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Switched On: Touched by a hacker
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: I glanced at the clock, 1:36 PM. Perhaps I should not have gotten my hopes up. For weeks I'd been exchanging e-mail with an elite hacker who promised to speak with me about the latest attempt to free hardware from the shackles of manufacturers that bind it, sticking it to such companies by making their products more desireable. Just then, Skype lit up like a flaming notebook battery. It was the notorious hacker 5m0kNcR4K. A shadowy figure in the videoconferencing window spoke in a disguised voice. "I'm in ur Skype, grantin' ur interview. Do not try to identify me. By using advanced digital video effects, I have pixelated my facial image, put myself in silhouette, and added a big blue dot in front of my face." "What video effect makes it look like you have bunny ears?" "Oh, that's just a mask I picked up at Party City." "We could have just spoken by phone, you know. Or just used VOIP. Besides, I thought we were set to talk at 1 PM." "I thought 13:37 would be more appropriate."
Switched On: Fruit versus fowl
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: As most Americans were getting ready for a peaceful Labor Day, it was war between Apple and NBC as the two companies couldn't agree to terms for carrying the network's shows on iTunes. A punchy media had a field day with the headlines -- Apple "Scrubs" iTunes Contract, NBC, iTunes Headed to Divorce Court, and Apple Peels Back NBC-iTunes Deal were just a few of the laf riots. Apple said that it moved to act in the interest of consumers, but the financial impact for both companies is practically nil. Engadget's sister blog TV Squad posted that it wasn't about the money for NBC, but about the flexibility to bundle programming. We are very early in the era of downloaded video. As long as this continues to be an opportunistic purchase, e.g., "I missed that episode last night," the market could probably bear more than $1.99. Where it breaks down is looking at buying TV shows as an alternative to DVD or subscribing to cable or another TV service provider (even though the big NBC hits are all on broadcast television). The comparison between getting shows via iTunes versus, say, a DVR is something that Switched On has addressed previously, and another Engadget column even ran the numbers.
Switched On: The WiMAX Window (Part 2)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:Last week's Switched On discussed some of the promise of WiMAX as delivered through Sprint's Xohm service. There are at least three larger open questions about the prospects for WiMAX, particularly as an embedded technology. First, we now know more about how the service will be offered, but we don't know at what prices it will be offered, at least for the blanket subscription. Web surfing on an EV-DO connection may not quite rival a home broadband experience, but it's often more than adequate for most Web tasks. WiMAX will certainly have to be priced significantly below the $60 per month that today's operators charge as an add-on to a wireless subscription or whatever they may lower prices to by 2008 and 2009.Second, while the idea of not charging a subscription for embedded access is a step toward ubiquitous wireless access for devices, it is far from a guarantee of adoption, particularly in a competitive consumer electronics category. Embedding such products exacts a premium both at the cash register and in terms of battery life. Both the PSP and Nintendo DS include WiFi, but digital camera manufacturers have struggled with it outside of the professional market and it isn't in any mainstream camcorder.While the Zune and especially the Sansa Connect have some interesting features built on WiFi (as should the Slacker portable player due later this year), neither has come close to rivaling the iPod, which (at least up until this point) has lacked an FM radio, much less a a data radio. However, there's a strong argument that WiFi's limited coverage makes it far less useful than WiMAX (imagine if you could only use your cell phone at home or at a coffee shop).Last week's column discussed some of the niche devices that are slated to appear early in the Xohm rollout. However, while there are certainly strong pockets of growth among digital cameras and MP3 players, their overall growth is slowing in the U.S. (and camcorder units are declining) as average prices drop, making it more difficult to cram in new features such as WiFi and WiMAX. Saturation is driving this more than cannibalization from the cell phone. Xohm can help its own cause. If it can breathe new life into existing devices or help spur new popular ones (say, a wireless, portable DVR / video viewer), it will drive demand and differentiation from the cell phone. However, as Sprint embraces retail consumer electronics, it will see that -- on some level -- the enemy is itself, a familiar position for a company that has juggled hosting the wireless networks of Helio, Disney Mobile, its cable joint venture Pivot and its own Boost.
Switched On: The WiMAX window (Part 1)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:It's a beautiful afternoon at SeaWorld. You're walking through one exhibit when you spot a group of penguins that look like they're about to break into a number from Happy Feet III: Mumble's Bumble, which you watched with your nephew after you wirelessly downloaded it to your portable video player last week.You shoot some video with the high-definition camcorder pulled from your shirt pocket, press a button, and the video is soon uploaded to your favorite video sharing site. By the time you're out of the exhibit, the little scamp has sent you a video response on your internet tablet asking if you managed not to spill the popcorn this time. As you head home and turn on the wirelessly streaming music service in your car, you think to yourself that he'll get his the next time you two go head-to-head in that multiplayer shooter you love to play on your PSP2 during lunch in the park. You laugh that knowing, resolved laughter that precedes the credit roll in sitcoms.If all goes as planned with Xohm, Sprint's WiMAX service, much of this scenario could actually become reality before future presidential candidates air their negative ads targeting the next incumbent. Sprint claims that Xohm will deliver between two and four megabits per second -- between four and five times the throughput of today's 3G networks -- at a tenth of the infrastructure cost. But what's even more extraordinary than Xohm's throughput or cost efficiency is its business model. Sprint has decided that the wireless future is in some ways bigger than any operator can -- or might want to -- completely control, and is making a $5 billion bet on the limits of convergence in the cellphone.
Switched On: The Foleo Imbroglio (Part 2)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Last week's Switched On identified two groups of early adopters that have damned Palm's featherweight Foleo 10-inch screen unseen. The pricey purists won't give up the capabilities of Windows in an ultraportable, even if it costs them money and battery life, while the mobile minimalists have embraced and adapted to smartphones as all they need even for the excursions at which Palm is targeting the Foleo. For some of the latter, Foleo may seem like a product that has arrived too late. In the early days, Bluetooth promised to turn cell phones into wireless gateways for laptops and other devices like the Foleo or Nokia N800, but support for such Dial-Up Networking (DUN) features was slow to arrive (and even then carriers sometimes disabled it), as were packets on the wireless networks themselves. Meanwhile smartphones started getting better keyboards and their operating systems improved. Handspring, long since acquired by Palm, did more for the mobile minimalists than any company to date with the Treo, the first smartphone that was widely viewed as successful at balancing PDA functionality and usability. This is why Palm's "smartphone companion" messaging may be harming perceptions of Foleo. The smartphone installed base has been growing for the past few quarters as prices have come down, but the promise of Foleo is not having two devices. It's about providing the right device with wireless access. This is closer to the message that Nokia -- which has cell phones running deeply through its DNA -- pursued with its Linux-based, Bluetooth-enabled 770 and N800, and what has been responsible for their somewhat warmer reception.
Switched On: The Foleo imbroglio (Part 1)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:If anything, Palm's Foleo seems like it was designed to elicit instant geek cred. It's small, thin and light, and its solid state storage helps provide long battery life. It has instant-on capabilities and supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It even runs Linux and all for only $500. However, quite to the contrary, much of the reaction to Palm's latest mobile foray has run the gamut from confusion to scorn, with some calling the product "Folly-o" or "Fooleo." The core problem that the Foleo seeks to address is easy to understand, but its positioning is a moving target. Here's how early adopters are becoming lost in Foleo's rationale: Palm: Smartphones continue to gain more processing power and more memory.Users: OK, that's fair enough.Palm: However, they are still deficient in input and output.Users: Well, there sure are compromises, we can agree. I drag my laptop around when I need more.Palm: So, what we need is a whole new device with a large screen and keyboardUsers: Whoa, why not create some kind of keyboard dock with a big screen for the Treo, like all those speaker docks for the iPod?Palm: That's clumsy. We consider this a smartphone companion.Users: I didn't realize my smartphone was lonely.
Switched On: MacBook mini would answer iPhone's call
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: A few weeks ago a two-part Switched On column (see: here and here) discussed Apple's approach to the iPhone keyboard. I agreed with Apple's reasoning that, for a phone, or at least this first iPhone, the gains that could be made by going with a soft keyboard outweighed the cons. And, make no mistake (or actually a lot of them with typos), there are cons. Even in a best-case scenario of perfect accuracy, the iPhone's keyboard has drawbacks. There are, for example, no cursor keys, (Mac history buffs will remember that this is just what the original Macintosh forced users to do as its keyboard had no arrow keys), and users must go into punctuation (albeit briefly if using the famous "Pogue period" hint) mode whenever you want to type a period.Since Apple seems to have decided that keyboards are only for laptops and larger devices, and now has an opportunity to create an embedded appliance (call it Foleo-like, if you must) loaded not with some souped-up file viewers but embedded versions of, Pages, Keynote, perhaps some future Apple spreadsheet product, and a light version of FileMaker (which, for all of Apple's stealth initiatives, is one of the company's best-kept secrets). iWork, much like Safari, may well have some agenda beyond being a Microsoft insurance policy for the Mac.
Switched On: Apple's brash Flash clash rehash
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: For all the attention on the love-hate relationship between Apple and Microsoft, there's another software superpower with which Apple is increasingly butting heads. Apple was an early investor in Adobe and an early supporter of PostScript, which drove the first LaserWriters and launched the desktop publishing market. When Steve Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, that company used Display PostScript as the imaging engine for the company's black boxes.Photoshop and other members of Adobe's Creative Suite remain some of the most popular creative tools on the Mac. For years, Photoshop made cameos at Apple keynotes as the company argued the superiority of the PowerPC architecture.But the relationship has been strained at times as well. After going on lots of minor quests involving the slaying of forest creatures, Adobe released PostScript Level 2. But Apple surprised nearly everyone when it partnered with Microsoft in 1989 to position TrueType and the now-forgotten TrueImage as a rival to Adobe's technology. Apple would later try again to surpass Adobe's font technology with QuickDraw GX before adopting PDF as the graphics lingua franca for Mac OS X.
Switched On: It browsed from another dimension!
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Microsoft named its browser a humble explorer; Apple encompassed a whole safari. Do you get the sense that the developers of the 3D browser "SpaceTime" are setting their sights a bit higher?Most 3D browsers from the early days of the web, such as those from ActiveWorlds and Blaxxun Interactive, became best-known for avatar-based chat, in many ways the precursors of Second Life. 3B, a more recent effort, allows its users to set up web pages and photos on walls or billboards in various 3D environments such as Tech (think bridge of USS Enterprise), Beach, Lounge and what the developers call "Girly" (sort of a pre-teen girl's bedroom) presumably located in Hannah, Montana.SpaceTime, though, differs from all these avatar cyberplaygrounds, using 3D instead as a means to more visual web navigation. Large thumbnails of web pages float in front of a slowly drifting Cirrus cloud background; double-clicking them travels through space and brings them full-screen. Alone, this would be little more than eye candy, but SpaceTime's design goals kick in when you choose a search from one of its partners, which include Google and YouTube, Yahoo and Flickr, Amazon and eBay, among others.
Switched On: Comparing Apples and Blackberrys (Part 2)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Last week's Switched On discussed the iPhone's controversial software-based keyboard in the context of its phone, media playback and Web-surfing features in which text entry plays only a walk-on role. (Note how no one seems to be bemoaning the iPhone's lack of handwriting recognition.) But email is another important part of the Internet experience. And while here, too, time reading generally outweighs time writing, email is one of the most compelling justifications for a good keyboard on a mobile phone. It's no accident that RIM's Blackberry was one of the earliest phones to have a thumb-typable keyboard. Indeed, Blackberry supported such a keyboard even before it supported phone calls (and even on the Blackberry's predecessor, the RIM 950 "interactive messenger"), operating on a two-way paging network. If it's consistent with its desktop cousin, the iPhone's version of Safari actually does a good job of Outlook Web Access. However, the iPhone is not optimized for the level of Microsoft Outlook synchronization that the Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices are. If you need your phone to be your lifeline to your business communication and you work for a company where IT appropriately protects the Exchange server like The Lost Ark, you will have bigger problems using your iPhone for searchable offline email than its keyboard until Apple support Exchange ActiveSync as other Microsoft competitors Palm and Nokia have.
Switched On: Comparing Apples and Blackberrys (Part 1)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: Apple has just introduced an incredibly promoted portable touch-screen device touted as revolutionizing an entire industry. Lines formed in anticipation of its release. The most controversial aspect of it, though, is its text-input method. And one more thing, the year is 1993 and the product is Newton. The disappointment of Newton's handwriting recognition resulted in negative reviews that left Apple with egg freckles on its face and the bold Newton MessagePad and its successors all but doomed. Will history repeat itself with this year's model? The first sign that the iPhone's touch-screen keyboard may have a learning curve came during the Steve Jobs interview at the D: All Things Digital event when Apple's CEO offered to buy Walt Mossberg dinner if he wasn't happy with the iPhone's keyboard after coming up to speed on it. Reinforcing that, in Apple's video walkthrough of the iPhone, the black-shirted narrator notes that "it's easiest to begin typing with just your index finger" but encourages that "as you get more proficient, migrate to using two thumbs" for the payoff that "in about a week, you'll be typing faster on iPhone than any other small keyboard. Perhaps the keyboard's tag line should be, "Give us a week. We'll take off the wait." Fortunately for Apple, most reviewers have not thrown Apple's baby out with its backspace.
Switched On: Mainstream music hits a mainstream price
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
