3. InnoPocket launched HexaPose Stand for Apple iPad

So for those of you who don’t know what the ChargePod is, it is a very simple device.  Basically, think of it as a starfish with charging ports for arms.  Up to six different devices can be connected and charged using a variety of dongles.  And by variety, I mean variety – over 3,000 different devices can be charged using the ChargePod’s stable of available connectors.  The device comes with three different connectors – one Apple Dock connector, one mini-USB connector, and one micro-USB connector.  It also comes with a coupon for a free connector and another for 20% off your first order, so all in all, you can set yourself up pretty well for not a lot of money.  Each dongle is about $10.

From a review perspective, it’s very simple.  The product does what it’s supposed to.  I plug in the power to the ChargePod and plug in my device and the device charges.  Cool.  A product that works as described.  It’s mindlessly simple.  My fiancee and I use it to charge her RAZR, her iTouch, my iPhone – I’m planning to get connectors for my son’s PSP, DSi, a generic USB connector so I can plug my headphone recharger into it….(umm, you folks at CallPod weren’t expecting this unit back anytime soon were you?).  We like the device, needless to say.  And the great thing is that it removes the tangle of wires that connect to my USB hub.  With ChargePod, I realized that 90% of the reason I have a USB hub is so I can re-charge something.  The ChargePod removes the need to keep my hub around.  The only cord I have in there now is for my iPhone so I can sync, and my headphone charger cause I don’t have the USB connector for the ChargePod yet.

The only “complaint” I have (cause no review can be perfect) is that you need a fairly decent amount of surface area to plug everything in.  To give you a sense of perspective, that sheet of paper is roughly 10″x14″.  It’s more elegant than a tangle of wires, but I’d love to wall mount this thing and somehow create a little electronics mandala to help remove some of the horizontal space requirements.  But it’s a minor quibble.  I’m looking forward to the V2 ChargePod, which will allow you to charge a laptop as well as other devices, plus plug in USB drives and the like.  It’s basically a portable universal laptop adaptor on steroids.

So why do I say that the ChargePod allows you to be a hero?  Well, I was in an all-day meeting last week at an off-site with limited Internet connectivity (which you had to pay for).  Almost everyone in that meeting was checking Blackberries every 10 minutes if not more frequently.  And because of that, their little addictions needed to be charged.  I personally was using my iPhone to access the corporate webmail presence, so I’m certainly not innocent.  But the thing I noticed was that everyone was swapping out a single charger between the various Blackberries.  And I thought to myself, if I got like five more mini-USB connectors and brought the ChargePod to my next all day offsite, people would love me.  LOVE me.  Hmm…$32 to buy the affections of a bunch of VPs and Directors…?  Might be worth it…

Related posts:

1. ChargePod will charge your iPad
2. USBCell Rechargeable Battery
3. 4-port USB hub connects to your network

Before I got so busy I had a chance to chat with an awesome new company.  tXtBlocker sent us a press release during the CES leadup, and I found them interesting enough to arrange a call with their media relations guy.  I came away quite impressed with their potential.

tXtBlocker provides a service that prevents cell phones from being used under user-specified conditions.  I say service because it’s not software that is installed on the cell phone itself; rather, compatible cell phones are registered on tXtBlocker’s servers and associated with an account.  This allows the account holder to identify and set up rules around when that cell phone can be used for calls and texts.

As an example, consider the very simple rule “no texting while driving”.  By using the tXtBlocker service, the phone is automatically prevented from being used for texting when the service registers that the phone is travelling faster than a pre-set speed.  It is transparent to the user in the sense that the phone just doesn’t text when the condition is met.  At CES, the company was selling this as a service to parents of teens, who are among the most prolific of violators of this particular rule.  However, the flexibility of the service is useful to companies as well.  We discussed many use cases, including:

• preventing calls/texts from a user-defined radius (ie, a school, a church, etc).
• preventing calls/texts before or after a certain time (ie, during school)
• tracking the location of a phone
• preventing texting while driving
• theft deterrence and tracking

Emergency calls to 911 are always available, regardless of whether or not a rule is in effect.  And rules can be added/suspended via account access – they don’t need to have physical access to the phone for rules to be implemented.  So if your phone is stolen, you can log in, prevent it from being used for calls or texts, and track where the phone is.  How awesome is that?  If need be, the phone owner can request that the block be removed temporarily.

In my opinion, the true utility is for corporations.  How many companies give their employees cell phones or Blackberries and only have soft guidelines about using them in inappropriate situations?  I’m honestly not sure why an enterprising lawyer hasn’t sued a major corporation because an employee was texting or replying to email while driving.  Yes, there’s some employee responsibility here but in today’s job climate, it’s very believable that an employee feels the need to always be available and to take unreasonable risks if they think it will help them keep their job.  By activating corporate phones on tXtBlocker, every employee’s phone can be set to prevent use when the phone is traveling over 15mph.  Simple, transparent, and safe.  The theft deterrence and tracking capabilities are a close second in terms of corporate benefits as well – a nice big sticker on the back saying that the phone can be tracked and retrieved will go a long way to removing it as a potential hijack.

Right now, the service is primarily compatible with Blackberries, plus a few other phone models.  But tXtBlocker indicated that by the end of 2010, they expect that their service will be compatible with the vast majority of GPS-enabled phones.  The big exception, of course, is the iPhone because of its walled architecture.  And since Apple sells a competing service (at least in the retrieval area), I don’t know how willing Apple would be to let tXtBlocker gain sufficient access to the background OS processes to make their service work.  I figure we just need a few high profile cases where people cause accidents while typing on an iPhone to raise the visibility of the issue enough that Apple starts looking for a way to do this (or at least allow tXtBlocker to do it for them).

The service has an annual fee with discounts for each phone registered to an account.  I know the last thing people want is another fee in these economic times, but as a parent of a future teen driver, I know I will be seriously considering this service.  The cost is not all that high when you consider what it might be preventing.

Related posts:

1. Google Sync Synchronizes Calendars and Contacts on Your Mobile Phone
2. The Solar Cell Phone Emerges
3. Sony Ericsson w350

———-

There are a  number of utilities that have sprung up of late that are designed to help folks keep track of their various passwords.  We are constantly being given opportunities to create user IDs and their attendant security information, and unless you use the same stable of passwords, keeping track of all of them become difficult.  For sites you visit often, it’s not a problem.  But for occasional use sites (like credit cards, affinity programs, retirement accounts and the like), I always have a devil of a time trying to remember my security phrase or password or whatever.  The tool I use, however, does not sync with the iPhone, so I can’t access my information when I’m away from my PC.  Keeper resolves that disconnect.

Keeper has both a desktop and a mobile component.  The desktop component is compatible with Mac, PC, and Linux, while the mobile component will run on the iPhone/iTouch, Android, and Vodaphone.  I ran Keeper on a Windows 7 laptop with the iPhone mobile component.  The mobile component is free; the desktop component is $19.95 regardless of platform.  I took a quick look at other similar applications available through iTunes to do a price comparison.  mSecure runs $2.99 for its mobile component but the desktop component is $14.99.  And SplashID is $9.99 but doesn’t have a desktop component as far as I can tell.  eWallet runs $9.99 for the desktop component and $9.99 for the iPhone component – you get the idea.  About $20 seems to be the sweet spot for these types of programs.

When you install and launch Keeper, you’re greeted with the above screen.  You pick a master password (preferably a complex one) and enter it twice.  It is critical to not forget this password.  You only get five attempts to log in after setting the master password; after that, Keeper wipes your data.  I couldn’t find a way to change the login attempts allowed to be more than five – if it’s not a feature, I’d suggest making it a future enhancement.  This is very important because the password you set in Keeper desktop has to match the password you set in Keeper mobile to allow syncing to occur.  Complex desktop phrases suddenly become a lot harder to enter when tapping on the iPhone’s virtual keypad.

The data entry interface is pretty straightforward.  The Folder field allows you to group sets of accounts by type.  The Title field allows you to name the specific entry.  The Login and Password fields are self-explanatory and the Notes field is pretty much your catchall for anything else.  A few more fields would have been nice, specifically things like URL and PIN.  I ended up using the Notes field to store those, plus things like answers to security questions.

The Settings allow some level of customization of the data entry fields, as well as timeout settings and data storage.  There is also a way to import and export your password database.  Exports can be for backup purposes, or you can print your database to PDF, text, or Excel.  Only the export to text file option allows for encrypting of the output.

The mobile component is very similar to the desktop component.  Options are limited, but how many options do programs like this really need?  You do have the option of turning off the self-destruct of the database if you fail to enter the correct password.  I thought this was an interesting option – on the one hand, you kind of want the database gone if someone tries to access your info.  On the other hand, I ended deleting my database three times either because I couldn’t remember my master password or because I mis-typed my complex (but easily typed on the desktop) password.  Again, balancing act – complex enough to make it difficult to guess but simple enough to enter easily on the virtual keyboard.  It’s a tough choice.

The login page shown is a bit deceptive because it defaults to numeric entry.  This particular page is only shown when you launch the app for the first time and need to set a master password.  I’d originally set a numeric password when I launched the mobile component, but then later had to reset the master password for the mobile app when I wanted to sync (more on that later).  Once the master password is set, however, you get a more standard login screen with a single password field and the alpha keyboard, rather than the numeric one.

I would suggest that Keeper look at using two different passwords on the mobile app.  The first password should allow access to the mobile app, while the second password should be the one used for syncing, and be forced to match the password on the desktop component.  This way, you can set a simpler password to allow quick entry to the application when you need it but you still retain a complex password for keeping the desktop and mobile versions coordinated.

Callpod will allow a one-time backup of your password database.  You pick a security question and provide an email address.  The mobile app then backs up your database to the Callpod servers.  When you want to restore from that backup, you provide the email address you used when you created the backup.  Callpod emails an access code to that email address, which you then enter into the mobile app.  Once entered, you must provide the answer to the security question you chose when you backed up the file.

But what most interested me about Keeper was the mobile/desktop syncing.  It works over Wi-Fi and it’s pretty slick.  You activate syncing on both the mobile app and the desktop app.

On the mobile app, you get an IP address plus a numeric key.  You enter this information on the desktop component, decide how you want the syncing to be done, and hit the Sync button.  The process is pretty quick and fairly bulletproof.  I tried syncing five or six different times and had only one failure.  I just re-tried the sync immediately however, and was able to sync just fine, so it’s not like failure means hours of troubleshooting.

Overall, I was pleased with Keeper and thought it was a solid product.  If you’re hesitant about buying it outright, the mobile component is a free iTunes download, so you can try it before you buy the desktop companion.  Callpod’s willingness to host a backup instance for free gives you a way to store your passwords securely, so if you don’t add tons of accounts on a regular basis, it’s possible for you to set up all your important passwords on the mobile version, have Callpod store a backup, and be about your merry way.  (Not sure that the Callpod folks are going to be happy about this suggestion!)

The biggest problem with Keeper (and other apps like it) is something they will not be able to solve on their own.  I am referring to the lack of multitasking on the iPhone, which makes products like this totally annoying to use.  I can’t just flip back and forth between Safari and Keeper on the iPhone – instead, I have to log into Keeper every time I want to access a different secure site.  It significantly deteriorates the usability of the application through no fault of Callpod’s.  I think an app like this would be great for the iPad, which is much more intended to provide a complete web experience.  However, the lack of multitasking on THAT platform will also make things annoyingly frustrating.  For a company that talks all about the user experience, Apple is having a harder and harder time justifying the lack of multitasking on its portable products.

Would I buy Keeper based on my experience with it?  Honestly, I’m not sure.  For a long time after I got my iPhone, I was looking for some way to view my passwords for American Express and Ameritrade and the like.  But since I couldn’t find anything that I was willing to pay for, I actually ended up learning the passwords.  If there were an easy way for me to switch between Keeper and Safari, or have Keeper pass URL, user ID, and password information to a Safari session, I think this software would be totally worth it.  But given the frustrations of flipping back and forth between Safari and Keeper, I just couldn’t see myself using it on a regular enough basis to justify its cost.  Your mileage may vary.

Related posts:

1. Google Push Email for iPhone Now Available
2. Google Sync Synchronizes Calendars and Contacts on Your Mobile Phone
3. REVIEW: Pocket Informant lets you chuck iPhone’s Calendar and To Do apps

My previous experiences with Jaybird left me a bit leery of ordering these.  I had purchased a set of their Freedom headphones when those had first come out only to realize when I got them that they were not compatible with glasses.  Which basically meant they were useless to me, even when I was wearing contacts (cause, you know, I have to look cool by wearing shades).  I can’t believe that no one on the Jaybird testing team had this problem.  I don’t know about you, but I use wireless headphones as much as possible.  Years of listening to Air Supply and Barry Manilow at glass-shattering volumes have left my ears unable to discern much of anything, so I don’t miss the ultra-high fidelity that wired headphones bring.  And I’m willing to give up that fidelity anyways because I hate being tangled up in cords, especially at the gym.

I ordered the SB1‘s through Amazon, where they were marked as pre-order status (and cheaper than on the Jaybird site itself).  They actually arrived within their customary 2 day window, much to my surprise.  So here are my first set of unboxing pics.

(Man, that guy could be my twin.  Well, at least in terms of the chrome dome anyways).

Nice plastic wrapping.  Could the electronics industry use any MORE plastic?  I mean, I know we have infinite oil supplies, but still.  Sheesh.

Nice and new out of the box.  The manual, by the way, is a marvel of simplicity.  I think there are only fifteen sentences in the manual.  Everything is done through colored pictographs.  My wife was unable to figure out what said pictographs meant, which goes to show you who the target audience might be.

This is the power/control portion of the headphones.  Five buttons.  That’s it.

Pairing was very straightforward.  The phones arrived with sufficient power to turn on and connect to my iPhone without any issues.  Charging took about three or four hours.  It has a nice touch in that the power indicator only glows red until it’s charged up.  When the SB1′s are fully charged, the red charging light goes off.

There is about an inch of extension to the drivers, and the foam is fairly thick.  The controls are covered in a matte rubber, and are easily manipulated even in gloves once you’re used to them.  The big silver power button serves as a play/pause button and the iPhone only allows volume control through BT anyways, so it’s not like I had a lot of choices to make.

The Jaybird people make a big deal out of the fact that the headphone pads swivel in two dimensions.  The amount of play in that swivel is not huge, so I don’t know that I got a lot of additional comfort because of this.  The foam covering the headphone drivers is a thicker version of the foam that come with earbuds.  Jaybird must be expecting that these things will last, because they didn’t provide a spare set of foam covers.  I can see them being torn over time and Jaybird would be well advised to make sure they have replacements available.

Sound quality was good.  Like I said, I’m no audiophile, but I had no issues with the sound level reaching my ears, even compared to my previous Sony BT headphones, which plug directly into my ears.  Phone quality was also good.  Folks on the other end had a bit of trouble hearing me but I chalk that up to the fact that I’m not a yeller – I speak at a normal volume no matter the environment and expect the headphone mic to pick me up.  The SB1′s did that just fine.

In terms of downsides, I had three main issues with the SB1′s.  First (and this will vary based on user), the headphones are TIGHT against your ears.  My ears were sore after an hour or two of use and I don’t think I have a very big head (small brain, you know).  For the more cranially endowed, the SB1′s might be way tight.  I’m sure the plastic headband will expand and loosen over time, but it’s something to keep in mind.  Second, I experienced weird volume issues as the power on the headphones drained down.  It was very difficult to reproduce, so I couldn’t tell if it really was a problem, but for some reason, the volume refused to drop down below a certain (very loud) level.  It was bizarre.  Finally, I noticed that the rubber underside of the plastic headband had started pulling away from the headband at the edges.  It wasn’t horrible, but it was enough that I was concerned.  I ordered a replacement pair from Amazon and this time I’m going to check the edges right upon opening the packaging.  I wasn’t sure if the edges had always been this way or if it had developed over the two weeks I’ve had the headphones.

Overall, the SB1′s are a good set of BT headphones.  They did slide around a bit on my head, which I really kind of chalk up to the fact that I have no hair.  The sound quality is good and the microphone seems to work just fine.  Controls are easy to use, charging seems quick, and overall I’m pretty happy with these.  The specs indicate that these are pairable with up to two devices but when I tried to pair them with my PC, I got all kinds of errors.  Contacting Jaybird support indicated that this was a Windows limitation rather than an SB1 issue.  I will ding them on support though – I asked them another question and I have yet to hear back from them.

I’ll update the post when I get a replacement pair from Amazon.  I’m hoping that these will be my primary BT headphones for the foreseeable future, but I’m sure I’ll fall in lust with another pair.

UPDATE: I received my replacement pair of SB1′s in the aftermath of the East Coast Snowpocalypse.  This time I took a careful look at the edges of the headband where the rubber and plastic meet.  They seem to be just fine, so it makes me think that either I got a defective set or it might be a problem that develops over time.  I’m hoping not because I do like these headphones.  I’ll post another update if I notice that they are starting to pull apart again.  Jaybird does offer a year warranty so you do have some level of recourse.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Sony DRBT160AS Bluetooth Stereo Headset
2. Jaybird Releases the SB2
3. Valentine’s Day Heart mp3 Player iPod Ear Buds Headphones

The C309 is a relatively svelte machine, especially compared to the behemoth that was my Dell (hatred and denigration of Dell products will be a theme throughout this post, so if you’re a Dell fanboy, just leave now).  It came in a ginormous Amazon box.  I tried to take some unboxing pictures but my iPhone apparently was operated by an epileptic on crack so I’ll be sticking to stock photos.

The C309 is a wireless/wired photoprinting AIO unit with a duplexer.  I was dreading the setup for this printer because my experience trying to set up the wireless printing on the Dell was a Chtulian nightmare.  And after all the pain of setup, the wireless printing never worked right, leaving my fiancee and I passing USB cables back and forth to print.  So you can imagine my complete surprise and amazement when the manual gave me a completely wireless setup option.  And not only was it an option, the option actually worked!

Coincidentally, I’d bought a new router about a year or so ago.  One of the features it had was something called a WPS button, which supposedly would pass all necessary wireless settings to any WPS-equipped device.  The C309 is one such device, so when the printer booted up and asked for a WPS signal, I was able to have it connected to my network in about three minutes.  It was amazing.  The touchscreen confirmed my SSID, asked for my network password, and went through a few more confirmation questions.  The software installation took longer than the connection to my home network.  If I have to ding HP on something, it’s the fact that they have ALWAYS released bloated software.  This thing was fatter than a pregnant cow with triplets.  It also had a very annoying feature that forced an immediate reboot.  I lost several web pages that I hadn’t had a chance to bookmark because the install program shut down my laptop.  Make sure you’ve saved everything important before you install the HP monitoring software.

That one bit of nastiness aside, I was connected to the printer and testing within probably 15-20 minutes.  But the biggest test was connecting my fiancee’s laptop to the printer.  Again, HP pulled through.  The second installation was as smooth as the first.  Within 30 minutes, both of us were printing to the C309 sans wires.  The duplexer works just fine, but it’s a bit slow because the printer automatically waits for the ink to dry before flipping the page.

Speaking of ink, the C309 uses individual ink cartridges.  There are five altogether – four for photos (including a photo black) and one for text.  I haven’t priced the ink out in great detail, but I do recall seeing sets of photo ink for this printer in the $25 range, which isn’t terrible.  The POS Dell’s ink was so expensive I actually considered buying a new printer rather than replace the ink.  Instead I just didn’t print anything (which was good, since I couldn’t print anyways).

The other awesome thing is that HP provides an iPhone printing app.  The HP iPrint will let you print pictures directly from your iPhone to any compatible HP printer.  Launching the iPrint app, I was able to detect my printer and send a test print to it with zero setup.  Tres cool.

I’d never really been a fan of HP products before, but if the C309 is any indication of the typical quality and ease-of-use that HP is putting into their designs now, they’ve just become my favorite PC hardware manufacturer.

Related posts:

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3. 4-port USB hub connects to your network

The Skylight is, like the iPad, an Internet-centric device powered by a 3G connection (courtesy of AT&T as well).  The specs are fairly similar in terms of processor speed, screen size, etc.  Most importantly, the Skylight is a Linux-based lightweight OS designed around applets.  Lenovo provides a bunch off the bat (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, YouTube, etc).  But they are planning to release development specs to the platform so that others can build additional widgets for the device.  Hmm…this model sounds familiar.

So the interesting comparison is whether or not you should get a Skylight or an iPad.  The Skylight, being Linux-based, is potentially much more easily cracked and made into a true mini-computer, but let’s assume that we stick to stock configurations of both devices – no jailbreaking and the like for these puppies.  How do they stack up?

Processor

Both the iPad and the Skylight are powered by 1GHz ARM-based processors.  Both utilize, at their hearts, the SnapDragon SOC.  Thus, they should run functionally at about the same rate.  The key issues will be around graphics processing and onboard RAM, both of which will have an impact on the ability of the processor to keep up with the user.  I wouldn’t expect Apple to be stingy with the RAM, but I could be on crack too.  Since Apple doesn’t really like multitasking, they aren’t necessarily as concerned with beefy RAM.  The Skylight’s custom widgets might be less memory intensive than their iPad counterparts, but I’ll also wager that the platform allows more than one to run at a time.

Display

The iPad has a 4:3 formatted screen at 1024 x 768.  The Skylight uses a more widescreen formatted screen at 1280 x 720, which is (if I’m not mistaken) HD-compatible 720p.  (I could be wrong about that – I’m horrible with remembering anything less than 1080p HD resolution).  So the Skylight probably offers a more traditional movie format display, whereas the iPad is geared towards TV.  Movies on the iPad will have tons of black around them.

Physical Size

The Skylight provides sizing as 253mm x 201mm x 17mm while the iPad is listed as 242.8mm x 189.7mm x 13.4mm.  So the iPad is a tad slimmer.  Weightwise, the iPad comes in at 1.5lbs while the Skylight is listed as being less than 2lbs.  However, keep in mind that the Skylight includes a full keyboard.  If you add the weight of even an Apple BT keyboard to the iPad, I’ll be that they will come in roughly the same (actually, the iPad might lose but it would be close).  And the iPad is probably a bit bulkier when you consider the addition of the keyboard.

Storage

The iPad comes in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB flavors.  The Skylight comes with 8GB integrated storage plus an 8GB microSD card, which can be expanded by the user.  The biggest external microSD card I’ve seen on Amazon is for 32GB, so you get an effective 40GB of storage on the Skylight, max.  However, the Skylight can be expanded easily once 64GB microSDs come out, while you’re stuck on Apple’s refresh cycle to bump up your iPad’s specs.  If you’re looking for long-term use, the Skylight’s expandability is the better way to go.

Wireless and Battery

The iPad’s top config includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and 3G.  The Skylight is similarly configured.  What I’m not sure about (cause Lenovo be mighty stingy on the specs) is whether or not the Skylight has GPS.  I would assume yes, but you never know.

Both devices boast 10 hours of battery life under “normal” conditions.

Summary

So there you have it – the iPad is basically a Skylight without the keyboard.  From a capabilities perspective, the two are very comparable.  However, the Skylight provides all the features discussed above at a top price of $499, whereas you’ll pay $829 for a similarly equipped iPad.  Then you add in the accessories necessary to make the iPad match the Skylight’s feature set and you could get almost two Skylights for the price of a top of the line tricked out iPad.  Heck you might even be able to get Lenovo’s removable-screen IdeaPad for that price.  That would give you a netbook AND a tablet.  From the press release, it seems that Lenovo has the same deal with AT&T that Apple does – that is, no contract data access plans.  I’m guessing they’ll be similarly priced too.

The key thing that will differentiate these two products then is the apps that run on them.  In that area, the iPad has a significant advantage over the Lenovo, but I’m sure Lenovo isn’t going to be an app gatekeeper like Apple is.  This is both good and bad, but it does put the Skylight at a very distant starting point.

Related posts:

1. iOS 5 Beta shows gesture-based controls
2. InnoPocket launched HexaPose Stand for Apple iPad
3. On the eve of iPhone OS4

In all seriousness, the hype over the upcoming tablet announcement (thank you Mr. Terry “Loose Lips Sink Future Apple Relationships” McGraw) is reaching levels that no product could possibly satisfy.  Unless this thing raises the dead and cures cancer, it will be deemed a failure.  I mean, c’mon – it’s just a gadget.  And it will stay a gadget until people start doing stuff with it.  The iPhone was just a clever gadget until people started developing apps for it.  Ever hear of AppleTV?  No?  It too was a clever gadget but no one ever did anything for it (and the few times people tried, Apple squashed them like a bug) so it’s disappeared.

Most likely, the tablet will be a very interesting take on the whole space.  Companies have been trying to get critical mass in the tablet space for a while but the devices have all suffered from two major flaws – heft and Microsoft.

Have you seen the typical tablet?  Until CES this year, they were all massive, weighing in excess of 3lbs.  Try carrying a 3lb weight like a microphone for 10-15 minutes.  It gets darn uncomfortable.  Now try that with a 5lb weight.  Even harder.  Get the picture?  No one wants to lug something like that around.  Sure, you can sit down at a local cafe or prop it up on a flat surface, but the point of it is to be able to walk around, interact with it, then put it away without thinking about it.  If the heft makes you hesitate to pull it out, the tablet has failed.  The great thing about the iPhone is that it made itself seamless in your life.  Need to look something up?  Whip out the iPhone.  My fiancee and I have settled arguments at dinner by grabbing my iPhone to Google something.  Now think about doing that with a PC.  Not even remotely possible.

The other major issue with tablets to date is Microsoft.  Let’s face it – hardware manufacturers are not very good at software (“cough cough” Dell especially sucks “cough cough”).  In fact, Apple is probably the only hardware manufacturer that does good software.  Because hardware makers suck at software, they rely on Microsoft Windows to provide functionality and as we all know, Windows is not optimized for anything.  It has huge bloat, the interface was never designed for mobile use, and its tablet functions were always an afterthought.  Even Windows 7, which has tablet functionality baked in, is an example of this bloat.  Why do I need a full Windows 7 install for a tablet?  It only adds disk, memory, and processing requirements onto a device that should be light and fast.  This carries down to the mobile space, where Windows Mobile 6.x is the latest example of bloated interface requirements being implemented on a device that has no desire to be a PC.  Unless Microsoft drops this “one universe one way” approach to their segments, they will rapidly become irrelevant.

What Apple excels at is minimalistic design of both hardware and software.  You can admire their hardware aesthetic, but their software minimalism is just as important to their success.  The iPhone OS does very specific things and it does them very well.  Furthermore, it provides a framework that allows developers to do 80%-90% of what they want to do, which for most people is JUST FINE.  If Apple doesn’t think something is absolutely needed, they don’t include it.  You don’t see a Mac interface in all its complexity squashed into the iPhone – they took the important stuff and put it in, but they weren’t wedded to absolute reproduction across their product lines.  They also aren’t afraid to break backwards compatibility (as they showed when they shifted to Intel chips).  I’m guessing that Apple is going to be very unconcerned about iPhone OS4 being a slow-as-molasses experience on an iPhone or iPhone 3G.  The future of Apple relies on regular hardware replacement.  They won’t care that you can’t run Quake 4 on your original iPhone if it forces you to buy iPhone v5 or v6.

I think the tablet will be similar.  Apple will provide an expanded framework based on iPhone OS.  It will do some things similar to the iPhone, it will do other things differently.  But because Apple’s already invested in a method by which developers can reach end users in an efficient, relatively cheap way, they already have a bunch of folks who will build new ways to interact and use the tech that Apple has given them.  I’m looking forward to this event not because of what Apple will release, but because I’m eager to see the creative potential of their new product.  It’s no accident that their invite uses a creativity theme.

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3. Bored bored bored

For those of you who don’t want to pay for a gym membership, body weight exercises provide effective exercise with minimal equipment and space requirements.  And they’re not a wuss-out form of exercise, either – studies have shown that bodyweight exercises will build mass, reduce fat, and get you in shape just as efficiently as weight equipment, if you do it right.  In order to help you do it right, a company called BrainBakery has created a suite of iPhone applications and a supporting web site under the moniker GymFu.

The GymFu line consists of four iPhone applications – CrunchFu, SquatFu, PushupFu, and PullupFu.  They run $0.99 each.  There is also a free version of SquatFu called SquatFu Lite that limits you to 30 reps but gives you a chance to try out the product line.  I downloaded three of these apps – I did not buy PullupFu because I don’t have a pullup bar.  The other three exercises only require some floor space to test out.

The basic concept behind all the apps are the same.  Each application trains you to reach a target goal for the given exercise.  For pushups, the target is 100 reps; for squats and crunches the target is 200 reps; and for pullups the target is 50 reps.  There are two modes.  The training mode is used to progress towards the target reps for the exercise, while battle mode allows you to compete against other GymFu members.  In order to use battle mode, you need to create a GymFu.com account (which I didn’t do).  If you create an account, you can post your progress to GymFu.com and see how you compare against other users of the app.

GymFu’s apps, however, don’t just record your progress – they make sure you’re doing each exercise correctly by using the iPhone/iTouch’s accelerometer to figure out if your rep was a good rep.  They only count the good ones, so the apps help keep you honest and make sure you’re doing a full range of motion.

To start off, each application gives you a short tutorial on what proper form looks like for the exercise in question.  It also gives instructions on how to mount the iPhone/iTouch for best sensitivity.  The app then has you go through a leveling section, where it tries to figure out at what level to put you into.  There are ten stages to the training but you can skip several of them depending on how many reps you can do when you first start out.

Each training session consists of five rounds.  The first four rounds have set target reps, depending on where in the progression you are currently at.  The fifth round is an “as many as possible” round, used to help determine whether to move you on to the next level or drop you down some.  Each training stage consists of three “days”; once you pass the 10th stage, you reach a finale where you perform the target number of max reps in one go.

The apps count your reps for each round.  They will also tell you if the rep was a half-assed one or if the rep was done incorrectly.  In use, I found this part to be a little annoying – it’s highly dependent on proper placement and perfect form.  It’s also important to get a strap that will fit you.  That’s not a problem for arm straps but finding an arm strap that will also fit around your thigh (for the squats) will be a bit of a challenge.

The default voice is a bit mechanical but if you sign up for an account, you can download two additional voices.

Since I belong to a gym and work out on a regular basis there, I didn’t use these apps as much as I thought I would.  However, for people who want to exercise in their homes and want a way to keep themselves honest and motivated, these apps are as good as anything else.  They’re also probably a better workout than a Wii Fit and a heck of a lot less expensive.

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When you work it out, however, if there are 28K developers making $175M, that works out to just $6.2K per developer.  Not bad, but don’t quit your day job.

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Being a gadget blog, it’s kind of weird not being at the Consumer Electronics Show.  Neither Quang nor I could make the show this year due schedule conflicts.  At the same time, being away from CES gives me a sense of perspective on the show that being submerged in the whirl wouldn’t necessarily provide.  So from 3000 miles away, here’s my take on CES 2010.

Tablets tablets tablets

HP Slate (image courtesy Engadget)

Everyone showed off tablets.  Windows 7′s built-in tablet functionality makes this viable from an implementation perspective, since that feature is built-in already.  But because vendors are relying on Microsoft to provide a feature set, the tablets are boring.  There’s no product differentiation – sure some are smaller or bigger, fatter or thinner, but from the pictures I’ve seen and the product snapshots I’ve read, there’s nothing really revolutionary about any of them.  In my mind, that further magnifies Microsoft’s increasing irrelevance in the growth of mobile platforms.  The Microsoft keynote was, from all reports I’ve read, boring.  Even with Ballmer’s hyperantics, they really didn’t have much to show.  Right now, the only products they’ve got that’s generating any kind of buzz are Bing and XBox360.  Project Natal is interesting, but it’s a platform that presumes something many XBox360 owners might not necessarily have – room to move. I’d guess that a large number of gamers play in their rooms, and unless you’re wealthy the typical room doesn’t have the space to use Natal easily.  The old handheld controls may be archaic but they also don’t require a ton of space to flail around in.  Show me someone using Natal in a 10′x10′ bedroom with a full size bed, a dresser, bookshelf, desk, and piles of clothes on the floor and I’ll believe in its viability.  Otherwise, I’m guessing it will be destined for a small portion of the population.

Ebook Reader, who’s got an ebook reader?

Skiff Reader (image courtesy Crave Blog)

At CES 2010, it seemed everyone had an ebook reader.  They were practically giving them away with entry.  Many of the online vids I’ve seen make me less than enthused.  I guess I am just disappointed by their lack of speed.  It shouldn’t be a case where I press a ‘next page’ key and have to wait for the screen to refresh.  I know e-ink is slow due to the technology and its current state, but as those e-ink screens get bigger and bigger, the refresh lag gets more and more disturbing.  The few 8.5″x11″ ebook readers I’ve seen really magnify the response rate issues, and will be one of the key issues preventing fast adoption.  That and publishers’ refusal to change their paradigms.  Did I mention that I saved the publishing industry?

3D TV

Intel 3D w/o Glasses (image via Engadget)

Too soon.  Too expensive.  Wait til CES 2012.  Plus would you really want to wear those glasses all the time?  And keep spares around for guests?  Annoying.

Mobile Tech

Levnovo LePhone (image via Engadget)

Lots of new smartphones.  Lots of new Android-based mobile tech.  There’s going to be an interesting war between carriers and device manufacturers.  I don’t know that the carriers will ever be relegated to dumb pipe status, unless Google is successful in licensing a swath of spectrum and developing it itself.  But carriers will definitely be shifting to more of a partnership model than a “we tell you what to make” model.  Verizon will be the carrier to watch – if they start shifting to a more device-friendly stance, then you’ll know the power balance has equalized.  For all their talk about network access and being able to hook any device onto their airspace, I’ve seen remarkably few devices that actually do this.

Furthermore, as smartphones become more powerful and capable, many single-use devices (navigation, pictureframe, ebook readers, etc) are going to be obsoleted.  I’m just not willing to pay for three or more different devices that are best in class when I can buy one device that does on OK job at all the things I need it to.  Especially as cellphone-based cameras become more powerful and capable, that market is going to fragment into a low end and high end, with little in between.  ’Good enough’ is becoming the deathnell of many consumer electronics companies that can’t adjust to the times.

iPhone and the unicorn known as the iSlate/iTablet/iPadd/iTouch Supersized

Mythical iSlate (image via TG Daily)

Let’s face it – CES 2010 really showed the dominance of the iPhone as a platform (if it wasn’t apparent before).  There was basically an expo-within-the-expo with iLounge’s iPhone Pavilion.  But the items identified as Best Of 2010 didn’t really impress me all that much.  The risk with having such an iPhone-dependent area is that the products being displayed are towards the tail end of Apple’s development cycle.  So far, the iPhone timeline tends to be that June/July announces the new hardware version of the iPhone/iPod Touch, followed in the late January timeframe for the latest update to the iPhone/iTouch OS (after CES) followed by Mac-based updates a few months later.  So the products being shown at CES are for a form factor/OS that will soon be previous generation once the Apple announcement cycle starts.  It’s gotta be painful for the manufacturers, since they’re constantly behind the development curve (especially given Apple’s notorious secrecy levels concerning upcoming products and features).

Overall

CES 2010 seemed more upbeat than CES 2009.  All in all, however, it seemed that this CES as good a one to miss as any.  Nothing really revolutionary seems to have been announced, and the elephant in the room was definitely Apple’s pending Jan. 27th announcement of its Jesus tablet (if that’s indeed what they are going to do).  Apple’s got a LOT of pressure to deliver something truly revolutionary, which is in a way a really sad testament to the state of consumer electronics.  So many companies out there vying for a piece of the consumer dollar yet only one company is consistently able to deliver something that people seem to want.  Why do Microsoft, Dell, HP, and the like even have R&D budgets?  They should just slavishly copy Apple.  Oh wait, they already do.  Even Google, which is trying to do something revolutionary with Android and Chrome OS, is going to get bogged down by their total lack of understanding of the consumer space.  Looks like it’s going to be an Apple world….

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And here’s another post:

When Google first went into China and agreed to filter their results per the requirements of the Chinese government, I wasn’t terribly outraged.  In fact, I thought that most of the people raising a stink were being, frankly, self-centered and self-righteous.  If a Chinese company were to come into the US and pay their workers lower than minimum wage and ignore US laws concerning health, welfare, environment, etc, we’d be all over them.  But because Google was following Chinese law, they were seen as being traitors to the idea of democracy and the US Constitution.  Last I checked, the Chinese didn’t ever agree to the Constitution.  Google couldn’t be faulted for following the rules of the country they’re operating in.

This, however, is different.  Basically, China is giving a big F*** Y** to any company that wants to do business inside their borders, and it’s a big enough reaming that every company rushing to build a presence in that country needs to seriously think about whether or not it’s worth it.  It wasn’t just Google – as their post states, it was a variety of financial, media, Internet, and chemical sector companies.

Here’s the thing about China.  They DON’T CARE what you think.  The government is concerned with one thing and one thing only and that’s staying in power.  If that means providing what looks like a market economy, then they’ll do it.  But don’t ever lose sight of the fact that it’s NOT a market economy.  If you create something incredibly valuable in China, copyright or no, patent or no, agreement or no, THEY WILL TAKE IT FROM YOU.  Whether they do it by “accidentally” releasing sensitive information to a government-associated company or by looking the other way when a Chinese company steals your secrets, the end result is that nothing you create in China will be yours.  Period.

And the sad thing is that the US can’t do a damn thing about it because we are owned heart and soul by the Chinese government.  Who do you think is giving us the money to bail out our economy and the Wall Street banks?  It’s certainly not coming from US savers.  It’s really hard to yell at someone to whom you owe trillions of dollars.  And it’s even harder for them to actually hear you talk about human rights in one ear when you’re yelling “please give us more money” in the other.

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(in the screenshot below, my task bar is oriented on the left hand side of my screen.)

See that little bar that’s in the area of the time/date display circled in orange?  Just click that and you’ll immediately get your desktop, with all other windows minimized.  It’s that simple.

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The basic concept of ProSwitcher is to replicate on the iPhone an interface similar to that of the Palm Pre.  It is a front end to Backgrounder, an app that allows you to set certain apps to run in the background.  Backgrounder is a must-have app for jailbroken iPhones but it has a distinctly minimalist interface, plus switching among the various running apps requires the standard interface actions so it’s hard to keep track of what’s running in the background.

When installed, ProSwitcher creates an icon plus a Settings entry.  You never need to touch the ProSwitcher app itself – everything is handled through its Settings.

The settings primarily revolve around how ProSwitcher is activated, though there are a number of other parameters that can be set using the interface.

The activation options are many and varied, and you should play around with them to figure out which method works for you.  When activated, ProSwitcher cards look very Pre-like.

There are a small set of dots underneath the application title – these describe the number of running apps.  To switch between the apps, just flick the cards left or right.  To close a running app, just hit the “X” button in the top left corner.  You can activate any of the dock icons directly as well as flicking between the active apps.  And that’s pretty much it.

The main issue I had with ProSwitcher was that I didn’t have an iPhone 3GS.  On the faster processor with the larger free memory, I’m sure this app would have been really amazing.  But on a 3G, the lack of RAM plus the slow processor makes this app worthless for running more than three or four apps at the same time, and since two of those slots are typically taken up by the Mail and Phone apps, and since I use my iPod app more than just about any other app on my phone, I was pretty much only single-tasking anyways.  But if you’ve got a jailbroken 3GS, definitely check out ProSwitcher.  I think it’s a great little app, and the fact that it’s (currently) freeware is even more amazing.  I was going to buy MultiFl0w, the other highly rated multitasking manager, but I’m glad I tried ProSwitcher first.  Not because it’s necessarily better, but because it showed me that I really don’t multitask very much.

ProSwitcher is available via Cydia.

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Find the best cell phone plans and more graphics at BillShrink.com

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In case folks around here hadn’t noticed, it’s gotten rather cold of late.  And one of the difficult things about being cold is that using electronics in the cold is just a rotten experience.  In tech’s never ending quest for miniaturization, designers seem to forget that there may be impediments between your tech and your hands that prevent proper usage.  I speak, of course, of the glove, bane of gadgetlovers everywhere there is snow and ice and freezing rain.  This problem is a lot worse with devices that use capacitative screens, such as the iPhone/iTouch.  Those devices rely on the electrical resistance provided by skin to do their thing.  In the case of the iPhone, you can’t even make an emergency call without touching the screen.  DOTS gloves were designed to address this issue.

The company itself is a couple years old.  I remember reading about them last year but by the time I’d gotten around to ordering them, they were out of stock.  They also only had one model last year if I remember correctly; this year they have three.  And this year, I went and ordered my pair early before winter really started so that I could be assured of having a set.

The DOTS gloves work by providing a small patch of thermally conductive fabric on two fingers plus the thumb portions of the gloves.

(Please excuse the crud on the gloves – the large animal in the background enjoys gloves for breakfast and dinner, and it’s a constant battle to ensure the gloves survive their daily use.)  If you look closely, you can see the two dots on the tips of the first and second fingers of the glove.  A similar dot adorns the thumb.

The conductive patch allows the gloves to pass electrical resistance from your skin to your device while keeping your hands warm and comfortable.  They come in three sizes – small, medium, and large.  My advice is to err on the smaller side.

I purchased the D200 model, which is their warmest one.  I originally ordered the medium and then ended up switching them for the small.  It’s critical to have a tight fit with these gloves, and the medium made me feel like my hands were swimming inside fabric.  Even with the smalls, my hands still have plenty of room, and therein lies the problem.

The gloves themselves do OK at keeping your hands warm.  They aren’t going to be a lot of use in really intense cold but then again, few mass market gloves will, so that’s not a big problem.  I’d rate them at about the same level as a good pair of Isotoners.  But in terms of letting you use your iPhone while gloved, I’d have to rate them as only so-so.  I don’t know if other reviewers had really big hands or if there’s a smaller size I could have gotten that would have fit better but I just couldn’t get the gloves to be tight enough against my skin that the dots would consistently make contact.  And without that contact, it’s like wiping a microfiber cloth against your screen – nothing happens.

I freely admit that I have delicate hands – my piano teacher called them bird hands they were so thin.  But in a way, I represent a subsegment of the potential user base that DOTS is eventually going to have to figure out how to handle, namely women.  I can’t imagine that women would find the size small versions to be a good fit.  I know girls who have hands even smaller than mine, and there’s no way they would be able to use these gloves in the way they were intended.  Even women with big hands could be challenged because in general, women tend to have thinner fingers than men.  Maybe the other DOTS models provide better fit and contact, but in my daily use, I ended more often than not taking the gloves off, working my iPhone, then putting the gloves back on.  I think if they could incorporate some Lycra into the gloves so that the fit were tighter and if they made the dots bigger so that they contacted more skin surface, the gloves would work better across a wider range of people.

I like the concept of these gloves, but now that conductive thread has come out, I’m tempted to get a really close fitting pair of regular gloves and sew a couple of big fat patches onto the fingertips.  Better fit and bigger usable surface.

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I am going to save the publishing industry from itself.  And no, they don’t have to thank me, shower me with roses, send young virgins my way, or pay me (that’s the important part).  It’s very simple.  I’ll even put it in big font so the old hats in publishing can read it with their aged eyes.  Ready?  Here it is.

Rent the books

No, no, please.  I can’t accept your praise and thanks.  It’s enough knowing that I did something good in 2009 (and boy was I cutting it close!).  Oh, what?  You don’t understand?  Geez do I have to do everything?  Ok let me explain it to you.  Pay attention, old publishing – don’t become even more of a dinosaur.

Most people I know don’t like to buy books.  I know lots of people who like to read, but they don’t necessarily want to buy every book they read.  This is why libraries exist.  However, there are times that a library is too small to have the latest book you want, or they take too long to get a copy to you when you want to read something right away because there’s only one copy and it’s being read by some geriatric who’s going to keep it the damn full three weeks plus renewals.  This is why used bookstores exist.  But those tend to be rare, messy, and rarely stock the book you’re looking for.  Turn to Amazon or eBay and you might as well buy the book new after you add in the shipping costs.  And let’s face it – most books aren’t really worth buying.  I mean c’mon – do you really need to buy the Star Wars or Star Trek or D&D books that seem to be released by the dozen every day?  99.99% of those are throwaways – read them once and throw them away.  Even the best books are typically throwaways – read once and never again.  I’m willing to bet a year’s salary that the publishing industry loses hundreds of sales each day because the number of people willing to pay $7.99 plus tax for a throwaway book is small and getting smaller.  Rather than trying to fight for a piece of an ever shrinking pie, the publishers need to think about getting a bigger pie.  Book rentals are the bigger pie.

Imagine you’re an average reader.  Average in that you buy maybe one or two books a month (if that – I consider myself an above average reader and I buy maybe one book every three to four months).  What if you could get access to a set number of books per month for a flat fee?  And to add spice to the offer, what if you could get a free e-book reader for signing up?  Let’s say you could rent books in units of five, ten, twenty, or thirty books a month for a range of prices.  Five books might cost you $15/month, while ten books might cost you $25/mo and so on.  Every month, on the first of the month, you get access to your alloted limit of new books.  Those could be books you pick out that day, or over the course of that month, or you could build up a list of books you’d like to read, from which a subset would be released to you each month.  Of course the books you’d already rented for the previous month would disappear from your reader, but that’s OK cause you can always re-add them to your list.  You read through your allotted books and everything is hunky dory.  Every month, you’re guaranteed access to your subscription limit.  But you read through your limit already?  Well, you could be offered the chance to increase your limit for the month or from that point forward.  Similarly, you got access to 20 books but only touched three of them.  Maybe you get asked if you’d like to downgrade your subscription.  The point of the service shouldn’t be to maximize immediate  revenue – the point of the subscription should be to maximize long term usage, and you do that by making things as convenient as possible for the user.  If that means giving up some short term revenue for long term gain, so be it.  And the thing is, Mr. Publisher, you’re getting money for books that YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE GOTTEN OTHERWISE.  Let me say that again.  YOU’RE GETTING MONEY FOR BOOKS YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE GOTTEN OTHERWISE.

People are going to say that there’s nothing like the feel of a book in your hands.  Those people are, frankly, luddites.  Are there some books I’d rather own permanently rather than temporarily?  Sure.  I can name maybe a dozen or so.  All other books I own are books I’ve bought, read once, and have thrown onto a bookshelf because I was too lazy to sell it or wouldn’t get enough money from the sale to make it worth my time.  This service removes the need for me to have bookshelves of paper that I rarely use (the bookshelf industry is screaming bloody murder right now) plus gets me access to a universe of books I’d never have bought in the first place.  For authors who still live for book signings, there will always be a cadre of fans who will buy a physical copy of your latest tome so that it can be graced with your signature.  But those people would have bought your book anyways, and I guarantee you that that set of people will only get bigger when you combine them with the set of people who will read your book once and never think about it again.

The beauty of a subscription model is that it’s a steady revenue stream for the publishers.  The only cost to them is for an e-book reader and digitization of their collection.  Once those are funded, they can count on a constant flow of dollars, punctuated by the occasional best seller that people decide they absolutely must own a physical version of.  It removes the need to front a bunch of stock to booksellers that they then have to buy back.  It encourages reading and the concept of temporary ownership – a key point upon which the music industry floundered.  Most importantly, it means that it DOESN’T MATTER what books people read.  If I decide to read the same five books over and over again each month, it DOESN’T MATTER because I’m still paying the publishers for the same five books.  Can you do that with a paper-based model?  Likewise, it doesn’t matter if I read 30 books a month because most likely those were books I wasn’t going to buy if I didn’t have a rental option.  The number of people who can afford to buy 30 books a month (much less read all 30) are probably less than 1% of the US population.  But the beautiful thing about such subscribers is that the publisher is still being paid for 30 book rentals a month regardless of whether or not those rentals are actually used.

What about sharing?  What if people get a 30-book subscription and share the reader amongst themselves?  WHO CARES?  At some point, the publishing industry (and every other industry) needs to get out of the mindset of maximizing every dollar and decide how to grow for the long term.  Even if five people share a 30-book subscription, there’s only ONE reader.  Think those five people can shuttle that reader amongst themselves for an entire month without impacting their ability to enjoy/read the books?  I doubt it.  It’s easier to just get a single reader for each person with a small monthly subscription.

Here’s a great example.  Manga.  How many people actually buy manga and read it more than once or twice?  Not many.  My daughter goes through manga like a pig goes through excrement.  Each book is $10 a pop.  How many do you think I buy her on a monthly basis?  One?  Two?  (Try none.)  Instead she spends tons of time at Borders or Barnes & Noble, sitting on the floor and reading.  And she’s young enough that coffee has no allure, so those stores aren’t making any money off her (and neither are the publishers).  What if she had an e-reader with a five-book subscription?  Five new manga every month and each month a check from me for the service.  Maybe she finds one or two that she wants so much that she asks for a physical copy.  Well hey – a bonus of $10-$20 on top of the monthly subscription, shared between store and publisher.

Are you getting the idea now, Mr. Publisher?  Do you see how magical this is?  And how easily you could implement something like this?  All you’d need is a Kindle equivalent with Whispersync but minimal local storage and featureset.  No need to provide external storage because you only need it to hold the maximum number of possible rentals (and 30 rentals won’t take up more than a gig).  No need for a keyboard – you could have them manage everything via a web site.  Every 30 days you’d get a burst from the transfer of data, but it’s basically the data equivalent of a 30 minute phone call (if that).  You could start with books and then expand it to magazines, newspapers, comics…the possibilities are only limited by what you can print electronically on a regular basis.  I can even tell you what the starting point should be in terms of a price per rental.  Want to know what it is?  Are you sure?  Want to maybe guess before I say it?  Here it is.

$3.00 per rental MAXIMUM

Why $3.00?  Because Amazon charges $2.99 for shipping used DVDs and $3.99 for shipping used books, and you’re not shipping anything.  At $3/rental for a five rental subscription, that’s $15/mo, which seems reasonable when you consider that buying two paperbacks will run you almost $16.  And it can only get cheaper from there.  In fact, over time, I’d recommend dropping the maximum price per rental to $2 once you figure out how many people will buy what price points.  DON’T GET GREEDY.  The music industry got greedy and they’re being destroyed.  The movie industry is greedy and is in the process of trying to fight getting destroyed.  You guys don’t know how to fight and you’re not big enough to make it a big fight.  Do it right and focus on the customer.  More so than music and movies, your industry is based on a fickle public.  Don’t give them reasons to hate you.

Now go on and build this thing before Amazon or Google does.  You’re welcome.

Related posts:

1. The Nook. No, it’s not new slang for something.
2. Reading 2.0 with the Amazon Kindle 2.0
3. CES 2010 – Some Thoughts

So today was Avatar day.  The fiancee, kids and I took in the 3:40 IMAX showing of James Cameron’s latest epic at a nearby megaplex.  I have to admit that I was not having the greatest of expectations for the movie, though I’d studiously avoided all reviews, critics, discussions, and associations with the movie to keep myself pure.  And of course I had to see the 3D version, because there was no way I was going to sit through a 2.5 hour standard movie.

We got to the theatre about 40 minutes ahead of showtime to find a rather large line.  But we only waited about 10 minutes before they let us in, and we got pretty good seats near the middle of the screen, in the row right before the dropoff to the next lower level.  I’m not sure if you’re aware but there are seats in an IMAX theatre that are useless for movie watching, and the number of bad seats increases for 3D movies.  In general, if you’re in the lower levels and on the outer ends the rows, you should probably just leave and get tickets for a less crowded showing.  This becomes critical for movies that Avatar is going to spawn because of how Cameron does 3D (more on that later).  I’m sure if you google “bad Avatar 3D seats” or some such, you’ll find plenty of articles talking about the details.  I personally have a rule that I will not sit below the midline of an IMAX movie, and for 3D movies, that rule has been amended to not sit below the midline or towards the ends of any rows.

So enough preamble – how was the movie?  In a word, amazing.  The glasses were uncomfortable at first but you get used to them really fast.  And after a bit, they disappear and you immerse into the screen.  The 3D is incredible.  Not the popout type of 3D, mind you.  That whole market has just been effectively rendered dead by Avatar.  No, this 3D was more about general depth.  There was a distinct difference between the foreground and the background, and the focus had a sense of being in front of the screen, almost as if it were being extruded from the screen itself.  And because Cameron doesn’t rely on the popout type of 3D, it means that you can’t focus on the background or you’ll get a migraine.  Flat movies can use an in-focus background to add depth to a scene or to shift attention.  If you remember Speed Racer, one of its signature visuals was that everything was in focus simultaneously, both foreground and background.  Avatar is different.  You have to look at what Cameron wants you to look at because if you don’t, the background won’t come into complete focus and it will give you a headache.  The few times I felt the most vertigo was when I was trying to pick out details in the scenery rather than watching the characters currently in focus.  That is a darn shame, because the visuals of the planetary ecology are just incredible and you want to see all the detail.  That may be the main advantage to the 2D version – you can catch more of the side stuff.

If you haven’t seen Avatar yet, I strongly urge you to see the IMAX version.  Even if you have seen the regular version, go and see the IMAX one.  I’d be pretty curious to know if you thought the movie was a deeper experience because of the 3D.  I can’t imagine seeing this moving in a flat version now, and quite frankly it’s going to color my decision to buy the DVD (Blu-ray of course).  The 3D was that good, and because it ran through the entire movie, there were no real “gotcha” moments where arrows leap off the screen or animals jump out at you.  The only times I saw anything like those types of moments were in a few scenes where ash or insects were flying around the characters – they appeared to be in midair, and seemed so natural that you almost wanted to brush them away.  I am not sure that Avatar will make a billion dollars like Titanic did.  But it will make a mint, and there will be sequels.  I’m not really looking forward to those, because the story is not anything to write home about.  But what I am certain of is that Cameron as a visual pioneer has raised the bar on immersive movie experiences and Avatar will now be the starting point for a whole new generation of movies that blend 3D into cinematography as a natural extension of filmmaking rather than as a gimmick.  My kids are going to be a bridge generation between flat screen films and true 3D, and their kids will probably grow up never knowing what a 2D film really was like.  Few people are able to advance an industry overnight.  With Avatar, Cameron joins the ranks of those few.  Absolutely amazing.

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This is huge, and puts a lot of pressure on the nav manufacturers to come up with compelling reasons to buy a standalone device to do turn-by-turn navigation, especially at high end price points. I give them maybe another year (two at most) to find a way to justify their existence or they’re toast. In two years, smartphone OS’s and processors will be powerful enough to allow both phone calls and navigation simultaneously while playing back music. Too bad the Nuviphone didn’t come out two years ago. It would have given the nav companies a fighting chance to develop their technology to a point where they could have competed. (Of course, hooking their star onto Microsoft was probably a boneheaded move too but there really weren’t many choices at the time so I’ll forgive them that.)

This move puts even more pressure on Apple. The Google Maps app on the iPhone is probably one of the most heavily used (it vies with email in terms of use for me personally). Now Apple’s faced with having a high-use mapping application that is a generation behind what’s available on Android. It’s quite possible that iPhone OS4 will remove the Google Maps app with an Apple-built alternative but that will be a version 1.0, and will probably not be as fully fleshed out as GMaps. And the expectation will be that Apple will provide an app that is at least as good as Google’s as part of the OS because, let’s face it, if I gotta pay $200 for an iPhone on contract, and then another $100 for TomTom’s nav app, I’d rather give my $200 to Verizon and Droid. Apple needs to lose the anti-multitasking religion right quick and figure out a way to do it efficiently and soon.

I highly recommend checking out the Engadget site to see the video and the press pics. The video demo of the alternative UI that pops up when the device is docked, plus the voice recognition capability, is pretty damned impressive.

Update:

If you’re TomTom or Garmin?  I hope you sold your stock before today.

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And I gotta say that I’m liking what I’m seeing. Oh please dear lord don’t let me be disappointed yet again. I gotta renew my two year ball-and-chain with the iPhone in July 2010, and it’s probably going to come down to a choice between iPhone 4G running OS4.x and an Android phone running Cupcake Eclaire 2.x. And I really really really wanna choose the Android OS because I’m getting pretty sick of the Apple monolith.

I think I’ve downloaded roughly 200 apps since I’ve owned the iPhone. I’ve paid for probably 40%-50% of those, maybe more, I’m not sure cause the App Store makes it so easy to buy junk you don’t need. Of those apps, I use maybe 10 on a regular basis. Maybe. Might be as few as 5, depending on how you define regular use. So it makes absolutely no difference to me that Apple has 100K apps in the store. I’m never going to know about 99% of those apps, and of the ones I do know about, I’ll want to try maybe 5% of them. And here’s where the sheer inertia of Apple’s store comes into play. Too many choices that people will never ever find out about. It’s like going to the local convenience store and standing in front of the drinks fridges. You have 50 kinds of ice tea, 90 kinds of soda, 30 different bottled waters – how many of those choices do you actually consider or even know about?

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If that should come to pass, it would be interesting to see how many net adds T-Mobile gains vs. jumpers from AT&T.  I’d especially be interested in seeing how many folks would be willing to jump from AT&T to T-Mobile with their existing iPhone.  That would be a pretty damning indictment of AT&T’s network.

Of course, this probably also means that Verizon will not be getting an iTablet next year either.  I can’t imagine Jobs would be willing to let his new baby play on a network that was abusive towards his old baby.

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Just as I write up a post lamenting the poor state of tech, a zinger comes from left field.  Barnes and Noble, of all companies, announces the Nook, their competitor to the Kindle.

(image courtesy Gizmodo).  I’ve long been fascinated by the Kindle (lusted after one, actually) but could never justify the expense.  Now that the price has dropped, I was going to start hinting that a Kindle would make daddy very happy around the holidays.  But looking over the Nook, I’m thinking that maybe I want one of these instead.

The great thing about the Nook (man I love saying that name) is that it one-ups the Kindle in many ways.  First, it uses AT&T’s network rather than Sprint’s.  That could be a good or a bad, depending on your coverage, but I’ve got no complaints about AT&T coverage in Philly so it’s a net plus.  Second, it has two screens (and we all know two is better than one right?).  The smaller screen allows for full color browsing of book covers cause, as we all know to our secret shame, we DO judge books by their covers.  Heck, my kids are baldfaced honest about it.  If I offer them a book with a dull jacket, they won’t read it until I bludgeon them repeatedly.  And that’s bad for their future development.

The device also has WiFi, which is important because you can get free WiFi access at any B&N you bring this little honey into.  You can customize it to display pictures and it has an MP3 player.  A built-in mono speaker allows you to listen to podcasts and audiobooks you download over the ether.  Very cool.

Most importantly, you can SHARE YOUR BOOKS.  An ebook can be lent for up to 14 days at a time to (intriguingly) other electronic devices, not just other Nooks.  B&N already has an iPhone app – it should be possible to let your Apple fanboys borrow the newest book slamming/worshipping Steve Jobs.  It also opens up the intriguing possibility that online lending libraries could start up where you pay an annual membership for access to a vast library of e-books.  I would totally be up for that since I don’t tend to re-read a lot of books.

Dayum, B&N – good on ya for a home run on your first at-bat.  If they don’t mis-manage the pricing of ebooks, they may have a Kindle-killer here.

UPDATE:  I can’t find it again but I could have sworn that I saw something about the Nook being able to read any e-book via WiFi when you’re in a B&N.  If this means what I hope it means, it completely justifies the in-store experience of a B&N vs. the cloud and really shows that they are thinking about how to leverage their physical footprint.  It makes total sense – if I can walk into a B&N and read any book I find on the shelf for as long as I’m there, then why can’t I do the same with my Nook e-book reader?  It’s a competitive advantage that Amazon can’t duplicate.  I really hope this is true.

UPDATE 2:  Haha!  I was right.  Core77 confirms the ability to browse e-books while you’re in a B&N.  Brilliant!

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3. In which I save the publishing industry

Let’s take Win7.  It’s Vista two years late.  Maybe a little faster if you read the right article, maybe a little slower.  There’s really no compelling reason to upgrade if you’re already using Vista.  If you’re using XP, then you should be upgrading just because you’re using an OS that’s 8 years old.  That’s like 192 in PC years.  There’s so little that’s new in the OS space that the critics are praising something that Microsoft should have done right two years ago.  Are our standards so low that we now heap manna onto anything that looks even remotely good?  (This would go a long way towards explaining Obama’s Nobel prize.)  Where’s the spark?  Why don’t we have 3-D control surfaces?  Where’s my Minority Report OS?  How come we’re not using the Zion docking station interface from the Matrix Reloaded?  How old is the mouse?  And it’s still our primary interface to the computer?

And don’t get me started on the iPhone.  Yea, it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Yea, it’s elegant and faster and better designed than anything ever put out by a mobile company since the invention of the telephone, and yea it’s leaving everyone in the dust.  But it’s also annoyingly behind the curve.  We got all excited with cut/paste when that’s been around since what – Windows Mobile 1?  We were overjoyed that the latest/greatest iPhone offers voice dialing when my Motorola RAZR did that five years ago, and did it better.  And don’t even get me started on MMS.  It’s a pathetic statement on the level of innovation in the industry that everyone is trying to catch up to Apple – god forbid anyone try to surpass it.  Even the Palm Pre, hailed savior of the non-iPhone crowd, is basically toast.  Palm is too small and too poor to make the Pre anything other than a niche product.

But size alone won’t help – look at Google.  Gimondo company with scads of cash and they can’t get Android 1 to match iPhone 2G.  Let’s face it folks – if your first attempt isn’t as good as Apple’s first iPhone, the chances of you actually beating Apple are slim to none.  And having 20 different models of phones selling the same OS isn’t really going to help you in the minds of the consumer.  Anyone remember a horror called Windows Mobile?  (Oh wait, that’s right it’s still around.  Windows Mobile is like a zombie – you keep blowing off pieces of it but it just won’t die.)  Say what you will about Apple’s desire for utter control – you only have to make TWO decisions when you buy an iPhone.  What color and how much storage.  THAT’S IT.  Contrast that with an Android or WinMo phone.  Want a keyboard?  How much storage?  Do you care about needing a dongle?  Want to use it for business?  Plan to play music?  Studies have shown that people just start shutting down when they’re offered too many choices.  It’s the big secret about our society – a sea of choices and we go for the one at eye level.

Finally, the cloud.  Cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud.  Let’s be real here folks – the cloud ain’t the savior of mankind.  Yes, I rely on Google for everything.  But when Google craps out, what right do I have to complain?  I use all their free services.  I have ad blockers on my browsers so I don’t see the ads that pay for the free stuff.  I write and keep tons of email but I’ve yet to hit 10% of the free space Google gives me.  You can’t complain about free, people.  Don’t like it?  Stop using it.  IT’S THAT SIMPLE.  If you choose to make your life dependent on a free service, you can’t complain when that free service goes away or changes.  Suck it up.  And for all the creative stuff going on with the cloud, 90% of America won’t be using it.  And 99% of the world will definitely not be using it.  Can you imagine trying to explain Google’s Wave to your parents?  How about a farmer in Bangladesh?  Heck, I can’t even imagine explaining it to my peers and they’re pretty tech savvy.  Maybe my kids will surf Wave like it’s a second skin but I’m doubting it.

So yea.  Bored Bored Bored.  Even CES isn’t looking like it’s going to be a ton of fun.

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Google Push Email and Calender Sync

Dammit.  I just spent $2.99 on an app to give me push Gmail on my iPhone and then Google goes and adds that capability through Google Sync.  Damn you Google, for making what used to cost money free.  Details at the Google Mobile blog.  Thanks to TechCrunch for alerting me.

If you have GSync already set up on your iPhone, all you have to do is go to the Exchange entry and activate the Mail option.  Simple!

Warning – the Google mobile blog servers are apparently mobbed right now, cause performance is slow slow slow.

UPDATE: In the 20 minutes since I activated this service, I’ve noticed three things.

• You don’t get a popup alert on your screen when new emails come in.  This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view.  You will get  a buzz indicating new mail (if your iPhone is set up for that).
• There is a definite lag between receipt of email and Google pushing it to your iPhone.  It’s not huge but it can be a couple minutes.  I’m curious as to if this is due to the newness of the service or if it’s normal lag due to using Exchange.  It’s no different than what sometimes happens with the Blackberry, so unless you’re OCD about your email you probably won’t notice it.
• My Yahoo push email has apparently never worked properly and for whatever reason I do not get my Yahoo mails pushed to my iPhone.  I only noticed this because of how Google’s push works.  Luckily I don’t care about my Yahoo accounts, since they serve as repositories of spam and junk emails for various signup lists.  Plus all my porn user names and passwords.

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So here’s the background.  Following the lead of our fearless leader Quang, I jailbroke my phone using the easy-as-cake redsn0w tool about two months ago.  And life was good, though not super-wonderful.  The main point of my jailbreak was to get access to deep customization and themes, plus a couple of apps that Apple refused to allow in the Apps Store (GVMobile and the uTorrent monitoring app).  I really didn’t need background apps or tethering, so a lot of the real benefit of jailbreaking was lost on me.  Still, I’d grown pretty accustomed to being able to change the look and feel of my device on a whim.  And I got kind of obsessive about monitoring the free memory of my iPhone.

When OS3.1 came out, a lot of the features it contained (Genius mixes and apps organization specifically) were things I wanted to play with so I figured I’d upgrade, try it out, and return to jailbroken freedom in due time.  Well the upgrade went fine (btw, jailbroken iPhones will sync just fine with iTunes 9), but now my iPhone does not display all the apps I’ve installed on it.  I believe that this is due to my use of a jailbroken app called Categories, which allows you to create folders into which to place your apps.  I think that the linkage between Springboard and Categories (which hides the app once it’s been placed in a folder) still exists and that the iPhone thinks the apps are installed but that Springboard has them set to hide because that’s what Categories told it to do.  I only noticed this issue this morning so I’ve tried a hard reboot to see if that would fix the problem.  No dice.  I’ll have to wait until I get home to do a full restore, and then if that doesn’t work I’m going to try to remove all my apps and re-add them to the iPhone and see if that does the trick.  If not, then I’m well and truly hosed and I might have to return to factory defaults as a last resort.

So word of advice – don’t upgrade your jailbroken iPhone until the Dev Team gives the all clear!

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New in GMail fresh from the mad scientists at Google Labs – you can now activate a feature that allows you to play your Google Voice messages in your GMail account. Furthermore, the playback syncs with your GVoice account and causes them to be marked as no longer new. Slowly but surely Google is tying together all their services into a supermegamonstercloud application set. Though it still pisses me off that the same features they activate in Google Tasks in GMail aren’t immediately available in Google Calendar. And that Tasks still doesn’t have an API that some coder in a dark room can use to sync my To Do’s with my iPhone. C’mon you lazy Googlers – get at it!

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Yes, you may look like a tool while sitting on it.

But check out the video of how you ride it.

Too fun for words.

via Coolest Gadgets

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OK I am not a James Cameron fan by any means but this movie looks freakin’ amazing. I’d watch it in 2D. How it’s going to work out in 3D, though….if he can pull this off, it will change movie making.

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Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on AT&T’s response, as well as the full text of the AT&T letter.

Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on Apple’s response, as well as the full text of the Apple letter.

Here is TechCrunch’s commentary on Google’s response, as well as Google’s response.

Most importantly (and if you want to skip over the previous to get to the meat of the matter), here is Michael Arrington’s insights into Apple’s distorted reality as evidenced in their letter.  Even someone like myself, who writes about gadgets out of love and as a distinctly part time hobby could see issues with Apple’s responses.

Mr. Arrington points out something that didn’t even occur to me until I read his post – aside from the email app and the phone, most of what I do with my iPhone does indeed revolve around Google-provided services.  I use Safari to access Google Reader.  I use third party apps that get me to POI’s via Google’s mapping app.  I use Google’s mapping app as a poor man’s GPS when I am too lazy to fire up my Mio.  I’ve already swapped out Apple’s Contacts and To-Do apps with an app that sync Google Calendar to my iPhone (and, god willing, will allow Tasks syncing in the near future).  As Google improves the Safari version of gMail, I’ll probably start moving over to using that more than I use the Apple mail client, especially because Apple seems incapable of providing a universal inbox a la the Palm Pre.  He’s absolutely right that the iPhone is a very pretty shell around a bunch of Google services, with Google Voice supplanting yet more iPhone functionality.

Dammit I never should have sold my Google stock.  At this rate, AT&T will be a dumb (albeit expensive) pipe to an Apple manufactured platform that provides a pretty (non-Android) version of the Google OS.

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Here’s a simple query I entered into Google.

Note that, even though Google didn’t find anything relevant search-wise, it very kindly pointed me to the UPS website’s tracking functionality.  Here’s the same query in Bing.

Again, note the link to UPS.  And Yahoo?  Here’s Yahoo’s result.

Fail fail fail.  If Yahoo can’t keep up, they need to get out.

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You may remember my review of an app called Pano.  AutoStitch one-ups Pano by removing the need to manually align subsequent photos to create the panorama.  Before I go into detail, let me show you a couple of the pics it created.  (All panoramas have been reduced to 60% of their original size to help them fit better on most screens.  Click on the images to see them in their full glory.)

The image quality is not bad at all, considering I took these using the iPhone 3G’s junky camera.  This app actually made me want to upgrade to the higher resolution/quality of the iPhone3GS, because I think the same pictures would have turned out even better.

If you recall, Pano used its own interface to the iPhone’s camera to do its thing.  You took a series of pictures that overlapped guidelines that Pano provided.  While I originally really liked Pano, I found it really difficult to use in real life because it’s tough to get the overlap Pano needs to make its panorama.  I also found that Pano was slow to snap and save successive images, making picture taking a pain.  AutoStitch solves both those problems.

When you launch AutoStitch, you are greeted with a very simple screen.

You have your list of photo folders plus the iPhone default Camera Roll.  I wound up using mostly my Camera Roll as my source (I’ll explain why later).  When you select a folder, you get a thumbnail view of all the pictures in the folder.

You just tap on two or more pictures to begin the process.  Each picture you tap on gets added to the “Photos to Stitch” area.

You can remove pictures from the stitching area by just tapping it.  Once you’ve selected your set of pictures, you tap the Stitch button to start the process.  To show you the output, here’s the three pictures I’m stitching together:

You can get a sense of how those three pictures might overlap to create a single image, no?  Well so can AutoStitch, because here’s the output of its manipulation of the above three images.

(Click on the image to see it in full size).  Pretty impressive, no?

AutoStitch doesn’t use the iPhone’s camera directly.  Instead, you snap pictures using the Camera app and then just select them in AutoStitch to generate the panorama.  This makes picturetaking blazingly fast.  The iPhone’s camera app is pretty quick to take and save pictures, so you can snap off a series of images to stitch together in no time.  (This is why I say you’ll probably use the Camera Roll most of the time – you just snap pictures into the Roll and then select them for stitching.  I recommend you do this quickly after taking the sequence – it becomes difficult to remember which images went with what panorama if you let too much time pass.)

Another benefit of AutoStitch is that you’re not limited to just six images like Pano.  Instead, you can use as few as two or as many as 20 to create the final frame.  AutoStitch recommends that you let each picture overlap by at least 30% to ensure the best results, but I didn’t really pay much attention to that after my first few stitches.  I just kind of did a fast pan-and-snap and trusted in the app to do its thing.

Once AutoStitch creates the panorama, you can crop the image to remove top/bottom fragments that result from AutoStitch doing the overlapping necessary to generate the image.  The crop area suggested by AutoStitch can be overridden by you but I found that I didn’t really need to do that – the app did a great job of finding the maximum size photo that could be extracted from the stitched images.

As my final showoff of the app, take a look at this gallery of thumbnails:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

And here’s the final output:

I’m totally impressed by AutoStitch and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to create panoramic images from iPhone snapshots.

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Bluetooth headphones are even more difficult to fit than normal headphones.  That whole wireless thing really confuses manufacturers.  I’ve tried expensive sets and cheap sets.  My best set to date were a pair of wiREVO S300‘s that I used until I beat them into the ground.  I’ve since tried at least five different makes/models in my quest for the perfect set.  (the wiREVOs were a bit too loose on my ears without the headband and too tight against the back of my ears after a couple hours with the headband).

Today, I picked up a pair of Sony DRBT160AS headphones from a Sony Style store in my future employer’s shopping plaza.

I was a little skeptical of these initially.  The CNet review was OK – not great, not bad.  Of special concern were the weight of the housings containing the electronics, plus the ability of the earbuds to fit my ears and ear canal without being annoying.

I popped the package open, pulled out the phones, and tried them on.  The default set of earbuds were too small, so I replaced them with the biggest pair.  The earbuds are color-coded so that you don’t mix up your pairs, a nice little touch.

It’s hard to get a sense of scale with these.  They look bigger than they really are.  And they are surprisingly light.  The headband is definitely flexible but you can’t adjust the loop diameter, so if you have a very large or very small head, that can be an issue.  I’m also curious how they would work in winter, when you’re wearing a jacket.

The electronics casings do make the headphones a bit wobbly, and the first few times you handle them, they almost feel like they’re going to snap.  Long term wear and tear is a bit of a concern, and I’d be afraid to just throw them into my bag for transport.  I’ll probably end up wearing them around my neck when I’m not using them.

With the modification to the earbuds, I found that they did an excellent job of sealing my ear canal.  Ambient noise was diminished and the earbuds fit nicely into my ear.  The casings aren’t terribly heavy and they don’t really impact your experience.  It didn’t take me long to get used to them to the point where I could ignore them.

I then charged them for about an hour or so before taking them out for a test walk.  Grabbing my trusty test canine, I headed out into the world.  During my 30 minute excursion, I found myself pleasantly surprised.  The transmission was strong, with none of the stuttering I’d experienced with other headphones.  The weight was negligible and the volume levels were more than acceptable.  Coincidentally, a call came in while I was walking and I was able to test the headset functions.  My caller did note some wind noise (partly from my walking while talking and partly because there was a storm moving into the area), but the conversation was fine otherwise.  I was able to hear him just fine and he didn’t mention any level issues from his end.

The left casing holds the battery and has a plug for the charger.  No USB-based charging plug is included – you have to plug the power cord into an outlet directly.  So if you plan to travel with this gadget, plan on bringing its charging device with you.

The right casing holds the controls.  Power button and microphone on the outside, phone control button on the bottom, and a five direction toggle on the back of the casing to control the music.  Once you figure everything out, the controls are intuitive and easy to manage.

For those of you with glasses, you’ll be happy to know that they seem compatible with most frames.  I tried them with both my sunglasses and my eyeglasses and didn’t notice any conflict.  The lack of frame compatibility was why I had to return the Jaybirds I’d tried out earlier in the year.

After trying them out in the gym and on the run, I will give these a solid B+ rating overall.  The band does get in the way at the gym, especially when using benches.  However, they didn’t fall out of position on my head when I was laying against the bench and they didn’t move around much while I was working out.  The left side definately felt lighter than the right side, which made my head feel like it was off-kilter.  Running with them was fine – they do bounce a bit, but nothing too terribly distracting.  I wasn’t running all that fast though, so speedy peoples’ mileage may vary.  For power walking they would be fine.

Good on ya, Sony – finally a product I can get behind.

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So the first thing to note is that the icon is clearly labeled “Lite”.  This is because this version does no dynamic routing.  It’s basically intended to be a proof of concept to familiarize potential users with the interface and capabilities before Navigon asks them to shell out serious coin for the full version.  And I’m sure that these apps will not be cheap, btw.

Above is the boot screen for the app.  I’ll be frank – it takes a WHILE to boot.  And this is without the routing logic being loaded.  I have an iPhone 3G, so memory is definately at a premium.  On average, from launch of the app to clear the above screen ran about a minute and a half or more, sometimes entering into the 3 minute range.  And that’s just to boot to the main screen – GPS lock-on could take another one to five minutes beyond that.  Considering that my Mio can get GPS lock from cold boot in about 3 to 4 minutes tops in the summertime, the Navigon app is way slow.

The above screen shows the primary options in the main menu.  To choose a destination, just tap the first option.

You can enter a ZIP code or a city name.  If you enter a ZIP, the app will have a lot less data to filter through.  This is important because of the Navigon’s next screen.

Note the list of streets that are populated once you select a ZIP or city.  The smaller a universe you can provide, the faster it will perform.  My Mio does something similar, narrowing the universe as you type the street name.  Navigon’s approach allows you to scroll to an address, but I can see it getting out of hand if the list is really long (and entering a major city like Philadelphia will produce a LONG list).  I would have liked to have seen Navigon provide a quicknav list on the right a la the Contacts app so that I could quick jump to a letter of the alphabet.

The above screen shows how Navigon allows you to select an intersection.  I thought this was pretty useful – my Mio’s intersection entry is annoying and very hit-or-miss.  This approach is much more intuitive and easier to identify a cross-street location.

In the Lite version, you can see the destination and simulate the trip.  I assume that this is where the real version will allow you to confirm the endpoint and initiate routing.

The above shows the app “calculating” a route and displaying progress in the 3D view.  I’m not sure how much dynamic re-routing will add to the memory footprint.  I’m also concerned about the speed of recalculation.

This is the same route in 2D view.  Note the large number of POI references.    I’m using this in portrait mode, so the screen is rather compact and hard to read.  The landscape view would probably not be as tight and give better spacing.  I didn’t see a way to limit the POIs to only a specific set, but I’m sure that will be there in the final version.

This is the night mode view in 2D.

Here I’ve looked up a POI and had the app plot me  a route.  Note that you can change the route profile to modify the path taken.

This is the map view in 2D mode.  I was viewing this while on the bus.

Here’s the 3D version.  Yes, we actually are going 0 mph.  Traffic was a mess that day.

Hey we’re moving!

Widescreen view.  The widescreen view is much closer to my Mio’s interface and will probably be the default view when using this app.

Overall, the Navigon app is impressive.  But my concerns are really around its ability to dynamically route, which you can’t experience in the Lite version.  My 3G definately felt pushed to its limits by the app.  I was listening to music over a Bluetooth connection while using the app and I definately noticed more stuttering of the music stream.  I’m also curious how phone calls would be handled while the nav app is running.  Since the iPhone OS doesn’t allow multitasking, I wonder if the app continues to maintain a route when a phone call comes in.

All in all, I am intrigued by the app, but my concerns about performance would make me very hesitant to sink a large amount of funds into it.  If there was a way to actually try the full function app without paying full price, I would definately recommend that as the way to go.  The other concern I have about the app is its sheer size.  The Lite version is almost 2GB.  I don’t know how much of the full map universe is in the app, or how much the dynamic routing functionality will add to that size, but it took a good 10 minutes or more to sync my iPhone to install this app.  Owners of 8GB iPhones are not going to be happy.

Any 3GS owners out there wanna comment on their performance?  I’d really like to know if it will be a big improvement on the faster hardware.

UPDATE:  Since this post was released, the Navigon app has gone live.  For a limited time, it’s $70 in the iTunes store.  iLounge has a very thorough review of it, which I highly recommend you read if you’re even remotely thinking about buying this app.  They give it a “C”, which matches my impressions based on the Lite version.  Also, there are some screen changes that I did not encounter in the Lite version.

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AT&T Is A Big, Steaming Heap Of Failure

How ’bout you guys?  Anyone missing any voicemails of late?

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