PC vs. Mac: The Straight Scoop

(Here’s my latest FoxNews.com column–this one’s my attempt to compare PCs and Macs for non-geeks.)

Want to start a fight between computer geeks? Bring up one simple question: PC or Mac?

Windows advocates will start accusing Mac users of being members of a fancy-pants cult. Mac fans will maintain that Windows users are the undiscerning owners of hunks of generic junk. It’s a pretty undignified squabble, and both Microsoft and Apple egg it on via contentious TV ads.

Me, I’m cheerfully agnostic: I recommend both Windows PCs and Macs all the time, and use them both, too. The last computer I purchased was a thin-and-light Asus laptop running Windows 7; the one before that was a 15-inch MacBook Pro. When it comes time to buy a new machine, I’ll consider both options. And if your budget permits, I recommend you do the same.

The PC-or-Mac debate has been raging for more than a quarter-century, but making sense of it requires considering the situation as it stands at one moment in time. Here’s my take on things as of early 2010.

Continue reading this story…

The Next Nexus

Rumor: Google’s Nexus One “superphone” will hit Verizon Wireless on March 23rd--which happens to be the first day of the big CTIA wireless show…

A Web Site is No Longer Enough

The way in which we interact with technology has changed dramatically over the past few years. The era of light computing has begun, and social media is big enough that the average person can shape perceptions. A Web site is no longer the most meaningful way for us to interact to tell companies about their products or to use online services.

Smartphones are selling in droves, and people are using apps rather than visiting Web sites for everything from buying movie tickets to checking stocks. At any given time, it is likely that conversations about big businesses are happening on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, and those conversations can be initiated by anyone from anywhere.

Continue reading this story…

Kindle App on iPad: No In-App Book Buying

More evidence that competition doesn’t exactly flourish on the iPhone and, soon, the iPad–at least if the company you’re attempting to compete with is Apple….

The EU on Google Street View

The European Commission is telling Google that it needs to delete Google Street View imagery after six months to preserve the privacy of folks who may be seen in it. Google says its practice is to delete it after 12 months. I’m not sure if I completely understand the squabble, but this I know: The photo of my house in Google Street View is almost two years old. (It shows a “FOR SALE” sign that hasn’t been there since before I bought the place in June of 2008.)

5Words: Facebook’s News Feed: It’s Patented!

Facebook patents the news feed.

Apple sexy ban’s about image.

FriendFeed is down. (Remember FriendFeed?)

Happy Windows 7 on netbooks.

Preview of next Symbian version.

Another creepy school Webcam story.

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Gizmodo’s Take on the Devour

Gizmodo has reviewed Motorola’s Devour, an Android handset that runs version 1.6 of the OS even though the current one is 2.1. In other words, the darn thing is shipping as a loaf of day-old bread…

Nintendo DSi XL Will Be an E-Reader, Too

Nintendo’s DSi XL will double as an e-reader soon after it launches next month, though it won’t have anything close to the book selection of Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

The DSi XL, a chunkier, larger-screened version of Nintendo’s wildly popular gaming device, goes on sale in the United States on March 28 for $190. The “100 Classic Books” collection, which includes classic public domain works from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain and others, will be available in June, Bloomberg reports.

Sound familiar? That’s because Nintendo already released the books-on-a-cartridge to the United Kingdom in December 2008. I’m not sure why it took so long for the collection to come stateside, but reading the books on the DSi XL, with its 4.2-inch screens, sounds more pleasurable compared to the original DS and DSi, which had 3-inch and 3.25-inch screens respectively. And despite the growing competition among e-readers, Nintendo’s device could be the most book-like, with two displays that you can hold up side-by-side.

Nintendo’s sales and marketing vice president Cammie Dunaway told Bloomberg that the company’s not trying to get a piece of the e-reader market. Let’s face it, without a cloud book store or the promise of weeks-long battery life, the DSi’s not equipped to do so anyway.

But I do think publishers would be wise to start bundling books onto DSi cartridges. Imagine the entire Harry Potter series on one cartridge — what a great gift that aunts and uncles who clueless about video games can give to their niece or nephew who has a DSi. As Dunaway said, “It’s just one more way to enjoy your device.” It shouldn’t start and end with the public domain.

One Small Step for Wireless Customers

I don’t like signing up for two-year contracts when I buy a phone–in fact, I’ve frequently chosen to buy phones at full price and therefore avoid the commitment. But there’s been one giant argument against doing so: Wireless carriers charge folks who pay up front for a phone exactly the same monthly fee that they get from customers who opt to get the phone cheap in return for signing a contract.

Effectively, full-price phone buyers are paying back the subsidy to the carrier even though they weren’t subsidized in the first place. That’s why I reluctantly but rationally signed up for a two-year Verizon contract last week when I bought a Droid. (The Droid only works on Verizon in the first place, so it’s not like I have the option of leaving the carrier a few months from now and using the handset with another carrier.)

Now T-Mobile has become the first U.S. carrier to do the right thing: As Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reports, it’s charging people who pay list price for phones less for monthly service than it does subsidy customers. By forgoing the subsidy, you’ll save money over the long run and won’t be locked into a relationship with T-Mobile; assuming you’ve got the cash on hand, it clearly becomes the smartest way to buy a phone.

Bravo, T-Mobile. May AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon follow your lead…

Opera 10.50 Beta Comes to the Mac

Opera has released a Mac version of Opera 10.50, whose Windows version impressed me when it came out a couple of weeks ago. Like that version, it uses Opera’s new JavaScript engine, which Opera says is eight times faster than its predecessor.

How does it perform? Well, Seth Weintraub of Computerworld and 9 to 5 Mac used the SunSpider test to put it through its paces, and found that it beat Safari and Chrome, the fastest OS X browsers in terms of JavaScript.

Zippy JavaScript performance doesn’t automatically translate into a browser that feels zippy. Judging from the time I’ve spent with Opera 10.50 today, though, it does indeed feel like an unusually fast browser in ways that earlier versions of Opera didn’t. (It also feels like a beta–it crashed on me while I was posting this articles–and so I’d suggest trying it as a complement to your main browser rather than a substitute.)

One of the things I like about the the Windows version is its Chromelike minimalist interface, which compresses all of Opera’s options into a single menu. Like Chrome, Opera isn’t so sleek on OS X–it’s got eight menus, plus the Apple menu and the Opera one. That’s at least in part because one of the most fundamental differences between the Windows and Mac interfaces is that OS X has a fixed menu bar at the top. If you start to remove menus from it, it doesn’t conserve space and leaves the bar looking a little naked.

Google Analytics tells me that 98.5 percent of Technologizer community members aren’t using Opera. On both OS X and Windows, I’m excited about 10.50′s potential to be the first version of Opera in a long while that tempts users of other browsers to switch allegiences.

CableCard Installs Getting Better?

Over the years, I’ve experienced more CableCARD installs than most. As I frequently rotate devices and have lived something of a gypsy lifestyle since unloading our home (along with our projector) and given bi-coastal employment. The vast majority of installs have been problematic. When the Comcast or Cox Communication techs bother to show. I even had to get in touch with my (previous) local franchising authority (Montgomery County, MD) at one point. Which is both good and bad… Fortunately, I know how to get things taken care of. On the other hand, why did getting a timely CableCARD install require filing a report? Plus, in most situations, I still firmly believe a CableCARD install shouldn’t require a truck roll — even if pairing is required. Let me pick up the card at their office and give me a number to call to read off my STB numbers for pairing. Saving the savvy some time (while preserving my PTO).

Continue reading this story…

5Words: Facebook Pages, Now in Google

Google gets Facebook page updates.

Sprint’s major-market WiMax plans.

Are TV commercials now obsolete?

iPhone mod: titanium back cover.

Mossberg: new Mac Quicken “iffy.”

Engadget compares smartphone GPS programs.

Google prunes Gmail Labs features.

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Photos That Talk

Fotobabble, which launched today, lets you share and embed photos with voice-over narration you create on a PC, Mac, or–this is the neatest part–iPhone. Not bad, but it would be nice to see it add the ability to create albums, so you could do things like upload an entire vaction’s worth of narrated snapshots. (Right now, the “Fotobabbles” you create consist of one photo apiece…)

OLEDisappointing

Everyone knows OLED screens look amazing, right? Well, everybody is wrong, or at least that’s not the whole story. My old friend Dr. Ray Soneira of DisplayMate, who’s been testing screens of all types for years, compared the OLED display of Google’s Nexus One to the iPhone 3GS’s LCD screen, and found that while the Nexus One’s icons, text, and menus looked terrific, images suffered from artifacts, banding, and inaccurate colors. (It didn’t help that the Nexus One only does 16-bit color.)

Ray’s testing is so thorough that it’s a multi-part story; even if you’re ultimately happy trusting your own eyes to judge if you’re happy with a display, his examination of the two phones makes for fascinating reading.

A Better Technologizer Presence on Facebook

If you’ve ever hung out with me at Twitter (where I’m harrymccracken), you know that it’s a kind of extension of Technologizer–an ongoing conversation among 16,000 people that’s mostly about tech-related matters. And if you ever joined Technologizer’s Facebook Group, you may have noticed that it’s…kind of quiet. Very quiet, in fact. Aside from the occasional note from me or another member, there hasn’t been much going on there.

Which is why we’re retiring the Technologizer group on Facebook and launching something much better: a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/technologizer. (I don’t completely understand why Facebook maintains a distinction between groups and pages, but pages are much more flexible and powerful.) Our page will be a central clearinghouse for Technologizer-related stuff: It’ll have links to every story here, plus all of my tweets, and you can comment on them or share them right there if you feel like it, or post a new question or idea on our wall. It’s also got some photos from our live events, plus discussion boards. Basically, it’s the sort of presence we always wanted but couldn’t implement in the group, and we plan to add more features as time goes on.

Three hundred folks have already joined the page during our quiet beta period. I hope you’ll join them by visiting us on Facebook and clicking the Become a Fan button. See you there…

Calling it: The Holiday Game Glut is Dead

It’s finally happening. This year, the most promising video games won’t be held for the holiday shopping season, as they have been for as long as I can remember. Instead, noteworthy game launches are scattered throughout the year, giving us things to play in the spring, summer and fall, and it’s wonderful.

This dawned on me today after hearing that Nintendo will launch two of its biggest releases in the next few months. Super Mario Galaxy 2 got a May 23 release date, and Metroid Other M will launch on June 27.

It’s not that blockbuster games are never released in the spring and summer; Grand Theft Auto IV came out in April 2008, as did Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Sports Resort launched last July. But as I look over release dates for 2010′s noteworthy games, the majority will arrive between now and the end of June. That’s not including all the games released already this year, such as Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Heavy Rain and Dante’s Inferno — several of those are merely the result of a 2009 holiday season abandoned by publishers.

Here’s a short list of games that will arrive before the end of June, not including Nintendo’s two sluggers: God of War III, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Super Street Fighter IV, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Lost Planet 2, Alan Wake, Max Payne 3, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Skate 3, Singularity and Alpha Protocol. Move out to September, and you’ve got Civilization V and Brink. It’s possible that Halo Reach, scheduled for a fall release, could arrive in September as well, seeing as Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST had September launches.

Some things won’t change. July and August are still dry, but there will be such a backlog from May and June that it won’t matter. And I doubt the 2010 holiday gaming season will be dead, with Microsoft and Sony releasing motion control devices. But perhaps publishers are realizing that games are a year-round hobby, not just a toy for the kids on Christmas morning. I hope the strategy works out financially, so the cycle holiday gaming overload is broken for good.