Geek Swagger.
Gadgets
iMac “Review”
Jul 26th
So at this point I've had the iMac for a few days, and I figured I'd post some of my opinions. Â I went back to the video format for this post as well, you can find those after the text. Â Everything's going great so far, I haven't run into a single problem that I can think of. Â Leopard is awesome, boot camped Vista is awesome, basically everything's going well.
The second part of the video is more of an update on the iPod Touch. Â Since my first video I've applied the Invisible Shield and also toyed around with the App Store a bit. Â I go over both in more detail in the videos if that sort of thing interests you. =)
I'm thinking about making my Saturday posts videos from now on...I find doing the videos easier than writing and linking a post, and I figure I can just as easily talk into a camera about whatever subject matter the post would have contained. Â If you have any opinions one way or another feel free to leave a comment! Â Anyways, without further delay:
iMac "review"
Â
Part 2 - iPod Touch update
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Machine Head - Desire to Fire
WWDC wrap-up
Jun 10th
There once was a time before everyone had the internet when you might go to an Apple event and be completely surprised by what was announced. These days, with several websites devoted to breaking Apple news first, that seems to happen less and less frequently. Whether it's an iPhone-unlocker examining in the latest firmware or a fanatic studying every , chances are news will be leaked on the internet long before it is made official. Of course the same can be said of yesterday's WWDC keynote.
The first hour or so of the keynote was devoted to, of all things, development (it's the worldwide developer's conference after all). With the hotly anticipated iPhone 2.0 update just around the corner which will include the application store, the development was all focused on iPhone applications. We saw Monkey Ball again, some other games, an Ebay application, medical application, so on and so forth. The thing you need to take away from this is that people are working on applications that you'll be able to get your hands on next month. Nothing new in the development portion of the keynote except the 2.0 update has finally been given a date - July 11th. I was kind of bummed by this, I was really hoping if nothing else we'd see something tangible from today's keynote, and I thought the update would be perfect for that. Still, at least we know for sure now when iPhone and iPod Touch users can start tricking out their portables with all sorts of touch applications.
After that, took the stage to talk a little bit about a subject near and dear to my heart - . You might recall that I put up a post talking about MobileMe last week and, aside from the price point issues, Apple did a lot of what I expected. They've branded MobileMe as "Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us," and its goal is to synchronize calendars, contacts and email across several devices including Windows PCs and the iPhone or iPod Touch. Pretty straightforward there and of course you get your usual web interface to access everything through - all of this will be located at the Me.com website in time. You can preorder MobileMe right now if you want, but the full package won't be out until July 11th. As I said the price right now remains the same $99 a year. I was hoping for a price drop but if you're getting a new mac you can get a $30 discount. Another nice thing is that the iDisk storage has been bumped from 10 gigabytes to 20, a significant increase. I still don't think it quite rivals the Windows Live suite of services if only because of the price point, but it's a definite step up.
Of course the darling of the show was the rumored 3G iPhone. It seemed like everyone was absolutely positive we'd see one, the only question was what sort of new functionality would be included to take advantage of the faster data transfers? Would there be new applications? Two cameras for video conferencing? GPS? Well as it turns out the answers to those questions would be No, No, and a surprising Yes. I never thought that Apple would be able to work GPS into the iPhone because the battery life would suffer quite a bit to have it. My assumption was reaffirmed when Steve Jobs said that the new 3G iPhone would boast 10 hours of talk-time over the previous generation's 8. Surely there's no way Apple could boost battery life and have GPS, right? Wrong. Almost right after discussing battery life Mr. Jobs went on to say that another of the most requested iPhone features, GPS, has been built into the 3G iPhone. The only question left is whether their battery estimates are with or without GPS enabled, I'm going to go ahead and assume without. Regardless, I was surprised and I expect to see some really cool location-based applications down the road for the iPhone.
There is, however, one more thing that most of the sites never guessed would happen. The new 3G iPhone received a pretty hefty price cut. The 8GB model went from $399 all the way down to $199. That's huge! I don't think anyone expected this. At first I was a little envious since I have my eyes out on an iPod Touch, so to see the brand-spanking new iPhone get a $200 price cut while I'm still looking at spending $399 for a 16GB iPod was kind of rough. Then I remembered that I won't be paying for monthly data plans and my nerves were calmed. Not only that but the fine print has been reviewed meticulously and it turns out you can't get this deal if you're an existing iPhone user, the iPhone 3G is only available at $199 with a new 2-year contract. Sorry early adopters, it looks like you have been bitten yet again.
It should be noted that I watched a lot of the announcements via Leo Laporte's coverage at and it totally brought me back to the TechTV days. He brought in a couple of guests and basically just did what everyone else was doing: watching news feeds from and . He was also able to hook up some live audio streams from the conference and of course all along he and his guests were giving their commentary on the news. There was a lot of difficulty in trying to find a decent stream from the keynote as Apple doesn't provide live video themselves. Therefore the only things available were and streams of amateur-shot video that ended up being garbled most of the time and struggled to stay live as each of the respective services tumbled under the weight of a few thousand users. Even Leo's feed went down for a short period of time. Looks like these video streaming services aren't quite there yet, are they? Or maybe Apple should just do the right thing and provide some live streaming video of future events. =P
If you'd like to watch the keynote address now you can see the quicktime version on Apple's site:
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The XO laptop turns 2
May 24th
Sorry, no gaming review/preview this weekend. I'm still working my way through Grand Theft Auto 4 as diligently as I can...instead I have a standard post today that I could have saved until next week but hey, I value those proud few who read my blog and put up with my antics so I figured I'd treat you. =)
Everyone remembers the first generation of the XO laptop from Nick Negroponte's (OLPC) initiative. Well, this past Tuesday Negroponte opened a workshop at Cambridge and what did he have to share? The XO-2, of course. Although most of was all very early and clearly from the concept stage of the project, there were some notable features about the new device including a new sleek form factor with a touch screen interface kind of like a super-sized . Only prettier I think.
This news came hot on the heels of a development that the OLPC organization was planning on switching to a much more proprietary platform than (the skew of Linux that serves as the operating system for the current-gen XO) - Windows XP. As one would expect the open source community is up in arms over this development, especially after Negroponte himself was prone to saying that "the thought of XO laptops being used to teach young students Microsoft Word or Excel made him cringe." Kind of makes you wonder what's with the sudden adoption of the Windows platform then.
As far as the XO-2 itself goes, I think it's a pretty slick machine. I compared it to a Nintendo DS which isn't really fair since, in a way, you can compare any laptop to a DS because they both fold in the middle. The kicker is that the interface is set to be all touch-oriented (the wave of the future) so really maybe it's more like an iPhone with a crease down the middle. The XO-2 is much smaller than its predecessor as well, and overall looks much more streamlined without any of the mesh antennas or anything getting in the way. The concept of the mesh network was pretty cool though, so I hope they aren't doing away with that functionality and instead have just decided to build the hardware into the actual laptop. The whole unit is basically in a book factor which I'm sure will be much more inviting to children to pick up and use. That being said it's still pretty early in the game - the XO-2's aren't slated to be released until 2010 - so I'm sure the bulk of this is subject to change.
One of the most interesting parts of the video that is posted along with the images of the XO-2 is a statement from Negroponte himself. Basically he says because the display technology is similar to that which is found in portable DVD players, the price point of the XO-2 could be as little as $20. Everything about this project screams ambition to me, especially the price point. The originally XO was supposed to cost $100 and it ended up costing twice that amount, not to mention that the hardware for the XO-2 at least looks much more advanced than the first. I have no doubt that this technology will become more and more viable and cheaper to produce over the next two years, but I still doubt very much that the XO-2 will be anywhere near a $20 price point.
I'd also like to tack on an extra little link here at the end of this post from a former employee of OLPC - Ivan Krstić. He recently wrote a post on his blog basically lambasting the concept behind the OLPC and, in particular, the motives of those who are at the forefront (Negroponte). Without giving too much away I'd just like to say if you want a behind-the-scenes look at the scandalous inner workings of a tech charity you should read his 4,460 word essay on his experience with the OLPC foundation. Yes, it's a long article but it's a great read.
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iPod Touch and iPhone upgrades
Feb 7th
For some reason Apple announced that the capacities of the and the would be doubled earlier this week. The reason I say for some reason, is it's hard to understand why they didn't just announce this at . You know, that huge event that is all about ? The one that was just a couple weeks ago? Yeah, it's odd. Maybe the new capacities weren't ready (if so, why didn't they just do what they did with the revisions and say it's coming in 2 weeks?) or maybe Steve Jobs didn't want to take attention away from the Macbook Air. Regardless, if you find yourself interested in the iPhone or iPod Touch but you couldn't see yourself committing to the rather miniscule capacities they came with originally (4 and 8 gigabytes for the iPhone, 8 and 16 gigabytes for the iPod Touch), you can now get hardware with at least twice the space.
The iPhone now has a 16 gigabyte version which doubles the size of their largest version up to this point, and the iPod Touch is getting a 32 gigabyte version which also doubles the highest capacity you could get for that device up until this announcement. If you've read my blog for any considerable amount of time (and God bless you for doing so =P) you'll know that the initial size of the hard drive on the iPod Touch was the main deterrent for me getting one to serve as my next MP3 player. So now with a 32 gigabyte version, which is over twice the size of any MP3 player I've ever had, I should be happy! At least that's what you're thinking. I would be too, but there's one caveat to this announcement - you'll have to pay for the new capacity.
Both the 16 gigabyte iPhone and 32 gigabyte iPod Touch are $100 more than the next closest capacity in the line. The 16 gig iPhone is $499 (whereas the 8 gig version is $399) and the 32 gig iPod Touch is $499 (whereas the 16 gigabyte version is $399). So for an MP3 player to get enough room to store the bulk of my music plus some video files I'd have to drop $500. That's $100 more than a , which plays video games and Blu-Ray movies, not to mention has wifi and bluetooth functionality, and comes with a gigabyte hard drive. I don't know, maybe I'm just being cheap but it doesn't seem worth it.
Honestly after this announcement my first thought was that it would be really nice to pick up an 8 gigabyte iPhone for $399 since my area has coverage. The only problem is that I just recently got a new phone and started a new contract under , so that probably won't be happening anytime soon. Of course by anytime soon I mean the next two years. What would have been great would be if Apple pulled one of their classic moves where they roll out new products at the same cost as the old products. I expected this to happen just because they've done it multiple times in the past, but no such luck this time around.
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Asus breaks the code
Nov 27th
Lately there's been a lot of talk about Asus' ultra-small laptop called the . Eee stands for Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play. I think it should have a fourth E which would stand for Easy to lose because the thing is tiny but that's beside the point. It's not exactly a of a machine but the Eee PC is a great business portable that lets you do some basic things like word processing, internet browsing, and make Skype calls. This is all done from a homebrew of the Xandros linux distribution, but drivers for Windows XP are included (so you can install XP on it). The best part about it is that it's only $400, which shows that these are finally getting into a reasonable price range. I think paying $2,000 for a limited-function machine that you'll use sparingly isn't a great investment, but if the prices continue to drop these things could catch on quick. The Eee PC has a 7" display, a 900mhz processor, 512 megabytes of ram and a 4 gigabyte flash drive. These specs seem pretty miniscule but remember this is not a machine you're going to be doing any serious gaming or development with. If you want to learn more check the un-boxing video below, I thought it was pretty interesting.
So now that you know all about the Eee PC I must tell you Asus has gotten into . I said above that the Eee PC runs a distribution of linux similar to Xandros, and if you're familiar with linux and how it's developed you know that it's all open source. Because of this, developers adhere to a license called the (GPL) which basically states that the source code for your project must be distributed freely. Asus must have forgotten about this bit because, though they claim to offer the project's source code on their website, people are having trouble using it to modify the Eee PC's operating system. This has caused some turmoil in the community as everyone's assuming that the code offered is not really the whole project. You can bet that Asus will either explain how to circumvent their laptop's software or just release the full bit of source code fairly soon.
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The GooPhone
Nov 12th
Google finally announced their plans for the Google Phone. That is to say what we thought would be the Google phone. I've been anticipating this for a while since, being a geek, I'm always planning my next gadget purchase. As far as phones go I'm excited for the next revision of the iPhone as well as the . Either that or some other type of smart phone. Anyways, the Google Phone was definitely on my radar. So now I'm kind of bummed since the Google Phone, as of now, isn't really a phone at all - it's just an operating system that can be run on a phone. Details are still sketchy about the final product since it's at least two years off, but we know that it will be based around the that I had heard about prior to the official announcement.
Android is really just a mobile phone platform that Google will give to current cellphone companies to base their hardware around. The question about this is whether or not these companies, after getting the Android OS from Google, will just lock down the presumably open source software anyways. A couple of the companies Google is working with are , , and . Obviously missing from this list are companies like who have their own phone software that they're trying to push. Plus Apple. . I'm looking forward to seeing what these firms do with the .
Since the release of any Google-powered phone is still a ways off it's hard to imagine what one will be like, but most people who have written about this subject (and people who are just familiar with how Google works) agree that there will probably be some sort of localized ad-placement. If the phones are offered at a highly discounted price with, for instance, no monthly fees, you might be subject to some ad placement from the phone. For example, if you were walking down the street your phone might ping you and say "Hey, would you like to see where the closest restaurant is?" You could (hopefully) respond yes or no, and if yes they would feed you a little ad for the restaurant and perhaps give you a coupon or something of that nature. I really hope they don't force this on the user, it would make the phone a bother to use if you absolutely had
to subject yourself to the ad whether you wanted to see it or not. I'll be interested to see though, whether people might be willing to ditch their phone bill for a cheap or free phone and be okay with dealing with ads. A lot of us use and we're subjected to advertisements constantly and yet almost no one complains about it. Same thing about Google's search engine. If the hardware to back up the software is decent it might be something to look into, but that's all on the phone companies now.
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The new social.
Oct 23rd
Microsoft finally announced the much anticipated follow-up to the Zune, tentatively called the . That's not what they're really calling it - they're actually naming the new units by their capacity (the , , and - the original model will be known as the ). There are some pretty cool upgrades both to the hardware and software side of Microsoft's MP3 player which I'd like to discuss. Honestly I haven't been very excited about lately aside from the , but even that's hard for me to justify. I'm glad to see Microsoft is stepping it up and, who knows, if the Touch doesn't receive a price drop or capacity upgrade sometime soon I might just end up picking up an 80 gigabyte Zune instead. Let's get started.
The most noticeable upgrade to the Zune 2 is the fact that there are now 2 different skews of the model - a larger hard drive based unit that is similar in size and look to the and new flash based models which are smaller, much like the 2nd generation . The smaller units come in 4 and 8 gigabyte capacities while the hard drive model has been upgraded from 30 to 80 gigabytes, showing that Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple's most popular iPod models. There were also some physical changes to the Zune line-up, most notably a new scroll button called the "Zune Pad" which is touch sensitive and lets you through your content. Also, in the case of the Zune 80, the player has been made 27% thinner.
As far as the software goes, Microsoft is starting from the ground up. The is being completely overhauled by adding audio and video and new . They're also giving their users access to a new feature called the Zune Card. Zune Cards are much like Xbox Live gamercards which show what you've been playing except they work for what's been playing on your Zune. Therefore you can place a web badge on your site, MySpace/Facebook page, blog, anywhere really and let people know what you've been listening to. Along with this Microsoft is launching a specifically for the Zune. Finally, and this is a big one, they've finally made the wifi do what we all want it to do - Wireless Sync. Now you can bring your Zune into your home, connect it to a power source (this is done for stability, so your battery doesn't die in the middle of a sync for example), and automatically your content will be moved wirelessly to your Zune. This is a feature that even Apple hasn't been able to execute yet. In addition to the wifi upgrade they've enhanced the wifi sharing feature, letting the songs you share remain active for longer than the 3 days from before. You still only get 3 plays with licensed music, but for content like podcasts you can share them with your friends and they can keep them for how ever long they like. It's pretty cool. Also, did I mention that if you're already a Zune owner all of the software upgrades will work with your current Zune? That's right. Microsoft is going to release a firmware update for the Zune 30 that will unlock almost all of this functionality. This is an awesome move on Microsoft's part, move that you would never see Apple make. I guess when you only have you value your current customers just as much as your potential new ones.
So now that I've hyped the dang thing up so much how much does it cost? Well, the 4 gigabyte model will be $149, the 8 gigabyte model will be $199, and the 80 gigabyte model will cost $249. If you keep track of iPod prices you can see that they're almost exactly the same as the prices of comparable iPod units. At this point I think they should have undercut the iPod a little bit, maybe by $50 or so, in order to gain market share. It's almost like when they were newcomers to the gaming console market with the original Xbox - the key goal is to gain market share (as opposed to profit). Still, given the upgrades I think the prices are reasonable.
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iDay + 1
Jun 30th
This will be my last post about the iPhone, I promise.
So now that it's out and people everywhere have had time to play with it, what do they think? Well it seems that the keyboard takes a little time to get used to...I've heard people say that you have to "trust" it. What that means is that you need to just let yourself make mistakes and trust the iPhone's software to correct it for you. The other thing that people seem to dislike is AT&T's Edge data network is slower than most. There's no 3G here, but it runs great off of wifi.
Other than that most reviews seem to be positive, the iPhone delivers on the hype. Check some of the videos after the text to see it in action.
The last thing I have to touch on before I stop talking about the iPhone has to do with my shrinking desire to own one. The best way I can describe it is when I first saw the 2005 Mustang with the old-school grill. I loved the car and thought it was awesome...until I started seeing a lot of them around town. Now it just seems like an average car that I see everywhere so it kind of loses its appeal. I guess I've heard and seen so much about the iPhone in the last month (or more) that I'm OD'ing on information about it. That's not to say that if someone offered me an iPhone I wouldn't take it, but now that it's out I'm sort of "over it."
That's all I have to say really, check out some of the links below if you want to know more.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/30/iphone-first-hands-on-video/
http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,545-page,1-bid,0/video.html
http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/iphone_first_impressions
The biggest consumer electronics launch…ever.
Jun 26th
Move over and , the is coming to town and
About a half an hour ago I was sitting on the couch watching ESPN's and when they came back from the break I noticed that one of the stalwart panelists, , had written a little note about the iPhone on his signature mini-blackboard that always occupies the space behind him. The message read "iWoody Phones Home." Not ten minutes later I caught the introduction to the 6 o'clock news where the anchorwoman announced that tonight's top story was the iPhone and that people are already lining up to get one 3 days in advance.
The iPhone is on our doorstep and it will soon either make history or become an ...but let's be honest, the chances of it failing aren't all that great, and there's one major reason for that: its mass appeal.
I've experienced launches like this before because I'm a gamer, and every time a new game console comes out (Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, PS3) all of the gamers go crazy with camping out to be the first to enjoy the next-gen goodness. Massive lines are formed, people camp out for days and days, hysteria ensues. The only difference with the iPhone launch is you don't have to be a gamer to want an iPhone...all you have to be is a human being between the ages of 13 and 70!
The iPhone appeals to the gadget lover inside all of us, literally all of us, so there's no doubt that it will sell out in a flash come Friday night. No one knows just how huge the turnout would be but I'm going to guess it will be unbelievably huge. The only question we have left is will the iPhone continue its success once the initial hype is gone? When people start reviewing the iPhone and revealing its flaws will everyone still want one? Being a gadget-lover I hope so, because the thing is damn cool and I can't wait to get my hands on one.
Here's to the iPhone 2.0.
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R., WordPress, and maybe my new phone.
May 25th
This is going to be a pretty jumbled post containing a few different topics that I was originally going to make separate posts out of.
Just so you know.
I finished up within the last week (finally) and I have to say it's really awesome. If you've played Oblivion or any of the other games then all I can say is think of it as an FPS version of those games. I don't really have enough time to go into much detail other than that except to say that I totally recommend it to anyone who has a gaming rig that's up to snuff. It was original, had a great story, beautiful graphics...let's just say I can't find very many bad things to say about it. Just make sure you patch it before you play since it launched with some brutal bugs.
Onto topic #2! Why the F does WordPress only let me left align images? It's annoying the hell out of me. I've checked their site and can't find anyone else who has the problem, but when I installed it on the server there were no errors or anything...I'll have to check if there's an update or something. Could just be the theme I'm using too.
Finally, I got a a month or so ago and I really like it. I almost bought a instead but I didn't really feel like paying $70 a month for a data plan. The phone's almost as slim as a Razr but also has a full QWERTY keyboard. It's nice for texting, IM'ing and especially Twitter.
That's all for now, I might go into more detail later...but probably not.
P.S. - I was just finding images to insert into this post when the thought occured to me...one of these days I'm going to get burned for hotlinking! So if for some reason you come here in the future and there's some weird or gross image just know it wasn't my intention to post it. :-\
