Category Archives: technology

Shelf life…

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From the moment you buy any new bit of technology, the clock is running. Call it shelf life, planned obsolesce, or corporate money grubbing, the only great truism in high tech, is the next great thing is always just around the corner. Another, more or less unspoken truth has always been that Apple released it’s new and improved products about a year after the last model came out. Amortized out over a period of 12 months, even a $700 iPad could almost be considered a yearly purchase, especially when you account for its relatively high resale value. By the time it was said and done, the total cost of ownership of my first two iPads came out to something like $20 a month… or one vinti vanilla latte a week.

In rolling out the iPad 4 just seven months after the 3rd iteration launched, Apple has thrown my TCOO calculation all out of whack. The device got a serious spec bump and I would love to have the additional processing power/speed, but the fact is there’s nothing the 4 does that the 3 can’t do (almost) as well. This time around, I’m just not seeing the typical “killer” feature that would usually drive me to switch to the latest and greatest model. Of course that explains why that iPad 3 has been discontinued rather than simply sold at a lower price point. The specs and performance are just too close to the new flagship. I know there are plenty of people who will be up early on Friday to drop in their order, though. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t strongly consider it if for no other reason than to be able to use the same charging cable for my phone and my tablet. Unless you’re in that position, it’s hard to describe just how annoying that actually is. Still, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be a buyer for iPad 4.

Having ruled out full sized iPad out of the equation still leaves me to consider the iPad mini. Since I many use my iPad as an e-reader, I have to admit this one is tempting. I like the idea of a smaller/lighter device, but don’t think I can get past what feels like a “downgrade” in specs going from iPad 3 to iPad mini, by which I mean losing the retina display and not gaining anything particularly impressive in terms of overall performance. I’m really going to have to hold on in my hand before I’m ready to pass judgment one way or the other.

Don’t take any of this as a slam against the world’s most valuable company, because it’s not. I think Apple rolled out a truly ridiculous number of new, improved, and magical devices today. If there’s any of them that I’m super desirous of at the moment, it would be the new retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, but with its 2008-model ancestor basically still running like it was new out of the box and a Mac mini doing all of the heavy lifting in this house, a $1700 bill from the Apple store just isn’t on the table at the moment.

It seems I’m at that uncomfortable point in product life cycles where there just isn’t much incentive to change what’s currently working. If I weren’t already sitting so close to the state of the art, though, any of the new toys Tim and Company spent the afternoon showing off would be a pretty damned impressive addition to the collection.

Money well spent…

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Since I’ve gotten serious about converting my DVD collection over to an all digital format, I’ve been trying to limp along using the DVD player on my 2008 laptop to do the ripping and converting. Lets just say that it was not as efficient as one might like. Since Apple has decreed that no one using one of their Minis needs an optical drive, that pretty much left the option of picking up an external DVD/RW and doing the ripping and compression on the much more powerful Mini. In the space of a couple of hours this afternoon, I ripped and loaded into itunes five movies using the new drive… while at the same time ripping three TV episodes using the laptop. That’s not exactly a 1-to-1 speed comparison, but it’s a pretty good indicator that the external drive will prove to be money well spent.

If I can do one or two disks a day – usually one before I leave for work in the morning and another before I go to bed – I can have this done sometime in the early part of the new year, instead of sometime about a year from now using just the laptop. Sure, I could use the laptop to get the job done, but why put an otherwise reliable and perfectly serviceable machine through a year long stress test when I can use the faster option for $40? So far, I’ve converted hald a doze random movies, all four seasons of The Tudors, and the first three seasons of Buffy (Yeah, I know. Stop smirking out there.). When I get this little project finished, I promise I’ll envite everyone over for movie night. Based on early estimates, we should have about 200 days of interrupted viewing ready to stream to every TV in the house.

Mini…

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So it seems that Apple is going to go ahead an announce the iPad Mini next week. Between now and then I’ll be doing my best to convince myself that trading in a six month old full sized iPad for a smaller version is a bad idea. I’m serious this time. Unless there are some pretty damned compelling features, I’m most likely going to be sitting this one out… although I won’t lie, it would be nice to have all my i-devices using a standard power source again. Keeping up with the old 30-pin docking cord and the new lightning cord has been a legitimate hassle, but I’m not sure it’s been enough of a hassle to justify switching devices in the middle of the product cycle. Even so, I’ll be watching next week’s media event with some serious interest.

Complicating matters even more, is the notion I’ve been kicking around of retiring my original Kindle keyboard e-reader in favor of the new Paperwhite model. I love reading on the Kindle. It does one thing and it does that one thing incredibly well. Even though Kindlem, to me, is a better reading exoerience, I default to the iPad for reading at night for the simple reason that it doesn’t require keeping a light on to do it. The front-lit Paperwhite appears to be the solution to needing either a backlit screen or an external light source at night. I’d really like to give it a test drive for a few nights and see how it handles. Sometimes I think it’s a real pity that there’s so much amazing tech on the market right now and so few hours in which to play with it all… but usually I just lump it into the category called “Awesome.”

As expected…

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I didn’t have high hopes for my test run with the indoor antenna. Since I live 40 miles from the nearest TV transmitter and there’s plenty of hills and trees in that distance, the antenna was a hail Mary play. Being that I’m only out $7, it wasn’t too costly an experiment. Unfortunately, the antenna failure led me to contemplate Plan B… kit the two small TVs in my bedroom and upstairs living room with Apple TV boxes and stream content as needed. Sadly, Plan B has also hit a snag. A snag in which both small TVs are so old that neither one has the required HDMI port. There are ways around that, of course, but none of them are particularly good. So that leaves us with Plans C and D.

Plan C is to replace the TVs – probably a $400 total expense since I’m looking at the sub-32″ class for both units. Add the two Apple TV units and the startup cost should be right at $600. Getting rid of two cable boxes would get me off the hook to Comcast for approximately $20 a month… so in 2.5 years, option C pays for itself, except for the part where technology has improved in the interrum and upgrades need to be made. Plan D, of course, is to do nothing at all and just learn to enjoy the pucker every time I get my e-bill from the cable company. I know what I want to do, but maybe after Thanksgiving the numbers will start to look a little more palatable.

Overboard…

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It occurs to me that it’s possible I’ve gone slightly overboard in my relentless pursuit of lowering my cable bill without giving up access to Game of Thrones when it starts airing again in March. Since I live in the middle of nowhere (that’s not a complaint, by the way, simply a statement of fact), I’m not sure it’s going to have the oomph to pull in a signal from Philly or Baltimore, but I’m going to be playing around with an OTA television antenna for the first time. That’s not quite true, I suppose. Growing up there was an old TV in the basement that when they antenna was adjusted just right, could pick up two or three channels. Since the only thing I really use the TV in the bedroom for is to watch the morning news while I’m getting ready for work and catch the late news again before bed, I’m hoping that this will be the perfect excuse to jettison one more cable box and its associated fees from my plan. If it works in the bedroom, I’ll duplicate it downstairs. In the event it doesn’t work, I’ll pick up two new Apple TV boxes and just stream content either from the computer or the iPad. At first, this started out as a philosophical question about why I was paying for 200 channels I didn’t watch… It’s becoming something more like a holy quest… and those always turn out just great.

Something corporate…

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I’ve spent the last 90 minutes waging my own personal war against Comcast… the company that we all love to hate. If it weren’t for basically needing to have high speed internet, I’d cut the cable all together. Sadly, there just isn’t a viable alternative to cable internet available here in the back woods of Cecil County and I’d end up paying as much for internet alone as I do for the cable/internet bundle.

Up until I made some changes, I had 300 channels of which I watched maybe a dozen with any consistency… something about paying for something I’m not using just rubs me the wrong way. Since my TV is usually parked on some combination of History, Discovery, and Fox News, cutting way back on the number of channels just seemed like the thing to do. As far as I’m concerned, they ought to pin a bright shiny medal on the guy who finally cracks the code on unbundling television channels. Let me pick five for $20 and I’m on it before the ink dries on the deal. Still, I managed to cut my bill in half tonight and I have the funny feeling that I’m not going to miss much even after “losing” two thirds of the channels I had been getting. With Apple TV, Netflix, and Hulu lined up to fill in the gaps, it’s possible that I’m well on my way down the road to ditching cable television completely just to make a small personal statement regarding my thoughts on the services they offer.

Is anyone else out there using Comcast for internet only? As always, feedback is encouraged.

By the Power(Point) of Grayskull…

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It’s been my experience that sometimes the best products are the ones you smash together on a tight deadline with people breathing down your neck. Unfortunately, these rush jobs are usually thrown at you as part of an outlandishly large assignment and when even a few extra minutes can make the difference between something that looks like crap and something that looks like the PowerPoint equivalent of a work of art. Occasionally you end up with all the time in the world and manage to finesse something just so in the first day or so… and spend the rest of the available time tweaking, adding, massaging, and generally cluttering up the white space until the actual point of the exercise has been lost in the gee whiz of “look what I can do.” Sure, it’s one badass looking slide, but after two days of messing with it, I can barely remember what the original subject was… Thank God that’s very rarely actually important when putting these things together.

Day 2…

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I had good intentions of getting a hands on review of the iPhone 5 done and posted last night, alas, my new job as nursemaid pretty much slammed the door on that idea. I haven’t even had time yet to really put the phone through its paces. The only think I can really add at the moment to yesterday’s first impression of it being super light is that it also feels fast and very responsive to inputs. Data speeds seem improved even here in Cecil County, BFE, so I’ll be very interested to see how it handles the next time I wander into LTE coverage. The only snag so far was a few apps that absolutely refused to restore from iTunes. After downloading them directly through the iTunes app, all was once again right with the world. So far, my day two impression is similar to one that is floating around out in the tech forums… iPhone 5 and iOS 6 are essentially refinements to what was already a solid device. Bottom line, is it worth the cost of upgrade from a 4S? For a heavy user bent on squeezing out every ounce of performance from the iPhone or a iOS gamer who wants more screen real estate, yes, absolutely with the upgrade. For the casual user wanting to check mail, text, and play angry birds, it’s not so much of a necessity.

Launch 5.0

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7:12AM – Good morning and welcome to the iPhone 5 launch day live blog. This is the second year that there was no option to reserve a phone for pickup at the local Apple Store, so rather than lining up and hoping that there was stock on hand by the time I got to the front, I opted for home delivery (translation: I’ll be casting alot of longing glances out the window looking for signs of UPS). I miss the festival atmosphere at the yearly Apple Store line up, but I have to admit that sitting here in the kitchen with a fresh steaming mug of coffee is generally better than waking up at midnight and heading over to Delaware to stand in the cold until the sun comes up.

For anyone curious about the new phone, I’d recommend checking out the venerable Walt Mossberg‘s early review. If you’re interested in some hands on discussion, take a look at the forums tab at MacRumors.com. As always, I’ll keep this space updated with anything quirky or interesting that I come across over the course of the day. In the interest of not flooding the page with separate posts, all updates will be made here on Launch 5.0. Stay tuned as Steve’s faithful enjoy Christmas in September.

8:06AM – One thing I didn’t mention in the bulldog-induced angst yesterday was that FedEx dropped off three Lightning cables. That still won’t replace all of the cables I currently use, but it will at least let me make keep two at home, one in the car, and one at work without needing to remember to take a cable everywhere every day. I’m glad I got that order in before people realized the adapters weren’t going to be available until sometime in October. What I didn’t take into account with the replacement of the 30-pin dock connector was just how small the Lightning connector was going to be. It’s about a quarter the size of a standard USB connector… For reference, here’s Lightning compared to a standard issue paperclip. Pretty slick, right?

8:20AM – If you upgraded to iOS 6 or if you’re considering it, here’s a good piece on some of the more beneficial changes Apple made by Jacqui Chang over at Ars Technica.

11:24AM – UPS makes an unexpected morning stop at Rental Casa de Jeff… Box in hand, I’ll give you the rundown once things are up and running.

11:45AM – First impression: This phone is surprisingly light, but still manages to feel like a very solid build in your hand. I’m setting up the phone now and will put together a more complete first impressions piece later today.

FSBO…

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OK ladies and gentlemen, in the ongoing effort to clean out some tech and accessories, I have two more items up for sale:

– Seidio desk charger for iPhone 4 or 4S (with power cord). I bought this charger new about nine months ago for $40 and it’s compatible with either a “naked” iphone 4-series or with the Seidio “Surface” line of cases. Asking $20, but if you’re really interested, make me an offer.

– Seidio “Surface” case and belt clip for iPhone 4 or 4S. Ruberized texture, solid construction, and the only cases my iPhones have ever been in. Priced new at $50 for the set, I’ll send them to you for $20.

For those looking for a real bargain, I’ll send you the whole lot for $30. I’ll take PayPal or personal checks from those of you I know in the real world.