The McWetlog

Tech

Scroll nipple redux
Thursday, August 3, 2006 at 9:24 AM | Mac |

See? I’m not the only one who calls the Mighty Mouse’s scroll ball a “scroll nipple” (see previous entry) — have a look at Kirk’s review of the wireless Mighty Mouse.

Weblogs Inc., TUAW and Procrastinatr
Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 10:25 AM | Blogs, Mac | 4

I’ve had mixed feelings towards the Weblogs, Inc. stable of blogs — not because I’m hostile towards pro blogging (since I are one myself), but because of the quality issues inherent to how they compensate bloggers. When you pay people $4 $x per post, you’re rewarding quantity over quality, and even in my favourite Weblogs, Inc. blogs (like Gadling) it sometimes shows: a lot of mediocre posts, either weak on content or weak on analysis. You don’t get occasional posts of substance, but a flood of more mundane material. The signal/noise ratio is worse than it could be.

Continue reading this entry »

Minor technical difficulties
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 at 9:40 PM | Mac, PDA, Personal |

I’ve encountered a glitch with Front Row: it’s not playing nice with iPhoto. I’m not sure what the problem is — probably something is gumming up the works as a result of how I brought the old data over — but I’m assuming it’s solvable. More when I find out how to fix it.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten the Palm syncing with the new iMac — works fine under Rosetta — and I’ve even got Documents to Go working again. My Tungsten T2 came with version 5, while Jennifer’s TX has version 7 — so when I synced up her Palm with my old iMac over Christmas, it overwrote version 7 over version 5 and promptly hosed it on my Palm. Now that we’re on separate machines (she’s using the old iMac), that conflict is no longer a problem. Unfortunately, no sooner had I got that working than I realized that audio was totally hosed on my Palm: I get a faint, high-pitched whine whenever it’s on (not enough to be annoying), but no other sound. (You can tell I don’t use my PDA much any more; it’s been like this for a while but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.)

The car’s headlights are only working intermittently at the moment: they outright failed over the weekend — no daytime running lights, no headlights, no brights — but appear to be working now. Garage suspects the daytime running lights module, maintenance on which requires a Mazda dealership. Sigh — the car is determined to have money spent on it. You can ignore compressors, but you just can’t ignore headlights.

Notes on the new iMac
Friday, June 16, 2006 at 11:17 AM | Mac, Personal | 3

New iMac
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at 8:03 AM | Mac, Personal | 1

iMacs

I was occupied last night setting up the new beast: a 20-inch, 2-GHz Intel Core Duo iMac.

Christ, it’s fast. And this big screen is going to take some getting used to. Much brighter — I had the old screen at full brightness; this one only at half. (Such an ordeal.)

AirPort Express failures
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 1:51 PM | Mac, WiFi |

I note with interest this report on HardMac (via Gizmodo) that more than 200 Airport Express base stations have ceased functioning 13 to 18 months after purchase — because, you may recall, so did mine.

From the report:

Today, with over 200 reports of APX defects, we can draw some conclusions:
- as we originally suspected, it predominantly affects users living in 220/230V-based countries (98% of the reports).
- all defective APX have been manufactured by Foxconn during S2 2004
- as a result, all defective APX have a serial number starting with HS42, HS43 or HS44.
- most of the defective APX have a product number either A1084 or A1088.
We are still missing proof that the large amount of defective APX is based on a design or component failure, even though we also suspect a Samsung-branded fuse to be part of the problem.

It’s interesting, but not necessarily surprising, that the serial number of my defunct AirPort Express begins with HS44; my replacement base station’s serial number begins with 6F53. And, true to form, the old station lasted a bit more than a year — though I’m not in a 220V region. Interesting.

Glossy vs. matte
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 6:40 AM | Mac |

This page, which I found via Fraser’s comment on this FatBits post by John Siracusa, explains, in technical terms, the difference between the glossy screens on the new MacBooks (see previous entry) and more traditional matte screens:

Both anti-glare and anti-reflective LCD screens serve a distinct purpose. Anti-glare LCD screens may be better suited to office environments, where spreadsheets, word-processing, and similar tasks are the norm — along with many light sources and less flexibility in screen placement. Anti-reflective, on the other hand, may be better suited for graphics, gaming, and multimedia applications — like watching DVDs. While anti-reflective high-gloss LCD screens may seem superior in all facets, they are better suited in indoor environments where ambient light conditions are not as bright. This way the user gets ambient light reflection reduction without sacrificing any image quality. Anti-glare, on the other hand, may be better suited to the outdoors or indoor environments with brighter or direct light. In this situation, the user may be better off sacrifice [sic] image quality for maximum ambient light reflection reduction.

This might suggest that a MacBook would be just fine at home, but perhaps less so in libraries with lots of fluorescent lighting — though not every library is as strongly lit as a cubicle warren. Probably equivalent to a CRT, both in terms of colour depth and reflectivity.

MacBooks
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 3:02 PM | Mac |

Random thoughts on the new MacBooks, the iBook replacements Apple announced this morning:

Later:

Open/save dialog delays
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 2:06 PM | Mac |

It turns out that the long delays I sometimes experience when trying to open or save a document — the application hangs for several seconds — is due to issues with iDisk syncing: “The problem lies in the fact that the local iDisk (stored in /Volumes/iDisk) has symbolic links (aliases) to folders on the remote iDisk (/Volumes/your_mac.com_name). When OS X lists the local iDisk’s contents, info for these folders must be loaded from the remote iDisk, which can take some time.” For some reason I assumed it had something to do with the external hard drive I bought last fall.

Awesome awesome
Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 10:53 PM | Fun, Mac |

This is the most pressing question from the new Mac ads: In “WSJ”, is the PC (played by resident expert John Hodgman) referring to a review in the Awesome Awesome Computer Review Weekly Journal, or is he referring, with a bit of a stammer, to the Awesome Computer Review Weekly Journal? I’m sure that confusion happens a lot on the newsstands. You’d think the two publishers would have a sit-down over it or something.

Full-time Fireball
Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 12:51 PM | Blogs, Mac |

John Gruber is going full-time: he’s making Daring Fireball, arguably the best bit of Mac writing on the web, his full-time job as of this week. (Two years ago, he started trying to earn a living wage from the site; now he’s taking the plunge. I’ve been a member since the start.)

You will recall that I’m quite interested in whether people can turn blogging and personal sites into a full-time career — Heather Armstrong’s done it, through advertising; Jason Kottke, who solicited donations (“micropatrons”), had mixed results — because, completely by accident, I’m trying to do the same thing. Almost all of my (puny) income comes from my web sites (mostly The Map Room), though I’m working on other avenues as well. (My so-called “little of this, little of that” business plan.) As I’ve said before: if they can succeed, spectacularly, there’s a chance that I might be able to muddle through.

Here’s hoping that John succeeds spectacularly.

Intel Mac Mini, iPod Hi-Fi
Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 2:45 PM | MP3, Mac |

Today, Apple announced a new Mac Mini line with Intel processors and a new iPod speaker system, the iPod Hi-Fi.

Initial thoughts on the new Mac Mini:

As for the Hi-Fi, it’s definitely aimed at the high end of the iPod speaker market, at US$349/C$429. You have to plug in an iPod (or another audio source), but it’s being positioned on Apple’s web pages as another iPod, which may cause some confusion:

ipodhifi.png

Me, I’d been hoping for a component unit with a hard drive that synced like an iPod wirelessly, but I imagine that the AirPort Express already fills that niche. So does a cable from an iPod to the back of your amplifier, for that matter.

But it doesn’t look like Apple means to complement your existing home stereo; it means to replace it.

Yojimbo
Saturday, February 25, 2006 at 7:48 PM | Mac |

Yojimbo came out last month. It’s a scrapbooking program for storing random bits of information — notes, passwords and serial numbers (encryptable), bookmarks or even fully archived web pages — that can be searched, organized into themed collections and so on. I’ve been using it for my writing notes — future blog posts, stories and so forth — and I like it well enough that, with the 30-day demo running out, I bought a licence for it.

Continue reading this entry »

An Apple Store in Montreal?
Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 7:40 AM | Mac |

MacSlash is reporting that Apple is hiring for a future retail store at the Carrefour Laval in Laval, Quebec, just north of Montreal. The Toronto store opened last year but, at five hours away, it’s hardly convenient; this would cut the one-way travel time to the nearest Apple Store to about three hours.

A wireless update
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at 11:09 PM | Mac, WiFi

A follow-up to yesterday’s post. Though multiple hard resets were able to resuscitate it for short periods of time today, I’ve decided to declare my AirPort Express clinically dead. Off to buy a new one, probably tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve got a whack of Ethernet cable connected to a laptop that’s sharing its connection via WiFi. (The old AirPort was definitely the culprit in the case of the poor iChat bandwidth; it was considerably improved under the new setup, which is admittedly a hack — iChat was crashing on my iMac for some reason, so I had to haul the iSight downstairs.)

A faltering wireless network
Monday, January 9, 2006 at 9:58 PM | Mac, WiFi | 1

The performance of my AirPort Express base station has been degrading in recent months and has gotten even worse recently. Videoconferencing with my mother — who’s just bought a new iMac with the built-in camera — is next to impossible due to low bandwidth, but we’re both on broadband. I suspect my wireless network as the culprit there. I also have to reboot my base station as often as several times a day to regain performance approximating normalcy. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s terrible: bad enough at times that I think it’s time to buy a replacement; good enough often enough that I hope I can defer that purchase. The way things have been going lately, though, it looks like I’ll be going shopping very soon.

It’s hard to troubleshoot something as ephemeral as wireless networking: hard to tell whether it’s an ISP problem, a local interference problem (neighbours running a microwave, say), or a hardware problem, though it’s increasingly looking like the last. The base station may have been acting up as early as last June, when we first moved here, though it’s possible that the sudden bouts of weak signal were due to interference rather than hardware problems. The other thing is, I expect hardware to be binary: either it works or it’s broken; having it “kinda-sorta” work is kinda-sorta counterintuitive.

But electronics have a hard time of it out here, thanks, I suspect, to the wonkiness of the power supply — lots of brief outages and, presumably, surges. So far we’ve had to replace our cable modem once — that unit, too, had exhibited some inconsistently weird performance — and have burned through an Airport (Snow) base station and an aquarium pump as well. I’ve got my iMac on a UPS, and, while I’ve got all the living room electronics (TV etc., stereo, cable modem and base station) on a surge protector, I think I’ll get a UPS for that stuff as well, just to be sure. Electronic gadgetry just isn’t safe in these parts, and frankly I’d rather not have to make a new wireless router an annual purchase.

See previous entries: Rewireless; Security alert: Mac networks susceptible to irony.

My mail management technique is unstoppable
Friday, November 18, 2005 at 1:44 PM | Mac

For years I’ve been using Mail.app’s rules to sort my incoming e-mail: mail from my web site contact forms go in these folders, mail from friends and family go in these folders, comment and trackback notifications go here, mailing list messages go there. While this keeps my inbox from getting totally unmanageable, I’ve had a tendency to lose track of messages and, as a result, forget to reply to them.

I think I’ve solved this by adding a new smart folder in Tiger’s Mail.app. The folder holds unread and flagged messages. If a new message requires action on my part — a reply, a blog post, or something else — I flag it. If not, I don’t — the message will disappear from the folder the next time it updates.

If I keep at this, I should end up in a state if I don’t reply to you, it’s because I don’t want to, not because the message got lost in the shuffle.

.Mac upgraded
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 8:08 PM | Mac

Apple’s .Mac suite of Internet services was upgraded this morning, just before the early adopters’ annual subscriptions come up for renewal. In a nutshell, the enhancements are: a bump in disk space, from 250 MB to 1 GB; Backup 3.0, with incremental backups and backup plans; and a new Groups feature.

I’m already making use of Backup 3.0: I bought a 160-gigabyte external FireWire drive for backup and extra storage last week; I figured that data loss was not something I could cope with. Version 3 is definitely an improvement, especially with the automated plans. It’ll be a lot easier to back up my data like a good boy.

As for Groups — well, it’s something I’d like to use, but it’s much more limited than other social-networking services. Private, invitation-only, and needs a trial Mac.com account. There’s probably a use for this, but its niche is not yet obvious to me. Must ponder.

Solving the iMac lockup problem
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 2:15 PM | Bluetooth, Mac

Ever since I got my 17-inch G4 iMac in December 2003, I’ve periodically run into a problem where the computer would lock up when entering sleep mode: the screen would be dark, but the computer would not respond to any user input. It happened relatively infrequently, and relatively irregularly: a couple of times a week, then nothing for months. One suggestion was faulty RAM, but I didn’t think that fit the description. At least it was infrequent enough that it didn’t interfere overmuch with my work; I rarely, if ever, lost any data.

It happened again this morning. For some reason it occurred to me to yank out the Bluetooth adapter from the USB hub. It worked immediately: the computer sprung back to life.

Now why didn’t I think of that before? That Bluetooth adapter — it’s an older D-Link dongle that isn’t compatible with Apple’s wireless mouse and keyboard — had been giving me trouble with my G3 iBook. Just not the same kind of trouble, I suppose, or I’d have recognized it sooner.

iTunes 5 bug reports
Sunday, September 11, 2005 at 1:05 PM | Mac

Reports of problems with iTunes 5, which was released last week, are beginning to circulate. Here’s another data point for the blogosphere. When I installed it I received an error message when it tried to import my iTunes 4 library, but my music all showed up. It hosed my podcast subscriptions, though; they disappeared from “Podcasts,” but remained as separate playlists. Reconstructing my podcast subscriptions was trivial — I only have a few — but now they stay in my regular library, and don’t get removed when I’m done with them unless I remove them manually. No other problems with iTunes 5, though.

Boolean!
Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 2:59 PM | Mac

Boolean searches are possible in Spotlight: Hiram figured out OR and NOT a few days ago. More fiddling to ensue. Via Mac OS X Hints.

!Boolean
Tuesday, May 10, 2005 at 11:23 PM | Tech

I’m missing Boolean operators right now. Neither Flickr’s new badges (by tag, by group) nor Tiger’s new Smart Folders allow them, at least on the surface, and they’d have been handy these past two days.

Talking past each other
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 at 6:03 PM | Blogs, Journalism, Mac

Bloggers and media organizations are filing amicus briefs in the Apple suit against rumour sites (my take on which is here). Paul McCleary writes, in his excellent summary of the case on CJR Daily, “One can’t help but notice that in a certain sense, Judge Kleinberg and the media types seem to be talking past each other.”

In his March 11 ruling, which is being appealed (hence the amicus briefs), Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg ruled that Apple could go after the rumour sites for their sources. Kleinberg ruled that the question of whether the rumour sites constituted journalism was irrelevant. From his decision:

But even if the movants are journalists, this is not the equivalent of a free pass. The journalist’s privilege is not absolute. For example, journalists cannot refuse to disclose information when it relates to a crime. […] Whether [O’Grady] fits the definition of a journalist, reporter, blogger, or anything else need not be decided at this juncture for this reason: there is no license conferred on anyone to violate valid criminal laws.

In other words, your obligation to obey the law is not affected by your status as a journalist, so whether or not you’re a journalist is irrelevant.

Continue reading this entry »

Tiger coming April 29
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 at 8:46 AM | Mac

Tiger — Mac OS X 10.4 — is coming out April 29. Apple’s page covers not just the new features, but summarizes all the OS’s features, including those first introduced in Jaguar and Panther, which is useful: you get a big picture of the whole OS; it’s not like the things announced in 2002 aren’t there any more.

The collapsing U.S. dollar makes stuff cheaper. In 2002, Jaguar cost C$219. In 2003, Panther’s retail price was C$179. Tiger, on the other hand, is priced at C$149 — education price, C$89. (The U.S. price has been US$129 at each iteration.) At least Apple prices are cheaper just before the inevitable global financial collapse.

Am I looking forward to it? Hell yes. I’ve got ideas for Spotlight and Automator, and I’ve wanted Dashboard for months. Also looking forward to having third-party programs sync between computers — especially NetNewswire.

B.Mac’s return
Monday, March 7, 2005 at 10:06 PM | Mac

A correspondent identifying himself as a former B.Mac employee writes, “Have a look at this. After the company goes belly up and hundreds of people including employees and clients are hurt in its closing, they have reopened.” It looks like B.Mac, after closing all four stores and declaring bankruptcy last fall, will be opening a store on the Plateau in Montreal. Down, but not out.

Their closure did little to endear themselves to the local Mac cognoscenti, some of whom were, if I remember correctly, quite pissed, especially those who didn’t know where else to go for servicing (or those who had gear in for repair when the doors were shuttered). And with Apple opening retail stores in Canada this year (though no stores confirmed for Montreal yet), this can’t be the best climate for them. Still, despite these challenges, I wish them well.

See previous entries: B.Mac closes Ottawa store; B.Mac closure update.

Think Secret, trade secrets and our right to know
Sunday, March 6, 2005 at 10:38 AM | Mac

Much of the online commentary regarding Apple’s lawsuits against several rumour sites frames it in terms of whether the rumour sites are bona fide journalists. In doing so, they conflate Apple rumour-mongers with bloggers and run up the flag on the so-far endless debate on whether bloggers are journalists. That’s an issue near and dear to the hearts of many bloggers craving legitimacy, but in this particular case it’s a red herring: whether or not Think Secret et al. are legitimate journalists has nothing to do with whether they were right to publish Apple’s upcoming products or are protected from the consequences of doing so.

Jeff Harrell thinks so too:

Was [Think Secret’s Nick] Ciarelli pursuing a news story? If the answer is yes, then he deserves to be given an exception from the laws governing trade secrets. For example, if he reported that Apple was dumping toxic chemicals into the groundwater behind their corporate headquarters, that would clearly be an important story, one which the public would have an obvious right to know. It would also clearly be a trade secret. In that case, the public’s right to know trumps company’s right to protect its trade secrets.
But we’re not talking about illegal dumping here. We’re not talking about blowing the whistle. We’re talking about the disclosure of specifications and prices for upcoming products, details that were obtained by convincing Apple employees to break their confidentiality agreements.
Newsworthy? Hardly. Important? No. Was Ciarelli on the trail of The Truth, a latter-day Bob Woodward blowing the roof off of a massive scandal? No, he was not. He was soliciting trade secrets and publishing them. So I don’t see any reason at all why he should be exempted from the normal laws governing such activity.

The test, therefore, is not whether whoever’s doing the publishing is a journalist, but whether the public interest is being served by it. And that’s something that can only be determined by the legal system. News organizations that publish private details about celebrities — or even ordinary people — do get sued, and successfully: the test is not simply whether it’s a secret that people are interested in. Corporations aren’t people, you may reply — but corporations do have trade secrets. Hence NDAs and the law under which Think Secret is being sued. What if Google Watch received, and published, Google’s entire PageRank algorithm? I’ll bet we’d all find that very interesting — unless we owned once-valuable Google stock.

And reporters who do publish stories that blow the whistle and serve the public interest, but who fail to reveal their sources, can get into trouble anyway (though in that case it was a public inquiry, not the leakee looking for blood). Journalists are sometimes threatened with jail for not identifying sources (in the context of criminal trials resulting from their reporting). Why should rumour sites get a free pass just because they’re making ad revenue off of our eagerness to find out what Steve is pulling out of his sleeve next?

It’s hard to see how learning about upcoming or unreleased Apple products a little earlier than the formal announcement serves the public interest. If you think it does, you probably need more hobbies.

New iPods are one cable short
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 9:16 PM | MP3, Mac

This morning Apple announced revisions to its iPod mini and iPod photo product lines. They’re cheaper and they come with more storage: the iPod mini now comes in two capacities, 4 GB (US$199, formerly US$249) and 6 GB (US$249); the 60-GB iPod photo drops US$150 to US$449, and the 40-GB iPod photo is replaced by a cheaper, 30-GB model that’s thinner because it uses a single-platter drive, at US$349.

The iPod decontenting continues: no iPod model now ships with a dock, and the iPod photos do not come with AV cables. In fact, the new models don’t even ship with a FireWire cable, just a USB 2.0 cable. This has raised a certain amount of ire and the inevitable petition. As usual, I don’t think much of the histrionics involved when Apple does something its fanboys don’t like. They generally invoke every argument — loyalty to the Mac fanbase or nefariously abandoning the FireWire standard — except the sensible ones. In this case it comes down to economics.

Continue reading this entry »

Workflow enhancements and such
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 8:46 PM | Mac

Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how much my various tech toys actually improve my life — or in this case, my workflow. For tomorrow’s “Tech Weekly” feature (see previous entry), the Citizen wanted to use a couple of my photos, and agreed to pay me for them. Some paperwork was naturally involved.

First, I had to sign the freelancer’s agreement. Time was, I would have printed the Word file, signed it, scanned it, and either faxed it or e-mailed it as an image inserted into a Word file or as a PDF. But now I’ve got a tablet. I was able to doodle out my signature and insert it directly into the file, save it as a PDF, and e-mail it back. No printing, no scanning, no faxing, no fuss.

Then they wanted an invoice. Being new and naïve in the ways of the freelancer, I didn’t know what format an invoice took. What to do? I started searching the web. But look! Pages comes with an invoice template, from which I was able to build my own. Signed, saved to PDF, and sent.

That was painless. That’s how it’s supposed to work, folks.

RIP Clie
Tuesday, February 22, 2005 at 5:37 PM | PDA

After pulling out of the North American PDA market last year to focus on Japan, Sony has announced that it’s ending production of its Clie line of Palm OS handhelds. Between this and the handhelds coming out of PalmOne, which are increasingly cheap-looking (and cheap-feeling — have you ever held a Tungsten T5 or Zire 72?), it’s safe to say that the high end of Palm OS based PDAs is about to disappear. Looks like I’ll be hanging on to my T2 until it falls apart.

iSight
Monday, February 21, 2005 at 8:50 AM | Mac

Now that I have an iSight, video conferencing with me is now possible. Tried it with David on Saturday morning and it worked very well. Other friends and family members who might be interested in trying this as well, take note of this post.

Even if you don’t have a camera, one-way conferencing is still an option; you just need an appropriate instant messenger account.

Mac users running Panther will want to use iChat: use your AIM screen name, if you have one, or a .Mac account. You can get a free .Mac ID by signing up for the free 60-day trial; you can keep the ID after the trial expires.

If you’re on Windows, you’ll need AIM 5.5 or higher to do videoconferencing.

My camera is also compatible with Yahoo, but it’s video only — no sound. MSN Messenger for Mac does not support video conferencing.

You can find out how to contact me if you’re resourceful enough, or know how to ask nicely.

I’ve also been using it as a barcode scanner with Delicious Library. It works reasonably well, though the mass-market paperbacks’ barcodes are generating errors. Probably a problem with the Amazon database that the software uses for book data.

A few articles on other uses for and tips for using the iSight:

Text editors
Thursday, January 20, 2005 at 12:13 AM | Mac

When it comes to text editors for HTML coding, I’m torn between SubEthaEdit and TextWrangler. TextWrangler used to cost money but as of last week is free; I’ve been trying it out as a result. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, most of which I don’t notice. SubEthaEdit has live HTML previewing, which is really useful when coding on the fly; TextWrangler doesn’t. TextWrangler, on the other hand, allows you to open and save files via FTP, which saves several steps and considerable time and allows me to make quick updates to web pages without logging in and using pico. In practice, this feature may be more important than live previewing: much of my substantial web work over the past week can be directly attributed to the ease of updating that save-to-FTP allows.

Rewireless
Thursday, November 25, 2004 at 10:22 AM | Mac, WiFi

For the first time since April, when my AirPort base station blew out, we’ve got a wireless network in the home again. Jennifer, using her education discount, splurged and got an AirPort Express and an AirPort Extreme card for the iMac. The rationale behind this is to reduce desk clutter (moving the printer and modem off, connecting them to the base station elsewhere) and to allow wireless-equipped laptops to connect (Jen’s old Toshiba or a school iBook or an eventual new iBook or Powerbook, or a visitor’s).

We got it set up last night, with no difficulties except that our ISP had to reset the modem — apparently it locks to a specific device and won’t work with anything else, which means you can’t just unplug it from one computer and plug it into another (I’m sure there’s a reason for it). It’s working well; I’ve got some oboe concertos coming out the stereo — which for some reason is less distracting than the computer speakers, even if they’re only a couple of metres apart.

Related: My WiFi links.

PalmOne Tungsten T5 announced
Monday, October 4, 2004 at 10:01 AM | PDA

PalmOne announced the Tungsten T5 this morning (coverage: Brighthand, Gizmodo, Palm Infocenter). In some ways this is more an E2 than a T5, in that it uses the Tungsten E’s form factor, abandoning the slider from the T/T2/T3. It’s still running OS 5, not Cobalt, and it still has built-in Bluetooth (it’s compatible with PalmOne’s new SDIO WiFi card) and the 320×480 screen. A part of its 256 MB of memory is flash memory that can store any files (not just Palm documents and applications) and that can be mounted as a USB storage device, which is kind of neat. On the other hand, it eliminates the voice recorder and uses a new connector format, which is kind of irritating. My snap judgment: I still like my T2, and would probably buy a Zire 72 if I was shopping for a gadget today. This one’s kind of meh.

The key phrase is “comparably equipped”
Monday, September 27, 2004 at 7:53 PM | Mac

News flash: Macs are less expensive than PCs.

Don’t believe me? It’s true — when you compare them to similarly equipped PCs. I mean, sure, when you use a stripped-down, bare-bones system with shared memory instead of an AGP graphics card as your reference point, Macs do seem pricey — particularly when, as some slashtards are wont to do, they compare low-end PCs to top-end Power Macs solely on the basis of processor speed.

But, as Paul Murphy wrote on LinuxInsider last month, when you compare Macs to brand-name PCs with the same specs (RAM, hard drives, optical drives, screen size, I/O, software), Macs actually come out ahead — and this was done before the new G5 iMac played hell with the price/value equation. Speaking of which, according to osViews’s Harry Rider, a G5 iMac is actually $300 cheaper than building your own PC from parts! (Assuming, naturally, that you don’t pirate the PC software.)

Apple used to charge as much as $7,000 for Macintoshes. That was over a decade ago. (Received wisdom dies hard.) They’ve been getting cheaper all the time, to the point where a 15-inch PowerBook now is cheaper than a 12-inch iBook three years ago, and a 15-inch TiBook in 2001 went for more than a 17-inch PowerBook does now.

B.Mac closure update
Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 12:25 PM | Mac

An update to my previous entry about B.Mac’s closure of its Ottawa store: MacNN is reporting that, according to a Montreal Gazette article (update: behind the subscriber wall), B.Mac has closed three of its four stores overall and may lose the fourth. The Gazette article apparently blames a declining user base; what limited information I have seen blames managerial cock-ups. It usually is, whenever a store closes, though management always blames something else — market conditions, the competitors, the suppliers.

Worldwide sales have been no worse in the last few months than they’ve been in the previous few years — in fact, they’ve been a little bit better for Macs, and obscenely good for iPods. And when you factor in the rise of the Canadian dollar over the past year and a half, which has meant an effective price cut of a few hundred dollars on a new Mac, the opportunity for sales should be even better. If B.Mac hasn’t been able to keep its head above water recently, it’s not because of market conditions, because they’ve never been as favourable in years, from what I can tell.

One factor: location. According to one commenter on the MacNN story, B.Mac’s Montreal stores are poorly located: one in an industrial area, another downtown but not at street level. Ottawa’s was in a suburban strip mall: downtown residents had to take the bus for an hour to get to it. (Hint: Don’t advertise in trendy downtown alternative papers and situate yourself in Nepean.) Apple’s retail strategy, on the other hand, obsesses about location: their stores show up in new, upscale or trendy shopping areas, and they’re always high-traffic areas. It’s true what they say: location’s everything.

B.Mac closes Ottawa store
Thursday, August 19, 2004 at 1:37 PM | Mac

B.Mac seems to have closed its Ottawa store. As I noted in the thread, they’ve been reducing their hours throughout the summer. I don’t think they’d been getting new stock in, either. But at no point did anyone suggest anything was up until the doors were closed; me, I’d thought they were being suicidally dumb to reduce their hours to the point where no one who was gainfully employed could visit the store. In hindsight, the decision had already been made.

This is a real pity, because it was hands-down the best Mac reseller in the Ottawa area. (I suppose I could wish really hard for an Apple Store.)

Florence switches
Sunday, August 15, 2004 at 11:41 AM | Mac

Say hello to Florence and her new 15-inch PowerBook (which is, I must jealously admit, an amazing computer).

Florence with her new 15-inch PowerBook G4

(Apologies for the Dell mousepad polluting the photo; optical meeces don’t work well on glass tabletops.)

The nonexistent Apple II-to-Macintosh upgrade path
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 at 12:08 AM | Mac

The Art of the Parlay: John Gruber shows once again why he’s worth every penny of the “Daring Fireball” membership fee. (Having said that, where’s my blasted T-shirt, hey?)

In this long article, he argues that the Macintosh’s marginal market share was not because Apple refused to licence the OS to other computer manufacturers, but rather because Apple didn’t provide an upgrade path for its enormous Apple II user base — in other words, Apple didn’t leverage its existing marketshare but instead essentially started from scratch. To move to the Mac, Apple II users had to leave all their hardware, peripherals and software behind — whereas MS-DOS users were able to migrate to Windows “slowly and incrementally.” Had Apple done otherwise, Gruber argues, the Mac might have been more successful in a marketshare sense, but less revolutionary. (Imagine if there had been a successor to the Apple IIgs.)

Now, Gruber’s article struck a chord with me because it echoes my family’s experience. In the mid-1980s we each had an Apple II+ or a IIe. By the late 1980s we each had an Apple IIgs. By the early 1990s we each had a 386- or 486-class PC. What happened? Without a post-IIgs upgrade path, switching to a PC was no more onerous than switching to a Mac, and it was less expensive. I imagine that a lot of Apple’s customers were lost this way. In the end, my father and his brothers were pissed at Apple for killing the Apple II line, and when you talk to them about it today, they’re still mad at them for it. There is a reason why I’m the only Mac user in my family!

More AirPort Express links
Friday, August 6, 2004 at 2:45 PM | Mac, WiFi

A couple more links about Airport Express: a brief report on O’Grady’s PowerPage on using AirPort Express in hotel rooms; and some first impressions from “2 Guys, a Mac, and a Website” (yes, that’s their name; Moltz wasn’t kidding, you know), including the sound quality from the audio-out. (See previous entries: In-depth AirPort Express review, AirPort Express availability.)

iPod decontenting
Friday, August 6, 2004 at 2:34 PM | MP3

The online documentation was contradictory at the outset, so it took us a few days to figure it out, but the new iPods have been “decontented” (see below): the low-end model, now 20 GB, has always lacked a dock, remote and case; but the 40-GB iPod now only comes with a dock, and not a remote or case.

Presumably, removing the remote and case from the US$399 model was one of the ways for Apple to cut prices without cutting profits overmuch. I imagine that their market research suggested that if they had to remove accessories, the remote and case would have been missed more than the dock. (That would be my sentiment, but I don’t presume that my preferences are somehow indicative of the whole, unlike many commentators.)

“Decontenting” is an apparently common practice of the auto industry: increase profits by removing standard features and making them extras, rather than raising the sticker price. (See the bottom of this page.) It’s best, of course, if it’s a feature that the customer won’t miss overmuch — i.e., the cost of including it outweights the benefit derived from including it — otherwise there’s a general hue and cry.

An odd link correction request from PalmOne
Monday, August 2, 2004 at 10:28 PM | PDA

Got an unusual e-mail the other day from a Cooper Marcus at PalmOne — the hardware successor to Palm — notifying me (redundantly) of recent corporate changes (Palm to PalmOne, which has also acquired Handspring) and would I mind updating my links to the Palm, Palm Store and Handspring sites to the new URLs? He cited a link from this site, dated May 2002.

You know, this is something that could be done a lot more efficiently at their end by simply forwarding to the new URLs: a lot less labour intensive than e-mailing everyone who ever linked to them. There’s also this feeling I have that links in old blog entries should be allowed to expire, or at least be accurate for the time: after three years and something like 1,600 entries, I don’t think I like the precedent of having to maintain and update links for all time. So phooey.

Clearly an exercise in supporting the new corporate branding — he also asked that the new name (“PalmOne”) be used, to which I say “fine”. But by asking everyone to update their links instead of forwarding them themselves, they might also be trying a bit of search engine optimization, by boosting the new pages’ ranking past the old pages. Years of the old Palm and Handspring names, with thousands of instances of relevant keywords linking to the old URLs, may well represent a very significant obstacle to overcome.

If they’re trying to kill “Palm” as an identifier, they’ll have their work cut out for them. Most of the people I talk to don’t understand “PDA” or “handheld”; they understand “Palm” or even — quelle horreur — “Palm Pilot.” And didn’t I see a trailer for Little Black Book, which features a Tungsten C, in which the characters refer to the gadget as a “Palm”?

Apple Product Cycle
Wednesday, July 28, 2004 at 10:03 PM | Mac

The Apple Product Cycle is a brilliant parody, not so much of Apple’s product development (though it does skewer its launch and ship dates), but of the ridiculous reactions of Mac fanboys — and the tech media — to expected or rumoured product releases. It’s funny because it’s true. Via Cult of Mac.

Review of new iPods for “power users”
Wednesday, July 28, 2004 at 10:04 AM | MP3

iPodlounge has a detailed review of the new iPods (released last week) from the point of view of current iPod owners and audiophiles. Useful if, like me, you’ve got an aging iPod — mine’s an original 5-gigabyte model — and you’re thinking about upgrading once a modicum of spare cash presents itself. Via Daring Fireball Linked List.

Camera phone hysteria
Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 1:40 PM | Cellular, Digital Photography

You may have noticed a certain amount of hysteria out there about the presence of camera phones — cellphones with a built-in digital camera. Apparently they could be used for all sorts of malfeasance, from pantsuto fetishism to industrial espionage. Case in point: at the Newmarket reptile show last month, there was a notice on the community centre banning digital cameras in PDAs and phones. This was a community centre where selling reticulated pythons was legal, but they were deathly afraid that someone might use their phone to surreptitiously take a picture of you taking a pee.

The reaction to camera phones is not unlike what happened when the inexpensive Kodak film camera was introduced in 1888 (via Kottke).

In-depth AirPort Express review
Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 1:17 PM | Mac, WiFi

If you’re thinking of picking up an AirPort Express base station, like I am, then this (typically) in-depth review by ArsTechnica’s Eric Bangeman is a must-read (via Gizmodo and MacSlash).

AirPort Express availability
Saturday, July 17, 2004 at 10:07 AM | Mac, WiFi

The AirPort Express base station has begun shipping, and is moreover now available for order in Canada, though Apple’s online store has a three- to four-week wait (Canadian Apple Store listing for AirPort Express). A salesguy at B.Mac yesterday — we were there to take Florence computer shopping — attributed the delay (previous entry) to the regulatory approval process. Radio transmitters, you know.

Blogging from your Palm
Friday, July 9, 2004 at 5:09 PM | PDA

HBlogger, currently in beta, is a Palm OS application that allows you to post to your blog (Blogger, LiveJournal and Movable Type) from an Internet-connected Palm OS handheld (via Palm Infocenter). This plus Bluetooth connection sharing — or an affordable and strong GPRS signal — and I’m set.

The Missing Sync
Wednesday, July 7, 2004 at 3:05 PM | Mac, PDA

The Missing Sync 4, available next month, is a full replacement for the increasingly creaky HotSync Manager for Mac OS X. Previous iterations of the Missing Sync have enabled Mac compatibility with a whole whack of handhelds, Palm OS or otherwise. This version integrates all the previous hacks for Palm OS handhelds (Sony Clié, Tapwave Zodiac, Garmin iQue) and adds features not available in HotSync. Me, I’m looking at the iPhoto plugins and the Internet sharing via Bluetooth.

This software is what will enable Palm Cobalt compatibility with the Mac; PalmSource had earlier indicated that they would not ship a Mac version of HotSync for Cobalt, but that third-party solutions would be available (see previous entry). Here’s that third-party solution, even though no Cobalt devices have shipped yet.

In the meantime, this’ll be compatible with Palm OS 4 and OS 5 devices. This means that Jen’s m500 and my Tungsten T2 will work with this, though OS 3.x devices won’t — too bad for imminent switchers Florence (Palm m105) and David (Palm Vx), who will have to use HotSync (which is at least free).

iPod mini available internationally; AirPort Express not listed in Canada
Wednesday, July 7, 2004 at 11:23 AM | MP3, Mac, WiFi | 2

Apple is now taking pre-orders for the iPod mini from international customers; they will begin shipping on July 24. The mini’s availability has been limited to the U.S. for months due to high demand and constrained supply (previous entry). The Canadian price is $349.

(Meanwhile, why doesn’t AirPort Express appear in Apple’s Canada Store? The Canadian page says “Coming soon.” I’d love to know what’s behind that.)

Windows as a bad neighbourhood
Sunday, June 6, 2004 at 11:11 PM | Mac | 4

John Gruber’s “Daring Fireball” essays invariably get widely circulated around the Mac web, and for good reason; his latest is no exception. In it, he argues that the reason why there isn’t any spyware, malware, and other assorted crapware on the Mac is because Mac users have absolutely no tolerance for it.

Especially interesting — startling, actually, because it’s so clever — is the analogy he makes to urban decay:

My answer to question posed earlier — why are Windows users besieged with security exploits, while Mac users suffer none? — is that Windows is like a bad neighborhood, strewn with litter, mysterious odors, panhandlers, and untold dozens of petty annoyances. Many Windows users are simply resigned to the fact that their computers contain software that is not under their control. And if they’ll tolerate an annoying application that badgers them with pop-up ads, well, why not a spyware virus that logs every key you type, then sends them back to the creator? …
The Mac is like a good neighborhood, where the streets are clean and the crime rate low. You don’t need bars on your windows in a good neighborhood; you don’t need anti-virus software on the Mac.

Which doesn’t do his argument justice, because doing it justice would require a hella long quote. Worth reading in full.

Credulity Online
Thursday, May 13, 2004 at 4:01 PM | Mac | 1

A cursory check of Applelegal.com would indicate that it’s not run by Apple Computer, and it’s certainly not their legal department. There’s the About page, for example, which says: “Welcome to Apple Legal, a Macintosh software review site.” (Emphasis mine.) Can’t imagine why they’d pick such a confusing URL, though, unless it’s deliberately to catch people who’d type such things in, hoping to find Apple Legal — but that’s so pre-Google.

In any event, somebody got taken in, and wrote a lengthy screed denouncing Apple for a snotty browser-detection message. Considering that her entire premise is wrong, her over-the-top outrage makes her look (and feel, I bet) pretty foolish. [Edit: Since corrected, to her credit.] But mistakes happen, especially if you’re not familiar with the material. And it’s an easy thing in the blogging world to fulminate before checking the details (cf. Slashdot, RTFA, etc.) — boy, don’t I know that!

But a Mac news site (that solicits donations) should really know better. [Update: Rob’s removed the entry without running a correction.]

iTunes ×2
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 8:18 PM | Mac

As advertised, iTunes 4.5 plays nice with fast user switching. It used to get confused when one user launched iTunes while another user’s iPod was still attached. That’s been resolved. And, if both users have iTunes running, you can share your music libraries as though you were on two separate computers on the same network. (Not that I tried this before, so for all I know this was the case in earlier versions.)

New Zires; PalmOne’s upgrade path
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 2:02 PM | PDA

Also this morning, there are two new Zire-branded handhelds from PalmOne:

Somewhat off-topic. The Palm OS version number on these handhelds is 5.2.8. Upgrades are the purview of the hardware manufacturers, not PalmSource (the OS company), and I’m not sure what PalmOne wants its installed base to do. They haven’t released any OS upgrades since 4.1 — you’re stuck on 5.0 if you have an original Tungsten T, for example — so they may implicitly want you to buy a new handheld to get the latest OS features. (The upgrades to the calendar and address book apps are ideal for their OS X equivalents, Address Book and iCal, what with the multiple calendar categories, address book photos, and birthdays, so of course I want to lay hands on them.)

But so many of the new handhelds lack the Universal Connector: all the Zires (except the just-discontinued Zire 71) and the Tungsten E. Anyone with a Universal Connector equipped handheld — say, the m500 series — who wants, say, a Zire 72 will have to ditch any accessories (the landline modem, the original keyboard) bought for the original gadget. Generally speaking the handhelds lacking the connector are entry-level devices: no one is going to “upgrade” from an m515 to a Zire 21. But it’s possible that someone might replace a broken m515 with a Tungsten E, and the camera-equipped Zires have definite upgrade appeal, if I’m any indication (see above). So I’m surprised that they left it out.

This may not apply to enough people for PalmOne to worry about it, but I do wonder about the upgrade path for existing users, whether it’s software or hardware. Palm originally offered regular OS upgrades at the very least. “Buy everything new again” is not something that would please a customer; it might even cost sales.

Mac software updates
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 12:53 PM | Mac

A whole pile of software updates kept me busy this morning:

Whew! (And so far nothing has exploded yet.)

Security alert: Mac networks susceptible to irony
Thursday, April 22, 2004 at 6:21 PM | Mac, Personal | 1

Yesterday we set up my broken-screened iBook with a surplus 15-inch monitor from Jen’s school. It still needed a new keyboard and mouse to be complete, but once it was set up we had a (somewhat awkward) second Mac workstation. I was looking forward to having a bit of networking set up between the two computers, having two Macs available in the household at any one time …

… and then irony struck. My Airport Base Station blew this afternoon. Not sure if it’s fixable — I’ve still got to do a bit of research — but here’s what happened. It couldn’t maintain a connection with the cable modem for more than a few seconds after rebooting. It could generate a wireless LAN fine enough; it just couldn’t stay connected to the Internet.

(No, I didn’t install the dodgy Airport 3.4 update. It’s a snow base station, not Extreme. At least I don’t think I installed the update I installed an awful lot of updates on the iBook last night … )

So much for that little experiment. I’ll see if it’s fixable, but it’s not worth the cost or effort to replace the base station at this moment. (It’s provided non-stop service for over two years; I don’t think that’s too bad.)

Another D70 review
Thursday, April 15, 2004 at 10:54 AM | Digital Photography

This Nikon D70 review, while detailed, doesn’t focus on menu lists and histograms (see previous entry); it looks at the camera from a photographer’s perspective — i.e., what’s it like to shoot with this thing? — which is actually useful (via Gizmodo). Yes, I want one.

All hail Bluetooth
Wednesday, April 14, 2004 at 9:53 AM | Bluetooth, Cellular, Mac

A man, an unlimited data plan, and a whole whack of devices and software: Matt’s a convert to Bluetooth, using his PowerBook and his T68i to connect anywhere there’s a GPRS signal, among other things. His mind boggles at the idea of ubiquitous net access. It’s something I’ve been coveting for a while, and something I’ll make a priority when I safely re-ensconce myself somewhere urban.

New eMac
Tuesday, April 13, 2004 at 11:55 AM | Mac

The eMac, often the forgotten sibling in Apple’s product lineup, is the first Apple product to receive an upgrade in three months. Price: $1,049 or $1,299 (Cdn), depending on the optical and hard drive options. Though it now has the same processor speed as my 17-inch iMac (1.25 GHz, up from 1 GHz), it’s actually more powerful in two aspects: the processor has a 512-KB L2 cache, which means it’s a 7457-class G4, previously only found in PowerBooks (the iMac has a 7455 with 256 KB of L2); and the DVD burner in the $1,299 model is an 8× drive, whereas those found currently in iMacs and Power Macs are only 4× (the PowerBooks’ DVD burners are 2×). That at least suggests where some things may be going with other models.

Keyboard as lust object
Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 2:25 PM | Mac

Drool. The only bright side in having to use a Power Mac 7200 as my workstation last fall was that it had an excellent keyboard — a good thing in journalism, don’t you think? I heard about this thing last year and can understand full well why (1) everyone wants one and (2) it’s heavily backordered until the end of this month. (Damn!) Here’s Engst’s review of the Tactile Pro Keyboard. (via Slashdot)

Update 4/8: Boing Boing and Gizmodo have picked up the story. It just got a lot harder to get one, I think.

Nikon D70 review
Monday, April 5, 2004 at 7:32 PM | Digital Photography

Nikon’s low-cost digital SLR, the D70, is now available: I saw one at the Henry’s in downtown Ottawa on Saturday, where, at C$1,899, it cost $500 more than the camera it’s up against, the Canon Digital Rebel (which has been reduced to C$1,399). Is it worth it? Wade through the review at DPReview, which, as usual, is exhaustive to a fault. (Jesus, people, is 28 pages of menu lists and histograms really necessary?) The bottom line, which you’ll find on page 27:

[The D70 is] a camera which is a significant step ahead of the EOS 300D in terms of build quality and feature set and a match, and in some instances better from an image quality point of view.
I am very pleased to see Nikon stepping up with a quality camera which doesn’t compromise on build quality, feature set or image quality and yet offers superb value for money. There’s no risk involved in the D70’s slightly higher price compared to the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel), it’s absolutely worth it.

In particular, the D70 is a lot faster than the Rebel, and in terms of shutter lag and startup times is a pretty fast digital SLR, full stop. Interesting. (via DigitalSLR.org)

Update: I should also mention Glen “Instapundit” Reynolds’s moonlighting-on-Gizmodo review of the D70.

iPod mini delayed internationally
Thursday, March 25, 2004 at 7:13 PM | Mac

When it comes to the supply channel, I’ve noticed that Apple usually tries to err on the side of caution: better to have too little in the channel than too many. Shortages are better than unsold stock piling up in warehouses. (Remember the sudden drop-off in flat-panel iMac demand, for example.) But the iPod mini, on the other hand, is in short supply because there just aren’t enough of those little four-gigabyte hard drives available; as a result, the international release has been pushed back from April to July.

So, another parts shortage. So what does it mean? It’s at least in part due to demand forecasts that turned out to be too conservative; they would have ramped things up differently — tried to order more hard drives from Hitachi, delayed release, or delayed international release. But then if they weren’t expecting limited supply and strong demand, they wouldn’t have opted for a two-tier rollout. In any event, it’s quite different from the conventional wisdom, which was that it was going to bomb.

Beating SanDisk to the WiFi punch?
Thursday, March 25, 2004 at 12:41 PM | PDA

It’s a new manufacturer so it’s wise to be skeptical — I’ve never heard of these guys before — but a Palm-compatible SDIO WiFi card is reportedly in development. Which of course gets everyone’s hopes up, since SanDisk has repeatedly pushed back the release of its own wireless card, at least for the Palm (see previous entries: SD WiFi card delays, Delayed again).

Treo 600 comes to Canada
Tuesday, March 23, 2004 at 7:45 PM | Cellular, PDA | 1

The Treo 600, which has inspired unhealthy levels of technolust south of the border, is now available in Canada from Rogers — but, at $600 and up depending on the plan, not cheaply.

Professor iPod
Thursday, February 26, 2004 at 11:40 AM | MP3, Mac

Wired has an interview with “Professor iPod” Michael Bull, talking about the social impact of that gadget. Actually it’s a bit of a misnomer, since he’s an expert on the social impact of personal stereos, from Walkmans on (profile).

If I had finished my Ph.D. — social history of music — I would have been all over this guy. Since I was interested in the divide between public and private music (performances vs. listening at home) and active and passive music (playing vs. listening), as well as the usual gender and class stuff, his work would have fit right in.

Now that I think of it, doesn’t GarageBand do something in terms of invigorating the active aspect of music, opening up opportunities for playing and, through sharing the music, performing that otherwise would have had obstacles insurmountable for some — whether through lack of lessons or lack of technology (not being able to afford Pro Tools or the bank of sound equipment plugged into the back of a Power Mac).

iPod mini’s hard drive costs nearly twice as much retail
Thursday, February 26, 2004 at 11:29 AM | MP3

“The $249 iPod mini contains a $479.95 Hitachi MicroDrive,” says Jonathan Hudson. Now, leaving aside the question of whether or not you can strip out the iPod mini’s hard drive for use elsewhere (iPodlounge), and save a bundle on a CF microdrive thereby, let’s look at that again. The US$249 iPod mini contains a US$479.95 microdrive. Anyone still think it, and other MP3 players using the same part, are overpriced? (via Boing Boing)

No Palm Cobalt for the Mac
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 at 7:44 PM | Mac, PDA

PalmSource’s decision to drop Mac compatibility from Cobalt (formerly known as Palm OS 6) is, on the surface, maddening. But this cloud may have a cobalt-thorium G silver lining.

Cobalt will have a different PIM architecture that renders it incompatible with the current Palm Desktop. The current Palm Desktop for Mac, however, sucks — and sucks hard, and the HotSync Manager is only barely on speaking terms with iSync. Mark/Space has already announced that it will release a version of Missing Sync for Palm Cobalt devices — they’ve made or announced similar software to get Sony Cliés, Pocket PCs and Danger Hiptops to sync up with a Mac. They might, in other words, come up with a solution better than anything PalmSource could come up with.

It also raises the question: assuming that the PIM architecture is readily accessible to third parties (as HotSyncing is not), why might not Apple itself engineer Cobalt compatibility directly into iSync? At least one commenter in the Palm Infocenter story’s comments raised that possibility, drawing an analogy with Microsoft ending IE development as Apple released Safari.

The problem this time is that the alternatives aren’t in place in time to reassure nervous consumers. There are almost certainly a lot of pissed off Mac/Palm users out there today.

GarageBand review
Friday, February 6, 2004 at 10:41 PM | Mac

Ars Technica reviews are lots more thorough than what the mainstream tech press can come up with, and Andy Deitrich’s take on GarageBand is no different — it provides exactly the sort of detail I was looking for, in terms of what it can do and what its limitations are.

Track planning on the Mac
Tuesday, February 3, 2004 at 9:31 PM | Mac, Model Railroading | 1

Most model railroad track planning software is Windows-only. Empire Express 1.5 runs on Macs — including OS X — and is relatively simply to use, but limited. For one thing, it doesn’t appear to handle grades and separations. This is important if you’re hoping that the track on top will clear the track beneath it, or if you’re trying to keep your grades under control. (I’m doodling with ideas of geared locomotives and logging railroads, which means grades can go nuts, but still.)

New Cliés
Tuesday, February 3, 2004 at 9:02 PM | PDA

Obligatory mention of the two new Cliés announced today by Sony Japan: the TH55 has a full 320×480 screen and built-in Wi-Fi; the TJ37 has a 320×320 screen and the usual god-awful Sony buttons; both have a built-in digital camera. Read more at the usual sources: Brighthand, Palm Infocenter.

Nikon Coolpix 8700
Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 5:12 PM | Digital Photography

Also at the same time that Nikon announced the D70 (see previous entry), they announced the 8-megapixel, 8x optical zoom Nikon Coolpix 8700, an upgrade of their 5-megapixel Coolpix 5700 (via Gizmodo). Definitely tempting as an alternative to a digital SLR.

iBook logic board program
Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 8:38 AM | Mac | 1

After lots of reports of logic-board failures on iBooks, along with threats of class-action lawsuits (background from Wired), Apple has announced a program to cover logic-board failures for the next three years, replacing faulty boards at no cost to the customer, and refunding any service costs already incurred. Some people will be delighted to hear this; some of them went through quite a few replacement iBooks that exhibited the same problem. Must have been frustrating.

Still, based on Apple’s past behaviour regarding noisy Power Macs (see previous entry) and iPod batteries, it might be a mistake to characterize this as an action taken “under threat of a class-action lawsuit,” as Macintouch does. Rightly or wrongly, Apple seems to have a practice of not commenting on repair and replacement programs until they’re in place and ready to roll, which means they’re silent on the issue longer than they could be. As a result, they don’t move fast enough to satisfy their customers, who know about the problems long before the program is ready. To be fair, Apple isn’t likely to know that it’s more than an isolated issue until they get complaints by the truckload, but they’d benefit from a quicker response.

iPod mini reviews
Thursday, January 29, 2004 at 8:23 AM | Mac | 1

MacUser has a review of the iPod mini, which, try as they might, they can’t see the appeal of. Maybe it’s because of this: “While we haven’t been able to test a unit yet, the specifications and price don’t seem to suggest that Apple has a winner on its hands.” Seems to me that a device whose main attraction is its size is something that has to be evaluated physically, rather than the review-by-spec that MacUser writer Kenny Hemphill has come up with — viz.: step one, divide capacity by price and compare with least expensive full-sized iPod; step two, conclude that the mini is a poor value. (I went on about this at length in a previous entry.) You’d think that by now the product reviewers would be able to break out of the pack and say something that hasn’t already been said a dozen times before. [Edited]

Part of the problem is the myopia of much of the Mac commentariat: they know a lot about the Macintosh ecosystem, but don’t do so well outside of it. Thus they can compare the value of a 1.25-GHz iMac vs. a 1.6-GHz Power Mac G5 on price and performance, but wouldn’t do so well comparing them to their PC equivalents. iPods aren’t Macs, they’re consumer electronics devices; yet Mac commentators fall into the habit of comparing one Apple product to another one, instead of comparing them to the other manufacturers’ products — they do exist, people — against which the gadget will be competing. That’s like comparing a US$2,999 17-inch Powerbook to a US$2,999 dual-processor G5 on performance and complaining that the Powerbook is too underpowered for the price: they’re different products serving different needs.

Fortunately, Mac.Ars doesn’t make that mistake, and provides a list of the competing MP3 players in the same price bracket. And Eric Bangeman’s analysis of the potential market is much more thoughtful. Now that’s more like it. (Not a permanent link Link updated.)

Palm OS 6 upgrades
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 at 12:42 PM | PDA

Oh well, it doesn’t all look bad on the Palm front — rumour has it that there may be an OS 6 upgrade for OS 5 devices. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to confirming that OS 5 handhelds are upgradeable; mum was the word when they were first announced. This was vexing to some users who knew perfectly well that OS 5 was an interim port to the ARM platform while they worked on OS 6.

Delayed again
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 at 10:51 AM | PDA

Well, surprise, surprise — the SanDisk WiFi card’s Palm OS drivers have been delayed yet again. See previous entry. Now SanDisk is warning that not every OS 5 handheld will have enough power to run the card. Why on earth did they announce the silly thing in the first place, then? I’m sure that it will turn out that the only Palm capable of running the card will be the Tungsten C — the one with WiFi built-in.

I’m not pleased with the state of peripherals on the Palm OS 5 platform. Despite the fact that the two dominant manufacturers use different memory card formats (palmOne: Secure Digital; Sony: Memory Stick) and different internals, is it not possible to have some equivalent of Pocket PC’s SDIO Now! for the Palm?

Nikon D70 preview
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 at 10:38 AM | Digital Photography

DPReview has a preview of the Nikon D70, a low-cost, 6-megapixel digital SLR that is clearly meant to go up against the Canon Digital Rebel — but, at US$999 for the camera body alone and US$1,299 for the camera plus lens, it’s a bit more expensive. It’s due to be released in March 2004, so we’ll have to wait until then to see how it measures up. Michael Buffington notes that the specs are better than the current Nikon D100 (which he owns). See previous entry; see also Gizmodo.

iPod mini mindset
Wednesday, January 7, 2004 at 11:54 PM | Mac

Yesterday, Rio announced an upgrade to the Rio Nitrus, a small MP3 player with a tiny four-gigabyte hard drive that will sell for $249. Hardly anyone paid attention.

Also yesterday, Apple announced the iPod Mini, a small MP3 player with a tiny four-gigabyte hard drive that will sell for $249. And everybody complained that it was too expensive.

It’s indicative of how thoroughly Apple dominates the MP3 player market that everyone compared the Mini to Apple’s current iPod line, instead of the players in the market segment in which the Mini will compete. It’s also indicative of just how clueless commentators can be.

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Digital SLR blog
Monday, January 5, 2004 at 8:07 AM | Digital Photography

Here’s a new blog dedicated specifically to digital SLR photography (via Matt). I’ll have to keep an eye on this one.

Copyright tariff increases limited to MP3 players
Friday, December 12, 2003 at 5:54 PM | MP3

This saga has been ongoing for more than a year and a half — see previous entries from Jan. 21, 2003, Dec. 11, 2002 and March 12, 2002 — but now we have a final answer from the Copyright Board of Canada regarding the CPCC’s proposed tariff hikes on recordable CDs and DVDs, flash media and hard-drive-based MP3 players like the iPod. And the news is mostly good overall. The Copyright Board has rejected increased tariffs on CDs and new tariffs on DVDs and flash cards (which can be used, after all, for data backup and your own material — I imagine that most flash media is sold for use in digital cameras) and imposed a tariff of up to $25 on hard-drive-based MP3 players. When you consider that the original tariff rate proposed was $21 per gigabyte — or $840 extra on a 40-GB iPod costing $729 — this isn’t bad at all. Read the news: CBC News Online, Globe Technology. See also Richard’s post; he’s been tracking this issue for a long time.

Update: A pretty good CBC News Online backgrounder.

Palm SDIO accessories
Thursday, December 11, 2003 at 1:54 PM | PDA

When I read that the palmOne SDIO digital camera was going to be delayed and rebranded, on the heels of hearing that SanDisk’s WiFi card has been delayed, I began to wonder whether there was something inherent to the Palm OS that made it difficult to produce accessories. You’d think that, with more Palm OS units than Pocket PC units out there with Secure Digital slots, there would be more SDIO accessories for Palm than for Pocket PC, but that’s not the case. Instead, we see the Palm Bluetooth Card still incompatible with OS 5 handhelds a year after they come out, and a WiFi card come out for Pocket PC months before the Palm. Here’s an article that sheds some light on the difficulties, particularly in the context of the SanDisk WiFi card (via Gizmodo).

Update: Brighthand coverage.

Photo tips
Friday, December 5, 2003 at 7:58 AM | Digital Photography

Derrick Story presents some reader-submitted digital photography tips (see also this). My digital photography category is going to be filled with little entries pointing to pages like these. Derrick’s going to feature in a lot of them, I suspect.

Digital SLR covetousness
Thursday, December 4, 2003 at 11:07 PM | Digital Photography

A little gadget lust is part of my normal equilibrium, so it’s not too surprising that, 18 months after buying my current digital camera — a 3.34-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 995 — I’m starting to think about upgrading to a new camera. Not that I can afford a new camera — especially not a digital SLR — but it costs nothing to think about it.

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iPod as digital photography tool
Wednesday, December 3, 2003 at 10:36 AM | Digital Photography, Mac

I’m beginning to think I should just put O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com RSS feed in my sidebar and be done with it. Here’s Derrick Story, he of Digital Photography Pocket Guide fame, writing about using the iPod as a digital photo storage device, thanks to the new card reader from Belkin (which, apparently, despite initial reviews, is not so slow as to be unusable). You can also view, upload, burn to CD and share (via Rendezvous — see Derrick’s earlier article on Rendezvous picture sharing) photos directly from the iPod.

(He said, looking forlornly at his aging, first-generation, 5-GB iPod that can’t do these things.)

Sony Clié UX-50; slow Nokia cameraphone
Wednesday, December 3, 2003 at 9:51 AM | Bluetooth, Cellular, Digital Photography, PDA, WiFi

Mobitopia has a couple of interesting recent articles. One is a rather gushing review of Sony’s top-end Clié, the UX-50, which includes a built-in camera (640×480), Bluetooth and WiFi, but not a cradle or a portrait-mode option for the screen. And it’s pricey. The other article is a complaint about the Nokia 3650’s built-in camera. Apparently its advantage is ubiquity, not speed: you may have the camera with you, but you might not be able to take the damn picture fast enough.

Faxing in Panther
Friday, November 28, 2003 at 7:26 AM | Mac

OS X 10.3 Panther allows you to send faxes from any application through the app’s print panel. Here’s an O’Reilly article on faxing by Wei-Meng Lee that, once again, I should note for future reference. I suppose I should plug the modem back in at some point. Though you can also fax through your mobile phone via Bluetooth, which is pretty cool. (As far as I can tell, faxing via a modem-equipped Base Station is not in the cards.)

Keeping Panther regular
Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 8:43 AM | Mac

I should note this O’Reilly Network article on regular maintenance for Panther for future reference. In two years I have not once repaired permissions or forced periodic maintenance in OS X — and, astonishingly, I appear to have gotten away with it. So far.

Signal strength in Quyon
Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 8:38 AM | Cellular, Pontiac

In Quyon last night to cover a public meeting regarding a proposed engineered landfill site, about which I hope to have a nice article next week. Quyon has a good spot for cellphone signal strength by the Lions Club and ferry dock: I was able to call home without difficulty. But by the time I hit Clarendon Street (Quyon’s main drag), the call began cutting out. In the Pontiac, at least as far as Rogers AT&T Wireless’s network is concerned, all cell towers are on the Ontario side; it may be a matter of being on the wrong side of buildings — something that is less prevalent in cities where there are more cell towers in more directions. Or does that make any sense? I’m just guessing.

SD WiFi card delays
Tuesday, November 25, 2003 at 6:21 PM | PDA, WiFi

Next spring? Oh, for crying out loud — how can SanDisk be almost a year behind schedule on their 802.11b SD card for Palm OS 5? This is something I’d buy just about instantly — in theory, the Bluetooth on my Tungsten T2 is more useful on the road, especially since there aren’t many WiFi hotspots in rural western Quebec, but it’d be nice to surf the web on my Palm at home. (Otherwise, I’d have to figure out how to enable Internet connection sharing via Bluetooth on Panther — the original hack under Jaguar appears to have been disabled as of OS X 10.2.6.) Serious grumblage.

Power to Go — for a price
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 5:03 PM | PDA

Brighthand has a review of the Palm Power to Go, an external battery pack for Universal Connector-equipped Palm handhelds. At US$100/C$150, this clearly isn’t for everyone — not when car chargers and AC adapters are so much cheaper. Palm-branded accessories are usually pricey in any event.

But it sounds like a good idea in certain, limited circumstances. I can think of two: where you are using it heavily for prolonged periods, and it’s inconvenient to recharge it by other means (i.e., you’re using it with the battery pack clipped on), or you’re in a location where charging by other means is simply impossible — say, out in the field somewhere. Ed’s review has some other scenarios.

The ballad of the headless iMac
Thursday, November 20, 2003 at 1:06 PM | Mac

Bill Palmer almost gets it right about people who want a headless iMac — i.e., an affordable, consumer-level Mac without a monitor. It’s only partially about monitor choice, which, Palmer argues, Apple has addressed by providing four screen options (one CRT, three flat panels) across its consumer line.

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MacNET goes off the deep end
Wednesday, November 19, 2003 at 11:33 PM | Mac

For a site that declares its hostility to Mac zealotry and positions itself as a debunker of the Reality Distortion Field, MacNET doesn’t exactly go out of its way to be balanced. Instead, it tends to go off the other deep end. And no clearer case in point could be its reactions — two of them — to Apple’s latest product releases, the 20-inch iMac and the dual 1.8-GHz Power Mac G5.

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Note: Entries prior to November 2003 did not have categories assigned to them, and are not included in category archives; please consult the monthly archives.