Author Archive | Harry McCracken

To Steven Jobs on His Thirtieth Birthday

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 6, 2011 at 5:56 pm

On February 24th 1985, Steve Jobs turned thirty. His Apple coworkers helped him celebrate by creating a short film for him. They set it to the wonderful song “My Back Pages” by one of Steve’s idols, Bob Dylan, and filled it with images from Jobs’ first three decades. You know some of them, but only some. And they include many ones of a happy, relaxed, even silly Steve Jobs that most of us never got to see.

And here it is. The tribute must have been deeply moving for Steve and his colleagues at the time it was made, and if you can watch it today without getting at least very slightly emotional–particularly as you listen to Dylan’s lyrics–you’re reading the wrong blog.

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Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 5, 2011 at 5:01 pm

[UPDATE: I thought I took this picture, which I found on my hard drive — but it’s actually by Tim Moynihan, my former PCWorld colleague. My apologies to Tim for claiming it was mine.]

Lots more thoughts to come, but for now, a photo I Tim Moynihan snapped at Macworld Expo in 2008. That’s Jobs with the original MacBook Air. And he’s wearing the smile I’ll think about when I think about the extraordinary impact he had on a company, an industry, and an era.

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Pioneer Does Augmented Reality–in a Visor

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 5, 2011 at 12:33 am

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I’m in Tokyo for CEATEC–the Consumer Electronics Show of Japan–and have been roaming the show floor and discovering nifty stuff. Some of it will show up in the U.S. eventually; some of it won’t.

Pioneer, which makes lots of aftermarket electronics for cars, is demoing a rather unusual visor. It’s an augmented reality heads-up display–Pioneer calls it an AR HUD–that uses lasers to overlay text and images on the road ahead. By doing so, it can do driving directions that use the world around you for imagery, not a digital recreation on a screen in the dashboard.

The technology should show up in commercial form in 2012, Pioneer says–in Japan at first, in a model that can be installed as an aftermarket accessory. It may be built into cars later, and should reach other countries. The price hasn’t been set yet.

(Full disclosure: I spoke at a CEATAC keynote and the show subsidized my travel costs.)

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Microsoft on the Windows 8 Start Menu

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 4, 2011 at 2:11 pm

Curious what’s on the mind of the people who are creating Windows 8? Microsoft’s Windows team blogs the thinking behind its decisions in posts that are sometimes remarkably detailed. It’s published a post that’s the first of a series on the Windows 8 Start menu, which has nothing to do with any previous incarnation.

I think that Microsoft is making a mistake by removing the classic Start menu from Windows 8 altogether. If you’re in the desktop running conventional Windows programs and click Start, you get instantly dumped out into the very different world of Metro. It’s a jarring and unpleasant experience, even if you like Metro, and I think that Windows 8 skeptics are going to see it as an argument against upgrading. But I’m still glad that Microsoft is explaining why it’s doing what it’s doing.

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Your Last Chance to Read, Rate, and Spread Rumors About the Next iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2011 at 10:46 pm

Twelve hours from now, someone–most likely new Apple CEO Tim Cook–will be standing on a stage in Cupertino, well into the company’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Normally at this point, it feels like we have a pretty decent sense of what the company is about to announce. Not all the details–which is fine with me, since I like surprises–but two-thirds of the broad strokes.

This time? Things are surprisingly blurry. If there’s no Sprint iPhone of some sort, and no iPhone with ambitious voice commands based on the Siri technology Apple acquired, I’ll be startled. But we don’t really know whether there will be one iPhone or two. We don’t know if there will be a radically new iPhone 5 or one that’s a near-twin of the iPhone 4. We’re not sure if the screen size will change. Basically, most of scuttlebutt of the past few months is still in play.

So here’s a roundup of some of the major rumors. In each case, I’m linking to an article that spreads a rumor–and one which quashed it. If you need to refresh your memory, read any or all of ’em. And then–assuming you’re reading this before 10am PT on Tuesday–vote in our silly little poll. (I’ll report on the results once the news is out.

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Live Coverage of Apple’s iPhone 5 Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm

I’m not going to be at Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday at 10am PT. (I’m in Tokyo attending CEATAC and participating in one of the keynote sessions.) But I will be tuning into Macword’s live coverage–and the Macworld folks were nice enough let me embed it on Technologizer at technologizer.com/iphone5.

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Hipmunk’s Flight Search: Just as Hip on Android

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 1, 2011 at 12:03 am

Slowly but surely, many of the best iOS apps are coming to Android, and their quality once they get there is improving. Case in point: The excellent air travel search engine Hipmunk, which arrived in a version for Android phones this week. Its Android version is just as good as the iOS one–good looking, easy to use, and brilliantly useful. (It ranks flight options by a price/complexity formula it calls “Agony,” and, as you can see above, shows which flights have Wi-Fi.

Hipmunk does flight search better than competitors such as Kayak and Bing Travel, but it’s not the only airfare research tool you’ll ever need, mostly because it only shows prices available through Orbitz, and routes you there when you’re ready to buy. Still, even if you just use the app to look for flights you’ll buy elsewhere, it’s invaluable. And it’s nice to see it didn’t get watered down on its way to Android.

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Is the Firefox Era About to End?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 30, 2011 at 9:19 am

Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer reports that Web analytics company StatCounter thinks that Google’s Chrome will pass Firefox to become the world’s second most popular browser by December. (Internet Explorer remains the top dog, but its share, which once surpassed ninety percent, continues to drop.)

If the trends established thus far this year continue, Chrome will come close to matching Firefox’s usage share in November, then pass its rival in December, when Chrome will account for approximately 26.6% of all browsers and Firefox will have a 25.3% share.

Those numbers are eerily close to the stats at Technologizer for the past month: 26.05 percent of you have used Chrome to visit us, and 25.06 percent have used Firefox. Chrome is already the top browser amongst youse guys: Safari is #3 at 20.31 percent, and IE is #4 at 19.07 percent. (We’re small enough that there’s plenty of flux in the rankings; things could be different next month.)

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