By the time I had it all set up and was surfing away to sites like Neiman Marcus and ESPN, sites I generally never attend but did so just to see how fast they would load, I was blown away. It was more than fast. I felt like I was on my high speed cable network, it was so fast. My wife is with me, so I crank on Internet Sharing via AirPort and away we go…

Um, no. In fact, the network shuts off. I turn off sharing and the blazing speeds are back. I turn sharing back on, and no more connection again. Wow. I’m paying US$60 a month for this? Anyway, I stow it for later and we head home. I fiddle around and then head out to go to my favorite local spot for coffee and to get some work done for a few hours. Later, I spend time at home just futzing around. I’m really using the network to see how well it works.

This morning I head on over to the Sprint.com site to check on usage, since the SmartView app doesn’t keep track for you, and I am met with an amazing site. I have a mere 300MBs of usage left! What?! I spend a nerds worth of two days, around 12 hours, on the wireless network and I’ve supposedly used up my monthly quota already? Not even slightly, bub. I’m a nerd. I know what kind of data runs through a pipe being used for browsing and email.

I called Sprint support and told them the gory details and they decided that they couldn’t do anything except create a service ticket and wait. I wasn’t about to start paying US$0.05/MB in a few hours so I declined and turned it off. I boxed the whole thing up and took it back to the store for a full refund. I asked them about phone as a modem and the potential for unlimited data again, and they had no idea.

Now, if I were to start up a horticultural center and sell plants and gardening gear people would start coming to shop there. When people would come to me or other staff with questions about plants and feeds and stuff I’d have to tell them that I have no clue. I just sell the stuff. How many people do you think will shop at my store again, or at all?

Not smart, Sprint. Not smart.

Two days later, I return it.

Some bloggers get paid for articles. Others receive free products. I fall into that category, but only slightly. I follow the standardized and accepted practice of arranging for product reviews with PR firms and then I report on my findings objectively. This is called journalism, and it is a symbiotic relationship. I am under no obligation whatsoever to produce a positive review for any product I receive and the PR firms are under no obligation to send me anything. When I am interested in a product, and I’m rather discerning, I send a request to a PR contact. They either ship me the product or not. If they do ship it, more often than not I am asked to return it within 30-60 days.

This is a common practice which has been going on in legitimate consumer journalism circles for decades, and there’s nothing new about it. There are no secret, smoky back rooms where journalists hammer out deals worth millions. In fact, most of us our just barely scraping along. There is so much competition from upstart blog farms like Gizmodo and Engadget (at least in my end of the pool) simply drown everything in their firehose form of “journalism” that its now very hard for the quality reviewers to be heard over the sheer noise of blogger hell. PDA Handyman succumbed to the fury of blogging, briefly becoming Mobility Handyman, then shifting to the blog format of Mobodojo.

So, how does the FTC decide whether a person is a journalist or a blogger? Am I a blogger because I use WordPress? What if I used another blogging tool like B2evolution or Textpattern? What if I switched to Joomla or Drupal? Would I then be considered a journalist? What if I purchased all of the goods I review? Would I then have to prove that I used my own money and wasn’t given funds to do so from a manufacturer? What about PC Magazine, MacWorld magazine, or any other magazine which reviews products? They use the same exact processes I do to secure goods for review. Since they post reviews online are they, too, to be considered bloggers?

This entire FTC whirlpool smacks of having not been well thought through. What I’d like to know is if sites like Gizmodo and Engadget will get consideration for being large sites which each handle millions of monthly hits? Are they journalists? I’m sure they consider themselves such. They do journalist-like things, but they do it from a personal perspective which steps well outside the bounds of being objective. Maybe that’s my failing. I am, at times, very biased and in those moments I consider myself a pundit. Of course, I categorize these posts under “Opinionation” so they are not confused with news. When I do post news, which is rare these days, I often slip in some of my personal thoughts.

I never, however, allow any aspect of the procurement process to shade my reviews. I can point to a case in fact; the Sony Mylo 2. To be blunt, its a piece of crap and its nowhere near being worth the money Sony sells it for. I wrote the review, sent the link to my PR contact, noted that it was rather harsh but didn’t get upset, and she thanked me. We discussed some more products for review, and I’ve not heard from her since. I could ping her again, asking about the VAIO P or the upcoming Sony PSPgo, but I doubt it will result in anything. That’s the price I pay, and I gladly pay it to retain my honesty and integrity. That’s because I’m a journalist and a pundit. I speak my mind when I have an opinion (often) and I clearly and concisely review products when I get them.

I wonder what category that will put me in with the FTC. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see later this year.

So, what makes Apple think this is okay? To be honest, I’m not sure. Mail.app is a special application which treats multiple email account with the respect they deserve, granting the user the ability work with all email as if it were one giant account. It does this because it applies simple smarts which any one of the hundreds of email clients which have ever come out could have applied at any time and chose not to. Every email account has an Inbox, a Sent folder, a Drafts folder, and a Trash folder. Does it not make sense to combine the contents of all accounts into one folder called Inbox? Of course it does.

Does anyone else do it? No.

I hear all of your Windows folk out there screaming your heads off about how Outlook does this, but I’m here to tell you it doesn’t. Not the same way. I’m no Apple-only nerd who touched a Windows 95 in DOS mode back in 1996 and consider myself in the know. I’ve been actively working with Windows and Microsoft technology based servers for years. I’m very, VERY familiar with this kind of stuff, and Apple walks through it like a hot coals walker handles temperate pavement. What Apple doesn’t do, however, is reliability.

I’ve had my issues, but I’m not the only one. Right now I can’t send mail. I even went through the trouble of setting up a single outgoing account for all messages since late last year Mail.app couldn’t remember how to login to several different accounts at the same time (if you tell me that having more than one account is breaking it, I’ll freak… comprende vous?). Its so bad that I’m actually using Entourage, which is a horrible kludge of an application. One of the issues that amazes me, though, is that when Mail.app is thinking hard to cause the spinning beachball to appear, all you need to do is click a half dozen times in the window to crash it.

Like I said, though. I’m not the only one. I have reports from people very close to me as well as dozens of strangers and semi-acquaintances that they are also having issues with Mail.app. They have lost mail, watched Mail.app practically eat itself, crash over and over again, and many other unpleasant behaviors. Why Apple continues to allow this is beyond me, especially when Steve Jobs and Co. are so rabid about user experience. If Apple could just make it work, make it more responsive, stop it from crashing and eating email, fix up the SMTP (postfix or sendmail, anyone?), and make the filters easier to create a manage (TIP TO APPLE: Don’t put it in the freaking Preferences panel and add a Create Filter From Message button!!!).

I’m just saying!

Regarding the MozyHome software itself, its pretty easy. Its a little odd in that it offers pre-configured sets which you just check or not (i.e., preferences, application settings, Microsoft Office files, etc…), but you can also just tell it to backup your entire user directory. It appears that you can select both, which seems redundant, but there it is. Nicely, though, the system runs in the background and has options for controlling when it will perform backups and for throttling bandwidth usage. My issue with the bandwidth controls is that at the low end you can pick 32Kbps or 668Kbps but nothing in between. You can pick a lot faster (up to 5.2Mbps) but nothing in between the lowest two. Weird.

Anyways, it will take some time before its all done so when something interesting happens I’ll let you know.

I know this because iPorn creators AdultVest (yeah… that’s an adult industry capital investment group) sent out a press release this morning claiming victory over opposition. While they didn’t mention names, its clear that Apple was quite upset with all of these proceedings. Apple wouldn’t let them into the show, the San Francisco Police threatened to revoke the operating license for the carriage, and later the owners of the Gold Club removed all signs and paraphernalia regarding iPorn at a little soirée they had that night.

iPorn, however, got what they wanted. They wanted publicity and parading half-naked girls around the Moscone West Center had quite the impact. There were guys all around snapping pictures and, as you can see above, even Kurt was pleased to join in the carnal-related fun. iPorn also garnered 35,000 (or so they say) new registered users from the publicity stunt. Apple, on the other hand, is not so pleased as pornography is not what they want their iPhone to be known for. After all, Apple is related to Pixar which is now a Disney company and Steve Jobs is involved deeply in all three.

All in all, Apple can do nothing about iPorn unless is plans on compartmentalizing the iPhone’s web access to limit its ability to receive the videos which iPorn sends to its members. It turns out that the iPorn thing is not an application, so Apple can’t turn it down. I’m sure Apple’s lawyers are working hard on a “solution”.

yay.

So, it has a small screen resolution, but it sports a touch screen, HD radio reception (that’s cool, really), and its very nice looking if you like brushed aluminum. Who doesn’t. Oh, and it has a web browser. It sorta sounds like an iPod Touch. Oh hell. I’m not going there. You know how hard Apple rocks the iPod Touch. It does really look quite nice, though. Maybe that’s the trick up its sleeve. Mesmerization by industrial design.

If I’m preaching to the choir right now and you didn’t already know this, your jaw is likely on the floor about now. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, then I shall explain. There are two kinds of computer graphics systems which can be installed in a computer by the manufacturer, discreet and integrated. Starting with the latter, integrated graphics is a simplified set of chips which generate video for the computer. These are installed on the mainboard and cannot be replaced. Integrated graphics also share RAM from the system, so if you have 1GB of RAM (1024MBs) and your integrated graphics system uses 256MBs of RAM, then your computer ends up with a mere 768MBs of RAM to run on. All cheap laptops and netbooks use integrated graphics.

Discreet graphics, on the other hand, is like its own separate computer whose only job it is to create the graphics for your computer. It has its own RAM and it is usually installed as a separate board which can later be replaced if necessary. In this case, if you have 1GB of RAM and 256MBs of VRAM (Video RAM) then you still have 1GB of RAM for your system. It is the discreet video systems which professionals rely on from Apple because they are powerful and are capable of things which integrated systems simply aren’t. That’s a huge part of the Pro in MacBook Pro.

What Apple has done by bringing the unibody MacBook models into the MacBook Pro fold is to bring the concept of integrated graphics into the Pro line-up. Witness on the Apple Store page or in Phil Schiller’s keynote at yesterday’s WWDC 2009 kickoff the introduction of the NVIDIA 9400M chipset in not only the 13″ models but now also the entry-level 15″ model which starts at US$1,699. If you take a closer look you will see that the 9400M integrated chipset is on every single MacBook Pro in the entire line. Sure, they are alongside the more potent, discreet 9600M GT chipset and you can select which one to use, but the game has still been changed.

Integrated video is significantly cheaper than discreet video. Apple has always charged a relatively fair price for the cost of quality components, a consistency which no other computer company has ever been able to match, and a level of reliability which isn’t fair to the competition. Two things emerge from the change. First, to call a MacBook with integrated graphics just because they look the same, have SD card slots, and can use 8GBs of RAM is more like a bait-and-switch scheme. Second, to put only integrated graphics into the larger, Pro-level 15″ model is almost lying.

Business users who don’t need the powerful graphics sub-systems didn’t have a problem with using a computer called a MacBook. I know of few people who were unhappy that they had a MacBook when they knew that what they had was what they could afford. In fact, I know quite a few MacBook users who don’t like the larger, heavier MacBook Pro line and are quite pleased with what they already have. The only thing Apple did here was arrange a little smoke and mirrors with no real updates to anything, just a name change. I suppose its possible that Apple was feeling the pressure of not delivering on Snow Leopard and only having the iPhone 3Gs to announce.

Then again, they’ve also had the pressure put on them from Microsoft about the cost of their computers compared to what Microsoft’s hardware partners offer in a recent spate of ads. Apple seems to be responding (they’ll deny it) by evening out their pricing structure. If there’s anything to be said about Apple’s product line-up now, its well spaced.

October 22nd

Yeah. If that seems a bit short for a product development schedule, your not far off. Microsoft has become well aware that the term “Vista” has become a bad word amongst Windows users. It wasn’t hard to tell, what with all those consumers rolling Vista back to XP and enterprise operations flat out refusing it. Vista was released to manufacturers (RTM) November 8th, 2006. Microsoft announced last week that Windows 7 would RTM in mid-July, a little over a month from now. Hmm. That’s less than three years for Vista, and Microsoft will dump the name. Shades of Windows Me? 

I’m not going to run through a list of things which Microsoft has done to Windows 7, but I’ll touch on a few items. First, Microsoft chose to remove the included Photo Gallery, MSN Messenger, and Windows Mail installations, so that for the first time in years, Windows will not come with an IM or email client. Instead, they’ve bundled it all up into a tight little package called Windows Live Essentials. Oh, and you have to download it. The total package is almost 180MBs, too. Hope you don’t have dial-up. To make matters worse, I noticed a number of the slow behaviors from Vista after installing Essentials.

The other problem, and this one kills me, just cropped up today and speaks far louder than some VP in Redmond opting to yank basic tools from Windows. This one is a problem created by and experienced first in Vista, but its far from the first time there have been issues related to User32.dll. Problems swirling around User32.dll have been a nuisance since Windows 2000 was first introduced. There’s not even a knowledgebase entry for it. Its just there. I’ve found a solution to it, though. Some smart guy figured it out, I tried it on one of my test machines, and it worked. Damn, Microsoft. Get a grip! If you happen to be having the same problem, here’s the link.

So, the moral of the story is that if you think Microsoft is making good on its promise to deliver a workable, reliable, powerful OS to replace the crappy Vista, you will be mistaken. Windows 7 is nothing more than Microsoft’s failed advertising campaign, the Mojave project. In that, Microsoft crawled through Windows Vista and changed it to be called Windows Mojave, then had a bunch of people look at it. They liked it, but were then told that Mojave was really Vista in disguise. Anyone can give a guided tour of crap and make it look like gold, just like you can coach a 4-year old to make a slideshow. There’s no magic there, but this appears to be what Microsoft is doing to make “the Vista problem” go away. 

Don’t worry, Ballmer! The smart ones are seeing right through the smokescreen about now. I won’t be the only one.

Next up is a discussion about what Snow Leopard will bring. There are lots of refinements to Leopard and very few new features. This is a good thing, too, as continually adding new features, like Microsoft does as a standard operating procedure, continually adds new problems. Apple has decided to refine all of the components of Leopard. The three big elements for developers are GCD, OpenCL, and 64-bit support throughout. OpenCL, a new open standard from Apple which is being supported by everyone who is anyone, allows unused processing time from the graphics GPU to be used for other stuff. GCD allows developers to take advantage of multiple CPU cores without effort. Nice. Snow Leopard is out later this year for upgrade pricing of US$29 per license and US$49 for the family pack. 

Finally comes the iPhone OS 3.0 chatter. Honestly, if this thing works like they say it will, the iPhone OS 3.0 on an iPhone 3Gs will be more like a laptop in your pocket than just a phone, and everyone else STILL has a long way to go to catch up (except maybe Palm, but that’s another article). Thirteen years ago when I was still banging away on a PowerMac 7300/200 and an Apple Newton MessagePad MP130 and had a PowerBook 145b and PowerMac 7100/60 in active use I would not have been able to tell you that Apple was going to pull it out again around now. For nearly ten years now, though, I’ve been watching Apple deal Aces off the top of the deck in the form of Mac OS X, the iPod, the new MacBook Pros, the Intel switch, and now the iPhone. 

Here’s to another 30 years of wicked Apple gear.