Articles for February 2011

Motorola's XOOM tablet has arrived, and with it a slew of other Android Honeycomb products are on the precipice of reaching out to the masses, crushing the iPad! Tech media and Apple critics alike are weaving their webs, claiming Honeycomb is the OS we've all been waiting for — which will bring iPad to it's knees and relegate the iPad as a niche player at best. I'm sorry to break it to all the Apple-haters, but the demise of the iPad is greatly exaggerated.

The problem with this premise is that while Honeycomb may be a big improvement to Android for tablet use, Android has nothing to do with tablet production costs, and ultimately, retail prices. When it comes to tablets and pricing, there is a massive pricing chasm between the horrifically bad product and a good enough solution.

The clock struck midnight and February 10, 2011 was born, but apparently no lines materialized at Verizon retailers. Why?

We heard a lot of hoopla surrounding the supposed "event everyone has been waiting for." Verizon made a special commercial with clocks just about to strike midnight and people in anticipation of being able to get an iPhone on the Verizon network. Jon Stewart was exuberant, claiming "a spring in my step... a certain twinkle in my eye" about the iPhone Verizon announcement. Apple even made the "Twins" commercial showing an iPhone on an AT&T and Verizon network simultaneously. So where are all the Verizon iPhone customers?

Apple's earbuds are neither the best sounding nor best fitting earbuds on the market. They do have two things going for them: they are relatively cheap and have a really nice remote and microphone. Acoustibuds might be the answer for those who don't like the way normal earbuds fit or sound, but don't want to shell out $100 for a nice pair.

Acoustibuds are small pieces of flexible silicone rubber that fit over most standard earbuds to channel the sound directly into the ear. This silicone rubber fits into the ear and helps to prevent the earbud from falling out. They may look like a gimmick, but how do they feel and sound after 9 months?

Adobe released version 10.2 of their Flash Player plugin at the beginning of the month. This latest version adds preliminary support for Stage Video, which is supposed to reduce CPU usage during video playback. In order for Adobe to improve the Flash Player, they need to improve battery life by reducing CPU usage during flash playback. Heavy CPU usage may not be a major factor on desktop computers, but it is on anything using a battery, as it drains the battery quickly. Is this new version any better on the Mac?

Looking at CPU usage will be the way to determine if Adobe Flash has improved or not. The best way to test this new version is to compare it with older versions of the Flash Player and similar sites running HTML5. This test was conducted with Adobe's Flash Player 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. An Aluminum 24" iMac with 4GB of memory, 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, and running Mac OS X 10.6.6 was used as the test platform. Safari version 5.0.3 and Firefox version 4.0b11 were both used to conduct this test.

If you're like me, you have an iPhone and you like it. I started with an iPhone 3G back in the day and recently upgraded to the iPhone 4. It's a great phone. It's a great mobile device. It's just great.

Each weekday I spend anywhere from 60-90 minutes in my car driving to and from the office. I have a handy Kenningston cradle that holds my iPhone 4 front and center while I drive. I use the Jawbone ICON (Thinker) to take incoming calls. It's a driver's perfect world... almost. What can cause frustration is an incoming text message or the "bing" of an incoming e-mail. Currently there is no good way to process and respond to a text message or read an e-mail while speeding along at 60+ mph. There are some that can use one hand to drive and one hand to navigate their iPhone. While I might be able to do that, I'm not willing to press my luck by taking my eyes off the road for more than a second, let alone read while driving.

Apple's Discussion Forum has been down the last two times we checked. Once a few moments ago (16:45 Pacific Time) and once last night (22:00 Pacific Time)..

We have to wonder if this has anything to do with the forthcoming rumored launch of the MacBook Pros or any forthcoming launch. It could be just a maintenance update, or worse — if Apple isn't using Xserves to host this site we can see all sorts of potential problems.

Back in November we delivered the forthcoming MacBook Pro specifications and the radical new direction Apple would be taking the lineup. Since that time, dozens of reports have surfaced with claims of liquid metal chassis to generic MacBook Air-like designs.

Our sources tell us the liquid metal chassis is out, but so is any optical drive. The lack of an optical drive is a radical departure vs the rest of the market, but it is information we believe to be accurate. Apple's optional USB Superdrive should quell any fears for those requiring optical requirements. Dropping the optical drive will extend battery life (larger battery) and allow for a much thinner design. But many more radical design features appear to be arriving in the new MacBook Pros...

Apple's announcement to end production and sales of XServes on January 31, 2011 was a sad day for many Apple IT professionals. To read about the frustration it brings to the Mac community you need to look no further than Apple's own discussion forum on the topic.

One person in the forum said, "This is so unlike Apple, pulling the rug out on us - it's more like a MS move, sounds like they're slipping." Another lamented, "This is horrible news for any ACN out there. We fight tooth and nail to convince business and enterprise that Apple is a valid contender. How OSX Server is "real UNIX' and how Apple servers are more cost effective for licensing and support... To then have to sheepishly explain we have no rack-mounted option, no hot-swap drives or redundant power, no LOM, no actual 'server' - it's embarrassing and destroys Apple's presence in the server room." So this begs the question, does Apple need to be in the Server market? Yes.

The Macintosh operating system comes with it's own screen capture tool called Grab. It's flaws will be very visible if used for any length of time. One of those flaws is the fact is it only saves images in a TIFF file format. Since TIFFs are big and rarely used, every screen grab requires at least a two step process. One step is to capture your screen and the second is to convert the file in another format like JPEG. There is a better way.

LittleSnapper by Realmac software is a must for any screen grabbing user with many advanced features. It makes Apple's Grab look like a high school project. Lets take look at some of the key features of Little Snapper now:

Anyone who has a smart phone or is thinking about a new smart phone knows about Apple's iPhone. It is the biggest name in the smart phone market.  When a new customer decides to buy a smartphone, they first decision to make is if they are going to get an iPhone, or look for another brand.

The biggest threat to Apple is losing their name recognition. They could lose it if another company were to dominate the mobile space (like Microsoft dominated the desktop starting with Windows 95). Lets take a look at the major competitors and see if they are capable of dominating of mobile operating system.

Despite our earlier report of Final Cut Studio and the MacBook Pro arriving in April (notwithstanding Sandybridge taking a slight “detour” to market), there is no indication that FCP has been thrown off its pace, and it is rapidly approaching its launch — with one of its largest updates ever.

The MacBook Pro may very well join the launch, shipping in late April/early May. We continue to hear the new MacBook Pro will arrive with higher resolutions screens, increased battery life, a thin chassis that follows the format of the MacBook Air — and no optical drive. One 15" legacy MacBook Pro model will remain, gaining internal updates only, for those believing they require an onboard optical drive.

Ultimate Electronics plan for rapid expansion hit a major speed bump this past week. The chain is in bankruptcy and all 46 stores are in liquidation mode, yet their going out of business sales are reportedly slow.

Surprisingly, in a consumer electronics market where Apple is a must have, Ultimate Electronics did not sell any Apple products. No iPods, iPads, iPhones, Macs or Apple software — nothing directly manufactured by Apple. Ultimate Electronics only carried a few non-Apple branded cases and minor accessories. Oh and one more thing...

Not only is Nokia using iMovie and Apple's music loops to create their quick-turn marketing videos, but within the video itself, it seems Steve Ballmer has pulled a fast on on Nokia. Evidently Ballmer used Nokia to launch Windows Phone 7 with a new upstart called Nahkia.

Now that Microsoft has successfully inked a deal with Nokia, MeeGo and Symbian are all but dead, leaving Nokia with a new master from Redmond, Washington. Both Nokia and Microsoft needed this deal regardless of the costs, as it delivers Nokia a partner in the OS world and Microsoft a level of credibility in the smart phone market place.

Microsoft's never been good at competing against opponents of equal weight. Rather, Microsoft's typical game is to bully their way into a market over time by outspending the competition. But this business model is expensive as seen in their entertainment division, and it failed with their Windows CE, Plays for Sure and HD-DVD initiatives. When Microsoft is standing toe-to-toe with other giants, we don't suggest placing your bets on Mr. Softie.

Remembering passwords can be a daunting task these days with hundreds of websites now requiring them. One option is to use the same password or to use simple passwords that are easy to remember. This leaves your web presence and even credit cards vulnerable to theft. A better answer is to use an application like 1Password by Agile Web Solutions. 1Password uses a single master password to store all your passwords in a 128-Bit AES encrypted file.

The key features or advantages of using 1Password are:

HP's OS Bowl 2011 is quite a work of creative fantasy. I must admit, I really didn't see Kramer, errrrr, Jon Rubinstein having the imagination to put together such a work of fiction, but there it is (based on Jon's bracket, I certainly hope he doesn't put good money down on any March Madness basketball tournament, because the way he think's he'll be in big trouble).

Now every good piece of fictional writing has some truth sprinkled in, and this is the case when Jon outlined the battle between Windows Phone 7 and RIM's Blackberry.

When the Apple TV 2 debuted last fall, people were hoping for an Apple TV App Store to be among its features. This was not the case and one has to ask why? We know the Apple TV runs the same operating system as the iPhone and iPad, so creating an SDK and app store would be easy.

In its current stand alone state, the Apple TV has no way of controlling applications and this is a big problem for developers. The current remote is used to choose which media to view or listen to, but it is not sufficient to control applications. Apple will have to come up with a better controller, if they want developers to build Apple TV applications.

Motorola's Super Bowl Ad was clever but also very hypocritical. The concept played off of Apple's 1984 famous Super Bowl Ad. However in Motorola's version Apple is "Big Brother" with its dominating iPad and Motorola is the freedom seeking, independent thinking innovator through use of its forthcoming Motorola Xoom tablet. While clever on an emotional level, the attempt shows hypocrisy and fails for these three reasons:

We've surveyed Apple retail stores all across America. From small stores in Michigan, to Apple's flagship 5th Avenue store in NY city, and found an alarming amount of retail locations are no longer displaying the Apple TV for demonstration.

The only consistent pattern we found was that within Apple's small stores (30ft-wide locations), none of them carried an Apple TV for demonstration.

Must be somewhere warm (relatively speaking). Are these people for real?! Come on, 7 days still to go... 

 While Google should be happy with Android's success so far, they are showing signs to the contrary. Since Google gives Android away for free, they can only make money on selling ads on the Android platform. They don't talk about how much they make from these ads either.

Even though Android is increasing in market share, that does not mean Google is making money on all that market share. Since Android is open source and device makers can remove Google from the devices, this could be a danger for Android's future development if Google can't make enough money.

 Apple cares little about market share, much more about profits. For companies like Microsoft and Intel, market share and profits go hand in hand. This is not true for Apple.

Apple competed with Microsoft not through market share, but through margins. They proved this when Steve Jobs came back and ended the licensing program for the Mac OS. Steve showed you can make a lot of money without dominant market share. They are now doing the same thing with Android.

There's been much barking recently between Mark and Karl in the last several podcasts, and with iPad 2 nearly upon us, it's high-time these guys lay it on the line.

So it's time to throw down the gloves and have it out. Without further ado - Mark vs Karl iPad 2 Predictions: (queue drum roll please...):