PowerPage: Off to Vote
04 November 2008 08:56 EST
Chris Barylick
It's November 4th, for better or for worse and despite the mighty PowerPage Server Hamster having been doing its own weird thing yesterday (it locked itself in a hotel room, ordered far too many cheap mimosas via room service, played the entire "Prince" catalogue and demanded a new TiVo as well as a new contract and hamster wheel), the PowerPage team will be taking some time off to cast their ballots today.
If you can get out there today, vote.
The candidates may not be perfect in your opinion, things may be less than ideal, but this day's important for its own reasons with a woman and an African-American also running for previously unreachable positions.
That being said, I still have high hopes for these guys:
Let us know what's on your mind over in the comments or forums.
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Category: Opinion
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Doing the Right Thing: Follow-Up
22 October 2008 09:51 EST
Chris Barylick
A while back, we posted user Josh Campbell's opinion piece Trying to Do the Right Thing, a short column focusing on his conflict between following the rules of policies of Apple and its vetted wireless carriers as he traveled and the prospect of unlocking his iPhone 3G handset.
Last night, Campbell sent in the following update:
After you posted my letter, one of the commenters suggested using a turbo-sim. A friend of mine here in Prague put me on to a guy that specializes in these kind of things. Anyhow, the guy and I met in a mall. The whole thing seemed a bit shady. I handed him my iPhone and watched – fearfully – as he punched a hole in my sim card and then layered a Rebel sim card underneath it before returning it to the phone. Within two minutes of handing him my phone, it was working! He didn’t even have to jailbreak it. There are some tricks to this. Be careful cutting the hole. Use a bit of cellophane tape draped back onto the cover to help pull the sim out later – since it’s slightly thicker with the Rebel sim. But honestly, I’m shocked that it is this easy. I was in London a couple days ago and had no problem swapping out sim cards (and doing the hole-punching and taping on my own). Also, I can use it on iTunes without any trouble. The Rebel sim and the guys time cost me US$75.I am generally wary of hardware fixes and at the end of the day I would far prefer to just have an unlocked iPhone. But I think you should know that Rebel sim and Turbo sim are legitimate alternates. I swear I have no affiliation to these companies! But they deserve to be lauded.
As always, let us know what you think over in the comments or forums.
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Opinion: Trying to Do the Right Thing
09 October 2008 08:04 EST
Chris Barylick
Yesterday, reader Josh Campbell sent us an open letter to Apple describing his experiences with the iPhone 3G's international calling plan structure, especially for users who require international travel and a lack of cohesion among Apple Certified wireless carriers.
The piece makes some relevant points and we'd like to see how your international iPhone experience compares with Mr. Campbell's:
Dear Apple,
I am a huge Apple supporter. I'm currently on my fourth Apple notebook, third iPod and first iPhone. In addition, I am a film editor and have worked on assorted major motion pictures. In my role as editor, I make decisions on software and hardware that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each film. I fight for Apple products regularly and I am a big fan of Final Cut Pro.
Thus, I am disheartened and distraught in my current situation. I purchased a "pay as you go" iPhone 3G from O2 UK a few weeks ago (serial number 87833U2YY7K). The phone cost 400 pounds (800 dollars) and has no monthly plan attached. At the time I was working in London. However, shortly thereafter, I got a job in Prague, Czech Republic. I will be here for months if not longer and the use of my iPhone would be a great help in my work.
I purchased a "pay as you go" phone with the knowledge that I might have to move for work. I did not want to take advantage of a company, nor be beholden to a one or two year calling plan. I assumed that if I paid full price for the product, I would be allowed to use it in other countries with other Apple Certified carriers.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
Buy from: Apple, iTunes
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Opinion: Did I Just Spend $11.99 on an iPhone App? (Updated)
08 August 2008 01:49 EST
Ryan Kaplan
You're darn right I did and it was worth every copper penny! WinAdmin was released on August 4th and I just found it surfing the App Store (on a side note, I need a better way to filter the new apps that come online, any ideas?).
I've been waiting for a Remote Desktop solution to log onto a Windows machine and finally WinAdmin fits the bill. Not only does it work through VPN, it is fast and has a great interface. The scrolling is smooth and responsive. It works great in portrait or landscape and all of my apps are totally, 100% accessible.
Whenever I to buy an a iPhone app, I always check the feedback. There is a reason why the average rating on this app is 4.5 stars out of 5. I give it a 5 out of 5 for just working. Thank you! I've been waiting for this one!!!
Update: WinAdmin can still be found and purchased from the App Store. Simply search for WinAdmin, agree to the purchase and download away.
If you've found a Remote Desktop or VPN application of choice for the iPhone, let us know over in the comments or forums.
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Category: Opinion
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Opinion: iPhone 3G First Impressions
17 July 2008 09:00 EST
Chris Barylick
By Lauren Hirsch
Ok, I admit it, I stood in line on Friday and waited with all the other Apple fanboys and fangirls to get my grubby little paws on a brand new 3G iPhone.
I’ve had it for the better part of a week now, and here are my impressions:
1.) Activation was a snap. I really don’t know what may have been going on with the AT&T network that day, but it didn’t seem to affect me. I did dodge the setup folks, preferring instead to hook up at home on my own iTunes. Within about 30 seconds, the iPhone blinked on and showed me set to go.
2.) The 3G network is spotty. Despite a very convincing blanket of solid blue on the AT&T website showing my area completely saturated with 3G service, the service itself is rather finicky. The iPhone blinks between EDGE and 3G with a little too much frequency for my taste. 3G coverage is basically nonexistent in any building, covered shelter, tent, or lean-to. However, when you’re locked on to 3G well, the throughput is speedy. YouTube videos load and play with only a few seconds’ delay, and webpages load with speeds akin to my pre-FIOS dsl.
3.) Call quality is excellent when the call stays connected, but for some reason I’m finding many more dropped calls and pockets of no service than I did with my previous iPhone.
4.) Apple seems to have fixed the volume issues that plagued so many first generation iPhone users.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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Clear to Partly Cloudy over Appledom
11 July 2008 12:53 EST
Kenn Marks
With the introduction of the iPhone 3G, firmware 2.0, the App Store, and MobileMe everyone is a twitter with pent up excitement. But, the weather over Appledom is clear, in the fact that all stores had a good stock of iPhones and some are already sold out by 10am EDT.
The App Store is up and serving up great apps, while iTunes updates are a little sluggish people are patiently updating. The Cloud in the otherwise clear skies or lack thereof is the much touted MobileMe, "Exchange for the rest of us". It appears that the MobileMe Cloud is coming through as partly cloudy at best.
Its taken this writer over five hours to get my first working PUSH event. The first four hours were spent just trying to keep or even connect to Me.com. The last hour was spent making sure all preferences were correct and all the syncing went without loosing any data. Once I achieved a stable connection I tried making changes on my desktop, iPhone, and lastly at MobileMe and PUSH worked albeit rather slowly, not the quick response of Steve's demo at WWDC.
This could be indicative of the immense network load with activations, firmware upgrades, and App Store downloads. We all have to understand that the Internet in not an infinite pipe, it's a packet network with lots of nodes, just like the freeways of California no matter how many lanes or limited access it still becomes a parking lot at rush hour. So when the dust settles and hopefully rises to make a stable Cloud all the new features of the iPhone 3G, Firmware 2.0, and MobileMe can be realized to it's fullest.
Post Script - Observations from below the Cloud
Some of the oops items that have been encountered are my number one pet peeve, holding the the delete key for an extended period causes key to go into repeat mode, even if you remove your finger, quickly erasing all you just typed, until you can type another key to stop it. I searched the preferences for a delay to repeat entry, but could not find one. My next upset deals with the content of a previous article where AT&T 3G is not where they say it is. Here it is 5 hours into iPhone 3G and still no 3G within 5 miles of my center of operation. The final straw was when I went to Starbucks for a Grande Cappuccino only to find that I could not log into the AT&T Wi-Fi page and connect with my iPhone, so my leisure day as a road warrior was cut short.
Let us know what you think over in the comments and forums.
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Category: Environment/MobileMe/Opinion/User Interface/iPhone
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Emory May Have Been Clairvoyant...
09 June 2008 03:49 EST
Chris Barylick
We don't often claim clairvoyance here at the PowerPage, but a writer over on the Emory web blog called what happened today with Apple's release of the .Me structure two years in advance.
Take a look and let us know what you think via this article.
Also, what's your take on the iPhone 2.0, the iPhone 3G and the .Me announcements? Let us know over in the comments or forums.
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Category: Opinion
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Time Magazine's Most Influential People Top 10 Has No Jobs
14 April 2008 08:53 EST
PowerPage Contributor
By Steve Abrahamson
Every year, Time Magazine runs a Top 100 Most Influential People article. Voting went up on their web site on April 10th.
I must confess, I first heard about it while watching the Colbert Report late last week. Stephen wanted to be #1 and exhorted his fans to go vote for him. As of this writing, he's shot up to the #1 spot, which I suppose some could see as ballot stuffing, but in actuality might show that he is quite literally that influential. At least when he specifically calls on his audience to do something.
What's this got to do with your friendly everyday tech blog?
Steve Jobs, as you might imagine, is on there too, as is Bill Gates, the Google guys, and a bunch more. Late last week, Jobs was hovering around 10th place with an "average rating" of 76 or so. Unfortunately, by my crude experiments, Time hasn't got any non-ballot-stuffing software in place; you can vote over and over and over, and it appears to count them all. In the last 12 hours, Steve's plummeted to 36th place, with an average rating of 50, yet his vote count hasn't even doubled. Which means all his votes have to be for the lowest vote, to skew the average that much.
Someone's stuffing an anti-Steve ballot.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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Move Complete: I Want My Frontal Lobe Back
04 April 2008 07:37 EST
Chris Barylick
Sorry for the lack of news this week and the move into my new apartment building is finally complete.
Given the situation, I'd like to convey the following thoughts:
-No matter how prepared you think you are, your possessions have multiplied while you were sleeping. At least something was having fun.-The dime-sized chunk of skin removed from my hand following an illicit love triangle between the elevator door frame, my couch and my hand? I'd like it back.
-There's now a proud stack of boxes in the middle of my living room that need to be sifted through. I think the ark of the Covenant is in one of them.
-The glowing fiber-optic tree won't make my new place a sexy, sexy magnet for all the ladies, but it will make it home...
-After battling Verizon and Cox to transfer my phone number and set up Internet service, I'm convinced Verizon hates anyone who leaves it and wants to make the process as hard as possible. By the time they got around to telling me I had to venture on a quest to retrieve four crystals and fight a minotaur, this suspicion was readily confirmed.
-The minotaur fights dirty but the crystals are shiny...
So, new home, phone and Internet is due to be set up on Monday, playing a DVD on my MacBook at 10 PM at reasonable volume didn't incite the downstairs neighbor to whack at her ceiling with a broom while screaming at me (unlike my previous abode) and the layout's getting a bit more familiar.
Stay tuned for much more regular news updates, sorry for the interruption and feel free to share your moving horror stories with the rest of the class over in the comments or forums.
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Category: Opinion
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The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Done: The US$792.75 Corona
20 March 2008 06:58 EST
Chris Barylick
On Monday, I offered an initial recap of an incident where, while finishing my taxes and setting up a PowerBook G3 for my grandmother and going to answer the phone, I accidentally tripped over a power cord and knocked half a Corona into the keyboard of my MacBook laptop.
A few days later, when I felt the unit had been sufficiently dried out, I booted it and found that the space bar was now stuck.
Space bars are kind of necessary.
Not the most graceful thing I've ever done and the journey to the Apple Store wound up with them citing a flat US$755 repair bill for non-warranty spill damage.
Biting the bullet, I signed the agreement and settled back into my own life. When Apple called and left a message on my answering machine that the MacBook had been repaired, I took this as a good thing and made a mental note to swing by.
Yesterday afternoon, I walked into my local Apple store, waited behind the crowd at the Genius Bar to pick my laptop up and was approached by a sales associate, who asked if she could help. I explained that I was there to pick up my repaired laptop and what had happened with the spill. She smiled, mentioned that she'd accidentally had a can of hairspray leak into her Blackberry while it was in her luggage, gave me a friendly chuck on the shoulder and pulled a Genius Bar worker aside to have him grab my MacBook from the back.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Done: Corona Meets MacBook
17 March 2008 08:00 EST
Chris Barylick
The following is a brief recap of the dumbest thing I've ever done with a computer. Keep in mind, this is also coming from the same person who accidentally set a SyQuest EZ135 drive on fire in 1995 by hooking it to a Windows laptop and running the "Find New Hardware" command (the smoke was interesting and somehow, SyQuest replaced the unit).
About a week and a half ago, I was sitting at my kitchen table, working out my taxes on my MacBook while setting up a black PowerBook G3 to be sent to my grandmother as her first computer. Simple enough and if you can make it easy enough to understand, you might not be inundated by calls from a person who'll probably love you unconditionally but is confused by her e-mail.
With the receipts almost in order and tallied up under Quicken, I grabbed a Corona from the fridge, took a sip, placed it on the table and kept working.
That's when the phone rang. Moving with all the grace of a Muppet having a seizure, I managed to trip over the PowerBook's power cord and knock half the Corona onto the MacBook's keyboard.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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Will Modbook cannibalize sales of the MacBook Air?
23 January 2008 09:05 EST
PowerPage Contributor
Add an Apple wireless keyboard & mouse and a 2.2GHz/2.0GB/120GB/Superdrive/GPS Modbook is $2,712, still less than the 1.8/SSD MBA.
Same 13.3" 1280x800 screen size. Modbook is 5.2 lbs (basic MacBook is 5.0 lbs).
For one major application of mine--eReader for extensive pdf articles I must digest--Modbook has a preferable form factor. And the pen mark-up capability would be fantastic.
But I don't trust my handwriting to be legible by any machine.
And you can't be too thin (or have too many Macs). My 17" MBP is great but nearly non-portable and I don't see a mandatory requirement for touch-screen.
So I think I'll go for the MBA as my never-leave-my-desk-without travel companion, after the reviews quantify the speed/battery life advantages of the SSD.
Then, of course, Apple will introduce the MBA Tablet with affordable eBooks at iTunes Store...
Contributed by: Warren Anderson
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Category: Opinion
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Google - My Location Needs Help
22 January 2008 09:09 EST
Kenn Marks
Thanks to Will over at Into iPhone who posted this request earlier today and I feel those of us at the PowerPage can help the effort. His request and instructions are copied below:
Are you the giving-type? Do you like to help others for the betterment of society? Well, you might be interested to hear that you can help Skyhook Wireless map WiFi hotspots in your area. If you’ll recall, Skyhook is the company that provides the iPhone’s version 1.1.3 firmware Google Maps’ My Location feature with WiFi hotspot location data, so contributing to their database should make the iPhone’s Google Maps My Location position-data more accurate and useful.
Here are the instructions on how to go about adding your positional data to Skyhook’s database (from iiPhone Central):
The rest of the article can be seen after the jump ...
Let us know what you think over in the comments and forums.
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Category: Opinion
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MacBooklet
10 December 2007 06:52 EST
Bob Snow
Apple's rumored flash memory based portable computer seems likely to be a real product born out of the iPod juggernaut. Does this mean Apple is going to step up to the plate at Macworld and smack another one out of the park? It has all the hallmarks of an Apple product success story. Just as the flash based iPod nano blew away the iPod mini, could a nand sub-notebook cannibalize MacBook sales? Possibly. Could it be priced just too darn high? Maybe. Will it be an unappealing product with no potential customers? No way. The success of this new Mac would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
The biggest question in my mind is the optical drive. I'm going to guess that Apple will build one in, even though I could live without one. With Firewire and USB 2, an external drive would do the trick. Maybe an external optical drive, hard drive combination for a Time Machine backup an added storage. A 13" screen or 12"? Would this new Mac have a touch screen as well as a keyboard or is there a tablet coming too? We will just have to wait and see, unless someone is willing to put their life on the line to leak this one.
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Category: Opinion
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Reader Email: Your Best Podcast Yet
08 December 2007 12:32 EST
Jason D. O'Grady
From the PowerPage inbox:
Jason,PowerPage Podcast Episode 64 may be your best work yet.
The problems with Leopard are minimal, but you seem to be having the same issues as many others. Quicksilver has been an issue for me with Leopard and I have decided to stay clear as problems seem to follow it. Web browsing can be very frustrating when certain sites using Flash are attempted to be visited. An example is: http://www.justin.tv/ijustine.
For some reason this site is down more than it's up working and for some reason it really taxes the processor as the CPU Temperature rises and on many occasions Safari will quit.
Using Back to My Mac has been very successful for me since the 10.5.1 update. What I had found is that many routers are not set up out of the box to handle Back to My Mac. The newer Apple Airport Extreme Draft N routers are by default set up to handle Back to My Mac. I have been able to access my home iMac with no issues from any outside networks I have been able to get access too.
The one issue that I have talked to two Apple Genius' about is the Preference Syncing Issue and the Dashboard Syncing Issue. Both were unaware of any issues. But, I have had Dashboard Widget's appear 3 times after a sync and preferences just getting confused that I have turned off both in my DotMac settings.
One final issue that occurred this week was with Time Machine on my iMac. I did a clean install of 10.5.1 on the iMac on Nov. 14 and started up Time Machine. It had worked perfectly until this past Wednesday Dec. 5. I got a message that the last time, Time Machine ran it Failed. I did some deleting of the damaged files and Time Machine did manage to start working again until the next day and the problem returned. I tried to start from scratch again and did a reformat of the the Firewire Drive. It appears the drive became damaged and I returned it today and got a new drive. Not sure if the problem is Time Machine related or just coincidence that that drive failed. The drive was a 320 gig My Book (Firewire 400 and USB). I got a Maxtor 1 Terabyte as a replacement. Both of these drives appear to be slow in data transfers to them compared to other Firewire drives I have.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
Joseph J Gudac Jr.Thanks for the kind words Joe, Happy Holidays right back at ya! - Jason
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Category: Opinion
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T-Mobile Germany Ordered to Drop Two-Year Contracts
21 November 2007 09:51 EST
Kenn Marks
T-Mobile Germany is being ordered to drop two-year contracts and to sell unlocked iPhones thanks to Verizon Wireless' partner Vodafone and the German court system. Sounds like another "does not play well with others" scenario reminiscent of Microsoft pulling Internet Explorer support when Apple introduced Safari. Vodafone lost the three recent European countries by not wanting to revenue share on contracts so now Telefonica (O2) has the UK, Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) Germany and France Telecom (Orange) in France.
Current reports from Germany (Reuters Frankfurt) are indicating that you can now get an unlocked iPhone from T-Mobile for €999 ($1478.00), a €600 increase from a contracted T-Mobile iPhone (See earlier article). If you were to continue the T-Mobile contract, the total contract would cost the user €1,176 minimum plus the €399 to purchase the iPhone. Now the end users will have to find a plan for less than €24/month and they still will give up the visual voice mail and EDGE connectivity for web browsing.
Click the headline jump for the full story...
Let us know what you think over in the comments and forums.
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Category: Opinion
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iPhone "Busted" on TV (Updated)
06 November 2007 05:11 EST
Kenn Marks
The iPhone wasn't actually busted, as disassembled or broken, but was used on the popular Discovery Channel program MythBusters where cohost Adam Savage used an iPhone's stopwatch feature (part of Apple's "Clock" app) to "bust" or "confirm" urban or popular myths (original idea Macenstein) (10/31/07 Trail Blazers episode).
It appears as if CBS currently has the corner on iPhone sightings. (Take Jump)
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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Willfulness
05 November 2007 02:09 EST
Bob Snow
Design by committee just does not happen at Apple. To use some basic Applespeak, it is not in their DNA. What does happen, though, are outbreaks of pure willfulness. Stacks is a great example. I have not read one good thing about stacks in all of the Leopard reviews I've seen. At the most recent meeting of the Philadelphia PowerBook User Group, I heard what amounted to universal disdain for stacks and pretty much all of the dock changes.
Stacks are terrible. The stack view is only invoked when there are few items in a docked folder and the appearance seems silly. If you have enough things in your folder, you get a grid layout which is actually worse in terms of being able to follow the order of files. If you have even more stuff, then you get a grid plus a listing of the number of files you can't see with a button that opens a finder window, so that you can actually navigate and find things in your folder. It is obvious to just about everyone who uses this new feature that it does not work and is a confounding step backwards from the old behavior that presented a hierarchical menu directly from docked folders. Add to this the fact that the first page of the first item in a folder becomes an unreadable overlay that obscures the folder icon in the dock, making it difficult to differentiate docked folders without mousing over each one. Of course, the new default folder icons are nearly indistinguishable from one another anyway.
This cannot be attributed to Apple secrecy, the other bugaboo that causes a design disconnect from users. This aspect of Leopard has been open and public for a long time. If you want an OS with more innovation and cohesion than Vista then you need to learn to live with a bit of willfulness.
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Category: Opinion
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The Evil Empire Strikes the Internet
26 October 2007 03:43 EST
Kenn Marks
I have a customer who was fed up with Comcast, feeling they were overpriced and were possibly blocking his VoIP connections (conjecture, not proof). So, in a fit of frustration, he called Verizon and requested to have FiOS installed in his home.
In the tradition of a true geek, he has computers in the kitchen, living room, laundry room, office (three) and one in the shop. Yes, I almost forgot all the kids' rooms. All these are being served by Mac OS X Server, so no matter which machine they log onto, they have their home directories and desktops. The download speed is comparable between Comcast and Verizon. Verizon's upload speed rocks, but who needs it since they block all outgoing ports to residential customers? Therefore, I can no longer AFP or FTP into their server to make additions or corrections.
Sure, Comcast had a dynamic IP addressing scheme and if they had a power outage, I would have to call to get the new WAN address, NBD, but I still did not have to make the 45-minute trip to work on their server. Another thing he did was when visiting family elsewhere in the U.S. he could AFP his home server to get files from the server to sync his laptop in the MotorHome.
To avoid the .Mac solution responses, he does sync with .Mac but he doesn't have his whole picture library synced to .Mac and therefore needs to access his home server shared folder to print archived family pictures.
Verizon is telling the customer that he has to get a business account with the ports unblocked at a cost of US$99.99/mo (with a two year contract) vs. his residential plan at the same speeds (15 megabits per second up, two megabits per second down) for only US$49.99/mo. Is static IP worth US$50 a month when you can have others who will host your site, provide FTP and mail services for $30 or less per month?
Another encounter with the Evil Empire was when trying to resolve technical issues. Verizon had a FiOS online chat Tech Support Agent, which, by the way, did not work with Safari, or Firefox, but worked with SeaMonkey. So all those people you see in the Verizon ads on TV or in print are not really support but bodyguards to protect the Verizon Guy from getting mugged, if not shot.
It's no wonder Verizon could not come to an agreement with Apple on the iPhone; they want all the revenue and want to be in total control.
Full Disclosure: The author subscribes to Apple and AT&T's services, but no longer subscribes to Verizon's.
Let us know what you think over in the comments and forums.
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Category: Opinion
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Looking Forward to Leopard: Utility Mode
10 September 2007 02:42 EST
Chris Barylick
During the recording for last week's podcast, a few gremlins surfaced in the process and shut down the session for a while. This wasn't the end of the world, but it being somehat late at the moment, I sloped off to bed sometime between the crash and when recording resumed before I could mention a utility I'd been futzing about with on my Mac.
Recently, a build of Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") fell off a truck and on its way to one of my drive partitions.
These things happen.
And despite some incredibly cool new features as well as an overall speediness on my quad-core Mac Pro, I came across a new disk utility mode wherein the operating system can take a hard drive that's otherwise inaccessible to other OS X operating systems and utilities (including Mac OS X 10.4.10, DiskWarrior and Data Rescue II) and was able to mount and work with the disk in a limited capacity.
Click the jump for the full story...
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Category: Opinion
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Labor Day: 30 Years of Not-Quite-Wisdom
03 September 2007 09:06 EST
Chris Barylick
Welcome to Labor Day, 2007, here on the PowerPage.
The puppy in the picture has nothing to do with the iPhone.
With the rest of the country going through a national holiday, we've decided to do the same and queue up stories for tomorrow. Or at least use the opportunity to form a crude shanty town around our local Apple Store locations in anticipation of whatever they release by way of the new iPods at the special event slated to occur this week.
My 30th birthday was four days ago and, looking back at things, this was definitely one of the best ones I've ever had. Granted, I think I fit somewhere in the genus "Geezer" at the moment, but I'm calling it awesome on the whole. Between friends, family, assorted geekery and a cake that can become breakfast for a week (when you're over 18, this is allowed) and a Clocky robotic alarm clock that flees from you via its wheels when you go to hit the snooze bar a second time, I'm calling myself ahead for the moment.
Here's what I've learned in 30 years (there'll be news galore tomorrow):
-The PowerBook 5300 series was a cruel, cruel joke and any remaining units should be hurled into the sea or the molten core of Mount Doom at the first available opportunity.-When smoke rises from a SyQuest EZ135 drive you've hooked into a laptop running Windows 95, you've done something wrong.
-The eMac is a boat anchor. Anyone who tries to convince you is lying or already has too many anchors for their boat.
-Friends with OCD make for a strange mix. For this, I'm citing a friend who, in the dead of night, decided to get up and spend two hours reorganizing my living room. Upon waking up and wandering into the room, I found he'd moved my furniture, hooked up an unused speaker system to my tv and sorted my DVDs by title, genre and quality. He's a good friend, but will one day reorganize and glue my office's rolling chair to the ceiling to improve the room's feng shui.
-Richard Dreyfuss probably fulfilled his role in the universe when he volunteered to be shark bait in the first "Jaws" movie.
-If you date a girl who's willing to spend part of a weekend you to solder points on a circuit board, you've earned geek points.
-Jonathan Ive remains the best thing to happen to Apple's design division. And if Apple needs to give him his own island-nation to keep him on staff, they should do so.
-There's a good reason to have kids: their toys are going to be even more awesome than anything you grew up with. Never forget this.
-Perhaps the best thing ever:
-The top five arcade games of the 80's, in no meaningful order: 1.) Dragon's Lair. 2.) Spy Hunter 3.) Paperboy. 4.) Robocop. 5.) Gauntlet.
-The Mighty Boosh and Elephant Larry remain some of the best comedy to come around in a long time.
-The iPhone seems to be running on the "Six Million Dollar Man" and "Bionic Woman" development cycle. Give it time, training and enough interest from the development community and they will make it the coolest thing ever. On the day the iPhone becomes truly mighty, it will get its own Steve Austin-esque track suit.
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Category: Opinion
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Why Lock DVD Players to a Single Region?
27 August 2007 09:15 EST
PowerPage Contributor
My MacTracker shows that I have owned 11 different models starting with the 128k original in 1984. Four are in the house with me right now (PB G3, PB G4, iMac G5 and MBP Core 2 Duo). I have dealt with the upgrades to System 7, 8, 9 and OS X as well as the jumps to PPC and Intel.
Through all of this I have been generally happy to be a Mac owner and user. For the past several years I have worked in IT Support in a Windows-only environment, which has given me a bit of healthy perspective about the pros and cons of each system, but my own investments have been in Mac hardware and software.
With that in mind I am truly amazed at how short-sighted it is of Apple to knowingly specify built-in DVD hardware that penalizes law-abiding citizens for the illegal activities of others. I'm referring to the built-in encrypted firmware that locks in the choice of DVD regions to a single region after a few switches. In my older machines I have circumvented this by using third-party software to reset the counter, but this option is not available on the latest hardware from Apple, and should not be necessary at all.
I am from the United States and return often for both business and pleasure, but I've lived in Europe for most of the past decade. My family and I have a variety of legally purchased commercial DVD's from both sides of the Atlantic. I have yet to see any evidence that US or European law requires that DVD players be locked in to a certain region, and region-free players are legally available in all countries.
Steve Jobs has done more than any other single person to make legal, DRM-free music downloads available worldwide. If he is looking for yet another way to win friends, influence people and sell more hardware he can start by:
Read the rest by clicking on the headline...
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Category: Opinion
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Opinion: Stick it to the Man or We Get No Respect
21 June 2007 08:30 EST
Chris Barylick
Apple's iPhone is scheduled for release only a handful of days from now, reader Kenn Marks voices his opinion on Apple, AT&T, unknown required contract details and the other mystery areas of iPhone ownership he'd like to see covered before he picks up Apple's next generation cell phone:
Stick it to the Man or We Get No Respect
By Kenn MarksWith the iPhone just around the corner, as a loyal Mac enthusiast I'm beginning to feel like Rodney Dangerfield that "I get no respect" from the company I support, sometimes on the bleeding edge, like my desire to be one of the first iPhone owners. I'm also feeling some of my sixties roots in wanting to "stick it to the man" with Apple introducing the iPhone six months ago at Macworld SF and letting us know it's going to cost us US$499 or US$599 plus the big AT&T unknown. Here we are, less than two weeks away from the big day and NO ONE can tell us what our monthly commitment to AT&T is going to be, or if there is a multi-year contract involved.
It's like buying that new car with all the features we want at a great price then finding out once we drive it off the lot that it only gets ONE mile per gallon fuel economy (aka, consumption). I know I can trust Apple for product and service reliability, but what about the New AT&T, the old Cingular and the Old AT&T. What are they trying to hide with all the name shuffling?
I think it's pretty arrogant of Apple and AT&T to introduce a new piece of hardware one day BEFORE the end of month and quarter and be betting the farm and their next bonuses on a great couple of sales days, while you and I might have to fork out US$74.99/month for an unlimited internet two-year contract (if a contract is required - "2 yr contract required" removed from advertising on June 7th). If that's the price point, then it's an additional US$1,800 commitment after purchasing the phone.
I feel that if we let Apple walk all over us this time when we have the opportunity to make our vote heard, we'll all lose. We can take all the online polls we want and have no guarantee that Apple even looks at the results. In the construction industry, where there are such things as holdbacks to ensure that there are no problems down the road with your newly constructed project, we as potential customers, who hold the cash/credit card, can influence future company decisions on how they treat us.
Not buying gas on a certain day doesn't even make a ripple for the oil company pond you are boycotting, but holding off your iPhone purchase until Monday July 2 could really make the bean counters scream. All that revenue they were planning for end of quarter just vaporized into Apple's fourth quarter. Yes, it will affect the value of my Apple holdings, but I feel treating customers fairly outweighs making a bunch of shareholders rich. We can do nothing about what the CEO of our employer makes unless we work in a union shop. Our supervisor will call us a troublemaker and tell us to seek employment elsewhere and that we'll be easy to replace. Unless Apple & AT&T publishes the rate plans necessary to purchase an iPhone by Monday June 25th I strongly suggest waiting two more days (you already waited six months) and buy the worlds greatest phone on Monday July 2nd.
An owner and loyal purchaser since my first IIe Plus.
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Category: Opinion
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