Author Archive | Ed Oswald

MLB to Stream Live Games on iPhone

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 17, 2009 at 10:44 am

mlb-logo.jpgThe 3.0 software will bring an exciting new feature to those iPhone and iPod touch users who have forked $9.99 over for the MLB application: live games. The first games would be streamed Thursday at 2:20pm (Chicago Cubs-White Sox) and 8:15pm (Detroit Tigers-St. Louis Cardinals). While initially only two games a day would be streamed, MLB hopes to expand it to the entire slate.

It should be noted that live video would be limited to out-of-market games. That means for me here in Reading, PA, I wouldn’t be able to watch Phillies games (after last night’s 8-3 embarrassment against the Blue Jays, I don’t know if I care, heh). However, its a giant step forward for streaming video on the iPhone.

The service will work whether the user is on 3G or Wi-Fi: the MLB servers will adjust the speed accordingly to ensure proper playback. Its going to be interesting to see whether 3G streaming works well at all considering AT&T’s increasing network problems.

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Facebook Servers Performing Admirably

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 12, 2009 at 9:23 pm

Well we’re about a half hour into the “land grab” and so far so good. I’ve been checking the Facebook page frequently, and I’m not noticing any kind of reduction in load times (at least that is noticeable anyway).

I’ve grabbed my name on there. I’m now facebook.com/eoswald, although I would have preferred the shorter “edoz” — note that your username must be at least five characters. I’m glad that the social networking site is doing this, albeit a bit late.

Are you participating? Did you get the name you wanted? Let us know in the comments.

Update: We have our first squatter issue of the new Facebook era. A man named Morgan O’Neill has picked up a username which is the name of Engadget editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky. We’ve attempt to contact Mr. O’Neill to see why he selected this name.

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Bing Share Nominally Better than Windows Live

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 11, 2009 at 11:45 am

Bing LogoThe tech world was aflutter last week as Bing catapulted itself to #2 among all search engines. That fun lasted one day. Now that things have come back to earth, data from analytics firm StatCounter show that Bing is only performing nominally better than Windows Live did.

Before the switchover to Bing, Windows Live in the last week of May averaged a 5-6% share of the market in the US, save for a one day anomaly on May 29 (it hit 12.81% that day). Bing took over on June 1, and generally experienced a good first week, peaking on the 4th as we had reported.

However, since then it has fallen dramatically, and over the last several days, seem to have found a bottom right around 6-7%. So that’s right, all this Bingmania has resulted in basically a overall gain of a percentage point or two in market share.

To be fair, it seems Bing is starting to make a move up again. However, its clear from these results that a significant portion of the Web surfing public tried and then passed on Bing.

It has to be somewhat disheartening to Microsoft that so far Bing has generally fallen on deaf ears. I bet they’re hoping that the $100 million they’re about to spend on advertising isn’t all for naught.

Point of solace for Microsoft however: it does appear that when Bing does gain, its coming at the expense of Google. You could take that this way — that Google searchers may be considering Bing a worthy alternative.

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Wait for iPhone OS 3.0? Fuhgettaboudit.

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 10, 2009 at 11:52 am

While Apple officially has set the public release date for iPhone OS 3.0 for next week, not surprisingly it has found its way onto The Pirate Bay. Weighing in at a hefty 230MB, from what we understand 7A341 is the build that was being provided to WWDC attendees.

The upgrade requires iTunes 8.2. In addition, there is talk that it locks your phone into some type of developer mode. Essentially, this means there would be no going back to a previous version of the OS software other than this: so far that has not been confirmed.

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Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband a Reality

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 10, 2009 at 9:19 am

virgin-mobile-broadband2goNothing beats mobile broadband on your laptop. While yes the size of the iPhone is nice, sometimes you need a full computer to do some of those more intensive tasks. Virgin Mobile is set out to make that a lot easier.

The carrier will begin selling a USB dongle produced by Novatel Wireless later this month for $149.99, but the best part about it is there’s no monthly fee or contract. Users will buy refill cards for the service much like they do for a prepaid phone.

Instead of minutes, the prepaid cards would be sold in denominations of megabytes. The cheapest card would be 100MB for $10, although it would also expire in 10 days.

All the rest of the denominations would expire within 30 days, and include a 250MB card for $20, a 600MB card for $40, and a 1GB card for $60. While yes, you can get 5GB of data for $60 through other carriers, you have that pesky contract to worry about.

Virgin’s broadband plan seems to make sense for occassional users. I would venture to guess there could be a potentially large untapped market here. Really, mobile broadband only makes sense for business right now due to its prohibitive price.

Some seem to be complaining over the short expiration periods. While I tend to agree, at the same time I see Virgin’s desire to attempt to make this as stready of a revenue stream as possible.

Either way, it’s a start, no?

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AT&T’s Network Problems Aren’t Just in Big Cities Anymore

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 9, 2009 at 2:10 pm

AT&T FrownyThe AT&T hate is strong these days, especially following the carrier’s inability to deliver two of the most highly anticipated features to the single largest iPhone market in the world. But now even I am beginning to hate AT&T, and I still unfortunately have 16 more months to deal with these folks.

I’ve been hearing a lot of reports from people about network quality issues. I never experienced them, and I guessed it had something to do with the fact that I live in a relatively small market.

That’s no longer the case. In the past few weeks, I am noticing increasingly degraded service. I watch as my phone signal flails around, losing data connectivity or becomes so sluggish its unusable. Call drops have also become increasingly numerous — before late May I may have dropped one or two calls in six months.

I’m also having problems where people are calling me and the calls are going directly to voicemail, even if I have service. The only way I know somebody was trying to reach me is a seemingly phantom voicemail notification.

So my question for our rural readers: are you seeing these problems creep into your neighborhoods? I’m quite curious.

AT&T is apparently being brought to its knees by the iPhone, and can’t keep up. It is also becoming the single strongest argument to end the company’s exclusive grip on the device. Problems like this are not the Apple way.

Looking across the Web, its becoming clear that consumers ire for AT&T is now being transferred to Apple. While this may not necessarily be fair, it was bound to happen. It is now the company’s responsibility to demand results from the carrier or move on.

I am actually hoping that T-Mobile makes a move to get the device. Personally, I think that carrier would have been a better fit for Apple if it would have had a decent network: AT&T was more a marriage of convenience and necessity.

Apple, please listen. It’s time to move on.

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Microsofties: There is No Hypocrisy

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 9, 2009 at 11:05 am

(Note: Yes, it’s Tuesday, but I thought I’d give you a break from Apple news, so here’s this week’s column.)

macmondayApparently WWDC has rattled some feathers in the Windows community. Apple is on the move, and its clear even in this recessionary environment consumers are still buying Macs.

The MacBook realignment was to be expected, and to bring system value back. I’m no fan of the way Apple releases new systems for this reason. Towards the end of the product cycle, the systems lose value because the internals do not change while the rest of the industry is continuously updating.

But that’s not what has the friends of Redmond upset.

Microsoft was mentioned during the keynote, especially surrounding the release of Windows 7. This is what whipped the Microsofties up into a near frenzy.

It appears the beef is this: Apple software chief Bertrand Serlet makes a comment saying Windows 7 is essentially the second coming of Vista.  This is leading into his discussion of how Snow Leopard has made development easier, while Windows development remains unnecessarily complex.

After all, this was a development conference, correct?

Let’s summarize. Apple is apparently hypocritical because Snow Leopard is the second coming of Leopard. Somehow, the Microsofties would have you believe that Apple sprung this on us without us knowing. But there’s one problem with that — we’ve known this for over a year now.

Continue Reading →

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iPhone 3G Gets a Reboot, Price Drop

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 8, 2009 at 12:02 pm

As expected, Apple introduced a new 3G iPhone, called the iPhone 3GS. “The S stands for speed,” says Phil Schiller. Most of us have experienced the iPhone slowness — this new phone aims to try to solve that. Overall, the device will load applications about twice as fast as the previous 3G model.

7.2MBps HSDPA is built into the device, also speeding up the data side of things as Apple’s carriers build out their 3.5G networks. A new camera as expected will grace the 3GS, providing 3-megapixel resolution and autofocusing capabilities.

It also captures video, which was also highly rumored of the new device, along with rudimentary editing features: think an iMovie of sorts for the iPhone. Also added is voice control, allowing the device to do what many others have done for awhile.

It will also allow apps to respond to you with informtion, such as the iPod app speaking the song playing when you ask what it is, and the like.

The rumored compass feature is a reality, and integrates with maps. Thus you can follow a map easier without having to reorientate the phone.

Improved battery life is another plus, with 12 hours of 2G talk time, and 5 hours at 3G. Users would also be able to surf the internet for up to 9 hours, listen to music for 30, and watch videos for 10.

Pricing will not change, and would stay at $199 — that is for the 16GB. A 32GB model would also be made available for $299. But the 8GB is going nowhere: yep, it’s now $99. Existing standard 3G iPhones will now drop to $99.

The iPhone 3GS is set to debut June 19.

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Want MMS, Tethering? Wait if You Have AT&T

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 8, 2009 at 11:07 am

Yep, once again AT&T has shafted the iPhone public. While 29 carriers will support MMS at launch, if you download iPhone OS 3.0 you’ll wait until “later this summer” for it. Oh and tethering, which Apple is now mandating that all carriers support? 22 at launch, AT&T is again not one of them (at least not on the list shown at WWDC).

It’s making more and more sense why we’re hearing Apple may be ready to broaden the iPhone’s reach in the US, no?

Note: We have a request out for comment with AT&T. I will report back with what they share.

Update (11:30am PT): Mark Siegel, AT&T spokesperson: “We won’t be commenting until after the event is done.”

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Apple Details Snow Leopard, and it’s $29

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 8, 2009 at 10:36 am

After wowing us with a little hardware, Apple turned its attention to Mac OS X, and its next release called “Snow Leopard.” As it has repeatedly said in the past, this version would be more of a tune up than anything, and Apple’s announcements at WWDC seemed to follow that pattern.

Best yet, you’ll get your hands on this in September for an upgrade price of $29. No, that’s not a misprint. Take that, Microsoft 😉

Installation of the OS will be 45 percent faster, and Apple claims you will regain up to 6GB of lost hard drive space following installation due to better compression

Over 90 percent of the code behind the OS has been rewritten to focus on speed. While the overall design of Finder has not changed much, the code behind it has.

Overall, the focus seems to be on speed, making applications faster. Preview is twice as fast, Mail 2.3 times faster. It seems the only real major change in UI is to QuickTime, which has been redesigned to focus on the content. Controls will fade away to leave just a video window, and sharing features will allow you to select portions of a video that you want to share with others.

In addition to all this, the company is also announcing Safari 4 for Mac and Windows, which is releasing in final form today. It would obviously be included as a standard feature in Snow Leopard.

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