An internal email leaked on Thursday offers more details (and confirms others) about the pending iPhone 3G launch, including an “unbrick” procedure by AT&T/Apple at first purchase, higher data pricing plans, a three device limit at AT&T stores, among others
Tags: iPhone
Since its introduction in January, Mac users (new and old) have been waiting patiently for Time Capsules (TC) to start appearing in retail stores. For me – I got lucky and wandered into the Apple Store on Friday to find that they had actually materialized earlier in the day.
Setup: Getting the product installed into my home network was a little more difficult than I expected, but not terribly so. For me – the hang up was that I was not going to use the Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) to share out my Internet connection. My goal was simply to turn this device into another client on my Cat6 home network. After installing the AirPort utility provided with the packaging onto my MacBook Pro, configuring Time Capsule to recognize itself as a NAS only device was fairly straightforward. For at least the beginning, I disabled the wireless radio and plugged it in via one of its 4 available Cat6 connections. Opening config stuff was fairly standard: 1) give the device a name, decide on DHCP or manual IP config, etc. The only slightly annoying thing is that the Airport Utility does like to reset/reboot the Time Capsule after you make almost any type of change to the configuration. Mine must have rebooted 8 times before I had made the last of my changes.
Initial Backup: As far as the integration with Time Machine, Time Capsule proved very intuitive and straight forward. The only curious thing is that it will not let me change my TM preferences unless my laptop was plugged in. Strangely, I could perform an instant backup with the laptop running on battery power. As many people have wondered, you can attach another USB-based hard-drive to the TC and use that drive(s) as the source of the TM backups if you like. Doing so would essentially make the entire size of TC available as traditional NAS Storage. Plugged in via my Ethernet connection, the initial TM backup of my 160GG (40 GB used) hard-drive took about 2.5 hours. I assume the speed would be significantly reduced if I was using the wireless. It looks as though Apple creates a sparse disk image bundle on the Time Capsule and then mounts that during a TM operation. This essentially leaves one file on the root of the hard drive after the initial backup is performed. You can mount this image at any time, and you will observe a folder structure similar to when Time Machine is operating against a locally attached USB hard drive.
Next the Wireless: After getting TM working to my satisfaction, I wanted to see if I set up another wireless network in my house. As with other AEBS units, this was very simple to do. I simply chose to put my TC into “Bridge Mode” and away I was. With 2 minutes I had a second wireless network up and running. For curiosity sake I setup the network to operate on the 5G Hz 802.11n configuration. I was curious to see how much faster the speed was than if I configured it to be backward compatible with 802.11a/b/g. Not surprisingly, performance on the “N” network was much better. I achieved average file transfers of almost twice the speed as I would have seen if I had been connected to my 802.11g network. Once I unplugged the Ethernet cable and went totally wireless, my Time Machine backups were very seamless and after a few hours of work, I stopped noticing the backups actually taking place.
Aesthetics: Like the AppleTV, the Time Capsule device does get fairly hot to the touch. From a size comparison, it is a little bit bigger (height-wise) than the AppleTV. It does not however have the smooth edges that the AppleTV sports. For some reason, its exterior design is more reminiscent of the last generation of AEBS.
Final Thoughts: Overall, Time Capsule is a great consumer device; but I have to believe that many power Mac users would cite SuperDuper’s (http://www.shirt-pocket.com) ability to perform backups to image files stored on a network share as a comparable feature set in a backup solution. Interestingly, I am using both backup strategies: Time Machine & Time Capsule to protect the incremental versions of my everyday files and SuperDuper to generate a weekly backup image of my entire hard drive. My last comment would be this: a 500GB TC unit should be more than sufficient to take care of any single MacBook or MacBook Pro archiving strategy. If however you are looking to service multiple Macs or work with large amounts of video across the network, then the 1TB version will definitely be the way to go. Enjoy!
Tags: Apple
Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. For the past 11 months I have been using Windows Vista on my home development PC. When it first went RTM Gold on November 8th 2006, I took advantage of my MSDN license to install and put it through its paces. In the ensuing 11 months, I have gone through a series of emotional ups and downs with Microsoft’s new OS. This is my chance to vent a little bit against MS, the Vista detractors and even the odd CNET blogger who recently called for Microsoft to abandon the Vista platform entirely. (http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9785337-7.html)
The Good with Vista
1) A number of things have struck me since I first started using Vista. The first of which is (IMHO) the ease of the installation process. Now before anyone starts shaking their fists at this comment, keep in mind my number one recommendation when installing a new OS: “Never upgrade an existing OS with a new one! Always wipe and rebuild the machine first”. With this said, MS has taken the effort to create a universal base OS image which expands and installs onto the target machine in a fashion which is a lot more streamline than in the past. There are fewer questions to answer upfront and contrary to some FUD reported on the Internet, Vista installation only requires a total of 2 reboots before the OS is ready to be used for the first time. As someone who has performed hundreds of XP installs and has installed Vista now a dozen or so times, I can also say that the time to install is indeed shorter now than it has been in previous versions.
2) Improved security and a much cleaner user experience – Microsoft pissed off a lot of 3rd party software vendors (i.e. Symantec) when they announced that they were going to change the security model of Vista (by refusing to allow kernel patching), however this was a much needed paradigm shift that was sorely overdue (IMHO). Fortunately or unfortunately (depending upon your perspective) they also introduced UAC [User Access Control] as another salvo in the improved security strategy. To say that UAC has been controversial would be an understatement at best. The area in which Vista gets the highest grades from me is on its UI re-design. Some people may not feel that the eye-candy, widgets and Aero interface are really worth the cost of the upgrade, but I know that I would never want to be forced to go back to the Windows XP shell again.
3) Improved quality of native applications – Microsoft did a real nice job on improving the usability and quality of the applications that get bundled with their operating system. Most notably – IE7. In eleven months of exclusive Vista usage, I have yet experience an application crash that has IE7′s fingerprints attached to any of the standard OS logging artifacts. I have also been pleasantly surprised by the quality of Photo Gallery (the amateur digital photographer now has almost no use for any other 3rd party photo editing application) and the ease of use of DVD Maker. I also appreciate the backup features that are bundled in Vista which allow you to make complete image backups of your machine. (Thank goodness, I’ll never have to buy a copy of Norton Ghost again)
The Bad with Vista
- Multiple Versions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, Business & Enterprise – What a total joke!
- Pricing: $319 for Vista Ultimate (retail), $249 for the upgrade; I don’t care how much R&D MS spent over 5 years, this is also a joke! Even the $219 (retail) / $149 for Home Premium is too high.
- Broken Promises: Microsoft has sorely missed both delivery dates and on delivering promised features. Those of you who paid extra money for Vista Ultimate, are still hoping that they didn’t pay an extra $100 for just a Texas Hold-Em game. On another note, why exactly did it take 5 years again to deliver Vista to the public?
- Where the heck is SP1?: This one is the most egregious IMHO. Now I realize that most people automatically get updates pushed to them through their broadband connection and Windows Update, but there is a large number of people (and organizations) who simply will not touch Vista until the first SP is released. Microsoft has had enough time (11 months) to have the first SP out the door. The latest has SP1 not being available until the middle of 2008 (and we all know how good of a reputation MS has for meeting their delivery dates). The funny part of this whole thing is that I believe Vista to be a pretty stable OS at this point. Even if SP1 is just a superficial milestone, why can’t MS simply throw the millions of soon-to be adopters a bone by releasing it already?
It’s not all Microsoft’s Fault
Many a blogger and technology reviewer have cited poor early driver support for Vista during the first 3-6 months of availability. Shame on the hardware vendors who have had the Vista driver specification for almost 18 moths before Vista’s release and did not have compatible drivers ready on the consumer launch date. Most notable offenders: (NVidia, Logitech, Creative)
Damn the FUD Mongers
You all know who you are (spreading Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) : “Vista requires all new hardware”, “You have to upgrade your memory”, “You have to buy a new video card!”, etc., etc. Although some would contend that this produced the fodder for some pretty funny ads from the boys from Cupertino, this drove me crazy. Bottom line: if you have a PC that is older than three years old, you shouldn’t assume that a new OS (regardless of who makes it) will run as fast as the OS that the machine originally came with. You are smoking something if you think this is a reasonable expectation. Besides, most people get a new OS when they buy a new machine anyway; and those that do upgrade their PC’s OS? They already know this anyway!
Legacy Application Compatibility
Reports of legacy applications that are not compatible with Vista have been greatly over-exaggerated by many (IMHO). However as users we have come to expect that our applications should work with new versions of an OS. Whose fault is this? Well that’s pretty simple, it is Microsoft’s fault! Or is it?
The reason why Microsoft has reigned supreme in the desktop OS market for so long is simple: they made a fanatical effort to ensure application compatibility from one version of the OS to the next. This has resulted in an OS codebase which still suffers from years of band-aids and hard-coded SHIMs that the Windows development team could not possibly get themselves out from under. So here we are: to ensure software compatibility Microsoft has to deliver an OS which is poorly engineered from the get-go. In order to deliver a well-crafted OS, Microsoft would have to completely break compatibility with all of the existing software that is out in the market. What would you do if you were in charge of Microsoft? I would love to see Microsoft be upfront and announce that the next release of Windows will completely break compatibility in favor of an OS foundation that will ensure the product line for the next 10-15 years.
“Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself”
My ardent belief in the first amendment requires me to recognize the opinions of others even if I deem those opinions as naive, foolhardy or even WRONG! Give Don Resienger’s recent posting on NEWS.COM’s blog all the credit that it deserves: it managed to get my blood boiling a little bit, but at the same time it presented arguments that I’d be hard pressed to refute. I seriously doubt that Microsoft got much more than a chuckle out of Don’s article, but it did make me wonder: despite being reasonably satisfied with Vista (I’d give it a 8 “out of” 10 rating), why do I feel “sheepish” when I tell people I work with that I am in fact running Vista on my main PC? The answer may not be simple but I’ll give it a try:
The Apple Factor
The old adage of a politician being asked to specify what constitutes pornography holds true in this discussion: “I don’t how to define it, but I know it when I see it!” These words are very appropriate when thinking about exactly what constitutes a great product design. For years, Apple has been able to (with very few exceptions) release products that have captured the imagination of the consumer. Regardless of what you may think about Steve Jobs, Apple’s agreement with AT&T, or even the issue of DRM music – there are really very few people who can argue with the aesthetics of Apple’s products. However, when people try to bring Microsoft into a discussion of product design, I always shake my head because it’s like trying to compare well … apples to windows.
Emotion & the Consumer
In today’s marketplace, most people buy things for 1 of 2 reasons: (a) the target product is truly a necessity of life or (b) because the consumer believes the target product will produce some perceived amount of enjoyment. For the most part, the majority of consumer electronic appliances fall into the second of these 2 categories. When we browse/walk through consumer electronic sites/stores most of us are able to realize that difference between necessity and luxury. However, when we ultimately decide to purchase that $400 iPhone or that $600 PS3 – it’s the belief that the transaction will deliver some level of happiness that allows us to justify an otherwise superficial purchase. Besides, who spends a lot of money on consumer electronics without the expectation of being able to brag just a little bit? Personally, if I find myself showing something off, it is usually because I have become emotionally attached to it. Which returns me to my original question: which would you rather get emotionally attached to?
Apples or Windows?
The first is a fruit and could arguably be classified as a food delicacy, while the second is a fundamental requirement for most modern day dwellings. Ask a person to pick up a piece of fruit, and it has the potential to elicit an emotional, tactile or even taste-sensitive response. As human beings, we tend to invest ourselves in things that elicit strong emotional responses. The folks @ FrogDesign know this only too well (www.frogdesign.com). As a strategic-creative consultancy firm, FrogDesign looks to create design prototypes which enable products and services to elicit strong emotional responses from the average consumer. What do you think is more likely to garner an emotional response from the consumer: an operating system or something that they can touch, hold and interact with every day?
“The WOW Starts Now“……. When?
Microsoft’s marketing campaign for the release of Vista is interesting and has been the source of derision by many in the industry. By their own expectation, Vista is supposed to instill emotion within the consumer (the WOW factor). Herein lies what I believe is my biggest problem with Vista. Is it a good product? Will it eventually be required by the majority of consumers looking to buy a new PC? Does it offer productivity improvements? Is it an improvement over previous versions? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES. However, eleven months after I installed it onto my main PC, I am still waiting to realize that emotional attachment that Microsoft promised. Better than XP? Yes! But do I bring up Vista during conversations with my friends and family? Not anymore.
By the way, if you’d like to see pictures of my kids – I happen to have my iPhone right here.
/8-)
Tags: MS Windows
When it debuted at the end of June for $599, I highly criticized any and all who blindly plunked down their hard-money for the “product of the decade.” $599 was entirely too high (IMHO) for a device which featured functionality which many of us already have in multiple portable devices. In my case, having been a recent purchaser of a 2nd generation Nano & recent convert over to a Blackberry 8800, the iPhone was a sexy yet dramatically overpriced toy that I just could not justify. However, that all changed on September 5th with the most recent Steve Jobs media-event. Like many others, I had expected the news event to announce one or more changes to the iPod product line. We all suspected an “phone less” iPhone, it was indeed introduced as the iPod Touch. With capacities @ 8GB & 16GB, this device would deliver a product offering that replicates the beautiful touch interface that the iPhone introduced. However, as I fell in love with concept of a sexier iPod I also came to learn that the iPod Touch would only offer some of the functions of the iPhone. I came to fear that if I bought one, I would quickly come to regret that I did not have the full feature set offered by the iPhone. What I wasn’t expecting was for Jobs to end his presentation with the declaration that the 8GB iPhone would be slashed by $200. Immediately, my mind began to scheme.
Before I could bring myself to enter an Apple store for the first time, I had to resolve some issues in my mind:
- Did I want to carry yet another device? I was already carrying around a BB8800, an iPod Nano and a Sony PSP. Well, my daily train commute justifies these indulgences for me, but I have to admit that having to turn off my iPod, rip the earbuds out of of my ears all to answere the inevitable “when are you coming home” phone calls was becoming annoying!
- I had (initially at least) fully subsidized my BB8800 purchase and was completely satisfied with the service and utility of the Blackberry service. Being able to answer compose emails while perusing my Audible.COM collection offered me a lot of enjoyment on the way home from work.
- If I were to indeed buy an iPhone, what would I do with the iPod Nano and that I had purchased not more than 3 1/2 months ago?
- Was my flirtation with the iPhone merely a product of the Apple marketing machine? Would I still be happy with my iPhone 1 year later when undoubtedly larger capacity formats would undoubtedly be available?
Well, before I tell you how I ended up rationalizing the purchase – let me share with you a few of my personal thoughts after just one week of usage:
- As much I love the Nano, the increase in form-factor on the iPhone is really not that big of a deal to me. This phone is still pretty small and surprisingly does not draw much attention to itself when in my pocket. In fact it is smaller in almost all regards when compared to the BB8800.
- Adequate Storage?: it has 8GB of flash-based storage (not a problem for me). Really now, how many songs, podcasts & pictures can you fit on an 8GB device? Well the answer is a lot and certainly enough to hold you over until you redock with iTunes and modify your favorite playlists.
- The touch interface is beautiful, and I really enjoy using it. I think I spent 3 hours the first night just playing my way thorugh all of the menus and configurations options. Once you pick up one of these, you’ll never want to go fuddle around with a Motorola Razr again!
- Built-in WiFi: granted I was not doing that much downloading of data with the BB8800, but navigating pages over the AT&T Edge network is painfully frustrating. The fact that I now may be able to jump on a free WiFi network wherever I go is definitely a luxury that I wouldn’t want to give up.
- The Safari Browser: I was really surprised with how intuitive and how rich an experience that this browser offers. Being able to zoom in and out of web content and be able to have multiple sites loaded at once is a big plus! The iPhone is the first mobile device that truly makes browsing on a hand-held enjoyable from the get-go.
- I down right resent the fact that I had to spend $9.95 for an earbud adapter that allows my Shure SE310′s to be plugged into the device. Why Apple, did you temporarily disenfranchise the thousands of customers who replaced the default white-earbuds with more expensive aftermarket product offerings?
- Why Apple, did you not provide even the most rudimentary slip cover for the phone? I’ve since purchased a leather case from http://www.case-mate.com/phones/apple that is quite elegant and yet still manages to retain some of the minimalism that make Apple products the works of art that they are.
- Battery Life Concerns: After 4 full charges, I’m getting better battery life than some of the early FUD mongers were claiming. However, as much as I like “Airplane Mode” (a usable way to preserve battery powere when not needing the phone/internet functionality), why couldn’t they provide the “Auto On/Off” scheduling that the BB8800 offers? I’m getting about 2.5 – 3 days between full charges. If I could go 4-5 days between charges I’d be thrilled!
Ok, so how did I end up rationalizing the purchasing? Well a couple of dynamics came into play:
- My employer is already reimbursing my monthly BB8800 voice and data plans
- I accepted an offer from a friend to buy my 8GB iPod Nano
- I decided to keep my BB8800 and add the iPhone as a 3rd line on my already existing AT&T Family Plan. The 3rd line and the unlimited data plan for it is only costing me $29.90 a month as compared to the $59 that it would have cost me had I added the IPhone under its own plan.
- I aggressively researched and found some ways to reduce my monthly cell phone bill (pre-iPhone coverage) to a degree that came close to offsetting the aformentioned $29.90 additional monthly charge.
- The final rationalization: Had I not already had the BB8800 and the iPod Nano would I have been willing to put out the original asking price of $599 for the iPhone? Well this is a difficult one; but then I remind myself that I put almost this same amount ($550) for my BB8800 and the iPod Nano before I knew I was going to re-sell or receive a subsidy for them. After I take the subsidy and re-sale of the Nano into account, my net cost for the iPhone is $500.
All in all, I really like this device. It’s not perfect, nor is it meant for strict business use. However, it is clearly the best blend of phone & portable multimedia that we’ve seen so far. Now of course all of this economic hocus-pocus goes up in smoke if Jobs rolls out another price drop within the next 12 months.
The $399 Question:
Does this phone have the power to turn me into an Apple Fan-Boy? Only time will tell ….
/8-)
Tags: iPhone
Well, I finally got my phone working on my recently transferred VOIP service. As I suspected, VOIP.COM requires that (if installed behind a home router) certain ports be opened to faciliatate the reception of incoming phone calls. Below is the list of the ports & instructions necessary to get the VOIP.COM service working behind a commercial grade router:
- your protocol has to be UDP Inbound and Outbound.
- port 21
- port 53
- port 69
- port 123
- port ranges, 5060-5061
- port ranges, 10000-20000
Now, why these directions are not on their web site is a whole other question ….
Tags: Internet
Well, I was one of the unfortunate souls who was affected by the shutdown of Internet VOIP provider SunRocket last month. Unfortunately, I have not had much luck getting my VOIP service transferred over to a new provider. After almost 2 days of exhaustive research, I decided to switch over the service provded by (appropriately enogh) VOIP.COM. However, I am almost at my wits ends here on the transaction and may find myself looking for another provider very shortly. Bottom line: VOIP has been SWAMPPED by people switching over from SunRocket and I am beginning to wonder if they have the infrastructure to support this many new customers this quickly. To briefly recap: here are they key dates and the stae of my service on those dates:
- July 25th – ordered service
- August 2nd - hardware has not yet arrived; send a support ticket request inquiring to where my phone adapter was
- August 3rd – hardware arrives; perform self install; can make outgoing calls but cannot receive incoming calls
- Augsut 4th – call technical support inquiring as to wether i need to open any ports on my router to allow incoming calls, support says no, but that they are having technical issues
- August 8th – call technical support againl they say they are working on “it”; my old number was finally transferred over
- August 12th – called AGAIN; on hold for 45 mins and then give up
- August 16th – still cannot receive incoming calls; attempt 3 more times to call for support; spend a collective 1 hour 50 minutes on hold and never to get to talk to a technician
THIS IS FUN!
Anyone else having this nightmare?
Tags: Internet
I had begun to think that it was never going to happen, but the folks @ DivX finally got a 100% Vista compatible version out to the public. Finally, I can again transcode video using the AWESOME DivX codec. For those of you who haven’t used DivX before, I strongly recommend it. Check DivX out @ http://www.divx.com. If you are looking for a great partner with DivX, I would also highly recommend the usage of Apollo Multimedia’s # 1 DVD Ripper. This can be downloaded from: http://www.dvdtox.com/. It integrates nicely with DivX (and other common codecs) to rip your DVDs for backup purposes or for streaming them across your home theater TV network.
Tags: Software
Podcasts
