Tips From Tony Blog

I swore in a previous post that I would wait, order an iPhone online, and avoid the long line at the local Fashion Valley Apple Store. Well, THAT resolve didn’t last. I now have THREE of the eight-gig models… One for me, and two for a favored client. It only took me a few minutes of waiting (with around two hundred other folks) before I was able to buy the first two iPhones. Then, I went home, came back, walked right in and bought another one. The Apple employees were charming, ultra-friendly and a constant source of pleasure. I didn’t expect to see them erupting from the store just before opening time, hooting, hollering and slapping palms with jubilant customers.
There’s very little new that I can add that hasn’t been said and said and said, over and over. I love the iPhone. I have no objection to the keyboard, at least for basic usage. My short-subject nature documentaries and Tom and Jerry cartoons play flawlessly. In fact, it’s mesmerizing to watch a full show from start to finish. I’m doing it too much, though - I’m getting a crick in my neck!
My iPhone wish list is not so important - I would love to use a folding Bluetooth keyboard with it for longer posts, such as blog entries. I like the onscreen keyboard, but it’s still a pain to edit something complicated, such as today’s entry.
Being me, of course, I had to do something that nobody else gives a hoot about. I emailed myself (from the Mac to the iPhone), sending an MS Word copy of “Our Lady of Chernobyl” by Greg Egan. Why? Because I wanted to evaluate the iPhone as an electronic book. I like the idea of reading, even though I do it so rarely. On my previous phone (the Treo 650) I always kept a minimum of 200 (and sometimes as many as 1,500) electronic books. It actually works very, very well - It’s much clearer than a regular dead-tree-technology book, and it doesn’t flicker like an old picture-tube display, so I don’t expect tired eyes fom reading on the iPhone.
I’m sure that I’ll have plenty more to say eventually, but I can easily say that the iPhone is a breakthrough device that will change the rest of the portable phones on the market - ALL of them. Once a customer has experienced having all of the world’s online knowledge available in their hands, 24 hours a day, anywhere at all, using a phone in the old ways will seem repugnant.
I forget where I saw it, but somebody said that this iPhone is the worst one that will ever exist. No matter what, they will get faster, more capacious, friendlier and less expensive. So will all of their competitors, and it’s all to the good.

The next step up the evolutionary ladder, of course, is the little StickerPod that goes just behind your ear, allowing you to gain access to the planet’s accrued information just by thinking of it. Steve Jobs and his crew are probably already working on it. I think I’d better patent that idea, fast!

There are already pictures floating around the Internet, showing folks who are lining up to be among the first to own a snazzy new iPhone.
I, myself, had even made specific plans to do something quite similar, but I’ve changed my mind, after receiving new information:
I plan to stay at home, waiting until 6PM this Friday, at which point I’m going to visit the Apple Store website (using my own Tony-specific link so that I can get credit for the sale), and then I will order the phone, along with some custom engraving on the back (at no extra charge). It’ll say “If Found, Please Call”, followed by my home phone number. As I’m getting older, I tend to keep leaving things behind… And embarrassingly often, too.
I WAS planning to try to elbow my way in to a local AT&T store and go through the hassle of setting up my new AT&T account (I’m switching my whole family from Verizon). Now, I know that the mere act of hooking up an iPhone to my Mac will cause iTunes to start up and to guide me through the process automatically. I can’t imagine why I’d want to stress out, dealing with store employees who always know less than I do.
I’ve been a busy, busy man, getting ready for the arrival of the iPhone. Many of my clients are asking me questions on a daily basis, and nerds everywhere are collaring me in public, trying to get the inside angle. I’ll be glad when things start to settle down again after Friday.
For my own part, I have been busy converting DVD’s and other movie files to the native format that iPhones love so much. I now have every episode of 51 different TV series ready for viewing on the iPhone’s sharp, wide screen, plus around 800 nature/history/educational documentaries. The entire first season of Ugly Betty (all 22 episodes) takes up around 3/4 of the storage in the 8-gigabyte iPhone. Will I truly WATCH all of that stuff? Probably not, but 1) I’m compulsive and 2) I’ve been a reader since age four. I grew up with a large family library (all of which I had read by age eight, including the encyclopedia). I like having lots of choices!
My favorite part about the iPhone is that I won’t have to carry multiple devices any more. I’ve got a big, clunky iPod with the 40-gigabyte hard drive the size of a quarter. I treat that iPod as if it were filled with nitroglycerin. It has been repaired or replaced many times! I had an iPod shuffle that I dearly loved, but it was so tiny that it just plain disappeared on me one day. My current phone is a Treo 650, and I won’t miss it a bit. It has a zillion features, none of which function at better than ten percent of what I would expect in terms of plain usefulness. It’s a heavy, fat bag of awkwardness and poorly-planned ideas. Good riddance!

These look very, very nice - no wonder Apple is selling more laptops than desktop computers, and the rate is increasing.

I like these new laptops because they can handle more RAM, FINALLY. The new “Santa Rosa” 64-bit motherboard design allows owners of these new MacBook Pros to keep shoveling in bigger RAM chips as they get cheaper. Right now, Apple claims that you can put “up to 4 gigabytes” of RAM inside, but I suspect that that number is just representative of what Apple is currently offering. When chips get cheaper and more capacious, I wouldn’t be surprised to see thirty-two gigabytes or more (as is now offered for the Mac Pro towers), as the years go by. Let’s say that you buy one with one gigabyte of RAM - In theory, the new MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro towers (and G5 towers) can recognize and deal with ten billion times as much!

I’m holding off on any opinion concerning the newest, flagship 17″ MacBook Pro, with the same, 1080p high-definition resolution as a 24″ screen. That’s a lot of pixels, and they’re awfully small and packed tightly together! I suspect that it will be a lot more appealing once Leopard (OS X 10.5) comes out, with its resolution-independent interface. This means that you can re-size everything that you deal with on your Mac, as small or as big as you want, and never see any gritty pixels in your menus, windows, icons or text. I’ll wait until I see Leopard and the new high-definition screen before I get too excited. My middle-aged eyes are having issues with the screen that I have!

They look and act the same, but there’s plenty more under the hood, for the exact same price as before.  What a deal!

I’m actually very, very happy with the MacBook line of laptops.  They’re ridiculously powerful for the price, and they work great with external monitors, so you’re not stuck forever with only one monitor.  Now that Intel has debugged the motherboard design, they’re rock-solid dependable.  I would have NO problem using one as my primary computer, and I’m a very high-end computer-user.

My first-generation MacBook Pro is blazing away 24 hours a day, usually running at least eleven programs at once at all times… Converting high-definition movies so that they work great with my AppleTV is an enormous amount of work, and my Mac never gets a chance to catch its breath!

The new MacBooks that came out today run exactly as fast as my top-of-the-line laptop from late September 2006, for less than half the price that I paid.

Go buy a few of them!

I’m dismayed, but not entirely surprised.  Google’s new study has found that one in ten websites contain malicious code designed to infect Windows PC’s.

I’m not surprised, because I have witnessed brand-new PC’s becoming loaded up with viruses, pop-ups, menubars, spyware and trojan horses almost instantly, as soon as they connect to the Internet.

Now, after reading the article, I finally understand the process.  It’s time to be extra glad that we use Macintosh computers, because we remain immune to those nasty websites…

I’m quite excited about the possibilities of some new software that will benefit businesses (and families) that need to coordinate calendar events.

In the past, sharing iCal events has been a stinky mess… SHARING them is not a problem, but MODIFYING them is not possible by anyone other than the original author, once they are shared. Folks beg me for a solution, but I haven’t felt comfortable making recommendations, because there weren’t any good choices. Now, I think that the pieces have finally come together.

So, here’s the solution… It isn’t free, but it’s still pretty cost-effective, particularly for multiple people in a group.

- Create a Google Calendar account. That way, you have a constant, online calendar that is accessible any time that you are on the Internet, and can be accessed from any web-browser.

Then, purchase Spanning Sync software. I recommend spending the full $65 for a lifetime account. That amount pays for everybody in your group. You don’t have to buy multiple copies.

Once you install it, then everybody in your group can use their personal iCal calendars as normal, but then everybody can also share the same, special calendar set aside for group activities. Everybody gets to make changes, and they’ll stay current.

Here’s a nice Quicktime movie to show you how it works.

This looks pretty plausible to me. It appears that somebody snagged a 2-megapixel photo taken with the iPhone’s built-in camera. It looks quite nice, though somebody should have cleaned the lens first! There has been a lot of conjecture about the built-in camera.

It looks a LOT better than what my Treo 650 can provide… Now that folks can buy a ten megapixel camera for less than $300, I suspect that our phones will follow suit as well, very soon.

Cameras inside of modern phones are getting better, and the one in the iPhone looks to be quite nice enough (unlike most) to be able to stand in for a regular camera in a pinch.

For a typical example of how wretched our results can be when we tolerate older technology, check out this photo I took with my Treo 650 at the Mirage’s White Tiger Exhibit in Vegas… The image is crappy, un-edited, and yet it was the best one from the entire collection!

I’m a photographer, and I have an extremely high-end camera that was too big and clunky to bring along to Vegas.  Most of the time, I didn’t miss it, but when I DID want it, I had only my horrid Treo with me.

I want it it all… Phone, address and calendar and alarms, Internet access, video and music player, and a camera that won’t disappoint me.  I want it easy to use, I want it high-quality, and I want everything in ONE device that stays with me at all times.  That day is coming soon, and that is why the iPhone is being anticipated so gladly all over the world!
Now, they need to put the camera on the FRONT, so that folks can video-chat with each other’s iPhones and Macs. Once the online speed is consistently high, it would be a snap, given how integrated video-chat technology has become in the Apple world. THAT would certainly bring some interest to iPhone 2.0!

I wondered - I know there is no way to know in light of the fact that this product is not even OUT yet - but do you think the Apple iPhone will blast the competition and make apple a STAR well known company again as some people are saying?

i may get really extravagant and buy one of these iPhones.

What is your take on this product and the effect it will
have on the cell phone industry??

Well, this is an awfully easy one to figure out, given what I’ve been reading lately.  Thanks for asking, because it gives me an excuse to talk about it…

The buzz out there is INTENSIVE.  Out in the early-adopter crowd, folks are so excited they can’t stand it, but this time, there are more folks involved.  The folks who usually follow our opinions are shoving past us to be the first in line, this time around.

This article says it better (toward the end), but the short version is that Apple is going to sell a pile of iPhones, and Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are undoubtedly already kissing up to Steve Jobs as we speak.

This thing is going to be huge.

Here’s a quote from a recent article, just to give you a taste:

“A recent study by Harris Interactive suggests that nearly a fifth of all US adults are interested in purchasing an iPhone, but most will wait until pricing and availability improve. The study found that 47 per cent of respondents over the age of 18 had heard of the iPhone, and 17 per cent had an interest in purchasing one.”

Seventeen per cent.  That’s worth repeating - Again, that’s nearly one out of every five adults that are in the USA. The nerd websites are frantically jabbering away, and the excitement just builds. Even Microsoft execs are having public opinions, and it’s not looking good for them. They’re sticking with the current plan, which is to supply the world with old-style phones that use a miniature version of Windows running on them. Yeah, that’s what we’re all asking for. More complexity, please!

So…. Why do _I_ plan to get one at some point, preferably around October when my contract with Verizon runs out?

- It’s all about synchronization with my Mac.  I already have a phone (a Palm Treo 650) that does that in a primitive way, but it’s frickin’ awful.  I never use the camera or the video because it’s so clunky. I hate the music-player, and you can’t force me to browse the web on its horrid little screen. I use the Treo to call people, and to read ebooks when I’m bored and stranded somewhere. That’s it. So expensive, and so little-used.

- I carry a big, heavy fourth-generation 40-gig iPod with the phone when I am out in the world doing things, rather than play my science-fiction audiobooks through the phone. I’d like to switch to one, slim, all-encompassing thing to carry.  I used to have an iPod Shuffle that I loved dearly, but the darned thing was too small, and I lost it somewhere. I keep hoping that it will show up under my desk or something.

- I want something with me that can do the most-important things that my laptop can do, AND fit inside my shirt pocket. My guess is that there will be small, folding Bluetooth keyboards (similar to this one) that will allow me to do better typing if I have to send in an article while I’m on the road.

- I want something easy enough so that 1) I can use anything that is on it, and 2) it has programs on it that I care about and want to use for my own selfish purposes.

- My AppleTV is something that I gladly use every day.  We watch a lot of our current video-based media on it, and it’s always a pleasure that never fails to be easy to use.  The iPhone is going to work using the exact same visual interface, but using my fingers.  Why WOULDN’T I love to use it often?

It looks like Apple’s on the job, and I trust them to do it right. They do simple and elegant better than anybody else.

Most folks don’t know this, but ever since Apple came out with the OS X 10.4.9 update, certain newer, “UVC-compatible” webcams can be plugged into your older Mac, and they will work right away with iChat.

Why would anybody bother? To stay in touch with family-members… To share love across the miles. “Hey Grandma! Look at Junior’s new tattoos!” Once it’s set up, it’s free forever, and it works whether you have a Windows PC or a Mac, as long as you have a fast Internet connection.

I set this up all of the time, and it’s always gratifying to see family-members cooing at each other across the miles. Holiday gifts being opened simultaneously across a continent are a big hit in our household.
Tell everybody in your family to get a webcam (see below), and then they should all go to AIM.com and get a free screen name. Once everybody has e-mailed each other with the new screen-names, then the Mac users should use iChat and the Windows family-members should download the newest verson of AOL Instant Messenger. Why? Because it’s the simplest way to share vision AND sound between the two platforms.
Ever since Apple stopped production on the iSight webcam, prices have skyrocketed for used iSights on eBay. Some have asking-prices as high as $299! Very discouraging.

I’m still doing research on which webcams are guaranteed to work, but here is one that is known to work, and is highly rated:

If your laptop, eMac or iMac already has a microphone, then the Xbox Live Vision webcam ($35.99 on Amazon.com) is a good choice. To see if your computer already has a microphone built-in, pull down the blue Apple menu, go to System Preferences, then to Sound, and then to Input. If an “Internal microphone” shows up, you’re in business.

If your Mac does NOT have a built-in microphone, then there are other choices for very little money:

There are good things being said about the Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks Pro, or the Logitech Quickcam Fusion.

You can also use Logitech’s support-page to see which of their models support “UVC”, which is required for proper, driver-free iChat compatibility. This one looks very nice, and for only $41.40 after rebate.

Once everybody in the family has their free chat names from AIM.com, then all Mac users should fire up their Address Book software and add the chat names for all relevant people. Then, fire up iChat and answer a few questions until iChat is up and running. On the Buddy List window, hit the “+” button on the lower left and start adding people to the Buddy List.

Hopefully, once the Windows folks have added everybody to their AIM Buddy List as well, you should see a nice green camera next to one of your buddies’ names. Double-click on it, and they will hear a “brrring!” sound. They’ll also see a window pop open, saying that you are requesting a chat-session. If they click “Accept”, then the video-chatting can begin!

Technically, I’m here for business, not monkey-business. I’m here for the NAB convention until tomorrow, learning all about digital video and the future of broadcasting. What the heck does this have to do with me, or my clients, you may ask?

Well, I am here to observe trends, detect patterns, and get set for what is going to be important to the folks that I help, a few years down the line. I’m observing software features that will be dirt-common in days to come. I’m looking at expensive hardware that will be cheap-cheap in five years.

For instance: I’m seeing plenty of signs at various booths saying things like “Up to 5 PB”, and at first, I was puzzled, until I figured out that they were referring to five petabytes… five million gigabytes. Gosh, that sounds like an awful lot of storage, and surely only big businesses are able to afford so much storage. But, based on so much past experience, I just KNOW that there will be five petabyte keychain drives being handed out for free at baseball games and banks in a few years. Remember when ten-megabyte hard drives were like infinity stretching out before you? I do.
Apple has announced their new suite of professional-class video-editing programs here, and in my opinion, everything else here runs a distant second-place finish. They’re dominating all of the news coverage. Their “booth” is the biggest thing here, and it’s always jammed. They have a huge theater for continuous presentations, and every seat is always filled. I’m seeing the usual, middle-aged, paunchy conventioneer-types, but I’m also seeing an enormous number of young people clustered around the Apple displays, and standing at the back of the rows of seats being hogged by old folks.

Apple hired a Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer to supply some high-quality photos for this event, so I’m not going to try to compete.

Being an enormous geek, I was mesmerized with Apple’s wall of horsepower… Technically referred to as a big ol’ pile of Apple servers (268 processors) and networked hard drives (300 terabytes). In every direction, Macintosh displays were demonstrating smooth, snappy powerful new software. Everything flowed so nicely, thanks to those stacks of servers, slaving away behind the main stage. This was brought forcefully to my attention when I was admiring this wall of flashing winky lights while the guy around the corner was demonstrating the audio-editing software. I could hear the sound of a Ducati motorcycle screaming away, on and off, and the winky lights in front of me were going bonkers in perfect sync. Cooooool.
This all seems very esoteric, expensive and far away from most people’s needs, doesn’t it? No, not really. The newest high-end Macs have eight processors inside. New laptops will have four processors in around one year. Intel expects to have 80 processors inside of one chip in about three years.

That huge, expensive wall of power probably cost more than a million bucks, and required a technical team for assembly and maintenance. By the time you buy your next Mac, YOU may command nearly as much power!

Off-topic, I have to say that I DID squeeze in some fun last night - SPAMALOT is well-worth seeking out when you get to Vegas (or Broadway, though the Broadway tickets are usually sold-out months in advance). If you’re a fan of classic Monty Python, you will NOT be disappointed.

Vegas has changed a lot, and there are construction-cranes everywhere. Expensive, glitzy casinos are replacing the old, tired classic dumps, and Sinatra’s ring-a-ding-ding has been replaced with REM and Beatles music everywhere. Baby-boomers rule here, now.

I’ll predict the future: In ten years, there will be industrial-strength shop-vacs at the exits leaving the Las Vegas Strip, just to simplify things. Nobody goes home until every wallet and purse has been emptied! NOTHING here is free, or even inexpensive, without a taxi-ride away from the Strip.  It’s too far to walk, even for a bank - I’ve tried.
There have to be EIGHT separate Cirque du Soleil shows in town, and my, aren’t they expensive. Every major casino has one of these shows, and I can see why… scanty garments, but not TOO scanty… You can bring the wife and kids.

I’ve done my best to be abstemious, so far away from my daily routine, but I’m failing miserably. It costs 22 buicks to use the gym, so I’m not spending a lot of time there, and my waistline is mysteriously expanding. It MIGHT be due to the incredible meals that we’re enjoying every day. Most nights, I feel like a python that has swallowed a goat! My vices don’t include drinking, womanizing(!) or gambling, but I can ALWAYS be tempted by high-end chocolates or a perfectly-prepared steak.

Dennis and I attend the conferences and walk around the convention floor by day, and do tame, expensive stuff by night. We are SO middle-aged!