If you've flown on a commercial airline since 2000, you've probably seen people wearing Bose QuietComfort headphones. They're expensive and large, and I don't like them.
Their noise-cancellation circuitry actually generates noise of its own, and my ears are good enough to hear it as long as I'm not seated too near the engines.
I started wearing earplugs on airplanes in the 1980s when I discovered the squishy memory-foam type. They block noise better than headphones ever could, and they don't make any noise themselves.
But when I bought my first iPod, that strategy didn't seem quite so perfect anymore. The ear-bud headphones that came with the iPod never fit me at all; they just fell out. After some experimentation with small folding travel headphones, I decided I was happiest with in-ear headphones. They gave me most of the noise reduction of the foam earplugs along with the ability to listen to music.
The problem with in-ear headphones is finding a model that fits me. I gather that this is a common problem with this type of product. I went through several low- and mid-priced models before settling on the old Apple In-Ear headphones--they just worked the best for me. (Interestingly, I had the same experience as CNET's Steve Guttenberg when he reviewed them: they only fit well when inserted upside-down.)... Read More
Apple's announcements this week expanded the range of the MacBook Pro product line, which now covers starting prices from $1,199 to $2,499.
In effect, the Pro line has absorbed the aluminum-cased models from the MacBook line, which is now reduced to a single model with a white plastic case, a look that debuted over three years ago.
Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro.
(Credit: Apple)Some "Pro" models now have features that used to be hallmarks of the basic MacBook notebooks: integrated graphics and no ExpressCard slot. I think of these as consumer-oriented choices, and I'll throw in the standard glossy screen finish on the 13-inch and 15-inch models. A glossy screen looks better for movies, but it's unacceptable for some professional users.
Consumers should be happy to migrate to the MacBook Pro line, since they can now get features and options never before offered on MacBooks: FireWire 800, for example, and support for up to 8GB of DRAM.
Professional users, on the other hand, are now reduced to just one good choice: the 17-inch MacBook Pro, which includes an ExpressCard slot and can be ordered with an antiglare screen.
So in a way, Apple's newly expanded notebook line is narrower than it used to be -- there's room both above and below, especially if the plastic MacBook is allowed to fade gracefully into history.
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(Sheesh, I've been busy lately. I had more spare time when I was employed!)
Ever since I got my iPhone 3G in late July, I've been keeping track of the things I like--and don't like--about it.
Since Apple is rumored to be releasing the next major iPhone firmware update today, I thought I'd run through the list now, and then see how the new firmware changes things. Many of these comments apply to the iPod touch as well.
The things I like are, generally, the same things everyone likes. The iPhone is feature-rich, well integrated, well supported by independent software developers, and fun to use.
The things I don't like are, generally, software features that ought to be present but just aren't.
Each time I discover another one of these missing features, I jot it down in my iPhone WTF list. WTF, of course, stands for "Where's the feature?"
Muting and sounds
For example: Where's the feature to mute the phone? You may point to the little toggle switch on the left side, but no, that just mutes the ringer and certain audio alerts, not the whole phone. On my old Palm Treo, the mute switch darn well muted everything, as if the switch disconnected the speaker wires themselves.
On the iPhone, there's no way to predict which sound sources will respect the mute switch. Calendar alerts do; alarms don't. These are good choices--I like knowing that the alarm function will still wake me up even if I mute the phone before going to sleep--but hardly intuitive.
Alarm volume is controlled by the ringer volume, but even the minimum ringer volume is still audible.
Application-generated sounds have a separate volume control. If you're not in the iPod application, which has a volume slider, I think the only way to adjust this control is to use the volume rocker switch while an application is making sounds. Sometimes, that's after the phone has already started to annoy the people around you.
Bottom line: I can't find a way to make the unit completely silent without going into multiple Settings panels and applications, and even that isn't completely effective because some applications (as exemplified by the otherwise valuable Phone Aid) will turn the volume back up when they run.
Alerts and Calendar app
While I'm on the subject of alerts: in the Calendar application, where's the function to set an alert for the exact time of an event? Sometimes I just want to beep myself at 10 a.m. to make a phone call, for example. I don't want to have to set the time for 10:05 a.m. and the alert for "5 minutes before." I love the fact that Calendar supports up to two alerts for the same event, but I wish I could set them to, say, 15 minutes and 0 minutes respectively. This problem could be solved by providing a "Custom" time choice for both of the alerts.
Apple's iPhone 3G
(Credit: Apple)The Calendar app also has the worst user-interface design in the whole iPhone, I think. To select the date and time for an alarm, you spin three wheels apparently stolen from the game show The Price Is Right. The minutes wheel is so easy to spin that in going from :00 to :30, I commonly spin right past :30 and back to :00. Apple has developed many ways to select dates and times for other systems and applications; this is by far the worst.
The Calendar app does something else that's kind of silly. In the daily view, most events get two lines of text: the title and location. Displaying these two lines takes up about one hour of the day. For a shorter event--one scheduled for 30 minutes, say--the two lines get squeezed into one line in an attempt to maintain the orderly appearance of the schedule.
But come on, Apple! The lines on a sheet of paper are fixed. The lines on a computer display aren't. Stretch the lines apart so that every event gets the space it needs! Jeez, this isn't rocket science.
Similarly, a long event has plenty of room to display additional information, such as the notes associated with the event--but instead, the event ends up with two lines of text and a bunch of wasted blank space. Display the notes, and shrink the event if that helps to keep the whole day on the screen. I hate having to scroll the Day display just to show two events.
The Calendar app doesn't handle multiple-user event scheduling very well. Invitations received by the iPhone's Mail app aren't understood by the phone. I can go look at the message on my Mac and add the event to my calendar there, and eventually the event shows up on my iPhone, but that's not so good when I'm traveling. And even then, the event can't be edited on the iPhone--not at all, not even to change the times.
The Calendar app does something very nice: the icon on the iPhone's home screen shows the current day and date. So, where's the feature? Why don't all of Apple's apps do this sort of thing where appropriate? The Clock app icon always shows 10:15. The Weather app always shows sunny and 73 degrees. The Stocks app shows a random squiggle. Sure, updating all these icons would give the iPhone some extra work to do--so Apple should provide a "Live icon updates?" setting and have some rules about how often the updates should happen. I think the slight increase in overhead would usually be worth it.
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Amazon.com really knows how to treat its customers.
Although I've read a few dozen books on my Kindle by now, my use of it is erratic. I use it heavily for days or weeks at a time, then set it aside for a while to address the stack of paper books by my nightstand. (When Montalvo Systems shut down, I had two 2.5-foot stacks of unread books. After a long summer of unemployment, the unread stack is down to a mere five titles.)
Amazon's Kindle e-book reader
(Credit: Amazon.com)Last Tuesday, I found an e-book I wanted to read, so I got out the Kindle and saw it was dead. (The battery lasts only a few days even if I'm not using it, which really isn't good enough.) I charged it overnight and moved the book onto the Kindle on Wednesday. Later that day when I wanted to read the book, I found the Kindle was out of juice already.
I charged it overnight again (with the radio off in case it was having some kind of issue), forgot about it Thursday and remembered it this morning. But it was dead again. I started it charging again before going out to a lunch interview. When I returned, I turned the unit on and just sort of kept an eye on it, pressing buttons occasionally to keep it mostly awake while doing some other work on my computer.
The battery ran down in less than two hours.
... Read More
In a way, this story is left over from CES 2008, where I attended a blogger party hosted by the Parnassus Group and sponsored by, among other companies, Virgin America, the US domestic airline counterpart to Virgin Atlantic.
The party was a lot of fun, and all the sponsors did extensive giveaways. I got a flight suit from Intel and Zero G, a private company that offers "weightless" (parabolic trajectory) flights. Alas, I didn't win a Zero G flight, but I did win a free flight on Virgin America. In fact, I think pretty much everyone at the party won one of these prizes-- apparently they gave away 80 flights.
A Virgin America A320 Airbus aircraft
(Credit: Virgin America)The free flight coupon, which was good for one round trip in the main cabin (that is, coach class) anywhere Virgin flies in the US, was valid through the end of May, so when Montalvo Systems shut down in early April I was able to spend some time planning a trip.
Although Virgin America flies to several West Coast destinations, I spend most of my time on this end of the country anyway. The two choices that seemed most attractive were New York and Washington, DC. Ultimately I decided I could have a better time in DC and not spend so much money, so that's where I went.
Buying the ticket on the Virgin America website was pretty easy once I figured out that the site requires customers to apply discount codes in advance rather than also accepting discount codes when paying for a flight.
I had to pay $21 in fees for the flight, and I chose to pay $25 extra for an exit-row seat, but the discount still amounted to $277.20. Normally I'd say such a meager amount wouldn't influence my posts here, but it's probably the case that I wouldn't be writing about Virgin America otherwise...
The airline charges $25 extra for "premium" seats at the bulkheads and exit rows in the main cabin. As a fairly tall guy, I like this idea-- it discourages people from taking these seats if they don't need them, and makes them more likely to be available for those of us who really need them.
I was able to get an exit-row seat on the return flight, but not on the flight out. The seat pitch in the main cabin is adequate for moderately tall people such as myself, but only barely. It's about like American Airlines, which is the airline I usually fly on.
Virgin America seems to have learned some valuable lessons from the success of JetBlue on these transcontinental flights. Virgin provides fairly comfortable leather seats in the main cabin and attractive leather massage chairs in first class. The airline's Airbus airplanes (my flights were on A320s) are attractively decorated inside with color-changing "mood lighting" (which remained set to blue and purple on my flights).
Virgin provides a high-quality multimedia entertainment system with a 9" touchscreen LCD at every seat. The system, called Red, carries 24 channels of live satellite TV (sourced from Dish Network), 20 channels of live satellite radio, a good variety of on-demand TV shows and music, movies, simple games, and even chat rooms. I checked frequently but never found anyone in the chat rooms on the way out; on the way back, this feature was disabled.
The system has menu options called "Read" and "Shop", but they were not active. It seems to me that unavailable options ought not to be displayed.
The Dish Network channels are standard definition, not HD, but are stretched to fill the widescreen LCDs, which I find annoying. The broadcasts didn't come through reliably; on both flights, there were long periods when some of the channels were experiencing trouble, even in level flight at our cruising altitude under a clear sky. Sharp turns caused the satellite receiver to fail entirely, but I suspect there's no good way to solve that problem. On the return flight, four of the channels (ESPN, ESPN Classic, BET, and BBC America) were carrying Dish informational programming instead of the intended content.
I was pleased to see that the music videos and some of the pre-recorded TV shows and movies are offered free of charge. For example, I found several of the TED Talks and an episode of Patrick Norton's Tekzilla (an old one-- episode 17 from January 2008).
When watching the pre-recorded content, there are pause, rewind, and fast-forward controls. These functions aren't available for the live broadcasts-- no in-air DVR yet, sorry.
I also appreciated the live flight map based on data from Google Maps, although it doesn't offer a satellite view or a really close-up view of the road maps. It seems to me that these features would be useful, but I suppose that providing them would require much more on-board storage. The map can pop up over whatever TV show you're watching, which makes it convenient to check the progress of the flight during commercials. There was an odd problem with this feature-- the black pixels on the map overlay were actually transparent, so legends on the map (city names, etc.) were intermittently illegible depending on the TV image. This function worked well on the flight to DC, but was not reliable on the flight back. Even after we landed at SFO, the system showed the airplane was a few miles southwest of the airport.
The system can also be used to order food, which seems like a great idea, assuming it doesn't run the cabin crew ragged. Some of the things you can order are free, like sodas, but most items are sold to generate additional revenue. Accordingly, "Eat" buttons are easy to find on the wired remote control and the on-screen menus.
Entrees-- salad and sandwich type stuff, no hot food-- were around $9; snacks were $1 to $2. These prices were competitive with those of airport shops, and it's certainly more convenient to get the food onboard-- but most airports offer more variety. A turkey-bacon wrap sandwich I ordered came without the expected accessories (napkin, mustard, etc.).
One of the most valuable features on board-- to me, at least-- was the provision of two 110V outlets for each set of three seats in the main cabin. (Presumably the folks in first class get one each.) Finally, there's a legal way to power and recharge my laptop in flight. The DC outlets found on some airlines won't charge a MacBook Pro, although they do let the machine operate without running down the battery further. Virgin's AC outlets are oriented horizontally, rather than the usual vertical arrangement in most wall outlets, which made for a fragile connection to the MacBook Pro's power adapter, which frequently fell out.
Virgin America also offers Ethernet and USB jacks at each seat, but these are currently useless. When I hooked up to the Ethernet jack, my laptop detected the connection, but didn't receive an IP address, so there was no way to communicate over it. I can imagine this feature could be useful for business travelers who need to collaborate on some project during the flight, but until a DHCP server is provided, even peer-to-peer networking will likely not work.
The USB jack, allegedly provided to allow customers to recharge cellphones, iPods, and other USB devices (and, according to the on-board Welcome guide, to hook up a full-size keyboard for the in-flight entertainment system, an amusing notion), didn't even provide power.
Bottom line-- the electronics and the in-air food ordering are fun, but not enough to make a difference for me. I will certainly consider Virgin America for future travel, but I'll continue to choose airlines based on price, schedule, and compatibility with my existing frequent-flyer miles, as I've always done.
Coming up next, a few museum reviews! I spent most of my time in DC doing the usual touristy stuff, and I ran across a chunk of ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose digital computer, in an unexpected place...
I like the Belkin company. I remember when Belkin was basically nothing but a cable company, and by that, I mean a company that makes electrical and optical cables. They made good cables, and still do.
The Belkin F6C550-AVR UPS.
(Credit: Belkin International)But in recent years they have expanded into a wide variety of consumer products. I've always assumed Belkin's expansion was driven, at least in part, by the success of Monster Cable, which has made a lot of money selling expensive cables that (in my opinion, at least) are not always worth the price.
I imagine Belkin's engineering-oriented management deciding that selling well-engineered cables at a reasonable price would provide effective competition for Monster's marketing-focused strategy. I have no idea whether it went that way or not, but at least it's a sensible theory.
I sometimes wonder sometimes if Belkin isn't expanding too quickly. The company seems to be introducing new product lines faster than some companies introduce new products. That can lead to problems with product quality, customer support, and other critical business functions.
I've bought quite a few Belkin gizmos over the last several months, including the TuneTalk Stereo that I reviewed here back in September. (And also see this update to that review.) The TuneTalk Stereo was incorrectly marketed as compatible with the newly-released iPod classic, and although Belkin advised me that an upcoming iPod update would likely restore compatibility with the classic, my TuneTalk Stereo still isn't fully functional. Maybe the current models work fine; I don't know.
But I've continued to buy Belkin products, including several audio and video cables and a USB hub that I've had no problems with.
Unfortunately, just this week I've bought two Belkin products that didn't live up to my expectations. One was a fairly trivial little item, the F9H600-03 Surgemaster power strip. I needed a power strip so I could plug in some "wall wart" power supplies that wouldn't fit on the back of a UPS, and this product was the cheapest power strip with surge suppression available at my local Home Depot.
Since they were only about $8 each, I bought two of them; I figured I'd find a use for the other at some point. But when I plugged in the first one, it immediately made a loud snapping sound inside and released a puff of vile-smelling smoke. I was so eager to get it out of the house that I immediately wrapped it up in the Home Depot bag and took it out to the trash. I simply wasn't going to give it the chance to stink up my car in order to return it.
The other power strip worked fine, and I doubt it'll ever go bad. It's hooked up to an outlet on the year-old APC Smart-UPS that services my Power Mac G5, and three little power bricks are plugged into it in turn.
For many years, I've bought all of my UPSs from APC; I've always been happy with that brand. But when I went UPS shopping for one to put in my bedroom to protect the XO-1 from the One Laptop Per Child organization that has taken up residence on my nightstand, I bought a Belkin instead.
At least at my local Fry's on that day, the Belkin F6C550-AVR was a better deal than any of the APC UPSs in stock. The Belkin product was, by far, the cheapest model that offered an alarm disable function. APC's cheaper models don't have that feature, but if I'm going to be sleeping next to a UPS during an extended power outage, I need to be able to shut off the alarm.
Anyway, I got the Belkin model home and hooked it up to my XO-1, my alarm clock, the charger for my Palm Treo, and a 20W flourescent lamp.
After it had been plugged in for a few hours, I tested it by unplugging it from the wall. And wouldn't you know it, the flourescent lamp-- a cheap model without a starter or ballast, admittedly-- shut off for a second then turned itself back on. Subsequent testing produced the same result. That's clear evidence that the switchover time from AC power to the internal battery isn't as short as it ought to be. I tested one of my APC UPSs with the same lamp, and the lamp never flickered.
I didn't return this product either, since it meets my simple needs in this application. The XO-1 won't notice a brief power interruption since it has its own battery, but I wouldn't use the F6C550-AVR to protect a desktop computer.
Three incidents, especially when they involve unrelated problems in different products over the space of five months, don't really establish a trend. But I have to admit I'm going to be a little less likely to buy Belkin products going forward.
Except the cables. I still like Belkin cables.
On Friday night, I was over at Santana Row in San Jose, just across the street from the Apple Store at the Westfield Valley Fair mall.
Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard
(Credit: Courtesy of Apple)I could have gone over there and bought a copy of Leopard, Apple's new Mac OS X version 10.5, but I didn't, for two reasons. First, I didn't need to-- I'm a member of the Apple Developer Connection (ADC), so I'll get a copy anyway, eventually. Second, I don't intend to install Leopard right away.
This isn't like my decision not to buy an iPhone. I didn't want an iPhone. I still don't. (The hypothetical future iPhone that includes 3G connectivity based on the recently announced Broadcom 3G "Phone on a chip" plus third-party development, more memory, etc. ... well, I'll be all over that one.)
No, I do want Leopard. But I use my MacBook Pro for business, and I can't afford to have it out of service because there's some undiscovered reliability issue or incompatibility with some critical application like Cisco's VPN software (my Vista Tablet PC still can't VPN into the company network because Cisco is months late with the necessary software update).
I figure I'll wait a couple of weeks to see if any problems get reported, and then I'll go for it.
In the meantime, my older PowerBook G4 has been running Leopard since the first beta release, and I'm very impressed. As Apple itself admits, Leopard isn't about big changes; it's just a huge collection of improvements, some bigger than others.
In a sense, I've already spent $848 to get ready for Leopard-- renewing the ADC membership recently was $499, and buying a new iPod classic with enough free space to use as a Time Machine backup drive on the road was another $349-- so I'm quite eager to make good on the investment by doing the upgrade.
Just another couple of weeks, and it'll happen. And then I'll see if I can't find something original to say about it here that hasn't already been said in a thousand other blogs!
When I posted my review of Belkin's TuneTalk Stereo, a representative of APC commented on the story to suggest that I might want to use APC's Mobile Power Pack to extend the iPod's battery life when recording.
I started to reply to describe the gizmo I designed to power my iPod from a spare PowerBook battery-- a little clip that connects the battery terminals to an iPod dock cable. This is what I used to use to power up my old 4th-generation iPod while recording long conference sessions with the Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod.
But even as I was typing, I realized ... Read More
I'd like to provide some additional information provided by Belkin as a followup to my review of the TuneTalk Stereo earlier in the week.
Belkin public relations coordinator Jacqueline Romulo wrote to me after the review appeared to confirm that the TuneTalk Stereo is not currently compatible with the iPod classic, and said it was listed as compatible on the Belkin Web site by mistake. (Indeed, it's no longer listed on Belkin's page for the iPod classic.)
In a subsequent e-mail, Romulo provided this ... Read More
Belkin TuneTalk Stereo
(Credit: Belkin)On Monday evening, I posted my first impressions of my new iPod classic 160GB. The first accessory I needed for my new iPod was a microphone so I can record conferences, meetings, and voice memos.
Right after receiving the iPod, I looked around online and found a comparative review of three iPod microphones by Mark Nelson on the O'Reilly Digital Media site. The review helped me settle on the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo for iPod.
I checked the Belkin Web site to make sure this model is compatible with the iPod classic. There's a page on the Belkin site just for that model, and the TuneTalk Stereo is on there--Belkin part number F8Z082-BLK.
I then went to the local Apple Store (at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, Calif.) since I remembered seeing this gizmo for sale there a couple of months ago. Sure enough, they were still there. In fact, there were two different ... Read More
