Apple announced a new micro laptop that is yes really cool looking but it’s not new, it’s just Apple’s take on a laptop without an optical drive.  We’ve seen this before this is just a little prettier.  You sacrifice a lot with this laptop too.  You only get one USB port, slower data transfers over wireless, no video out if you wanna use something other than the very small 13 inch screen, and limited audio capabilities.  Also the hard drive is pretty tiny so if you wanna rip DVD’s (since there’s no optical drive) and put them on it for travel you’ll have limited space.  For some people this will be a perfect laptop, for road warriors nah.

As far as the new movie rental abilities of Apple TV, all I can say is Netflix.  In a brilliant move just before the Mac event started Netflix announced that Netflix subscribers will now be able to watch as many films on-line as they want.  So, with this one monthly fee you get DVD’s in the mail and all you can eat on a computer, also in hi def.  I’d jsut hook one of my computers to my plasma TV and I’m good to go at a cheaper price than the Apple TV.  If you ahve an Apple TV it could still be pretty cool, but again not innovative.

CES didn’t do any better.  This show was just “wow look at my big TV”.  When the exciting new gadget at a show like this is a dancing MP3 player you know something is really wrong.  The one interesting thing I saw were these modules from a company called Bug Labs.  These modules can be combined to build a bevy of devices including motion detectors and GPS devices.  When you build the device of your choice you have to actually write the program that drives the device.  This is a really cool hobby but again not a mass audience innovation.  Old time CES fans know that consumer electronics don’t innovate as quickly as computers do so for many the lameness of this show wasn’t a surprise.  Many journalists say that you should only attend this show every 5 years.  There was one big announcement at the show and that was that Warner Brothers is committing exclusively to Blu-Ray.  So, the hi def format war rages on…

I think Microsoft is saving announcements for the XBOX for the Game Developers Conference and the cell phone companies are saving their big announcements for the cell phone specific conferences happening this year.  So there’s still time for some innovation, it just didn’t happen yet.

Now, recently my video work has expanded to the point that I needed to make my equipment universally compatible in case I have to outsource some editing.  So, I put together a Mac Pro editing suite.  I’ve been using it around 8 months now and I believe if it was going to improve my life it would have happened by now.  The harsh reality is, to be compatible output wise I’ve actually had to spend quite a bit of extra money because I’m using the Mac rather than a Windows based PC.  Here’s the other reality, on average, editing takes LONGER with Final Cut Pro than with Adobe Premiere due to the excessive rendering required for Final Cut.  Here’s the other thing, the programs within Final Cut Studio aren’t as well integrated with each other as those in the Adobe Suite.  When using Premiere, Photoshop, after Effects, and Encore you feel like your just using one big program.  That’s not the case with Final Cut Studio.  There’s still a lot of importing and exporting that happens between those programs.  When comparing Premiere to Final Cut Pro as individual programs they are virtually the same.  They do the same work in almost the same ways.  I will say that I actually find myself forced to make more clicks with many basic tasks in Final Cut over Premiere.  I do believe that Final Cut Pro was on the cutting edge ahead of everyone else for years but it looks to me like Premiere has leapfrogged Apple’s product.   

Now, this I have to say about Final Cut Studio, Motion and LiveType are far superior to what you can do in Premiere and After Effects.  I have been blown away by these two programs.  I’m sure anything you can do in Motion you can probably do in After Effects but I don’t find After Effects to be user friendly enough to find out.  It’s for these programs that I continue working on the Mac, plus I spent hundreds of bucks on Flip4Mac so I can export a wider variety of very standard formats not available within Final Cut Studio.  Also, generally on the Mac, Garageband is a fantastic piece of software for making music and doing podcasts. 

As far as day to day use I was able to work exclusively on the Mac for about 4 months before I was forced to get a KVM switch to be able to use my PC as well.  The Mac OSX interface is easy to use and again not that much different than what I’m used to on Windows other than the fact that I can’t easily get in and tweak the OS as easily as I can Windows.  I had to get my PC going for so many basic programs that I can’t even count them.  For example I can’t even sync my phone with something like AvantGo without hacks on the Mac.  In the end the Mac pro and Final Cut Studio cost 4 times what the comparable PC with the Adobe suite cost and I have to say it wasn’t worth the money.  I have it now though, and I’m still waiting for my life to change…. 

Help me Bono you must know the answer!

I did switch to IE, not because of bundling or anything else, but simply because the websites just looked better in the IE environment.  They continued to look better in IE until a few years ago when I finally got rid of Netscape for good.

Netscape fans can take solace however in the fact that Firefox was born from the open source code released from Netscape and now continues to grow market share.  Oh, and websites actually look good in Firefox.  It’s what I use these days.  Even though I haven’t used Netscape in a long time it’s still a little sad to see it no longer exist.  Must be really sad for AOL who paid a ton of cash for it just a few years back.

Here we’re all about the interface between humans and their machines and we look for that bit of innovation that will truly make technology “user friendly”. I’m a big audio book reader, just out of necessity due to a vision impairment but Mike, another writer here at Whiz Bang is a hardcore book reader, the old fashioned kind, you know with pages and such. He has recently been reading a lot of digital books though, either on his phone or on a PDA. So when the Amazon Kendle was announced he was quite excited. There have been a number of critics complaining about various features of the device, and I have some criticisms myself, but I wonder if enough has been said about the true innovation of the device.

People are inherently spontaneous personalities. When we want something, we want it now. That’s a problem that Amazon has had to contend with since its inception. If I order from Amazon I have to wait several days where I could go to a big box store and get whatever it is that I want right away. Now, with that said let’s talk for a minute about what digital books do for us. If we are traveling, or if we find ourselves waiting at a doctor’s office, being able to pull out a digital device crammed full of books, magazines, and newspapers is much more convenient than carrying a giant bag of heavy books. So, what if a company created a device that not only allowed you to read a book anytime anywhere but it also allowed you to immediately buy a new book with a couple of button pushes virtually anywhere you find yourself.  Well my friends, that’s the Kendle.

The device is a digital book reader that works with the digital ink which features high contrast and is easy to read in nearly any light.  So, stores books and it’s easy to read, what else does it do?  Here’s the big interface innovation, the one that makes it the most exciting, the device has EVDO built into it via Sprint. That means it hs cell phone tech inside allowing the user to buy a book through a free service by hitting a few buttons on the device. So, no more waiting, you want it, you get it immediately. Amazon has already done about as good a job as any website in getting over the “bin shopping” hump, so now you can browse Amazon then click buy and the book is automatically downloaded in a few minutes right to the Kendle I really believe this could change everything. I will give the device a try because you can make the text huge and it also plays Audible audio books.

This is version one of the device though, so there are some problems.  The first problem is the device design isn’t perfect. I’ve heard there are issues with the location of the next and previous page buttons too. Finally, I have to say, the device is just kind of ugly. It looks like some early Apple design from ten years ago. Here’s the worst part though, it costs $400.00! This is a ridiculous price for a device that’s so toed to future retail purchasing. I know the cell tech built into the device probably makes it pricey plus I’m sure Amazon has to pay some sort of percentage to Sprint but the price is just too high to allow the device to grow beyond tech heads and early adopters at least during generation one. I predict some massive discounts for rev two where you sign a contract guaranteeing to buy a certain number of books over a given amount of time, similar to a cell phone package.  Ultimately I’d like to just see the price come down and to see the device opened more to the user being able to store more of their own stuff on it. Yes it’s pretty locked down and in fact if you want to email docs to the Kendle for future reading it costs 10 cents but you can do it for free via USB.

Along with books you can subscribe to newspapers and magazines which are automatically pushed to your Kendle which is great, but Amazon is also charging for blog subscriptions. The b logs they are offer are freely available on the internet so it’s a little odd that we’d have to pay for them on this device. Here’s something broken about that though; in the experimental menu item of the device there’s a web browse which can access the blogs for free that you would normally be asked to pay for. It seems to me that Amazon is trying to work out usage of the EVDO service and how much it’s going to cost them. I feel like they should just go ahead and make the internet openly available and create some data packages, again similar to cell phone packages. Maybe they should just add a speaker and make this a cell phone too!

What we have here is an interesting start that I hope the early adopters will support enough to keep new and improved versions coming.

More on this soon and more on other tech happenings tomorrow…

-Stephen lackey

When we are talking about our interface to the information super highway I believe the real trick is to get the computer out of the equation. Believe it or not, Microsoft has believed this for some time. That’s part of the point of the XBOX gaming console. Sure it plays great games but it already has a built in social network of other gamers with IM, and voice and video chat, and friends lists. Social networking is one of the most popular parts of today’s internet experience, especially in the highly coveted 18 to 35 demographic.

I’m a fan of HD-DVD, mostly because I have no faith in Sony when it comes to new media formats, plus it was cheaper quicker to go hi def with HD-DVD. One of the most interesting parts of HD-DVD players is that they all have to have internet connectivity, Blu-Ray players do not. We’ve seen movies like The Transformers doing some fun things with web enabled bonus features but now via HD-DVD, starting with the new Harry Potter flick, we can socially watch our films. All you have to do is throw in the movie and go into the web features and invite friends who are also watching the film to view it with you. As the host you control the move for everyone watching including pausing and rewinding. Once viewing you can chat with everyone else watching while the movie plays.

While this is a neat feature, it will make seeing movies in theaters an even worse experience. Watching movies at home has gotten people accustomed to talking and answering phone calls so much that they do it in theaters where everyone around them has paid between 8 and 10 bucks (depending on what part of the country you live) to see the film. While I don’t want to chat while I watch a movie, not even while I’m at home, I do see some great potential in these capabilities built right into the HD-DVD. As long as the use of these features is kept simple it could easily draw more and more people into the world of social networking. Microsoft has a stake in HD-DVD and in Facebook, where do you think all of this is going?

-Stephen Lackey

The real question is will this new OS get my grandmother to finally buy a cell phone? In short, I doubt it. Based on early looks at the interface it looks liek a pretty standard cell phone OS and it’s nowhere near as slick as the flavor of the month, the iPhone. In fact, I’d say it looks sort of dull.

The one advantage to the OS is that most of the major carriers and phone builders seem to planning to offer the OS. So, once you’ve learned it on one phone, transitioning to another phone should be a breeze. I’m still looking for that perfect UI and I don’t know that touch screen is really the answer. I wonder how many iPhone owners actually use all of the phone’s features and how many just whip it out to show off to their friends?

-Stephen Lackey