Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Bad Revue: Logitech’s Google TV Box Suffers From “Negative Sales”

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2011 at 2:19 pm

How is Logitech’s Revue–the first stand-alone Google TV box–selling? Logitech says sales are “slightly negative.” As in, more Revue boxes are coming back to Logitech than are being bought and used by consumers. I feel the company’s pain, but I’m not surprised by the bad news. I like the idea of Google TV, but when I tried the Revue last October, I found its software horrifically rough around the edges, to the point that it was no fun at all. Logitech has knocked the price down from $249 to $99, but a shaky product is a shaky product no matter what the price is.

As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out, the Revue is an example of a trend I cover in my new TIME.com Technologizer column: products which ship even though they’re clearly not ready to ship. I don’t know the Revue’s backstory–and tend to think that Logitech may have been as surprised by anyone at how iffy the Google TV software is. But reviewers like me and early adopters who bought the Revue found it lacking, and told other people. Is there any way that Google TV’s chances at success wouldn’t have been a lot higher if Google had finished it six months or a year later and invested the extra time in creating something that pundits and real people would have loved?

 

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DisplayMate’s Latest Tablet Display Shoot-Out

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2011 at 2:08 pm

Some people review phones and tablets. My friend Ray Soneira, the display guru who runs DisplayMate, reviews phone displays and tablet displays–and he just published an update to his ongoing review of tablet screens. Executive summary: He thinks that Apple’s iPad 2 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 are both really good, and very close–and that, even though the Tab’s colors are oversaturated, it’s slightly better than the iPad overall. None of the other tablets he tried rival the iPad and the Tab.

Ray also points out an important fact that many of us trip up on: Android tablets with 10.1″ screens don’t give you more real estate than the 9.7″ iPad 2.

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Google Wants to Speed You Up

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2011 at 8:29 am

Google thinks the Web should be faster. It’s a constant theme at its media events, and is reflected in its decisions about its search engine, Android, and other products.  And it’s announcing Google Page Speed Service, a new service which aims to help other sites pick up the pace. Page Speed Service will wedge itself between an existing site and the Web, and will rewrite the site’s code on the fly to optimize it for speed. It’s not intuitively obvious that this would work–wouldn’t the rewriting process eat up part of any gains realized?–but Google says that it’s seen improvements of 25% to 60% in some cases.

Just for yuks, I ran Page Speed Service’s tests on Technologizer. It said that the optimized version of this site was 1.9 percent faster than the current one, but also said that the optimized one was slower in other respects. (The video comparison of existing Technologizer vs. optimized Technologizer–which you can view here–does make the optimized one look snappier.)

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Happy Fiftieth Birthday, IBM Selectric

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2011 at 5:28 am

Last month, I had fun paying tribute to Polaroid’s SX-70, an old-technology gadget that’s all the more extraordinary because there was nothing digital about it. The SX-70 came to mind again when I learned that IBM’s Selectric typewriter is marking its fiftieth anniversary. It was a great leap forward beyond every typewriter of the time, both technologically sophisticated and beautifully designed. And it remains pretty darn cool even if most of us will never use one again.

To celebrate the Selectric’s fiftieth, I put together a slideshow of evocative images and interesting factoids, including stuff about later models–such as the $21,000 (!!!) Selectric Magnetic Tape Composer. Here it is.

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It’s Selectric! IBM’s Classic Typewriter Turns Fifty

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 27, 2011 at 4:51 am

Do you remember typewriters? Of course you do. But do you remember the last time a typewriter was exciting and futuristic? That would be 1961, when IBM released its first Selectric. It went on sale on July 27th, which makes this Sunday its fiftieth anniversary. (IBM is celebrating its own hundredth birthday this year, making the Selectric a nifty half-way point in its long history.)

The result of seven years of research, the Selectric went on to become one of the best-selling office devices ever. It’s been so archaic for so long that it’s tough to remember just how remarkable it was in its day–and there’s no better time than right now to give it its due.

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Kobo to Apple: We’re Building Our Own HTML5 E-Bookstore

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 26, 2011 at 3:15 pm

Apple’s new App Store policies–the ones I worried about when they were announced months ago–have kicked in. From now on, app makers who sell content such as books and music have two ways of making it available. They can use Apple’s In-App Purchase system to sell content within the app (giving Apple a 30 percent commission). Or they can sell it directly to consumers through their own venues, such as Web-based stores–but can include no mentions or links relating to that fact in the iOS app itself.

Many third-party developers are choosing one route or the other without any public fuss. Canadian e-book purveyor Kobo is being a tad more prickly. It’s updated its iOS app with a new version that meets the new rules–it lets you read books you’ve purchased, but provides no way to buy them or register for a Kobo account, nor any explanation of how to do so. But it’s also announcing plans to build an HTML5 e-reading app which will work in the iOS browser–and which it’ll control itself, with no requirement that it follow Apple’s rules. And the company’s chief iOS architect is detailing the Byzantine approval process which the Kobo app had to go through before Apple would finally approve it. (The essentially similar Borders app wasn’t forced to jump through as many hoops, a reminder of the biggest problem with App Store rules: they’re sometimes applied in an inconsistent, apparently arbitrary fashion.)

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Sony’s Digital Zoom Breakthrough?

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 25, 2011 at 4:14 pm

One of the core things that digital camera buyers have always needed to know is that optical zoom is good, and digital zoom is…well, maybe not bad, but kind of worthless: all it does is throw pixels away. But as PCWorld’s Tim Moynihan reports, Sony is saying that its new Cyber-shot TX55, a super-thin camera, has a digital zoom that preserves detail rather than losing it. I’m still skeptical, but I’m looking forward to seeing reviews.

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Gmail Users on the New Gmail

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 25, 2011 at 3:49 pm

I continue to like the new version of Gmail which Google is letting users sample (at least in part) by switching to a new theme. One of the things I like best about it is that it’s not packed to the point of illegibility with messages, options, menu bars, and sidebar items. Google aired the interface out with a lot more white space, and for me, at least, that makes for a far more pleasant, efficient experience. So I’m slightly worried by Google’s report on initial overall response to the new version:

What you like

  • The clean and minimalist look of the new design
  • Seeing a consistent “look” across Google products

“The new Preview theme is wonderful! It’s clean and crisp, easy to read and really focused on the one thing that matters most in Gmail — the mail! Thanks!”

What you want to change

  • Too much whitespace and not enough information (though interestingly, many people reported that they appreciated to lower information density after a while)
  • Not enough contrast
  • Darker theme options

Fine by me if there’s a dense version and a lighter, airier one. (There already is–the new theme is available in two variants.) But for purely selfish reasons, I hope that Google doesn’t react to the “Too much whitespace” feedback by cramming more stuff back onto the page. My eyeballs are very happy with the new look just the way it is.

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