Author Archive | Harry McCracken

The Case For a Mac Netbook

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 22, 2008 at 12:14 pm

“There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”

–Steve Jobs in yesterday’s Apple earnings call, responding to a question about whether Apple will release lower-cost Macs

Let’s begin with a few disclaimers:

–I have no idea what products Apple is or isn’t working on;

–Attempting to reverse-engineer Steve Jobs’ thought processes is a hopeless task that usually leaves you guessing he’ll do the exact opposite of what he ends up doing;

–If you assume that Apple will jump on a bandwagon or respond to pricing pressures, you assume incorrectly–it’s quite possible that the company will never make anything remotely like a netbook;

–Making predictions about future Apple products most often ends up making you look dim and Apple look smart.

With that out of the way, the question that folks have been asking lately about whether Apple will or should release a netbook-like Mac is fascinating. Regardless of whether the company ever does unveil a small, cheap, simple Mac notebook, it’s fun to think about the prospect of one. And I’ve come to the conclusion that such a machine could be in the works, in a manner that’s consistent with the Apple way and the company’s product line as it stands today. I’m not calling this a prediction. But it is a scenario.

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Bring on the Bold! AT&T Sets a Launch Date for New BlackBerry

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 22, 2008 at 10:09 am

I’ve written several times about RIM’s BlackBerry Bold–mostly with an an impatient edge in my voice, since I first got to try one way last spring and thought it would come out on AT&T at around the same time that the iPhone 3G arrived in mid-July. AT&T took longer to decree the phone ready for prime time than anyone expected–a good thing, apparently–but it’s reached its comfort zone. The company has announced that the Bold will go on sale on November 4th; it’ll cost $300 with a two-year contract.

To recap, the Bold is the next-generation full-sized BlackBerry: It’s got 3G data capability, an excellent screen (the same resolution as an iPhone, but more dots per inch). improved software with what looks like a decent browser and new media apps, and, yes, a very real physical keyboard. I’ve lost track of the number of BlackBerry users who have asked me about it over the past few months, and the number of times I’ve told them to hold off on jumping ship to the iPhone until they were able to try out a Bold. My gut is that there are a lot of BlackBerry users who have no desire to give up their clicky little keyboards, but want a hipper phone–and therefore there may be a big pent-up demand for a phone like the Bold.

The Bold has taken so long to make its appearance that it risks never getting a chance to be the newest, coolest BlackBerry: Verizon will be shipping the BlackBerry Storm soon, too, and its touchscreen makes it a more strikingly different type of BlackBerry than the more evolutionary Bold. I haven’t tried the Storm yet. But no matter how cool it turns out to be, I think there’s going to be a very large market for BlackBerry devices with real QWERTY keyboards for a long time to come.

Much more to come on the Bold once we get our hands on one for a full review.

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Motorola’s $2000 Aura Phone vs. the Rolex Submariner: The Ultimate Showdown

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 21, 2008 at 7:04 pm

In introducing its new $2000 Aura cell phone today, Motorola repeated comparisons to luxury watches. So contrasting it to an iPhone or a BlackBerry or even the Prada phone may not do it justice. How about facing it off against one of the most famous mobile status symbols of them all, Rolex’s eternally popular Oyster Perpetual Submariner? I did just that for this T-Grid, and found that it’s a close contest–the two gadgets have much in common, but both sport some attractive features that the other doesn’t. Bottom line: If you’ve got a spare $8K, you might want them both!

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A $2000 Cell Phone, Motorola? Good Luck With That

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 21, 2008 at 10:52 am

Swiss precision. More than 200 tiny parts. A sapphire crystal. A price tag that’s close to twice what I paid for my first car. It sounds like something from Rolex or Omega. But it’s the Aura, a new cell phone from Motorola.

The Aura has the following features:

–the phone industry’s first round display, with 16 million colors and 300-dpi resolution;

–a stainless-steel frontpiece that takes two weeks to make;

–an “assisted opening” blade mechanism that involves more than 130 ball bearings (” an effect more like opening a luxury car door than accessing a mobile device”) and which is visible through the back of the phone;

–Stereo Bluetooth!

(Motorola’s press materials don’t mention whether it has Internet access or not; if if it has a browser that reformats pages so they’re round, I’m impressed.)

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Twine: A Better Approach to Social Bookmarks. Potentially.

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 21, 2008 at 7:47 am

Twine has launched. The new site, which has been in private beta testing for a year or so, is a super-ambitious service for sharing not just plain old bookmarks but Web information of many kinds. And so far, I’m finding it intriguing and potentially useful–but also kind of frustrating.

First the good news: Twine is a much more powerful take on social bookmarking than Delicious and its rivals. A Twine is a collection of links and other Web information, and you can create them on any topic you like and either make them public or keep them private. Other Twine members share their Twines, too, so you can browse through ones on an array of subjects, or peruse the Twines that a particular member has created.

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Lala’s Spectacular New Music Service

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 20, 2008 at 8:12 pm

For a couple of months now, I’ve been using a music service that’s been in a quiet (but open) beta period. It’s been kind of amazing. That service is the all-new version of Lala, and it’s officially throwing its doors open to the public today.

Among other things, Lala is:

–a service that sells MP3s (DRM-free, natch) for 89 cents apiece and streaming-only versions of songs (“Web songs”) for a dime (which can be applied later to the purchase of an MP3). Entire streaming “Web albums” are typically eighty cents. And most downloadable MP3 albums are aggressively priced–ones that go for $9.99 on iTunes are typically $7.49 on Lala, less than even the price-slashing Amazon.com download store charges. (Any download you buy includes a streaming version at no extra cost.)

–a service that will let you listen to scads of new music without paying even that one thin dime per streaming track, since you can stream any song that Lala has–and it has millions, from the four major labels and 170,000 independents–for free the first time you listen. (New members also get their first fifty Web songs for free, period.)

–a service which scans the music on your computer’s hard drive, identifies the songs, and puts them into your online library at Lala for free, so you can listen to them in any browser on any computer. Yes, this is a modern version of My.MP3.com, the nifty service that was killed by the music industry back in 2000. But this time around, Lala is paying the music companies so it’s all kosher. (I’ve wanted MyMP3 back since the day it went away, so I got kind of emotional when I saw that Lala had essentially replicated it for the moden era of digital music.)

–a social network that lets you discover new music by seeing what other folks are listening to, then listening yourself–again, for free if you’ve never heard a track before, and for a dime if you’ve listened once and haven’t already bought the Web version.

–an iPhone application that lets you stream your entire music to your phone; as long as you’ve got an Internet connection, the effect is a little like having an iPod with infinite capacity. (The iPhone app isn’t available yet, but I saw a preview and liked it; the company says it’ll arrive soon.)

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Is the New MacBook Expensive?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 19, 2008 at 11:38 pm

When I first tried to compare the cost of Macs versus Windows PCs, I said that “Are Macs more expensive?” is one of computing’s eternal questions. It’s not, however, one with anything like an eternal answer. And the pricing analysis I did in that first article was rendered obsolete last Tuesday when Apple unveiled its new MacBook–which turned out to be a substantially slicker computer at a higher price point.

So it’s time to compare Apples and oranges Windows computers again. Let’s begin with a standard Mini-FAQ on the research effort that follows…

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A Partial Cure for the No-MacBook-FireWire Blues

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 18, 2008 at 12:24 am

I’m thinking this is my final post on the lack of FireWire on Apple’s new MacBook, but it might help some of the folks who are in mourning. If what you’re sad about losing is Apple’s FireWire Target Disk Mode–which lets you copy files back and forth between two Macs via a FireWire cable–you can get a rough USB approximation in Targus’s Targus for Mac File Transfer Cable.

It’s a $50 cable that lets you connect two Macs–or a Mac and a Windows PC, or two Windows PCs–and shuttle files between them. One end of the cable has a lump (see above), and the lump contains Mac and Windows software that shows the folders on both computers and allows you to drag and drop folders and files:

Since the software’s in the cable, there’s no need to install anything (you just launch it directly from the cable). And unlike Target Disk Mode, you don’t need to reboot one computer and put it in a mode that doesn’t let you do anything else. If you’ve been using computers as long as I have, the whole experience will remind you of using Laplink.

I haven’t done any speed comparisons between this cable and Target Disk Mode–lemme know if you’re curious, and if there’s enough demand, I’ll try to do some.

Not everybody needs this cable–if your computers are both on a network, you can move files between them without any additional cost–but it does what it does nicely, and might be worth the investment–especially if you’ve got multiple Macs and Windows PCs.

I do think that Apple will eventually make Target Disk Mode work with USB connections; I make no predictions about when that may happen, though…

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FireWire Isn’t Alone: A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 17, 2008 at 12:44 pm

Apple has a storied history of being the first company to introduce an array of new technologies in its computers, or among the very first, at least. It all started with color graphics in 1977’s Apple II and continuied features such as graphical user interfaces, Firewire, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and light-up keyboards–and items such as the buttonless touchpads on its new laptops. But it’s just as core to the company’s character that it’s often the first company to kill a technology if it appears to be heading for the dustbin of computing history.

Which is causing a bit of a firestorm this week: The new MacBook has no FireWire port, and some Apple fans are very, very unhappy about that. In our T-Poll on the topic, 49% of respondents are pretty ticked off, and 85% think FireWire still has life in it; only 10 percent applaud Apple’s decision.

It looks like Steve Jobs isn’t terribly sympathetic: He allegedly sent a brief e-mail to an unhappy customer pointing out that USB has been standard equipment on new HD camcorders for several years. Which is true, but may not pacify folks with camcorders that are FireWire only. Or who like FireWire’s speed for external hard drives. Or who just have trouble giving up technologies that they know and love.

(Side note: Some pundits snipe at Jobs for the fact that his e-mails in response to Apple customers are usually extremely brief. Me, I’m impressed that he finds the time to send ’em at all–and what the e-mails lack in diplomacy, they make up for in honesty.)

Like I say, Apple would clearly prefer to move too fast rather than too slowly when it comes to eliminating technologies that may be past their prime. I don’t know if anyone from the company has ever explained its rationale, but I presume it stems from a desire to save money; t remove components and therefore reduce weight and bulk; and maybe simply to simply remove clutter from the clusters of ports on its computers. I know of no instances in which feedback from angry customers caused it to reverse its decisions. Nor of any where most PC manufacturers didn’t eventually follow its lead.

Shall we review the evidence?

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