Apple Scrubs Snow Leopard’s Spots

Apple has delivered a service pack for its Snow Leopard operating system just a matter of two weeks after it shipped. The company says that the update will “enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.”

The update targets specific issues such as device driver compatibility and performance, stuck DVD drives, and SMTP routing. More importantly, it fixes three major security vulnerabilities, including one that Apple introduced by bundling an outdated version of Adobe’s Flash run time that had a well-publicized security hole.

Apple already patched existing versions of OS X for the vulnerability in July. That should have been a showstopper for Snow Leopard’s distribution.

Continue reading this story…

DOJ Investigates Microhoo

The U.S. Department of Justice is placing the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership under greater scrutiny, according to reports. The DOJ is allegedly requesting more information about ad pricing, product plans, and search engine investments.

Microsoft was prosecuted in the 1990s for abusing its monopoly position in the desktop operating system market, so it comes as no surprise that the company is operating under the long shadow of government regulators. However, in the search engine area Microsoft is playing underdog to Google, which comScore reports held 64.7 percent share of the U.S search market in July.

In comparison, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo have a combined 28.2 percent share. If the deal is approved, Microsoft will be in a position to claw its way up to compete with Google. The company is rumored to be preparing to launch an upgrade to Bing before the end of the month, and is spending profusely to promote Bing.

The only people who have any right to be upset about the deal are Yahoo’s shareholders. Shortly after the deal was announced, some shareholders began to cry bloody murder over Yahoo’s use of the Bing search engine for nothing in return.

Further, Yahoo did not receive an upfront payment to make the deal happen, as many Yahoo investors had hoped. The deal’s complexity also makes it unlikely that any company other than Microsoft will be able to acquire Yahoo over its 10-year duration. None of that concerns the DOJ.

Not Quite Sold on iTunes Home Sharing

There were really only two items out of Apple’s “It’s Only Rock & Roll” event earlier this week that managed to capture my attention. First off, where the heck was the iPod Touch camera? Several credible leaks, including compelling imagery, suggested photographic and video functionality was an inevitability. File this one under don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.

Next up is Home Sharing, introduced within the refreshed iTunes 9. (See Engadget’s brief video overview above.) This feature allows you to copy purchased iTunes content amongst five authorized devices in your home. It’s surely a simpler method of interaction than sneakernet-ing files around. However, Home Sharing does nothing to overcome the single iTunes Store account limitation. And, in fact, now that Apple’s tracks are DRM-free, Home Sharing is actually more restrictive than simply copying music via a USB stick. Perhaps Home Sharing 1.1 will allow Melissa and I to link our iTunes accounts in a ‘family unit’ sort of way.

Another perceived limitation was the implication that other computers must be powered up to access all home media. However, folks with Macs running Snow Leopard and an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule now have Wake on Demand capabilities. In our household, that should allow Melissa to grab tunes from my laptop (when it’s home). But I still wouldn’t be able to access her iTunes library when her Windows 7 machine is shut down.

Ideally, Apple would bring true iTunes server functionality/support to NAS devices. Even if limited to Time Capsule, that’s the sort of hub & spoke model many of us seek: A central home repository of media files, with family members creating their own individual, custom playlists to stream or mirror on demand – not just to computers, but to iPods/iPhones and AppleTV as well. I’ve gone down this path on my own, with limited success. What we really need to succeed are Apple’s philosophical and technological blessings.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

Eight Years Ago Today

Would you pardon me if I shared some wholly personal memories? I think about them every year, but I don’t think I’ve ever recorded them. Don’t worry–there’s some tech stuff in here (even a Windows XP reference).

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I arrived at PC World’s Boston office a bit earlier than usual and got to work on whatever I happened to be working on that morning. I hadn’t been at my desk for long when my San Francisco colleague Denny Arar pinged me on IM: She’d received an e-mail from the organizers of a wireless conference that was going to be held at the World Trade Center, saying that there was a fire at one of the towers, but not to worry–the conference would be rescheduled or relocated if necessary.

That’s how I heard something was amiss in New York.

Denny told me there was something on the news about an airplane striking one of the towers. I assumed it was a small plane under the control of an incompetent pilot.

I went to CNN.com and it wouldn’t load. Neither would other news sites. Instant sinking feeling.

Eventually, we figured how to to get news about what was going on (I think a Boston coworker had a tiny TV) and I spent the first couple of hours of September 11th worried about my sister, who had plans to fly from Boston’s Logan Airport to New York that morning. (It wasn’t yet clear that the hijacked planes were all supposed to be flying to the west coast–or that other hijacked planes wouldn’t be smashing into other buildings all day long.) Once I reached her, I learned that when she arrived at Logan they told her the airport was shut down, but didn’t explain why; she then tried to take Amtrak before learning just what was going on. (When she got home, her answering machine had reached capacity with messages from friends telling her not to go to New York.)

We spent the rest of the day at the office following the news, and trying to work. Everybody else anywhere near Copley Square apparently went home early; by the end of the day, the only people in the vicinity seemed to be me, my coworker Tom Spring, and one bartender at the one restaurant in our office building which hadn’t closed early.

Later, at home, I was watching TV when a list of names of passengers aboard Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, scrolled across the screen. One of the names was Mark Bingham. I knew a Mark Bingham–a PR person who I talked with frequently and who had sent me e-mail that was still sitting in my inbox. At first I thought the odds were against it being the same Mark Bingham, but then it dawned on me that while the world might have a lot of Mark Binghams, relatively few of them were likely to be aboard a New York-San Francisco flight. I started Googling around and learned that the Mark Bingham on Flight 93 was, indeed, a PR person.

My colleague Bud McLeod noted that Mark might have been involved in a passenger uprising against the Flight 93 hijackers and suggested that we publish a story about him on PCWorld.com, which we did. I had my first moments of mild cheerfulness since the morning of 9/11 when e-mails from folks who knew Mark a lot better than I did started to roll in thanking us for the story.

(Most of my encounters with Mark were on the phone, and I can still hear his rich, distinctive voice: “Hi, Harry, this is Mark Bingham.” That Flight 93 movie wasn’t bad, but they shoulda cast someone who sounded like Mark rather than an actor who looked sort of  like him.)

Flash forward to October 25th, 2001. I’m in New York City for the first time since the events of 9/11, for the Windows XP launch. (Rudy Giuliani joined Bill Gates onstage, unannounced; it was easily the most electrifying moment I’ve ever witnessed as a tech journalist.) I still hadn’t been on an airplane–I took the train to New York, as I’d planned to do all along. But after the XP launch, I was flying to San Francisco. From Newark Airport. On United. Which was the same route and carrier as Flight 93.

When I’d booked my flight in early September it had seemed unremarkable. But if you’re going to get back on the horse, you might as well get back on the horse…

I was a trifle skittish; the flight attendants were maybe the most skittish people I’d ever encountered. The plane, as you might guess, wasn’t very crowded. So I got an upgrade. To seat 1A.

After we’d reached cruising altitude, I decided to visit the restroom. There were two doors in front of me at the front of the plane, and for a moment I couldn’t tell which was the cockpit and which was the lavatory. I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to rattle the handle on either of them to see if it would open, and went back to my seat.

I hope it goes without saying that I also spent a lot of time during this period reflecting about those far more directly impacted than I by the events of 9/11 and all the events that followed–and that I still do. May we never forget.

Those are my 9/11 memories–what are yours?

5Words for Friday, September 11th 2009

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Microsoft meeting: no-iPhone Zone.

Skype kills developer plug-in platform.

Facebook Lite: Facebook, only liter.

Facebook punks TechCrunch big time.

Snow Leopard update fixes Flash.

David Pogue reviews new Nano.

Google helps you leave Google.

DOJ is eyeballing Microsoft-Yahoo.

Twitter revises terms of service.

Console game sales are hurting.

They’re Not Phones Anymore

Musing about Motorola’s announcement of MotoBlur and the Cliq yesterday, ZDNet’s Sam Diaz says that the telephone is no longer the dominant feature in today’s smartphones:

Call these devices smartphones if you’d like – but increasingly, the phone part of the device is just another feature, another widget on the home page.

He’s right, of course. The transformation of phones into pocket computers began with the arrival of devices such as the earliest Treos, and is now complete. These things are pocket computers that can make phone calls. Calling them “phones” is a little like calling a PC a “word processor.”

Sam goes on to wonder whether we need to come up with a new name. He brings up “handheld,” but says it doesn’t feel quite right. Me, I’ve been advocating for awhile now that smartphones are PCs, and that they day isn’t long off when everybody will think of them as such, But I’m not arguing that we should start calling them PCs (which could stand for either personal computer or personal communicator). At least not yet. For now, I’m comfortable calling my phone a…phone.

Here’s a quick T-Poll–and if you have any nominations for new names for phones, leave ‘em in the comments.

Apple: Hey Sony, Nintendo, Bring It

Man, we’re getting so close to having Apple as a real contender in the handheld game console wars, I can feel it.

As Gamespot points out, Apple’s music-themed event marked the first time that the company publicly argued why the iPhone and iPod Touch are better gaming options than Sony’s PSP and the Nintendo DS. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, went so far as to say those other two consoles are “not a lot of fun.”

Now, we can debate ad nauseum the merits of iPhone and iPod Touch gaming vs. the PSP and the DS. We can argue which device is the most successful, has the best games or has the greatest chance of survival. But that’s boring. What’s really great about the console wars is all the bickering and spin that goes along with it. In that regard, Apple showed that it’s ready to play hardball.

At yesterday’s event, one of Apple’s slides touted a catalog of 21,178 “Games & Entertainment Titles,” compared to 3,680 DS games and 607 PSP titles. Of course, it’s totally bogus for Apple to include “Entertainment” in the mix, as we’re strictly comparing gaming devices here. A quick check of Apptism shows 14,657 games on file.

If Apple’s still ahead, why fudge the stats? Because that’s what you do in the console wars. I’m reminded of when Sony argued last January that it’s a better value than the Xbox 360, assuming that you bought the basic Xbox 360 Arcade, then purchased the most expensive hard drive available and threw in an optional Wi-Fi adapter. Sure, the argument is valid, but the math is fuzzy.

And then, there’s all the trash talk. Back in February, I looked on with delight at the way Microsoft and Sony were sniping at each other. Yesterday, Schiller argued that “once you play a game on the iPod touch, you think ‘hey, [the DS and PSP] aren’t so cool any more…’” Burn!

Sony and Nintendo haven’t fired back yet (in fact, Sony’s been unbelievably timid on the matter), but if Apple keeps up this rhetoric, it’s only a matter of time until the sparks fly. I can’t wait to watch.

Windows 7: The Ads Begin

Um, some of them will star grownups, right? Even so, it’s nice to see a Windows ad that’s actually about Windows…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU&feature=player_embedded]

(Via Joe Wilcox.)

Video Streaming Box Announcements of the Week

Netgear Entertainer Live ($150)

The new Netgear Entertainer Live (EVA2000) was originally announced as a VuNow platform device at Netgear’s CES press conference back in January. At that time, I saw the unnamed Netgear product demo-ed using VuNow’s non-distinctive hardware, but has since been repackaged with some left over Netgear router enclosures. In addition to YouTube and CinemaNow VOD access, and unlikeRoku’s similar small box solution, the EVA 2000 is also capable of streaming a wide variety of local media. PlayOn is supported (and offered at a discount), but that PC-based software hack is only interesting until Hulu drops the hammer (technically or legally). However, this $150 box should gain a bit more traction thanVerismo’s VuNow with the Netgear brand and retail relationships.

LG BD390 Blu-ray Player with Vudu ($400)

Vudu continues to execute on their hardware diversification strategy as LG announces a network upgrade to their existing 802.11n-capable Blu-ray player. The smooth Vudu experience and extensive HD video-on-demand library joins Netflix on YouTube on the well-regarded connected BD390. While the $400 MSRP may seem a bit steep for what it offers and compared to the Sony unit below, this box can be found online for significantly less. We’re hopeful of taking a look at a review loaner in the near future.

Sony BDP-N460 Blu-ray Player with Bravia VOD (~$250)

Sony just unveiled a new Bravia-connected device at CEDIA. The BDP-N460 Blu-ray Player will be available in October “for about $250″ and features “Bravia” Internet services, including video-on-demand, YouTube, Slacker, and Netflix streaming. While it doesn’t incorporate the type of wireless connectivity found in the LG BD390 above, Sony’s upcoming model sure looks aggressively priced to boost holiday sales.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

Facebook Gets @Mentions

One of the things that makes Twitter Twitter is @mentions–the use of an @ to indicate you’re mentioning another Twitter user in a tweet. Now Facebook is getting @mentions, in a somewhat different form:

Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend’s name to something you are posting, just include the “@” symbol beforehand. As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages. Soon, you’ll be able to tag friends from applications as well. The “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post after you’ve added your tags.

Sounds useful (it’s rolling out over the next few weeks and isn’t live for me yet); also sounds like yet another example of Facebook drawing inspiration from Twitter. I like the idea of @mentions being a convention across the Web–as they seem to be in Technologizer comments already.

Motorola Announces Android Social Networking Aggregator and Phone

I’m at Gigaom’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco, where Motorola’s Mobile Devices CEO Sanjay Jha just announced an Android-based application, Motoblur, and the company’s first Android phone, the Cliq. He spent most of his time demoing Motoblur, which is a social-networking aggregation interface designed to weave Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, e-mail, and other services into one world. It’s got status updates that can span as many services as you want; widgets capturing content from your friends; a unified address book; hooks into other services such as maps; and more. It’s a hard service to judge from a demo–there’s a lot going on, and a lot of functionality delivered via varying user interfaces. But it’s ambitious and fancy, at least–and unlike anything Apple has built into the iPhone (but at least vaguely reminiscent of the social integration in Palm’s Pre).

Blur will be available on the Cliq, but also on other devices–apparently including another phone to be announced shortly.

Jha didn’t really give a thorough introduction to the Cliq, which will be available for the holidays from T-Mobile. (Yup, another Android phone that’s a T-Mobile exclusive.) Like T-Mobile’s G1, it’s got both a large touchscreen and a landscape-mode sliding keyboard; it also has a five-megapixel camera.

Everyone knows that Motorola needs to take a giant leap forward to be part of the future of smartphones. Unlike Palm’s showstopper of a Pre launch at CES, all Motorola’s unveiling did today is to whet the appetite. But that’s a start.

Here’s a fuzzy photo–more details to come.

PC Annoyances–and a Security Fix

I know you’re not always happy with your PC, so here are three fixes to some of the annoyances you’ve sent to me.

Louder. No, Quieter

The Annoyance: I have lots of MP3s I’ve ripped onto my hard drive from CDs. Nothing seems to play at the same volume level. When I play Copeland’s “Fanfare,” it’s loud enough to make the dog jump, yet all of Dave Brubeck’s music is way too soft.

The Fix: When you use Windows Media Player to burn music into a CD, the trick is to adjust–or normalize–the sound level as you’re burning the MP3s to the CD. Do that from the Burn menu by enabling Apply volume level across tracks on the CD. Normalization doesn’t work in WMP when you’re ripping MP3s from a CD to disk. Unfathomable, I know, but it’s Microsoft’s party. So use FairStars CD Ripper to do the job. The freebie does its job, normalizes the cuts, and handles plenty of file formats, including WAV, MP3, WMA, and more obscure ones, such as APE and VQF.

Continue reading this story…

Palm Pre vs. iTunes: It’s Checkmate, or Should Be

When Steve Jobs was detailing the wonders of iTunes 9 at yesterday’s Apple music event, there was a One More Thing he didn’t mention: The new version of the software once again blocks Palm’s Pre from making like an iPod and syncing music and video directly with iTunes. This is the second time that an iTunes update has foiled the Pre. (Palm responded to the first attempt by using a workaround to regain access to iTunes.) And even if Palm has another kludge up its sleeve, it should bring this saga to an end.

I say that with regret, because I was rooting for Palm: iTunes sync is a nifty feature, and I wish that Apple looked at non-Apple phones syncing with iTunes not as an intrusion, but as an opportunity to sell more music. (If it did, it might actively court other phone manufacturers such as Palm.) But we now know that Apple won’t even take a laissez-faire approach here–it’ll boot the Pre out again and again.

Which means that it’s silly for Palm to promote the Pre’s Media Sync feature as it stands as a reason to buy the phone–even in a best-case scenario, the feature is doomed to an unhappy, tentative future.

The solution seems simple to me: Rather than hacking iTunes to provide direct syncing, Palm should use a bit of PC/OS X middleware to do the job. Lots of products do this without controversy, and Palm can probably license the technology if it needs to. In theory, it’s not as elegant a solution as direct syncing, but it works. And there’s absolutely nothing elegant about the cat-and-mouse game that Media Sync has been playing with Apple to date.

AMD Keeps It Simple. Very Simple.

For as long as I can remember, AMD has been trying to convince the world to worry less about specsmanship when thinking about the CPUs inside PCs. It’s often had a point, such as when it argued that processor clockspeeds were a lousy way to judge a chip’s performance. (It largely won that war when Intel deemphasized clockspeeds in its marketing, although I have a sneaking suspicion that consumers still use them as a primary means of comparing processors.)

Now AMD is making a dramatic bid to simplify branding of its CPUs down to the bare essentials. In fact, rather than emphasizing specific CPUs at all, it will focus on three levels of performance:

PCs with Vision technology are basic machines designed for Web browsing, music listening, and the like. Ones with Vision Premium are potent enough to handle video and audio conversion well, as well as gaming. And Vision Ultimate indicates that a PC is well suited to video recording, audio editing, advanced photo editing, and the like.

Beyond the fancy stickers, there are two simple ideas here: AMD is emphasizing media applications (which makes sense, since video and audio-related performance is the main reason to worry about what chip you get at all) and is giving consumers the classic choice between good, better, and best. (However, it plans to introduce Vision Black, a sort of “bester” designation aimed at gamers and enthusiasts, early next year.)

Intel, meanwhile, is trying to simplify performance comparisons, too–but its menu of choices is broader and more complicated, and it’s not always easy to figure out how everything relates. Which brings up an issue with Vision that’s out of AMD’s control: The most important CPU comparisons are those you make between processors from competing companies, and it isn’t obvious how the three Vision options map to Intel’s chip family.

I’m sure that serious tech enthusiasts will squawk that AMD is dumbing things down too much (and the company does say that it’ll use more traditional, meaty technical facts to market its chips and technology for that crowd). But when I think about how I buy PCs these days, the Vision distinctions would probably do the trick. There was a time when I dithered over whether I needed a CPU with a math coprocessor, and got excited over stuff like MMX extensions. Today, I mostly want a general idea of whether the processor will be potent enough for the tasks I’m likely to throw at it. And once I’ve plunked down my money for a computer, I tend to forget what’s inside.

How much time do you spend thinking about CPUs these days?

5Words for Thursday, September 10th 2009

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AMD introduces Vision processor ratings.

Watch the Apple music event.

Five biggest Apple event disappointments.

David Pogue interviews Steve Jobs.

Google working on newspaper micropayments.

Do we need iTunes Lite?

The future of Windows Mobile.

Sega Dreamcast console turns ten.

Vudu on LG Blu-Ray player.

Free Cell-to-Cell Calls From Sprint

TechVi broke this news, which is now official:

Any Sprint customer on the base $70 / month plan, which includes unlimited data, text and MMS messages, and 450 minutes, will be able to call any other cell phone on T-Mobile, Verizon, or AT&T without using plan minutes.

That’s not unlimited calling, but for some people, it would be darn close. I wonder what percentage of the average American’s cell phone calls are to another cell phone, and how that figure has changed in the last decade