Results tagged “apple” from karlo.org

Out here in LA I tend to watch less television than I did before, view more feature-length films (especially because I’m working on projects related to the industry) and drive a whole lot more.

Last week I had my high speed modem installed, but I decided not to subscribe to cable television, which saves me about $100 a month in service fees. Instead, I’m going to try using a Mac Mini, along with a number of parts and accessories, as a home media center that depends on the Internet, and eventually Over-the-Air (OTA) digital broadcast television, to satisfy my video entertainment needs.

I want the system to take care of the following tasks:

• Play from streaming media sites such as Hulu and Netflix
• Play DVDs and downloaded video from services like iTunes
• Play edited HD home movies to the television, in HD
• Provide an easy-to-use interface to my MP3 collection and streaming audio online

I also require that it:

• Be stable as a rock. Never crash. I want continuous uptime measured in months, broken only by the need to restart to install a system update.
• Have minimum maintenance and upkeep - this in particular is why I am using a Mac over Windows, it reduces update hassles and hardware compatibility headaches. I want an appliance, in essence, not another system to babysit.
• Be quiet. No loud fans - I’m looking at you, Xbox 360.
• Conserve energy. At 13 watts, the Mini burns far less power than my Tivo HD and Cable Box used to.

As I work my way through the process, I’ll continue to extend this post with relevant information and links to the parts and software I’m using.

Exchanges like the one on the right are why I'm really, really wishing the iPhone had a built-in chat application (not just SMS) that could run in the background, even though I don't own an iPhone myself. (I've highlighted the time stamps to make it obvious how little time I had to respond before Marissa dropped offline.) Because folks are using an installed, application to reach their IM logins (most likely Google's own Google Talk app), they're not able to stay connected unless that application is in the foreground, because Apple doesn't allow third-party applications to run in the background. So you get that contant login-message-logout pattern from iPhone users. In an ideal world, Apple would let third-party apps run in the background, but on a mobile device I can understand why they don't. So they should at least provide a "built-in" chat application that can connect to the major IM networks and stay logged in even when in the background, given that instant messaging is as common a method of real-time interaction these days as voice calls or SMS (at least for certain people.)

If Apple is just doing this to force folks to SMS via the AT&T network, they should be ashamed of themselves. There's no reason users should have to be paying on a per-message basis for sending 140 character text clips when they have a TCP/IP connection available for web browsing, etc on an unmetered basis.

Even my Blackberry Curve handles this issue better than the iPhone -- and it's pretty rare that I say that for anything unrelated to its hardware keyboard.

It occurs to me that I've never attempted to record or list all the computers I've owned and used over the years. Before my memory fails me, I'm going to commit at least a few down:

1. TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with Cassette Drive (Approximately 1984, Upgraded to 256K RAM)
2. Apple IIGS (1986?, still no hard drive - I bought one but returned it because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it, and it was way expensive.)
   
3. No-name, 80386-based, 33-mHz tower case PC (1990?-1995, beige, furniture-huge. I ran a BBS off it in high school.)
4. Power Macintosh 8600 (1995-1998, $3000, my first web design and imaging machine)
5. PowerBook 2400 (1997-1998, unbelievably compact, unbelievably awkward to use. My first laptop, bought for covering conventions for Cnet.) 
6. Home built Pentium (1998-2000, I think I just disposed of this a year or two ago as it had a second life at my parents' house.)
   
7. Dell Laptop (1998, Adrian and I bought this for our company. The first day we tested the new -external- wireless modem in Harvard Square, a pigeon dropped a mess right on the pristine keyboard.)
8. Large Dell Laptop (Late 1999, originally my work laptop at iKena but eventually purchased from the company for my personal use for $250 when we were acquired by Net2Phone.)
   
9. AMD "Athlon"-based home-built PC (2001-2004? Slot A based.)
10. Dell Latitude X200 (2002-2004, bought for business school after I dropped the previous Dell at a final exam.)
    
11. 2nd Athlon-based home-built PC (2004-2007, Socket A. Still in use, very occasionally.)
12. MacBook Black, 2Ghz/2 GB RAM (January 2007-Present. I've used the hell out of this computer, it was my only personal PC for a year and is now both my work and personal computer. I'm probably a year from thinking about replacing it as I write this in June 2008 -- my only complaint is it's a few pounds heavier than I'd like, but the MacBook Air isn't quite fast enough yet.)

Yeah, I notice that I'm kind of vague around the PC desktops and laptops I used during the 2000-2007 period. I blame it on the desktops all being home-built systems that often saw a number of CPUs during their lifetimes, and the laptops being those generic black Dell designs that are always named "Latitude" or "Inspiron" with a number that doesn't particularly mean anything. It's also clear that I change computers about every two years -- ignoring the overlap between desktop and PC ownership (which partially relates to playing games on the PC), I've owned about 10 computers in the last 24 years.

I'm definitely done with doing anything home-built any more. The time investment vs. the marginal savings and learning opportunity just no longer works in the current era of cheap computing power. No point squeezing an extra 10% more power out of hardware when you can just spend another $100 or so instead.

(I'm also wondering if I should really put the Playstation, Xbox and Xbox360 on this list -- by all measures they're essentially a computer -- especially the latter two with their internal HDs -- and I'm not sure they should be cut out just because they're specialists.)

"This sounds overly simplistic, but I really do think Apple just split the mobile world into two choices: settle for a free phone or buy an iPhone. There just aren't many reasons to do anything else."

Mike Davidson, "Apple Just Killed the Market for Phones"

This morning I twittered about the need for a countdown to iPhone3G widget... ask and ye shall receive. Isn't the Internet swell?

Steve Jobs took $200 out of my wallet today. And I wasn't a v1 iPhone buyer... but I knew this was coming. July 11. He might as well have taken it from my wallet while I was asleep and left an iPhone (the iPhone fairy?)

Worse, it's probably more than $200... since I suspect I'll need the 16GB model.
Updated: Mahalo offers the 60 second edit of the Steve Jobs's WWDC keynote.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a wave of new Apple products at yesterday's MacWorld Expo keynote. They included higher-capacity, smaller-form, and Windows-compatible iPods, a new 17-inch-LCD iMac, and a number of OS X applications.

I was at Job's first keynote after returning to Apple, at the 1997 Boston expo. That was the one where he scored a coup by having Bill Gates teleconference in. To those in the room, it was like having Darth Vader pop up on the screen during a meeting of the Rebel Alliance. Still, it gave no clue to the amount of turnaround Jobs would produce at Apple. I don't think there's any corporate CEO of late whose amazing arrogance and personality is matched by raw strength in product development. I can't think of any other company that has ever released in one year the number of well-designed, innovative products that Apple regularly debuts at the MacWorld expo keynote.

(For those of you who didn't catch the title reference, Insanely Great is a book about the early days of Apple computer and the design of the Macintosh computer. )

I'm going to have to start an "Apple Computer" category at this rate (and no, I don't presently own a Mac -- I gave up my Dual G4 at work after we stopped developing for the Mac.) Here's an interesting exercise in technology journalism. David Coursey, executive editor of ZDnet's AnchorDesk (a thoroughly Windows-centric publication) authored an interesting seven-part series on trying out the Apple iBook.

It's a nice piece of personal technology journalism that probably earned him a wall of flame mail from both Windows and MacOS X users, if my own experience reporting on Apple applies. Still, I think he did a really evenhanded, honest evaluation of the experience that's worth reading about even if you'll only leave Windows when they pry it out of your RSI-gnarled fingers.

Too often, designers and engineers assume that to build something really innovative, you have to create it from the ground up. Especially for technology start-ups, this is a very dangerious ideology to entertain. Many of the best products are the intelligent merger of proven technologies. Regardless, it's still rare to see a really beautiful design come from a consortium of companies -- too often it devolves into design-by-committee.

Electronics Design Chain Magazine has a terrific story on the development of Apple's portable MP3 player: Inside the Apple iPod Design Triumph. Not only did Apple create a groundbreaking product with relatively little custom design or production, but they accomplished it by leveraging the intellectual power of a consortium of technical firms, leveraging the unique experience of each company. Amazing to read about, and something to keep in mind if you're at a company that builds consumer products.

Apple Computer has instructed its PR company to revoke MacWorld Expo Press Passes distributed to certain online sites [slashdot], reportedly because it considers them "rumor-mills." Blacklisting otherwise positive enthusiast sites simply because they might get overeager and publish details of upcoming products is a mistake for Apple, especially if these sites aren't violating NDA (non-disclosure agreements) or press embargoes. Mostly, these sites feed Mac-enthusiasm and community, providing Apple with free PR and user culture on a daily basis.

It seems to me this is a poor call made by a new Apple PR rep who's simply unfamiliar with enthusiast-reporting in the tech sector. It's simply not as clean, or organized, as mainstream media relations. But it's also a much more intense, vibrant media with a better link to its readership. Unless Apple rescinds this decision, it's only going to be ugly for them.

Apple sure knows how to make it hard to ignore their laptops... they just announced a new PowerBook G4, with adds a higher resolution 1280x854 screen, Radeon 7500 video processor, and 800 MHz G4 processor... all within the thin, 5.4 lb titanium casing. There really isn't anything comparable in the Windows laptop market, as usual. It really makes me think about whether I could do all of my office applications on a Mac under OS X, or perhaps by putting Linux on this machine... but I'm not sure I'm willing to deal with the hassles of moving to a non-Windows platform. If only money were no object...