Long experience has taught me that this has to stay a gadget blog. I know that once I stray into gadget/Tycho Brahe territory it's only a matter of time before we're all Tycho all the time. No need to trouble yourselves figuring out the monetization story for a Brahe blog. It's dismal.
I mention this only because Tycho Brahe and Doctor Who are obviously one and the same. I mention this, in turn, because a colleauge recommended 'Breaking Bad' to me a couple of years ago.
'Breaking Bad' is brilliant. It is filmed as if it has the resources of an entire state-run broadcast empire behind it. Beyond that similarity, it shares something else with the modern Welsh re- (re-re-re-re-re-re-re-) incarnation of The Doctor. The Doctor requires a companion so that the Doctor has someone to explain things to. That's twenty five percent more subtle than just grasping the lens hood of the camera with both hands and speaking directly to the audience.
Breaking Bad requires Saul the Lawyer for the same reasons. Imagine -- just for a moment -- that The Doctor needed a lawyer more than he needed a companion. What a show that would be! Dick Wolf may not have been the first to imagine 'Law and Order -- Gallifrey' but the potential is obvious. Dick? Are you reading? Call me. I'll be on the morning train to Cardiff.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
ewaste: express
I usually like to play it cool in public. I cultivate the impression that I've been an Apple user since the Macintosh IIfx. The truth is that I'm an Apple user since the ][+ but I left the fold and I didn't return until 2001.
I wandered in the intervening years. I became a NeXT addict just after it was fashionable and just before the color machines arrived. I wouldn't have fished a IIfx out of a dumpster, let alone one of the machines hawked at Sears or one of their wretched StyleWriter serial printers. Even now, Apple still can't let go of that era. I typed 'stylewriter' above and my iPad autocorrected it for me. I would have disavowed all knowledge.
I moved to Ted Ts'o's boot/root 2-floppy linux distribution when that was the mode and stayed on that wagon for some time. I drifted back to Apple only after OS X shipped from the factory on a machine. Mine was a late 2001 iBook. I think I went back just for reliable wake/sleep and for the internal WiFi.
The clean lines and reliable hardware of the iBook may have pushed me back into the pool, but I had already dipped a toe. Apple's AirPort was amazing. I got one of the original graphite base stations not long after their release and used it together with Lucent Orinoco cards in Linux machines. The Mac-only configuration was a turn-off but a third party client was available. Several contemporary accounts dinged Apple for rebadging the Lucent RG1000 access point or for the relatively primitive KarlBridge software.
Those reviewers missed both the biggest upsides and the biggest downside of the graphite. The biggest upsides were that it was a straight rebadge of someone else's concept and therefore was not encumbered with a pile of hopeless AppleTalk garbage. It worked with just about any client and any 802.11b card. The biggest downside was that Apple took somebody else's concept and removed the ventilation. Apple's access point appears to have actually used the same motherboard as the Lucent unit. An analogous product from HP did the same. Search for 'airport graphite bad capacitor' and you'll get thousands of hits on articles or posts about repairing bad capacitors in these units. Search for 'rg 1000 bad capacitor' and the closest you get is a link to an article that talks about repairing blown caps in the Apple version of this product!
The Apple version of this product probably outsold the Lucent version and it certainly sold better to the individuals likely to repair their own devices but I don't think this is the only explanation for this disparity. I can only find one useful link anywhere to a user who is in any way dissatisfied with the reliability of the RG 1000. I suspect that the RG 1000 had a better thermal story that Apple didn't copy. Even though they share a motherboard, the Apple packaging is radically different.
What does this have to do with the ancient history of Apple products? Many of them since the ][+ have been plagued with overheating problems. Examples include the Apple III, the Macintosh 128k, the Power Mac G4 Cube, several models of iMac and Mac Mini, and many Apple accessories. My own experience with modern Apple towers is that some huge portion of the total cabinet volume is consumed by fans and heatsinks. These machines have never overheated on me.
I'm sure they have learned that there are three types of quiet computers: passively cooled computers, computers cooled with slow turning fans, and dead computers. They have a line of machines to cover every corner of this market. Quiet is a core part of their brand identity in exactly the same way that visual simplicity is. I truly admire their commitment to quiet -- just not the part where it pushes past a commitment to correct functioning. This product philosophy extends to their peripherals and accessories as well.
Today's ewaste item is the last of my 802.11g Apple Airport Express base stations.
For a few years, I popped these the way some people pop Chiclets gum. I think I lost four to overheating in three years -- all in locations with good airflow. I kept replacing them only because a seamless AirTunes (now AirPlay) experience was available nowhere else.
My own luck is better with the newer 802.11n units. I have no experience with the very newest units that resemble the second generation Apple TV. My original graphite base station did die of bad capacitors. I replaced them and the unit worked for several more years. I tossed it only when I gave up my last modem in 2004 -- sadly too long ago to merit an ewaste entry of its own.
Here's a Kickstarter idea for the intrepid: As soon as Apple announces a new passively cooled device, introduce a designer heatsink to match.
The clean lines and reliable hardware of the iBook may have pushed me back into the pool, but I had already dipped a toe. Apple's AirPort was amazing. I got one of the original graphite base stations not long after their release and used it together with Lucent Orinoco cards in Linux machines. The Mac-only configuration was a turn-off but a third party client was available. Several contemporary accounts dinged Apple for rebadging the Lucent RG1000 access point or for the relatively primitive KarlBridge software.
Those reviewers missed both the biggest upsides and the biggest downside of the graphite. The biggest upsides were that it was a straight rebadge of someone else's concept and therefore was not encumbered with a pile of hopeless AppleTalk garbage. It worked with just about any client and any 802.11b card. The biggest downside was that Apple took somebody else's concept and removed the ventilation. Apple's access point appears to have actually used the same motherboard as the Lucent unit. An analogous product from HP did the same. Search for 'airport graphite bad capacitor' and you'll get thousands of hits on articles or posts about repairing bad capacitors in these units. Search for 'rg 1000 bad capacitor' and the closest you get is a link to an article that talks about repairing blown caps in the Apple version of this product!
The Apple version of this product probably outsold the Lucent version and it certainly sold better to the individuals likely to repair their own devices but I don't think this is the only explanation for this disparity. I can only find one useful link anywhere to a user who is in any way dissatisfied with the reliability of the RG 1000. I suspect that the RG 1000 had a better thermal story that Apple didn't copy. Even though they share a motherboard, the Apple packaging is radically different.
What does this have to do with the ancient history of Apple products? Many of them since the ][+ have been plagued with overheating problems. Examples include the Apple III, the Macintosh 128k, the Power Mac G4 Cube, several models of iMac and Mac Mini, and many Apple accessories. My own experience with modern Apple towers is that some huge portion of the total cabinet volume is consumed by fans and heatsinks. These machines have never overheated on me.
I'm sure they have learned that there are three types of quiet computers: passively cooled computers, computers cooled with slow turning fans, and dead computers. They have a line of machines to cover every corner of this market. Quiet is a core part of their brand identity in exactly the same way that visual simplicity is. I truly admire their commitment to quiet -- just not the part where it pushes past a commitment to correct functioning. This product philosophy extends to their peripherals and accessories as well.
Today's ewaste item is the last of my 802.11g Apple Airport Express base stations.
For a few years, I popped these the way some people pop Chiclets gum. I think I lost four to overheating in three years -- all in locations with good airflow. I kept replacing them only because a seamless AirTunes (now AirPlay) experience was available nowhere else.
My own luck is better with the newer 802.11n units. I have no experience with the very newest units that resemble the second generation Apple TV. My original graphite base station did die of bad capacitors. I replaced them and the unit worked for several more years. I tossed it only when I gave up my last modem in 2004 -- sadly too long ago to merit an ewaste entry of its own.
Here's a Kickstarter idea for the intrepid: As soon as Apple announces a new passively cooled device, introduce a designer heatsink to match.
 |
| A bright future on Kickstarter Image credit ebay seller 'fiatinc' Used without permission |
Saturday, September 15, 2012
knife fight (2)
In the first installment of this post we waxed nostalgic about the HP 7475 and flayed ProvoCraft for their knife cutter that prints money but only for ProvoCraft. This installment is all about the Silhouette Cameo.
ProvoCraft started with an unformed block of public sentiment towards Cricut and has spent the last seven years whittling it into a tasteful single digit salute. On the other hand, Silhouette is a virtual unknown. Silhouette America was incorporated only three years ago, in Utah, as a subsidiary of Graphtec America. Silhouete existed in some form as a product family under Quickutz before then but I suspect that they sold a rebadged Graphtec machine.
Who is Graphtec? Graphtec America is a subsidiary in turn of parent Graphtec in Japan. That firm appears to be no part of the Greater Salt Lake Metropolitan Craft Mafia that controls the entire I-15 corridor from Salt Lake City to Orem. I dare not speculate publicly about the rumored Yakuza-GSLMCM tie-up that floods the US market with smuggled craft materials. Graphtec appears to be an actual successful company that has built a business that sells real products to grown-ups who use them the way they like. They have been at it since 1949. So far, so good.
The Silhouette Cameo machine appears to be derived from Graphtec's earlier CraftROBO machine, itself derived spiritually from Graphtec's main line of industrial cutting machines. The Silhouette Cameo is clearly a response to ProvoCraft's Cricut. It represents a measured response. The main innovation in the Silhouette is a bundled application, Silhouette Studio, that lets new users start cutting quickly. That application knows how to take your credit card number and generate a series of nearly painless little charges for the same kinds of unimpressive little shapes that Cricut forces you to buy bundled together on an expensive cartridge.
If Cricut is your evil cable company, then Silhouette is the mythical a la carte cable that many seem to want. I don't want either of those things. I just want to cut the same kind of simple SVG file that nearly any web browser can show. Silhouette Studio can't do that unless you introduce it to your friend Ulysses S. Grant. With that dirty transaction out of the way, Studio is happy to open as many as perhaps three quarters of the SVG files you have lying around. Three quarters is not a bad ratio for SVG interoperability in my experience.
I get my files from openclipart.org. I can't say enough about what a great resource that site is. It serves public domain vector art exclusively. They have a simple service to rasterize the images on their server for casual users who lack a tool chain for that. It's absolutely the thing for Free software.
Once you click the buttons for cut, load media in the cutter, and adjust the knife depth to match the on-screen prompts, things happen pretty quickly. I haven't yet has a serious feed or cut problem. The basic operation is the same as the Cricut machines or the HP 7475. The head moves in one direction across the piece and a pair of rollers move the work back and forth. For knife cutting on paper, the work is fixed temporarily to a sticky mat that holds all the newly freed pieces in place. This mat is not necessary when drawing or when cutting some stocks that are themselves fixed to an adhesive back.
The Silhouette Cameo offers one big hardware advantage over the Cricut mini. The Cameo includes a small image sensor next to the cut head. This sensor can locate registration marks on a printout and align cuts precisely with matching images printed on the sheet. This seems to work well when it works but I have found it to be finicky. It may be very sensitive to print quality and ink bleed in the paper. I intend to try some of the more troublesome papers in a color laser printer to see if this helps.
I haven't yet tried the cutter with Inkscape or other tools. Look for an extended review once I get that working. What I have is a device that seems reasonable enough to be worth the effort of figuring out. The Silhouette Cameo isn't going back anytime soon. I was able to use it to cut decorations for a child's birthday party. They looked good and made my eldest happy. What more can I say?
ProvoCraft started with an unformed block of public sentiment towards Cricut and has spent the last seven years whittling it into a tasteful single digit salute. On the other hand, Silhouette is a virtual unknown. Silhouette America was incorporated only three years ago, in Utah, as a subsidiary of Graphtec America. Silhouete existed in some form as a product family under Quickutz before then but I suspect that they sold a rebadged Graphtec machine.
Who is Graphtec? Graphtec America is a subsidiary in turn of parent Graphtec in Japan. That firm appears to be no part of the Greater Salt Lake Metropolitan Craft Mafia that controls the entire I-15 corridor from Salt Lake City to Orem. I dare not speculate publicly about the rumored Yakuza-GSLMCM tie-up that floods the US market with smuggled craft materials. Graphtec appears to be an actual successful company that has built a business that sells real products to grown-ups who use them the way they like. They have been at it since 1949. So far, so good.
The Silhouette Cameo machine appears to be derived from Graphtec's earlier CraftROBO machine, itself derived spiritually from Graphtec's main line of industrial cutting machines. The Silhouette Cameo is clearly a response to ProvoCraft's Cricut. It represents a measured response. The main innovation in the Silhouette is a bundled application, Silhouette Studio, that lets new users start cutting quickly. That application knows how to take your credit card number and generate a series of nearly painless little charges for the same kinds of unimpressive little shapes that Cricut forces you to buy bundled together on an expensive cartridge.
If Cricut is your evil cable company, then Silhouette is the mythical a la carte cable that many seem to want. I don't want either of those things. I just want to cut the same kind of simple SVG file that nearly any web browser can show. Silhouette Studio can't do that unless you introduce it to your friend Ulysses S. Grant. With that dirty transaction out of the way, Studio is happy to open as many as perhaps three quarters of the SVG files you have lying around. Three quarters is not a bad ratio for SVG interoperability in my experience.
I get my files from openclipart.org. I can't say enough about what a great resource that site is. It serves public domain vector art exclusively. They have a simple service to rasterize the images on their server for casual users who lack a tool chain for that. It's absolutely the thing for Free software.
Once you click the buttons for cut, load media in the cutter, and adjust the knife depth to match the on-screen prompts, things happen pretty quickly. I haven't yet has a serious feed or cut problem. The basic operation is the same as the Cricut machines or the HP 7475. The head moves in one direction across the piece and a pair of rollers move the work back and forth. For knife cutting on paper, the work is fixed temporarily to a sticky mat that holds all the newly freed pieces in place. This mat is not necessary when drawing or when cutting some stocks that are themselves fixed to an adhesive back.
The Silhouette Cameo offers one big hardware advantage over the Cricut mini. The Cameo includes a small image sensor next to the cut head. This sensor can locate registration marks on a printout and align cuts precisely with matching images printed on the sheet. This seems to work well when it works but I have found it to be finicky. It may be very sensitive to print quality and ink bleed in the paper. I intend to try some of the more troublesome papers in a color laser printer to see if this helps.
 |
| A triceratops cut by the Silhouette Cameo (pictured with Sparky for scale) Photo courtesy your correspondent |
I haven't yet tried the cutter with Inkscape or other tools. Look for an extended review once I get that working. What I have is a device that seems reasonable enough to be worth the effort of figuring out. The Silhouette Cameo isn't going back anytime soon. I was able to use it to cut decorations for a child's birthday party. They looked good and made my eldest happy. What more can I say?
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
knife fight
I threw out my HP7475 during a move about 15 years ago. I didn't look back until this month.
The statute of limitations is long past for me to use this in our regular ewaste feature. It's a bad fit in any case. The 7475 weighed a bit more than 15 pounds. I think junk that large is really more than ewaste. The plotter really should have been decommissioned and struck from the register of ships.
It was a great machine, though bulky and slow. HP had ditched the entire line a few years earlier. I got the unit used and never used it much.
I've had two different 2D cutting machines in my house in the last month. Each of these machines is a pale, though much lighter, imitation of the 7475. These cutters, a Cricut mini and a Silhouette Cameo, cut thin stock with a knife. The 7475 drew with one pen at a time but could automatically switch pens from a six pen carousel. A blade holder is still available for that machine that would allow it to do the job of these newer cutters.
The first of the new machines was the Cricut mini. I don't think I can find the polite, neutral language to summarize the Cricut business concept in a way that minimizes our total liability. I can imagine another company, though, with the slogan "We don't think our customers are stupid, we know it!". If that company also thought that its customers were filthy pirates, that company would probably build hardware and software that looked and acted like the Cricut mini.
Earlier machines from Cricut were configured to allow users to breezily install expensive cartridges that contained licenses for some shapes and then cut those shapes into a variety of materials without the need for a PC. The 'mini' machine eliminates all those buttons and frills. It requires a PC, Cricut software, and an Internet connection to use the machine.
I never intended to use the provided software. I thought I would just use it with Inkscape or a standalone tool to cut SVG dinosaurs for my kids. ProvoCraft, the concern behind Cricut, uses a very simple protocol for these devices and helpfully encrypts the link so that users can know exactly where stand with the company. ProvoCraft has always encrypted the link but earlier machines did a poor job that was widely cracked. A number of tools exist for those models that allow them to be used in just the way I imagined.
I'm not a filthy pirate. I'm not misusing a machine sold for below its cost. The cutter head transport reminds me of the Commodore VIC-1525 printer. The head has depth adjustment that must have been lifted directly from that printer. That printer was cheap and nasty even by 1980's home micro standards. I'm sure that ProvoCraft is not selling this device at a loss. I have no interest in cloning or even using their cartridges. I just want to cut and draw like it's 1989.
After I discovered that the existing open tools wouldn't work on the machine, I decided to try ProvoCraft's tool. I thought that it might do until intrepid hobbyists sorted the openness issues.
The Cricut Studio program isn't really a program. It's an Adobe Air wrapper for the Cricut website that lets that web app reach out and touch your printer over USB. No Internet? No program!
I ran the app and tried to create an account on the Cricut servers so that I could get started. I got a message that told me that the Cricut Studio beta program was full. This was for the only software that works for this device. Awesome. I called customer service. They told me that today was the very first day for their new website design and that I should probably try again later. I actually did manage to contain my rage long enough to try later. Just as I thought I was about to succeed and cut a square on some paper, the app decided that my firmware (version XXX) was too old and needed to be updated to a newer version. I allowed it to proceed. The printer came back online reporting firmware version 0.01.
Unsurprisingly, the software decided that this was too old and that an update was needed. This loop
continued until I unplugged the machine, put it back in its box, and whisked it back to the store.
Provocraft placed me and their other users at the mercy of terrible application software. Lots of firms do that. Provocraft placed me at the mercy of incompetent web administrators. Lots of firms do that too. Provocraft went farther. Provocraft pulled off an amazing triple Lutz the likes of which Utah hasn't seen since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They broke their app, their website, and their own hardware in a single, fluid motion. I'm at peace now. I no longer hope that someone broke their ankle on the landing.
I missed the HP 7475. It had a serial port. You could talk to it with a terminal program. You could drive it from Lotus 1-2-3 or gnuplot. E.T. could probably have connected it to a Speak & Spell with little difficulty.
I ordered the Silhouette Cameo from Amazon while I was at a traffic light on my way to return the Cricut. It arrived in about a day. In about a day, you'll be able to read the next installment of this piece. Only reograph brings you tape-delayed live blogging.
 |
| HP7475 plotter Image credit: HP Computer Museum |
The statute of limitations is long past for me to use this in our regular ewaste feature. It's a bad fit in any case. The 7475 weighed a bit more than 15 pounds. I think junk that large is really more than ewaste. The plotter really should have been decommissioned and struck from the register of ships.
It was a great machine, though bulky and slow. HP had ditched the entire line a few years earlier. I got the unit used and never used it much.
I've had two different 2D cutting machines in my house in the last month. Each of these machines is a pale, though much lighter, imitation of the 7475. These cutters, a Cricut mini and a Silhouette Cameo, cut thin stock with a knife. The 7475 drew with one pen at a time but could automatically switch pens from a six pen carousel. A blade holder is still available for that machine that would allow it to do the job of these newer cutters.
The first of the new machines was the Cricut mini. I don't think I can find the polite, neutral language to summarize the Cricut business concept in a way that minimizes our total liability. I can imagine another company, though, with the slogan "We don't think our customers are stupid, we know it!". If that company also thought that its customers were filthy pirates, that company would probably build hardware and software that looked and acted like the Cricut mini.
Earlier machines from Cricut were configured to allow users to breezily install expensive cartridges that contained licenses for some shapes and then cut those shapes into a variety of materials without the need for a PC. The 'mini' machine eliminates all those buttons and frills. It requires a PC, Cricut software, and an Internet connection to use the machine.
I never intended to use the provided software. I thought I would just use it with Inkscape or a standalone tool to cut SVG dinosaurs for my kids. ProvoCraft, the concern behind Cricut, uses a very simple protocol for these devices and helpfully encrypts the link so that users can know exactly where stand with the company. ProvoCraft has always encrypted the link but earlier machines did a poor job that was widely cracked. A number of tools exist for those models that allow them to be used in just the way I imagined.
I'm not a filthy pirate. I'm not misusing a machine sold for below its cost. The cutter head transport reminds me of the Commodore VIC-1525 printer. The head has depth adjustment that must have been lifted directly from that printer. That printer was cheap and nasty even by 1980's home micro standards. I'm sure that ProvoCraft is not selling this device at a loss. I have no interest in cloning or even using their cartridges. I just want to cut and draw like it's 1989.
After I discovered that the existing open tools wouldn't work on the machine, I decided to try ProvoCraft's tool. I thought that it might do until intrepid hobbyists sorted the openness issues.
The Cricut Studio program isn't really a program. It's an Adobe Air wrapper for the Cricut website that lets that web app reach out and touch your printer over USB. No Internet? No program!
I ran the app and tried to create an account on the Cricut servers so that I could get started. I got a message that told me that the Cricut Studio beta program was full. This was for the only software that works for this device. Awesome. I called customer service. They told me that today was the very first day for their new website design and that I should probably try again later. I actually did manage to contain my rage long enough to try later. Just as I thought I was about to succeed and cut a square on some paper, the app decided that my firmware (version XXX) was too old and needed to be updated to a newer version. I allowed it to proceed. The printer came back online reporting firmware version 0.01.
Unsurprisingly, the software decided that this was too old and that an update was needed. This loop
continued until I unplugged the machine, put it back in its box, and whisked it back to the store.
Provocraft placed me and their other users at the mercy of terrible application software. Lots of firms do that. Provocraft placed me at the mercy of incompetent web administrators. Lots of firms do that too. Provocraft went farther. Provocraft pulled off an amazing triple Lutz the likes of which Utah hasn't seen since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They broke their app, their website, and their own hardware in a single, fluid motion. I'm at peace now. I no longer hope that someone broke their ankle on the landing.
I missed the HP 7475. It had a serial port. You could talk to it with a terminal program. You could drive it from Lotus 1-2-3 or gnuplot. E.T. could probably have connected it to a Speak & Spell with little difficulty.
I ordered the Silhouette Cameo from Amazon while I was at a traffic light on my way to return the Cricut. It arrived in about a day. In about a day, you'll be able to read the next installment of this piece. Only reograph brings you tape-delayed live blogging.
Monday, September 10, 2012
long term wrap up
Texas Instruments had shelves stocked with their Speak & Spell for Christmas 1978. That groundbreaking handheld electronic tutor retailed for under $50 ($176 in today's money). Those original machines weighed about 475g empty and another 275g with the batteries installed. They measured 10 by 7 by 1.3 inches. Each had a VFD display that could be read outdoors, a monaural speaker, and sturdy plastic case with an integrated handle. They ran for hours on a set of batteries.
A 'new iPad' is weighs 650g and measures 9.5 by 7.31 by .37 inches. Wrap one in Apple's 'Smart Case' and it packs on an additional 150 grams and about .3 inches in each dimension. Those cases are available in a vibrant orangish red. If you are of a certain age, this package may remind you more of TI's toy than it evokes the Alan Kay 'Dynabook' concept to which it was so often compared at launch.
Mark Prensky might say that the S&S made me a 'Digital Native'. If he's right, then I probably also have dual citizenship with the Republic of Muppet Show. If I'm a digital native, then my children are developing into 'Digital Spaniards' (you read it here first) who will consolidate power together with their playmates and have us all under their thumbs in no time. I'm happy to help. I wonder what their El Dorado will be. Maybe it will be Sunnyvale, where the streets were once lined with unsold HP TouchPads.
The S&S showed the promise of portable electronic computing to millions. Such is the power of misunderstanding. I knew neither that its vocabulary was extremely limited nor that it could do only a few simple tasks. S&S had a slot in the battery compartment. What went in the slot? More! More of what I did not know but wonderful ideas flowed into that void of ignorance. I'm not yet sure that the iPad is delivering on that promise. Though the iPad is clearly an amazing computer, there is less room for my kind of misunderstanding. To start, there is no slot. Further, it came in to the world as a larger cousin of an iPod, not the smaller cousin of a proper computer. I think it is perceived largely as a leisure device for casual buyers and as a companion device for small number of professional buyers. I think Amazon agrees. An Amazon search today for "ipad case with stand" returns thousands of real matches. Most of these stands allow the iPad to be held upright so that video can be viewed without having to hold the device. The search for "ipad case with keyboard" returns a quarter of the matches. A search for "ipad case crocodile" returns six hundred and nine. The iPad is a established as a leisure device. I think that part of the professional crowd must be IT people who have turned a quest for their lost S&S into a paying job.
It may seem unfair to hail S&S as a prophet of computing and fault the iPad for six hundred crocodile cases. After all, the iPad can actually be made to compute useful things. TI didn't market S&S as a computer. They did better. They made it in the mold of an authority figure and marketed it for children. Electronic grown-up? There's got to be a positronic robot brain in there somewhere. TI was clever and shipped the future. Apple's iPad could have been this and more. Instead, it is merely amazing. Apple included a chess program, a calculator, a C compiler, and an electronic version of the World Book encyclopedia with early Mac OS X machines. The iPad includes a number of apps from Apple that can't be deleted. Maps, calendars are there. Photo viewers and video players are there. A pretty great web browser is there. Email, messaging and address book apps are all there. You can take simple notes. You can make the wallpaper be any picture you want. There is something called 'Game Center' that I cannot make disappear. No calculator is present.
The iPad and iPhone, together with Google, Wikipedia, Wolfram, Amazon and others, are clearly delivering on the promise of portable, connected electronic knowledge. Knowledge and computing may have been part of the same nebulous future in 1978. The Dynabook certainly runs them together into the same narrative. Several vendors sell all of Wikipedia wrapped into an app for iPad but I still haven't seen a great platform for computing turn up in the App Store.
 |
| A later Speak&Spell model Photo credit Bill Bertram (CC-BY-2.5) |
A 'new iPad' is weighs 650g and measures 9.5 by 7.31 by .37 inches. Wrap one in Apple's 'Smart Case' and it packs on an additional 150 grams and about .3 inches in each dimension. Those cases are available in a vibrant orangish red. If you are of a certain age, this package may remind you more of TI's toy than it evokes the Alan Kay 'Dynabook' concept to which it was so often compared at launch.
The Dynabook concept dates from 1968 and was certainly known outside PARC by the time Speak & Spell development began at TI in 1976. TI engineer Richard Wiggins credits colleague Gene Frantz with overall product design for Speak & Spell (here's a 2008 interview with Wiggins). I can find no contemporary account in which Frantz or TI credit PARC with influencing either their ideas for children's computing or their specific product design. Their similarity may be simple coincidence. TI was certainly in no position to build Kay's complete Dynabook but neither was PARC nor anyone else.
We play a long game here at reograph. Other gadget review sites only have the stomach for long term reviews that last a few months. We keep our powder dry. I've been working on a review of the Speak and Spell for the last 34 years. That review is nearly complete but our editors have that piece timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the S&S in 2018. Today's iPad probably won't seem as dated as a Dynabook by then but the iPad will probably never more closely resemble S&S than it does today.
I just gave iPads to my children and the similarities between these devices was a substantial factor in my decision. S&S had a profound effect on me. It was as close I came to a computer until I got a TI 99/4a for Christmas some years later.
The S&S was sophisticated but it was certainly not a computer. I think kids hiding under the covers with a S&S managed to learn as much about what computing could be like as did users hunched at a 99/4a in the basement. In 'Points of View', an anthology assembled in tribute to Kay on his 80th birthday, Adele Goldberg recalls that Kay used to tote a completely inert cardboard mockup of his Dynabook to conferences. I imagine that some of what was obvious to Kay would occur also to users of the slightly more functional S&S.
I briefly considered just giving eBay S&S units to my children. The S&S is well past its 'use by' date for new users. Though it was made in Texas and the iPad in China, several complete revolutions in product safety in the last 30 years mean that the iPad is probably safer.
When a S&S was unwrapped in 1978, it could have put its owner a decade or more ahead of their parents' technology base. I think the next most advanced device at my home was an APF Mark 51 scientific calculator from 1975. The S&S showed it to be a mere abacus. The same is no longer true and my kids know it. There is no chance they would accept a couple of old orange boxes and my nostalgia and leave me my own iPad.
When a S&S was unwrapped in 1978, it could have put its owner a decade or more ahead of their parents' technology base. I think the next most advanced device at my home was an APF Mark 51 scientific calculator from 1975. The S&S showed it to be a mere abacus. The same is no longer true and my kids know it. There is no chance they would accept a couple of old orange boxes and my nostalgia and leave me my own iPad.
 |
| The APF Mark 51. A mere abacus. Photo credit ebay seller rr9. Used without permission |
Mark Prensky might say that the S&S made me a 'Digital Native'. If he's right, then I probably also have dual citizenship with the Republic of Muppet Show. If I'm a digital native, then my children are developing into 'Digital Spaniards' (you read it here first) who will consolidate power together with their playmates and have us all under their thumbs in no time. I'm happy to help. I wonder what their El Dorado will be. Maybe it will be Sunnyvale, where the streets were once lined with unsold HP TouchPads.
The S&S showed the promise of portable electronic computing to millions. Such is the power of misunderstanding. I knew neither that its vocabulary was extremely limited nor that it could do only a few simple tasks. S&S had a slot in the battery compartment. What went in the slot? More! More of what I did not know but wonderful ideas flowed into that void of ignorance. I'm not yet sure that the iPad is delivering on that promise. Though the iPad is clearly an amazing computer, there is less room for my kind of misunderstanding. To start, there is no slot. Further, it came in to the world as a larger cousin of an iPod, not the smaller cousin of a proper computer. I think it is perceived largely as a leisure device for casual buyers and as a companion device for small number of professional buyers. I think Amazon agrees. An Amazon search today for "ipad case with stand" returns thousands of real matches. Most of these stands allow the iPad to be held upright so that video can be viewed without having to hold the device. The search for "ipad case with keyboard" returns a quarter of the matches. A search for "ipad case crocodile" returns six hundred and nine. The iPad is a established as a leisure device. I think that part of the professional crowd must be IT people who have turned a quest for their lost S&S into a paying job.
It may seem unfair to hail S&S as a prophet of computing and fault the iPad for six hundred crocodile cases. After all, the iPad can actually be made to compute useful things. TI didn't market S&S as a computer. They did better. They made it in the mold of an authority figure and marketed it for children. Electronic grown-up? There's got to be a positronic robot brain in there somewhere. TI was clever and shipped the future. Apple's iPad could have been this and more. Instead, it is merely amazing. Apple included a chess program, a calculator, a C compiler, and an electronic version of the World Book encyclopedia with early Mac OS X machines. The iPad includes a number of apps from Apple that can't be deleted. Maps, calendars are there. Photo viewers and video players are there. A pretty great web browser is there. Email, messaging and address book apps are all there. You can take simple notes. You can make the wallpaper be any picture you want. There is something called 'Game Center' that I cannot make disappear. No calculator is present.
The iPad and iPhone, together with Google, Wikipedia, Wolfram, Amazon and others, are clearly delivering on the promise of portable, connected electronic knowledge. Knowledge and computing may have been part of the same nebulous future in 1978. The Dynabook certainly runs them together into the same narrative. Several vendors sell all of Wikipedia wrapped into an app for iPad but I still haven't seen a great platform for computing turn up in the App Store.
A report earlier this year suggested that Mathematica would make its way to the tablet but nothing has been heard for months. Apple themselves were (or are) part of the problem since before the iPad debut. Several developers have put small programming environments or ports of entire home micros in the app store only to have them bounced or pulled.
The developers at 'manomio' reported in September 2009 that their Commodore 64 emulator for iOS had been pulled from the app store because crafty users could enable the built-in BASIC. That app is back with ROM BASIC included. The developers have been reeducated and the app remains focused squarely on vintage games and in-app purchases. Scheme, Python, Lua, and other languages including BASIC have all become available since Apple relaxed at least the enforcement of some obnoxious restrictions on developers. More than a few seem like novelty items. Kay's own Smalltalk and Squeak are notably absent. Scratch is nowhere to be found, though intrepid users can download the source and build it themselves. Apple will hit you for $99 for the privilege of putting it on your iPad. Search for iSqueak on the app store. It's a $2 virtual dog toy.
Strangely, Apple themselves provide an amazing programmable environment in Mobile Safari but do little to advertise it this way.
I'll keep working to turn the iPad into the children's device I imagined 34 years ago. I wonder if my children's own dreams will be influenced in the process.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
ewaste: big picture
The origin of the phrase "It's always Friday somewhere" is now lost to antiquity. The prominent American nacho chain "TGI Friday's" tried to adopt this as their own slogan. It was a disaster. They were forced to change it almost immediately to "In here, it's always Friday". The best restauranteurs, wardens, and casino operators know that you have to keep your patrons focused inward until it's time to turn over the table/cell/stool.
Americans produce domestically almost 80% of the Fridays they use. The Friday deficit can be attributed mostly to office workers who simply assume that COB Friday and SOB Monday are really the same thing. They are not. The extra Fridays it takes to cover that weekend work have to be made somewhere and the shocking truth is that many are made by totalitarian regimes under primitive conditions. China alone spans five geographical time zones but shows only a single time zone to the outside world. Where do all those extra Happy Hours go? They are stolen by the millions from impoverished rural farmers and sold on shady exchanges around the world.
Does your favorite watering hole now offer one dollar rail drinks from five to close? How do you think they are able to extend the traditional two hour Happy Hour? With stolen ones. That's how. You will never look at 'Breakfast Served All Day' the same way after you've seen the conditions in a morning mine in the jungle run by the Columbian cartels.
Some of you may have noticed that our traditional Friday feature 'ewaste' didn't put in an appearance yesterday. Don't worry. It's here and we are bringing it to you now using an ethically harvested and fairly traded Friday afternoon culled by Laplanders from the endless sun of a high arctic summer day.
Today's ewaste offering is a ScreenPlay 4805 DLP video projector from InFocus. I bought this projector as a refurb directly from InFocus 2004 or so. It's DLP chip from TI offered much higher contrast than the LCD projectors of the day. The 4805 was one of the first budget home theater projectors. It boasted a native 16:9 aspect ratio and a double-speed color wheel to reduce rainbow effect.
The 4805 had several flaws. Strangely, for a projector, the one that irritated me most was not glaring. It was more of a whine. The cooling fan ran all the time. Even when the projector was shut off with the remote. The fan wouldn't stop until the cord was unplugged or the mechanical power switch was thrown on the side of the unit. I kept mine mounted inverted near the ceiling and this was always a pain.
Bulbs were expensive, but no more so than for other projectors of the time. I think I put about five thousand hours on the unit and went through just one bulb. The projector was not bright and would have required room darkening window coverings in any room before sundown.
The projector went on the ewaste pile not long after it died. A single expensive part failed. These projectors have a tiny 'light tunnel' about an inch long and a quarter inch on a side that takes light from the bulb assembly to the DLP optics box. That tunnel is made from four pieces of mirrored glass that form the tunnel. The pieces touch only at the corners and were held together with glue. If the projector gets just a bit too hot, the tunnel comes apart. Mine did just that. Some replacements were available on EBay for around a hundred bucks but I had little confidence that a replacement would arrive intact, survive installation, and then continue to function for long.
I don't expect to replace the 4805 with another projector. I paid about $750 in 2004. For that price today, I could buy a 50" LED backlit LCD TV from Toshiba at Best Buy. That's almost as large as the image I used to project. The cheapest 1080p projector from Best Buy is $799.
I'm not surprised that flat panel prices have fallen. The apparent ongoing collapse in prices is no more amazing than the regular semiconductor miracles to which I have become accustomed. I am amazed that projector prices have not fallen to match. TI may enjoy a monopoly on the MEMS mirror arrays that make DLP work but there should be no corresponding limits on LCD or lamp technology for projectors. Where's my 8000 lumen 4k LED projector for $300?
There are no such projectors because there was never a market for them. As far as I can tell, most of the recent innovation in the projector market is in 'pico-projectors'. These take some of the very same DLPs used in more expensive projectors and pair them with 50 lumen LEDs. This seems like an attempt to move down-market without first having a market. These projectors still cost hundreds of dollars and typically can't produce an image larger than a cheap laptop in a room with any ambient light.
For me, it makes no difference how a 50 inch picture can best be generated today. I switched from the 4805 as my primary media screen to a 27 inch iMac. I haven't looked back yet. I haven't listened to the persistient rumors of an integrated Apple TV. I have paid much more attention to the forthcoming 50th anniversary edition of Lawrence of Arabia. Ask me again in November what I think about a large screen.
Americans produce domestically almost 80% of the Fridays they use. The Friday deficit can be attributed mostly to office workers who simply assume that COB Friday and SOB Monday are really the same thing. They are not. The extra Fridays it takes to cover that weekend work have to be made somewhere and the shocking truth is that many are made by totalitarian regimes under primitive conditions. China alone spans five geographical time zones but shows only a single time zone to the outside world. Where do all those extra Happy Hours go? They are stolen by the millions from impoverished rural farmers and sold on shady exchanges around the world.
Does your favorite watering hole now offer one dollar rail drinks from five to close? How do you think they are able to extend the traditional two hour Happy Hour? With stolen ones. That's how. You will never look at 'Breakfast Served All Day' the same way after you've seen the conditions in a morning mine in the jungle run by the Columbian cartels.
Some of you may have noticed that our traditional Friday feature 'ewaste' didn't put in an appearance yesterday. Don't worry. It's here and we are bringing it to you now using an ethically harvested and fairly traded Friday afternoon culled by Laplanders from the endless sun of a high arctic summer day.
Today's ewaste offering is a ScreenPlay 4805 DLP video projector from InFocus. I bought this projector as a refurb directly from InFocus 2004 or so. It's DLP chip from TI offered much higher contrast than the LCD projectors of the day. The 4805 was one of the first budget home theater projectors. It boasted a native 16:9 aspect ratio and a double-speed color wheel to reduce rainbow effect.
The 4805 had several flaws. Strangely, for a projector, the one that irritated me most was not glaring. It was more of a whine. The cooling fan ran all the time. Even when the projector was shut off with the remote. The fan wouldn't stop until the cord was unplugged or the mechanical power switch was thrown on the side of the unit. I kept mine mounted inverted near the ceiling and this was always a pain.
Bulbs were expensive, but no more so than for other projectors of the time. I think I put about five thousand hours on the unit and went through just one bulb. The projector was not bright and would have required room darkening window coverings in any room before sundown.
The projector went on the ewaste pile not long after it died. A single expensive part failed. These projectors have a tiny 'light tunnel' about an inch long and a quarter inch on a side that takes light from the bulb assembly to the DLP optics box. That tunnel is made from four pieces of mirrored glass that form the tunnel. The pieces touch only at the corners and were held together with glue. If the projector gets just a bit too hot, the tunnel comes apart. Mine did just that. Some replacements were available on EBay for around a hundred bucks but I had little confidence that a replacement would arrive intact, survive installation, and then continue to function for long.
I don't expect to replace the 4805 with another projector. I paid about $750 in 2004. For that price today, I could buy a 50" LED backlit LCD TV from Toshiba at Best Buy. That's almost as large as the image I used to project. The cheapest 1080p projector from Best Buy is $799.
I'm not surprised that flat panel prices have fallen. The apparent ongoing collapse in prices is no more amazing than the regular semiconductor miracles to which I have become accustomed. I am amazed that projector prices have not fallen to match. TI may enjoy a monopoly on the MEMS mirror arrays that make DLP work but there should be no corresponding limits on LCD or lamp technology for projectors. Where's my 8000 lumen 4k LED projector for $300?
There are no such projectors because there was never a market for them. As far as I can tell, most of the recent innovation in the projector market is in 'pico-projectors'. These take some of the very same DLPs used in more expensive projectors and pair them with 50 lumen LEDs. This seems like an attempt to move down-market without first having a market. These projectors still cost hundreds of dollars and typically can't produce an image larger than a cheap laptop in a room with any ambient light.
For me, it makes no difference how a 50 inch picture can best be generated today. I switched from the 4805 as my primary media screen to a 27 inch iMac. I haven't looked back yet. I haven't listened to the persistient rumors of an integrated Apple TV. I have paid much more attention to the forthcoming 50th anniversary edition of Lawrence of Arabia. Ask me again in November what I think about a large screen.
Friday, September 7, 2012
luggage
I gave Gizmodo editor Leslie Horn a hard time on Saturday (see 'archives') over a shoddy review of laptop bags. Horn turned in a slightly better piece of homework this week. That piece is a straight reiewvertisement of some new bag from Incase. I'm sure the bag is fine. Portions may have been lifted from a cardigan review, though, as she claims:
What? The bag doesn't include a Space Blanket for emergencies. It doesn't have loops to hold your mitten string. I've never heard of a winter laptop bag. To be fair, the bag and strap look as if they were fashioned from a pair of Ann Taylor pants with matching belt. The pants had probably originally been intended for fall before they were remaindered.
Rather than dwell on the fashion coverage over at Gizmodo, I prefer instead to point you to
today's "Something for the Weekend, Sir?" piece at the Register. Alistair Dabbs demonstrates the proper technique for laptop bag review. Note the pictures including laptops in bags. Read the rest of Dabbs' work while you're there. I think he's one of the masters of narrative in contemporary gadget review.
I carry one of the more modern TSA-approved laptop messengers from Timbuk2. I've been carrying a Timbuk2 laptop messenger since the time of the Titanium PowerBook G4. I upgraded to the new TSA bags after I accidentally melted the neoprene back of its predecessor on a cooktop in a small Paris apartment.
Dabbs laments the lack of good bags with padded compartments for both laptop and tablet. The Timbuk2 has a separate laptop compartment with a padded divider. The separate compartment is actually zippered through about 270 degrees to allow the bag to be spread flat on an X-ray belt like a split chicken breast. It is through these acts of valistic supplication that the bag makes itself suitable to the authorities. The panel that appears to be a padded divider is, in fact, the outer skin of the separate laptop compartment when the bag is splayed. I find that it works well for an iPad and a very slim laptop. The contents of the rear compartment can fall out if you allow the zippers to work themselves completely open. I don't.
The newest incarnation of my bag finesses this detail and includes a dedicated tablet sleeve in the rear compartment. By the time I wear out my current bag, dedicated tablet pockets will probably seem as quaint as men's hats, watch pockets, and bicycles with only one speed.
An added perk, for some, of the Timbuk2 is that many of them are not made in China. My current bag was made in the Philippines. Some are made in San Francisco. In the fullness of time, the Chinese authorities will surely realize the advantages to creating an administrative region called 'San Francisco'. For now, though, this San Francisco is probably the one in California.
this new line will have you all set for the chillier months
Rather than dwell on the fashion coverage over at Gizmodo, I prefer instead to point you to
today's "Something for the Weekend, Sir?" piece at the Register. Alistair Dabbs demonstrates the proper technique for laptop bag review. Note the pictures including laptops in bags. Read the rest of Dabbs' work while you're there. I think he's one of the masters of narrative in contemporary gadget review.
I carry one of the more modern TSA-approved laptop messengers from Timbuk2. I've been carrying a Timbuk2 laptop messenger since the time of the Titanium PowerBook G4. I upgraded to the new TSA bags after I accidentally melted the neoprene back of its predecessor on a cooktop in a small Paris apartment.
Dabbs laments the lack of good bags with padded compartments for both laptop and tablet. The Timbuk2 has a separate laptop compartment with a padded divider. The separate compartment is actually zippered through about 270 degrees to allow the bag to be spread flat on an X-ray belt like a split chicken breast. It is through these acts of valistic supplication that the bag makes itself suitable to the authorities. The panel that appears to be a padded divider is, in fact, the outer skin of the separate laptop compartment when the bag is splayed. I find that it works well for an iPad and a very slim laptop. The contents of the rear compartment can fall out if you allow the zippers to work themselves completely open. I don't.
The newest incarnation of my bag finesses this detail and includes a dedicated tablet sleeve in the rear compartment. By the time I wear out my current bag, dedicated tablet pockets will probably seem as quaint as men's hats, watch pockets, and bicycles with only one speed.
An added perk, for some, of the Timbuk2 is that many of them are not made in China. My current bag was made in the Philippines. Some are made in San Francisco. In the fullness of time, the Chinese authorities will surely realize the advantages to creating an administrative region called 'San Francisco'. For now, though, this San Francisco is probably the one in California.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
twelve
It's a bit late in the week for our first gadget review but the Labor Day holiday wreaks havoc with our workflow for depositing the product endorsement checks. We're working to turn this into a completely paperless process. Until then we're left with a cumbersome payment system left over from the fifties.
The 12 Volt automotive cigarette lighter has also been with us in its present form since the fifties. Gas is unleaded now and even unneeded in today's most sophisticated rides. Though the cigarette lighter itself seems quite archaic, the socket it spawned is still a relative youngster in the slow moving world of automotive technology. It is newer than radios, fuel injection, electric cars, and anti-lock brakes.
The cigarette lighter socket is about 70 years newer than the phono jack, thought its smaller 3.5mm mini phono jack cousin is about the same age. I have never owned a car without a cigarette lighter jack and I have never yet owned a car 'new' enough to include a direct 3.5mm jack into the audio system. My lo-fi tunes are typically passed through a small coil into the magnetic head of a tape deck.
It is into this vintage environment that I introduced the TuneLink Auto from New Potato Technologies. This is a simple device that works well. It fits in a 12 Volt cigarette lighter outlet and provides a USB charger and a Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio gateway in its medium-size enclosure. The audio is output through either 3.5mm mini jack or on-board FM transmitter.
This is my third A2DP bridge for the car. I've used units from RIM and Belkin that were intended for home use and always been displeased by the tangle of wires these units leave. The TuneLink is simple and mechanically uncluttered.
It is a bit logically cluttered. When I first paired my telephone to the device, I got an unexpected 'this accessory requires an app' notice from my phone and feared the worst. Most of these helper apps are obnoxious at best. The device almost went back right then.
I braved the App Store and downloaded the 'TuneLink' app and quickly forgot about it. It is mercifully only required if you don't care for the defaults and then only to change them. You may need it once or never if you are using the mini jack for output as I do. The app provides the only interface to change the FM transmitter settings.
You can use the app to set two useful bits in the device. The first is an 'auto play' flag that will simulate an AVRCP 'play' command when the TuneLink device connects to the phone. I found it to be irritating and the default. I changed it and never looked back. The second is an 'auto connect' flag. This setting mirrored the behavior of my earlier bridges and all the in-car bluetooth headsets I've used. It was on by default. I found that the FM transmitter was also on by default and was spamming one of my favorite local radio stations. It was easy to switch off.
The TuneLink will pair with several devices, though it will only connect with one at a time. Apple devices seem a bit greedy about connecting to these audio devices as soon it sees them. I would often prefer that my phone or tablet continue to connect automatically but only when they actually have something to play.
The unit may be just as large as it needs to be. I find it to be fifty percent larger than it seems like it ought to be.
I bought my unit in June. I use it constantly. I didn't remove it from the car until yesterday and then only to take a picture. Inexpensive A2DP-ready replacement automotive head units are now available for not much more than the price of this relatively expensive ($90) adapter. I generally prefer the design, integration, and tactile feedback of OEM units. I usually also stick to the provided steering wheel.
The 12 Volt automotive cigarette lighter has also been with us in its present form since the fifties. Gas is unleaded now and even unneeded in today's most sophisticated rides. Though the cigarette lighter itself seems quite archaic, the socket it spawned is still a relative youngster in the slow moving world of automotive technology. It is newer than radios, fuel injection, electric cars, and anti-lock brakes.
The cigarette lighter socket is about 70 years newer than the phono jack, thought its smaller 3.5mm mini phono jack cousin is about the same age. I have never owned a car without a cigarette lighter jack and I have never yet owned a car 'new' enough to include a direct 3.5mm jack into the audio system. My lo-fi tunes are typically passed through a small coil into the magnetic head of a tape deck.
It is into this vintage environment that I introduced the TuneLink Auto from New Potato Technologies. This is a simple device that works well. It fits in a 12 Volt cigarette lighter outlet and provides a USB charger and a Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio gateway in its medium-size enclosure. The audio is output through either 3.5mm mini jack or on-board FM transmitter.
 |
| TuneLink pictured with Betty O'Shannon for scale Photo courtesy your correspondent |
This is my third A2DP bridge for the car. I've used units from RIM and Belkin that were intended for home use and always been displeased by the tangle of wires these units leave. The TuneLink is simple and mechanically uncluttered.
It is a bit logically cluttered. When I first paired my telephone to the device, I got an unexpected 'this accessory requires an app' notice from my phone and feared the worst. Most of these helper apps are obnoxious at best. The device almost went back right then.
I braved the App Store and downloaded the 'TuneLink' app and quickly forgot about it. It is mercifully only required if you don't care for the defaults and then only to change them. You may need it once or never if you are using the mini jack for output as I do. The app provides the only interface to change the FM transmitter settings.
You can use the app to set two useful bits in the device. The first is an 'auto play' flag that will simulate an AVRCP 'play' command when the TuneLink device connects to the phone. I found it to be irritating and the default. I changed it and never looked back. The second is an 'auto connect' flag. This setting mirrored the behavior of my earlier bridges and all the in-car bluetooth headsets I've used. It was on by default. I found that the FM transmitter was also on by default and was spamming one of my favorite local radio stations. It was easy to switch off.
The TuneLink will pair with several devices, though it will only connect with one at a time. Apple devices seem a bit greedy about connecting to these audio devices as soon it sees them. I would often prefer that my phone or tablet continue to connect automatically but only when they actually have something to play.
The unit may be just as large as it needs to be. I find it to be fifty percent larger than it seems like it ought to be.
I bought my unit in June. I use it constantly. I didn't remove it from the car until yesterday and then only to take a picture. Inexpensive A2DP-ready replacement automotive head units are now available for not much more than the price of this relatively expensive ($90) adapter. I generally prefer the design, integration, and tactile feedback of OEM units. I usually also stick to the provided steering wheel.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
archives
We're going into the archives for today's image.
This is a promotion that Piercing Pagoda ran in September 2011. You could get a low-end Android smartphone free* from them if you submit to any of the piercings they offer. The only *wrinkle was the $50 data plan and new two year contract that was required to get the phone. A mere formality.
This seemed brilliant to me a year ago. Take people who turn up at your business seeking elective pain and you've got a data plan audience ready made. People looking for what might be permanent body alteration might not sweat a commitment of only two years.
A year later it seems more desperate than brilliant. I now think it was just a delaying action to lock up some otherwise loose subscribers for two years before the iPhone 4S appeared.
Cell phones and earrings may have been co-marketed last fall but the moment is fast approaching when they will be just be the same thing marketed at the low end by Claire's Boutique and remaindered at dollar stores.
I thought back to this picture after reading a terrible 'laptop bag' review over on Gizmodo last week. When I read:
I was confused. I didn't understand why they were sandbagging the piece from the start by reminding readers that laptops can now be only a bit more expensive than the bags under review. Gizmodo is right about the price most consumers pay. Most laptops are now actually quite cheap. Best Buy's value laptop today is a 15.6" Toshiba for $279. That machine is no miserable netbook! It's an entire miserable laptop with a full size numeric keypad.
Gizmodo editor Leslie Horn reviews nearly five bags in a 'Battlemodo' no-holds-barred product shootout. The entire review process took about a week. That's as long as some Apollo missions! Each bag surely endured a brutal schlepping. The full test regime required each bag to fit "a 15-inch MacBook Pro, a charger, a notebook, keys, wallet, sunglasses, iPhone, and in most cases a couple of extra gadgets ...".
Contestants three and four wiped out early in the review. Editors over at the Giz failed to preflight half of the bags to see if they could actually hold these items. The worst offender was probably the electric blue laptop sleeve that is -- just a laptop sleeve. You could have disqualified it at 10 yards. Up next was the Clare Rojas Tote Bag for 13" MacBook Pro. The included padded sleeve for a 13" MacBook Pro probably won't work well with a standard testing machine that measures two inches larger diagonally. 0 Stars? Death? No. 3 Stars! It's wonderfully whimsical, unique, and adorable.
Contestant two was a credible messenger-style laptop bag from an expensive label. Horn sets it up well and balances the readers right where she wants us with "if you have a considerable amount of cash for a laptop bag, it's worth it.". The trap is set!
Blam! In comes the winner. It's Jansport's messenger bag! "$50 is an unbelievable deal for such a fantastic bag.". I wept. Four bags to make the piece seem worth reading. Two throwaways reserve the spotlight for the winner and an artificially expensive alternative to bring us home. If I set up pieces like this on the Jansport account, I would insist that the reviews were handled by senior editors like Horn and not mere hangers-on and, uh, bag holders.
You can be sure that it's no easy feat for a manufacturer to get prose like that slung together so quickly. This review goes over the top with photography to match. You couldn't have gotten photos like Gizmodo's even if you stalked the reviewers all week! How? The light! It plays spectacularly across the inside of each COMPLETELY EMPTY BAG. The old real estate agent's trick of eliminating all furnishings works as well here as it does in the most claustrophobic bungalow.
The most amazing part of the Jansport review is that no mention is made of the laptop sleeve. It's not even included in the photo. The bag itself is otherwise barely suitable for a laptop. This is why Horn talked down the price of laptops to 'hundreds of dollars' even while the standard test article was an Apple machine with a starting price of $1800! This is why the bag is shown empty. A sales piece has to keep the set from upstaging the product.
What does this have to do with Piercing Pagoda? The technology isn't the thing here or there. The technology is the accessory. The bag -- "So soft. So attractive." -- or the earrings are the thing. Fine for a retail empire with "Piercing" in the name. Is it fine for a gadget review site that asserted journalistic privilege only two and a half years ago?
I'm talking about it over here at reograph to close out our dinosaur cycle with the third piece in a week. This time, the dinosaur is me.
 |
| brilliant co-marketing Photo courtesy your correspondent |
This seemed brilliant to me a year ago. Take people who turn up at your business seeking elective pain and you've got a data plan audience ready made. People looking for what might be permanent body alteration might not sweat a commitment of only two years.
A year later it seems more desperate than brilliant. I now think it was just a delaying action to lock up some otherwise loose subscribers for two years before the iPhone 4S appeared.
Cell phones and earrings may have been co-marketed last fall but the moment is fast approaching when they will be just be the same thing marketed at the low end by Claire's Boutique and remaindered at dollar stores.
I thought back to this picture after reading a terrible 'laptop bag' review over on Gizmodo last week. When I read:
"You spent hundreds of dollars on your laptop ... . At Gizmodo, we're married to our laptops. They are our livelihood." --Gizmodo
I was confused. I didn't understand why they were sandbagging the piece from the start by reminding readers that laptops can now be only a bit more expensive than the bags under review. Gizmodo is right about the price most consumers pay. Most laptops are now actually quite cheap. Best Buy's value laptop today is a 15.6" Toshiba for $279. That machine is no miserable netbook! It's an entire miserable laptop with a full size numeric keypad.
Gizmodo editor Leslie Horn reviews nearly five bags in a 'Battlemodo' no-holds-barred product shootout. The entire review process took about a week. That's as long as some Apollo missions! Each bag surely endured a brutal schlepping. The full test regime required each bag to fit "a 15-inch MacBook Pro, a charger, a notebook, keys, wallet, sunglasses, iPhone, and in most cases a couple of extra gadgets ...".
Contestants three and four wiped out early in the review. Editors over at the Giz failed to preflight half of the bags to see if they could actually hold these items. The worst offender was probably the electric blue laptop sleeve that is -- just a laptop sleeve. You could have disqualified it at 10 yards. Up next was the Clare Rojas Tote Bag for 13" MacBook Pro. The included padded sleeve for a 13" MacBook Pro probably won't work well with a standard testing machine that measures two inches larger diagonally. 0 Stars? Death? No. 3 Stars! It's wonderfully whimsical, unique, and adorable.
Contestant two was a credible messenger-style laptop bag from an expensive label. Horn sets it up well and balances the readers right where she wants us with "if you have a considerable amount of cash for a laptop bag, it's worth it.". The trap is set!
Blam! In comes the winner. It's Jansport's messenger bag! "$50 is an unbelievable deal for such a fantastic bag.". I wept. Four bags to make the piece seem worth reading. Two throwaways reserve the spotlight for the winner and an artificially expensive alternative to bring us home. If I set up pieces like this on the Jansport account, I would insist that the reviews were handled by senior editors like Horn and not mere hangers-on and, uh, bag holders.
You can be sure that it's no easy feat for a manufacturer to get prose like that slung together so quickly. This review goes over the top with photography to match. You couldn't have gotten photos like Gizmodo's even if you stalked the reviewers all week! How? The light! It plays spectacularly across the inside of each COMPLETELY EMPTY BAG. The old real estate agent's trick of eliminating all furnishings works as well here as it does in the most claustrophobic bungalow.
The most amazing part of the Jansport review is that no mention is made of the laptop sleeve. It's not even included in the photo. The bag itself is otherwise barely suitable for a laptop. This is why Horn talked down the price of laptops to 'hundreds of dollars' even while the standard test article was an Apple machine with a starting price of $1800! This is why the bag is shown empty. A sales piece has to keep the set from upstaging the product.
What does this have to do with Piercing Pagoda? The technology isn't the thing here or there. The technology is the accessory. The bag -- "So soft. So attractive." -- or the earrings are the thing. Fine for a retail empire with "Piercing" in the name. Is it fine for a gadget review site that asserted journalistic privilege only two and a half years ago?
I'm talking about it over here at reograph to close out our dinosaur cycle with the third piece in a week. This time, the dinosaur is me.
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