Author Archive | Harry McCracken

RealDVD is in Real Trouble. No, Really.

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 4, 2008 at 9:59 pm

Why is the woman in the above image from RealNetworks RealDVD site smiling? You’d think she’d look just a tad glum given that the software, launched just last week, has been pulled off the market. According to NewTeeVee, a court has told Real to stop distributing the company’s DVD copying software until Tuesday while it reviews the case. That’s the latest development in the legal tussle that has Real suing Hollywood, Hollywood suing Real, and most consumers, I suspect, rooting for Real–except for those who think that the company is a bad guy itself for selling software that not only preserves DVD’s encryption on the copies it makes but adds additional DRM.

I sure hope that Real prevails, and quickly; RealDVD is a small but real positive development for consumers who want to get more out of media they’ve paid for, and it doesn’t let anyone put copies on BitTorrent or otherwise engage in mass piracy. If even its limited functionality is forbidden or stuck in legal limbo, it’s going to be really depressing.

I’m not a lawyer, though, so I’m not going to make any predictions about RealDVD’s fate. You’d think that Real wouldn’t have gone to the expense and bother of developing it if it wasn’t reasonably confident that it could sell the darn application, but perhaps it gambled and gambled badly. (I do regret declaring that the software was “clearly legal” in my review: I was…clearly wrong. Or at least not clearly right.)

Oh, and Technologizer gave away ten license codes for RealDVD yesterday to members of our community, so I’m rooting for the current RealDVD takedown to indeed end on Tuesday so those winners can make use of their codes.

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The T-Poll: Windows XP Lives!

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Looks like it’s official: Microsoft will let PC manufacturers offer a Windows XP downgrade option through July 31st 2009, extending XP’s original death sentence by six months. As I wrote yesterday night when this was still just a rumor, it seemed pretty much inevitable: If Microsoft had denied computer vendors the ability to provide their customers with the operating system which a huge percentage of their business buyers will want, the planet’s major PC companies would have descended on Redmond with pitchforks and torches.

(System builders who were still selling PCs with XP preloaded may still be irate, though–Micorosft is saying that the January 31st deadline will remain for them.)

What does this mean for Windows Vista? Well, the whole point of the downgrade option is that every downgradable PC that’s sold includes a copy of Vista, so this isn’t hurting Vista sales a bit. It is, however, surely depressing Vista usage. But with Windows 7 supposedly arriving in late 2009 or 2010 depending on which Microsoft comments you believe–hey, this is a new version of Windows we’re talking about, it’s obviously going to be 2010–Vista’s tenure as the current version of Windows may already be more than half over.

Maybe Microsoft is resigned to the fact that XP refuses to die and is focused on preparing for a Windows 7 rollout that’s way less bumpy than Vista’s has been. If so, that might permit it stop plotting XP’s demise and permit it to survive for the time being…grudgingly, at least. That would make for a Microsoft whose interests weren’t so much at odds with those of a signficant percentage of the people who use its operating system. Which would be good.

Which raises the question: Once Windows 7 is available, what are the chances that Microsoft will still be dealing with PC users who simply won’t give up Windows XP, which will be close to nine years old by then?

And here’s another question for you, in the form of a T-Poll:

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You Know, What I Really Want is a Sony Kindle

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2008 at 10:31 am

Sony, which is among many other things the other big company besides Amazon that’s in the e-book game, has announced a new model: the Reader Digital Book PRS-700BC. Available in mid-November, it will sell for $399 and sports two significant features: a touchscreen that lets you turn the page by swiping and sidelighting that illuminates the screen. In theory, at least, both should be great big advances, since both previous Sony Readers and Amazon’s Kindle have had quirky user interfaces that involve buttons off to the side of the screen, and the e-ink technology used by both devices works pretty well in bright light and not at all when the environment’s too dim. (In that respect, it provides an uncanny simulation of real paper.)

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RealDVD Giveaway Winners

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2008 at 9:24 am

We have winners! Our giveaway of ten copies of Real’s RealDVD software is now complete. The software was released earlier this week and has already inspired legal warfare between Real and Hollywood–I know who I’m rooting for–so it’ll probably stay in the news for awhile, and its fate remains unknown. But the following lucky Technologizer Community members get the application for free, and license codes are in their inboxes as we speak:

Matthew
Azeem
Tuxedobuford
Jamil Caram Jr
Warren
Brian Winking
Sammy Brence
The Human Yawn
Samuel
John99

Congrats to the winners–and thanks to everyone who took the time to enter.

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The T-Grid: Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic vs. the iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 2, 2008 at 9:53 pm

Give Steve Jobs this: When Apple frets publicly about other companies ripping off the iPhone, it has a point. The iPhone is quickly becoming what the Mac was more than twenty years ago, only more so: A device that sets the style, technological, and functional agenda for an entire industry. And now Nokia is leaping into the game with the 5800 XpressMusic, its first iPhone-like touchscreen phone.

The 5800 XpressMusic certainly looks like an iPhone, and it matches its features in many areas (though not all of them: It’s got a less sophisticated, single-touch screen, albeit one with more pixels). And it’s got some of the features which some people wish the iPhone had, including a fancier camera that has a flash and can record video, voice dialing, and even an FM radio.

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Windows XP’s New Lease on Life?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 2, 2008 at 7:12 pm

The Register is reporting something that’s both really interesting and totally unsurprising: It’s saying that it’s heard that Microsoft will extend the period that PC vendors can offer a Windows XP “downgrade” option with new machines that run Vista from January 31st, 2009 until July 31st of that year.

This is still a rumor at this point. But every time I meet with a PC company and ask them whether their business customers are ready for Vista, the response is amazingly similar, and amazingly negative. They always bring up the January 31st deadline, and when they mention it, you can see the fear in their eyes.

If the desire in corporate America to retain the XP option is so strong a few months from now, I don’t see how Microsoft can give XP its final heave ho. There’d be an uprising among PC buyers, and that uprising would prompt one among Microsoft’s PC manufacturer customers. There might have been a time when Microsoft could have told the world to stuff it, but I don’t think that time is now.

And if Windows 7 really does come out in early 2010 or so, extending Windows XP’s availability until the second half of 2009 would allow companies to sidestep Vista altogether if they so chose. (Not that most of them will go to Windows 7 quickly, no matter how good it is: 2011 is about the earliest that corporate adoption would really kick off.)

The Register’s scuttlebutt may or may not be true–maybe Microsoft will not simply extend the current situation but instead move to some new policy that allows it to save face without ticking off the entire planet–but I’ll be startled indeed if XP does indeed simply vanish at the end of January….

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Picnik: Even Neater Than I Thought

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 2, 2008 at 10:35 am

In my last Operation Foxbook post, I said that when I edited screen images in the browser, I cheated on my Web-only regimen and saved them in Windows Paint first to get them on my hard drive for uploading into Picnik. Turns out that I could have done it and remained true to the spirit of Operation Foxbook–the Picnik folks wrote to tell me about their Firefox extension, which lets you grab images, screens, and even whole Web pages (including regions that aren’t on screen) for editing with one click. I stand happily corrected.

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New Targus Accessories Cater to Mac Users

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 1, 2008 at 6:08 pm

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Seagate’s new hard drives designed specifically for Macs, and noted that it was interesting to see how booming sales for Macs have led large companies to enter the Mac market rather than flee it, as many were doing not so long ago. Here’s more confirmation of that trned: Targus, the big manufacturer of computer cases and mobile accessories, is rolling out its first products tailored for Mac users.

The “Targus for Mac” line includes mice, a USB hub, a presentation remote, a file-sharing cable, a cooling pad, and privacy screens. For the most part, their Mac-isness doesn’t relate to functionality, and Mac users already have access to products in all those categories which are fully Mac-compatible. But Targus has done a nice job of styling the products with a look that’s pleasingly complimentary to MacBooks and MacBook Pros without simply being an unimaginative knockoff of Apple’s own aesthetic.

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Okay, What the Heck is Windows Cloud?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 1, 2008 at 5:06 pm

As far as I’m concerned, one of the most interesting topics to speculate about in all of personal technology is the fate of Windows in an increasingly Internet-centric world. And Steve Ballmer just gave us more fodder to chew on: This IDG News Service story says that the Microsoft CEO told attendees at a London conference that Microsoft will announce something code-named Windows Cloud in about a month. (That timing would coincide neatly with PDC, Microsoft’s big annual conference for software developers.)

The IDG story describes Windows Cloud as an operating system, but I’m assuming it’s not an OS that’s in any way akin to Windows as we know it as a desktop OS. Rather, it’s more likely a development platform and/or set of services for Net-based apps, possibly in the same vein as some of the stuff Amazon is doing with its Web Services offerings, which are used by lots of significant consumer services. (See Ina Fried’s story at Cnet News for more on this idea.)

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Good News for the iPhone: Apple Axes the NDA

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 1, 2008 at 10:48 am

Here’s a happy development to kick off October: Apple, which has come under increasing criticism for the all-encompassing non-disclosure agreement that developers must sign to create iPhone applications, is terminating it. In recent weeks the NDA was in the news for everything from preventing developers of programs that had been rejected from the App Store from discussing why to stifling publication of books about iPhone software development. It also caused some of the respondents to our recent iPhone satisfaction survey to express extreme dissatisfaction with Apple. Basically, it was so comprehensive that in theory, it turned the iPhone software platform into Fight Club: If you were a developer, you didn’t talk about it.

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