Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Quickoffice and the Paradox of the iPhone Platform

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 10, 2008 at 11:11 pm

Paradoxical but true: The iPhone is both the most highly evolved mobile platform ever and one that’s remarkably rudimentary in some major ways. What’s good about it is so good that I sometimes forget that. But every time I do, something happens to remind me of the things it still can’t do, and of how little we know of Apple’s road map for the phone and its software.

CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment, the fall edition of the big cell phone show, is going on in San Francisco this week, and as usual the Mobile Focus press event piggybacked on it. I attended MobileFocus tonight and was pleased to find the Quickoffice folks–who make office suites for the Symbian and Palm platforms– there. I was even more pleased when they told me they were getting into the iPhone software business.

They showed me a free application they plan to ship in November that lets you do something you might assume Apple’s MobileMe would do: allow you to shuttle files between the iPhone and the iDisk online storage that comes with a MobileMe account. Quickoffice’s software supports the WebDAV standard, so it also works with Box.net, Google Docs, and other forms of online storage. Very clever.

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Funnest. iPod. Ever.

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 9, 2008 at 4:15 pm

I get along pretty well with copy editors and other grammar experts, but I’m not a language snob myself–I enjoy using and abusing words, and making up my own ones when I don’t know of any existing ones that will suffice.

So I hereby officially approve of Apple’s tagline for the new, slimmer iPod Touch: “The funnest iPod ever.” Sure, “The Most Fun iPod Ever” is grammatically unassailable and means the same thing. But it’s nowhere near as…fun.

And I think that Apple’s probably in the clear given that Merriam-Webster does mention funnest as an acceptable (albeit unusual) inflection of fun.

If “The funnest iPod ever” proves to be unpopular with word pros, it’ll be the second time an Apple slogan has been linguistically controversial: “Think Different” provided lots of fodder for debate. It’s also as good a candidate as any for Apple’s most famous tagline ever–so I suspect that the company will weather any gripes that come their way concerning funnest. If it starts calling the new Nano “the most thin iPod ever,” we’ll know it’s just being difficult.

(Side note: Years ago, Wendy’s adopted the slogan “Ain’t no reason to go anyplace else,” and I remember lots of flack about the use of ain’t from teachers and others with a professional interest in proper grammar; Wendy ended up dropping it. I think America has gotten a lot more easy-going about language over the last few decades.)

The other thing that’s interesting–and yes, even fun–about “The funnest iPod ever” is its suggestion that Apple is going to be really serious about mobile gaming. At the moment, we think of the iPod Touch as a music player that also does video and applications; I wonder if Apple’s goal is to get folks thinking of it as a handheld gaming device first. Maybe even the handheld gamingest device ever.

And aw heck, let’s make a T-Poll out of this:

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iTunes 8 First Impressions: Pretty, Good

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 9, 2008 at 2:59 pm

It’s really tough to review any application or service that relates to musical tastes: The kind of music you like is intensely personal, and it can have a huge impact on how pleased you are with a product. Please bear that in mind as you read my initial impressions of iTunes 8–and know that my music collection, while quite sizable, consists mostly of stuff from the 1950s and 1960s. (Offhand, I’m not sure if I have more than fifty songs on my hard drive recorded in this century.)

iTunes 8, which Steve Jobs announced today at the Apple event in San Francisco, has a few major new features..

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The New iPod Nanos

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 9, 2008 at 11:24 am

Here’s a look at the new Nano in all its polychromatic glory–I’m running this image from the Apple Store sideways so I don’t have to shrink it. (If these were real Nanos, the displays would all rotate automatically.)

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Remoteblogging the Apple iPod Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 9, 2008 at 9:56 am

For the first time in a while, I’m not at an Apple product-launch event–I’m at DEMO in San Francisco today, so I’ll miss “Let’s Rock” in San Francisco. (Which probably means it’ll be an especially good one…the last one I missed was the original iPhone launch at Macworld Expo 2007.)

The good news is that the Web will be full of live coverage, including liveblogs at Cnet, Macworld, Engadget, Gizmodo, and elsewhere. I’ll be reading ’em and chiming in here. Call it remoteblogging, if you will–and refresh this page for updates. It’ll be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.

11:05: Apple event is over! I had fun even though I wasn’t there. I’m going back to attending DEMO–more thoughts later.

11:02: Unrelated news which I may or may not write about at greater length later: PC World has announced that my friend and former boss Steve Fox, who has an ever longer history with PCW and IDG than me, is the new head of editorial. That’s amazing news, and he’ll do a great job.

11:02: More music from Jack Johnson.

11:01: Twitter is down. Possibly killed by Apple-related tweets.

11:00am: Jack Johnson speaking to crowd.

10:57: Johnson is apparently playing something with political overtones, or understones. I can’t tell from here.

10:53: Musical conclusion with Jack Johnson, #1 selling male artist on iTunes. Does Jobs ever announce anything after the music? Not that I can recall.

10:52: iPhone 2.1 software available today Friday, fixes lots of bugs.

10:50: My EVDO choked, so I’m playing catchup. Schiller showed soccer game and Need for Speed. Touch prices: 8GB, $229, 16GB for $299, and 32GB for $399. Available now. People at event see new ad.

10:41: Guy in front of me here at DEMO is reading Engadget’s liveblog of Apple event; Bet he’s not alone…

10:38: Steve invites Phil Schiller onstage, apparently to talk games. He’s demoing Spore, which just shipped.

10:37: Demo of Genius feature on the Touch. And watching Iron Man.

10:34: 100 million apps have been downloaded from the App Store. It’s available in 62 countries. 700 games available.

10:32: New Touch has built-in speakers, volume controls on side, built in Nike support, App Store, other software enhancements. Jobs is showing Genius feature again.

10:32: Is the fact that he announced the Nano first a hint that something REALLY interesting will be the “Just one more thing?” Maybe, maybe not.

10:31: Jobs is introducing new iPod Touch. It’s contoured, in a stainless steel case.

10:30: If I were at the event, I’d be watching a new Nano ad right now.

10:28: New Nanos in stores in next few days. Also introducing new $79 headphones with built-in microphone, woofer, and tweeter.

10:26: Announcing colors (blue, purple, orange, green, pink, yellow, red, violet, silver) and pricing:  $149 for 8GB, $199 for 16GB.

10:25: New Nanos are highly recyclable.

10:24: New Nano has 24 hour battery life for audio, four hours for video.

10:23: As rumored, shake the Nano and it’ll shuffle your songs!

10:22: Rotate the Nano into landscape mode, and it automatically notices, adjusts the screen, and goes into Cover Flow mode.

10:20: New Nano is, as rumors had it, curved. And as last-moment rumors said, it has accelerometer from iPhone and iPod Touch.

10:19: New Nano is extremely thin–Jobs says we’ll be blown away. Thinnest iPod ever. Aluminum case, curved glass screen.

10:18: He’s announcing the new Nano. It’s the skinny model I was skeptical about, from all the spy shots. Wrong again!

0:16: Microsoft-bashing: Zune has 2.6 percent market share. Sandisk has 8.6 percent–actually kind of amazing for a memory company. iPod has 73.4 percent. Still dominant after all these years.

10:15: Remoteblogging is fun, but it just ain’t the same when you can’t hear Steve Jobs. Yes, it’s what creates the reality distortion field. But without Jobs, it’s all a lot more clinical.

10:14: He’s moving onto iPods and quoting impressive stats.

10:13: Jobs is demoing Genius by listening to Elvis and getting a playlist with Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison automatically.

10:11: Jobs is browsing songs by artist, genre, etc. You can browse albums by cover and look at albums by artist. Works for TVs and movies, too.

10:09: Genius sends info about your musical tastes to the cloud, but it’s anonymous. Also uses combined data of all iTunes users.

10:07: iTunes 8 has Genius feature that makes playlists of songs that go great together. Will also recommend songs you should buy from iTunes Store.

10:06am: NBC is returning to iTunes Store; HD TV Shows available on iTunes for $299; iTunes 8 is launching today.

10:03: Okay, he’s quoting stats about iTunes sales.

10:02: Actually, Steve is onstage. He says there’s some exciting stuff to come, and makes reference to Bloomberg’s premature obituary for him.

10:00: It’s 10. But these events usually start a few minutes late, and begin with some fairly standard stats on sales of iPods and iPhones, iTunes successes, etc. So I’m not overly anxious. Yet.

9:58: Engadget says that the Doors’ “Touch Me” is playing; sign of new touch-screen products? Who knows?

9:56am: If I were actually at the event, I’d be blogging about the crowds and music right about now; if I spotted Al Gore or Woz in the crowd, I’d mention that, too…

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An Intensely Selfish Apple Wishlist for Tomorrow’s Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 8, 2008 at 11:15 pm

I’m telling you, I’ve given up trying to predict what Apple will announce at its press events, such as the one that’ll happen tomorrow in San Francisco. Safe predictions (“The event is called ‘Let’s Rock,’ so it’s likely that it will involve new iPods”) are boring, boring, boring. Out-there ones (“Apple will release a touch-screen Mac tablet”) are too random. And the most interesting things that happen at Apple events are usually so unpredictable that nobody predicted them.

That doesn’t mean I’m not curious, though, or that there aren’t things I’d like to see announced. So in lieu of a list of predictions, here’s a wish list, in rough order of its chances of actually being announced tomorrow (that doesn’t count as a prediction, does it?).
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More on Plastic Logic’s Reader

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 8, 2008 at 4:31 pm

I popped by Plastic Logic’s booth here at DEMO to get a closer look at its thin, full-sized e-reader and ask a few questions. What we saw this morning was unquestionably a very early sneak peek at a product that’s still under development: The Plastic Logic folks haven’t named the reader, won’t say how much it will cost, and aren’t disclosing anything about its price.

Once of the nice things about DEMO is that attendees usually have the opportunity to try out the new stuff for themselves. But the Plastic Logic reader was sitting inside a glass case where neither attendees nor Plastic Logic staffers could touch it. I can’t think of another instance of product at DEMO being presented in such a hands-off manner, though it did remind me of the iPhone’s unveiling at Macworld Expo in 2007.

With the reader cased away, I could get a sense of the general form factor–it’s nice and thin. But I couldn’t hold it and gauge its weight. And the exhibition wasn’t of much use at all for judging the screen quality, since the reader was sitting under lighting in what was presumably an ideal setup. (One of the issues with the e-ink technology used by the Plastic Logic reader and the Kindle is that the grey-on-grey text becomes hard to read in less-than-optimal lighting.)

The Plastic Logic reps I chatted with talked about business people being excited about doing presentations on the reader. I can see the form factor appealing, but I’d think that the grainy black-and-white graphics would discourage most people from doing that in most instances.

Oh, and they said that the reader will have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and built-in software for converting documents into the appropriate format for reading on the device.

It seems inevitable that it will someday be possible to build a reader in a size similar to the Plastic reader with a really good color screen and marathon battery life–I just don’t know if it’s a year or two away, or a decade or two. I do know that I’d like to have one right now…

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More on RealDVD

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 8, 2008 at 4:06 pm

I blogged about Real’s RealDVD ripping software last night, and now the company has done its demo here at DEMO. The basics are as I mentioned last night: It’s legal, runs on Windows, costs $30, retains copy protection and lets you watch DVDs on up to five PCs but not iPods or other devices.

The most important new news in the DEMO was a look at the interface, which looks nice: Like a program such as iTunes does for CDs, RealDVD identifies your movies when you insert a disc and downloads a box image and movie details. You can browse your movie collection via those box images.

Real says you can store movies on an external drive or thumb drive, and the software will notice that you’ve attached the drive and show the movies on it. I’m not sure if you can store movies on a networked drive, but I’m not sure why you couldn’t.

Oh, RealDVD copies preserve menus and bonus materials, and you can record a movie to your hard drive at the same time you’re watching it.

RealDVD looks like it does a nice job of what it sets out to do, which is let folks copy and watch DVDs in a way that’s simple and designed to avoid being sued into oblivion. That doesn’t mean that Hollywood won’t sue Real over RealDVD–I can’t imagine that content owners are thrilled by the idea, since they’d much rather sell you all the movies you already paid for as digital downloads.

I also suspect that folks who use existing DVD rippers will sneer at the idea of paying for an application that retains copy protection and therefore lets you do less with your ripped DVDs. But Real is presumably hoping to sell RealDVD to large numbers of consumers who don’t know about existing tools, find them intimidating, or–hey, here’s a novel thought–stay legal.

I think the software might do quite well with that audience, and I’ll give you more impressions once I’ve had a chance to try it…

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