Author Archive | Harry McCracken

“Father of the iPod” Departs Apple

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 4, 2008 at 7:47 am

We usually don’t cover executive comings and goings here at Technologizer, but this onee merits a mention: Apple Senior Vice President Tony Fadell has left full-time work at Apple and will be an advisor to the company. Fadell was not only the head of the company’s iPod division, but the guy who came up with the idea of the iPod in the first place. In fact, the former Philips employee–anyone remember Philips PDAs such as the Velo?–came up with the idea of the iPod on his own, and approached Apple with it. I’m pretty sure that Steve Jobs is awfully glad that Fadell came to Apple, and that Apple was smart enough to see the idea’s potential.

(It makes for an unanswerable but fun what-if question to muse on what might have been if Fadell had sold the iPod idea to a different company: There’s probably an alternate universe in which it ended up being a product from Philips, Creative, Rio, or some other company. It might have been very successful, but it also wouldn’t have been the iPod that Apple made. And speaking of what-ifs, where would Apple be today if Fadell hadn’t approached it with the iPod idea? Would it have ended up making an iPod anyhow? We’ll never know…)

Fadell is being replaced by Mark Papermaster, a former IBM executive. IBM is suing him, saying that his contract with Big Blue had a non-compete clause which prohibits him from working for Apple.

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TechDecision ’08: Cast Your Votes!

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2008 at 9:02 pm

No negative campaigning. No robocalls. No stump speeches full of impossible promises. And absolutely no hanging chads. You don’t have to register, either–actually, you don’t even have to be a U.S. citizen.

Nope, Technologizer’s TechDecision ’08 is just a silly little poll that lets you vote for your favorite tech-related products and companies in five categories, and take a stance on six imaginary tech-related propositions.

Your ballot is after the jump–make your choices and press the “vote” buttons in each category to register them. Your country thanks you. Oh all right, your country couldn’t care less–but Technologizer thanks you, and it might be fun to see the results.

And it’s now Tuesday on the east coast, so let the voting begin!

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Dash Express is Killing Its Device? Sad. And Smart!

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2008 at 11:24 am

Dash Navigation has announced that it’s going to stop selling the Dash Express, its clever, well-reviewed Web-enabled GPS unit. Instead, it’ll focus on licensing its technology to manufacturers of other gadgets–in-dash navigation systems, smartphones, netbooks, and the like–and it will cut its staff (reportedly by two thirds) to reflect its new direction.

For a company that helps people figure out how to get where they’re going, Dash had trouble charting its own course: Dash Express only started shipping in March, and so never had a chance to succeed. (It didn’t even make it to its first holiday season.) Even if Dash Navigation’s plans always involved licensing its technology and its own gadget existed mostly to demo the idea’s value–and I’ll bet that was the game plan all along–I can’t imagine it intended to get out of the hardware business after eight months.

On one level, this is sad news: Dash Express was an impressive product, and if I didn’t own a car with built-in GPS, I’d probably buy one. (Those that did buy the device should be okay: Dash says the service will continue.) But long term, I think that the company is doing the right thing, even if it’s doing it more hastily than it expected.

We’re pretty clearly in the waning days of the era of multiple gadgets, in which a rational person might buy and tote a phone, a GPS unit, a media player, a digital still camera, a video camera, an e-book reader, and maybe even another pocketable gizmo or two. Much of this functionality will merge into smart phones like the iPhone; some of it will be wired into cars via automotive computing platforms like Ford Sync. It hasn’t all happened yet, but most of it surely will over the next few years.

(At the moment, the digital camera seems like the device least likely to be replaced by the phone…and I can’t imagine point-and-shoots disappearing entirely anytime soon. But I betcha that the best camera-phone cameras will get surprisingly good surprisingly soon.)

Bottom line: I think the future will see fewer successful makers of hardware–especially small ones, like Dash Networks–but will have plenty of room for smart software and service companies. And even though I now know I’ll never own a Dash Express, I hold out hope of using the Dash technology in some form someday…

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The Best News I’ve Heard in Months

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2008 at 10:14 am

Ever felt like you should keep a blowtorch on hand to blast your way into the tamper-resistant packaging that a lot of tech products come in these days? Help is at hand–and it doesn’t involve blowtorches. Instead, it takes the far more sensible step of making packaging easy to open.

Amazon has launched an initiative called Frustration-Free Packaging, which involves selling products in packaging that eliminates those indestructible blisterpacks and scissors-destroying plastic ties. The initial lineup of offerings includes a bunch of toys, but also some electronics products, including a Microsoft mouse and Transcend memory cards.

The company says that an added benefit of the frustration-free packaging is that it’s more environment-friendly. That makes sense: I can’t imagine the world really needs all that plastic packaging, when cardboard and paper (which is what the Frustration-Free Packaging involves) will do.

The plasticky stuff–from now on I’ll think of it as Frustration-Filled Packaging–is meant to discourage shoplifters, so it was always pretty silly that customers of a Web-based merchant like Amazon had to deal with it in the first place.

I’d love to see brick-and-mortar retailers jump on this bandwagon. While we’re at it, could they do something about the pointless and insulting anti-shoplifting procedures involving a guy at the door who glances at your receipt and pretends to examine the products in your shopping bag?

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Yet Another Reason Not to Buy Motorola’s $2000 Phone

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2008 at 10:00 am

You’ve just spent two grand on Motorola’s Aura, the cell phone that thinks it’s a Swiss watch. You suffer sudden buyer’s remorse. No problem–you can just put it on eBay and recoup at least part of your dough, right?

Um, problem. According to the blogosphere, the Aura comes with a contract that forbids you from dumping the phone on eBay. Instead, you can sell the phone back to Motorola. Supposedly, the company thinks it would tarnish the Aura’s image if it were available on the second-hand market.

It reminds me of the contract that Oscar winners need to sign to get their statuettes. That one mandates that before they can sell their trophy, they must offer to sell it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences–for $1. I don’t know what Motorola’s buyback price is–I assume it’s more than a buck, but less than $2000.

Anyhow, it seems damned presumptuous of Moto to tell Aura buyers what they can with an Aura once they’ve plunked down their money. You also gotta wonder why a company that’s laying off thousands of people and trying to get out of the phone business altogether is devoting energy to the idiosyncratic Aura. I’m guessing that Aura will be short-lived–kind of like Sony’s equally preposterous Qualia line of a few years back, which included stuff like a $4000 2-megapixel digital camera. Which, as far as I know, you could do whatever you wanted with once you’d lost interest in it…

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Is There Any Way to Save Circuit City? I’m Not Optimistic–But I Hope So

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2008 at 12:42 am

Engadget is reporting a rumor that that the venerable Circuit City chain is planning to shut down 155 of its stores, which would amount to about a quarter of its locations. If true, this is sad news for the folks employed at those outlets, not to mention the ones who like to shop at them. But it wouldn’t be a shock. For a long time, Circuit City’s very existence has been defined by the fact that it competes with the juggernaut known as as Best Buy, and it’s never found a satisfactory strategy for defining itself in an appealing, distinct way. Mostly, it’s felt like a Best Buy with less floor space and a skimpier selection of stuff, and service that was at best no better than Best Buy’s. Which is a recipe for irrelevance, long term.

It’s easy to forget that there was a time when Circuit City was the nation’s leading national electronics chain, and Best Buy was an up-and-comer, not an 800-pound gorilla. Actually, it wasn’t that long ago: Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, published in 2001, lavishes praise on Circuit City’s success and mentions Best Buy only once, in passing. But there’s no business that’s more fickle than retailing, and electronics is especially brutal–just ask CompUSA, Good Guys, RadioShack, or any of the other chains that have either gone out of business or suffered serious challenges in recent years. (And while I was writing this, I learned that Tweeter, a mainstay of my New England youth, is being liquidated.)

I can’t say I’m optimistic about Circuit City’s chances–its stock has fallen so far that it’s flirting with being delisted from the NYSE–but I would be pleased to see it figure out a way to turn things around. If Circuit City ends up with only a handful of stores or disappears altogether, it’ll leave Best Buy as the only truly national, truly full-service electronics retailer. And I’d much rather it had at least one strong competitor to keep it on its toes and pressure it to keep prices low. (Best Buy’s healthiest rivals all seem to be indirect competitors: the regional chain Fry’s, the generalist Wal-Mart, and the Apple Store.)

I’m not sure what I’d do if I somehow found myself as the CEO of Circuit City–if there was an obvious route to success, the company would surely have tried it by now. But I’d hope that there was a place for an electronics chain that offered a noticably superior shopping experience than most–better products more invitingly displayed, with savvier salespeople and smoother checkout. In other words, a sort of Apple Store that sold everything besides Apple-related wares. Given that Circuit City made headlines last year for firing its most experienced salespeople and replacing them with newbies, this doesn’t seem to be its strategy. But I’d love to see it, or somebody, try…

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Please Vote for the Best and Worst Windows Versions of All Time

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 2, 2008 at 11:38 pm

It’s the most popular product in the history of personal technology. It’s also the one that’s inspired the most angst–not to mention a landmark court case or two. But Windows isn’t one product. Over its twenty-three year history, it’s been available in dozens of variations. Some got glowing reviews; others still cause those who remember them to wince at the mere thought of them.

But which version of Windows was the most impressive one ever–and which one was the most awe-inspiring fiasco? I have my theories. But I thought it would be more fun to let you make the call.

Hence this article. I’ll recap some of the essentials on twenty editions of Windows, from the prehistoric (version 1.01) to the futuristic (version 7, available today only in a pre-beta incarnation); you can click on the title of each listing for more information over at Wikipedia. Once you’ve read up, please vote on the best and worst, and use Comments to praise or rant at greater length if you choose. We’ll use this feedback as the basis of an article we’ll publish in the not-too-distant future.

This survey involves only desktop versions of the OS that ran on x86 CPUs–sorry, Windows NT for DEC Alpha and Windows CE buffs–and I haven’t included each and every version, just the major ones and some others with a reputation for being particularly outstanding or excruciating. You can also cast write-in votes if you’re an aficionado or enemy of Windows/286 or Windows XP SP1 or another version we skipped.

The rundown that follows includes pros and cons for each edition, but I won’t pretend it’s entirely dispassionate–it’s hard to write about Windows without expressing opinions. Don’t be swayed by my slant on things, though. Just vote honestly (hey, it’s anonymous). The list starts after the jump, but if you don’t need to brush up before voting, you can head straight for the poll. Oh, and please tell your friends about all this–the more opinions the merrier…

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More on Opera (or the Lack Thereof) on the iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 2, 2008 at 2:41 pm

Last week, I wrote about a New York Times story that reported that Opera has written a version of its browser for the iPhone but had it rejected by Apple. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has a good follow-up post in which he combines reporting, technical analysis, and some scuttlebutt from an informed source to theorize that Opera’s browser–and in this case, as he notes, it’s Opera Mini rather than the fancier Opera Mobile–may not actually have been rejected by Apple, and that its issues on the iPhone may have to do with the fact that it’s a Java app, and the iPhone doesn’t do Java.

Like much relating to iPhone development, this is all pretty murky–but Gruber’s post is illuminating even if his parsing of what may have happened isn’t 100% correct. Go read.

I persist in the belief that iPhone owners shouldn’t have to worry about issues of Java and software interepreters and SDKs and NDAs and such: There’s surely an audience for Opera on the iPhone, and there oughta be a way for Opera to satisfy that audience. And Apple should err on the side of making it possible for third parties to quickly ramp up the catalog of iPhone apps rather than putting obstacles in their way.

I also persist in suspecting that even if the iPhone is less than completely open right now, it will open up over time–competition with other platforms such as Google’s Android will leave Apple with no choice. It’s mainly a question of whether that opening up will happen really quickly or will drag on forever. I hope…

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Build (or at Least Envision) Your Dream PC

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 31, 2008 at 10:54 am

Asus and Intel have launched WePC.com, a Web site that’s a marketing vehicle, but an entertaining one: It lets you noodle out ideas for new PC designs, then publish them so that other folks can vote on them and discuss them. The designs will supposedly be taken into consideration to serve as the basis of new Asus systems, but even if your dream machine stands no chance of ever becoming reality, it’s fun to piece it together.

(Side note: The site provides a configuarator that lets you specify your computer’s specs, including the number of FireWire ports…and the minimum number of FireWire connectors it permits is one. Guess that whoever designed this configurator agrees with those who say that even the idea of a FireWire-free laptop is a travesty.)

(Further side note: The configurator doesn’t involve specifying the CPU inside your dream PC, but you get the chance to describe the machine using free-form text. I’m happy to see that some people are proposing PCs that run OS X and/or use AMD processors, even though the site is sponsored by Asus and Intel.)

I spent a few minutes at WePC roughing out a machine I’m calling the Foxbook, which continues the idea behind my series of articles about working in the browser by proposing a thin-and-light notebook that’s designed to run Firefox really well and which has enough connectivity options to ensure that you’ll be able to get online anywhere on the planet. It’s not a standard netbook, since it has a largish 14-inch screen. And I wouldn’t be stunned if it cost more than a grand, especially if it had a nice aluminum case. But I’d sure like to have the chance to buy one–and I’m reasonably confident that laptops that bear at least some resemblance to it will arrive in the not-too-distant future.

If you find WePC intriguing enough to design your ideal machine, why not leave a link in the comments on this article so we can check it out?

(Full disclosure: Federated Media, Technologizer’s advertising partner, helped Asus and Intel launch WePC.com…and in fact, there are ads for it in this site. There might even be one on this very page. But I’m not writing about it because of those ads, and I won’t make any money if you click on the ad or otherwise make your way over to WePC. I just think it’s clever enough to deserve a quick mention.)

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