Salvaging the Air Book: USB 3.0?

I've been turning the oddball Air Book over in my head. What the heck were they thinking?

It if were $600. If it had Gigabit ethernet, or even Firewire with a firewire/ethernet dongle. If it had a dock ... If did Bluetooth tethering to an iPhone... Built in GSM support ...

But it has none of the above.

Ok, what if the designers were gambling on USB 3.0?

Universal Serial Bus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.... On September 18, 2007, Pat Gelsinger demonstrated USB 3.0 at the fall Intel Developer Forum. USB 3.0 is targeted at ten times the current bandwidth, roughly 4.8 Gbit/s, utilizing a parallel optical cable. The USB 3.0 specification is planned to be released in the first half of 2008, commercial products are expected to arrive in 2009 or 2010.[20]

* Backwards-Compatibility and Efficiency: USB 3.0 is designed to be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 and employs more efficient protocols to conserve power...

A future Air Book with USB 3.0, and a USB 3.0 to ethernet dongle, and a USB 3.0 docking station -- that could make sense.

Maybe today's Air Book is a marker for that future.

Incidentally, I've been hoping for a 20% drop in Apple's share price to refocus them on delivering value to customers (viz the Airport Extreme disk story). I might get my wish faster than expected!

Jeff Atwood's recommendations: multitool, flashlight, thumb drive

CH's Jeff Atwood spends a LOT of time thinking about his keychain.

Lazy people like me prefer to read Jeff, and just buy whatever he suggests

Coding Horror: What's On Your Keychain, 2008 Edition

Leatherman Squirt S4 multitool

Corsair 8 GB Flash Voyager thumb drive

Fenix L0D-CE AAA LED flashlight

Curious results of various image formats: OS X Preview and PDF

Image compression is a tricky thing. For example, few people know that PNG is by far the best format to use for screen shots; vastly better than JPEG, GIF or (shudder) BMP. (Ok, so Word's mysterious internal format is pretty darned good -- but it's a mystery.)

Storing black and white scanned document images is even odder, however. Consider these results from PDFs generated by my Brother MFC-7820N document scanner (1 page, 300 dpi, b&w). In each case I saved from OS X preview:

• Original PDF: 132kb
• PNG: 155kb
• JPEG 2000 lossless: 296kb
• JPEG 2000 good quality: 380kb
• JPEG: 328 kb (artifact can be seen)
• TIFF zip compression: 220kb
• TIFF alternative compression: 216kb

A PDF of a scan is simply a wrapper, like TIFF, around some other format. PDF uses different compression depending on the image. A B&W image does very well with ancient run-length compression, so I suspect that's what's being used. I was surprised by how large the TIFFs were -- I think OS X Preview isn't providing the optimal compression for a b&w image.

Interesting that JPEG 2000 lossy is almost 40% larger than lossless for a b&w image. I thought I'd get better results there.

PNG, as always, does very well for lossless compression. A shame they never put any $!#$% metadata into the file specification!

Note that iPhoto will handle all of those image formats except PDF.

DRM, the new iPods and the unanticipated

Apple's movie rentals won't work with older iPods, including the 5G model I own.

The NYT mentions one reason for this:

Where Is Apple’s Rental Service for Music? - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog:

...The technology behind this is that iPods need to have a tamper-proof clock in them so that content can be vaporized after its expiration date. The first models didn’t have this feature; the new ones do...

Another "feature" of the new iPods is that they won't allow video out except through Apple's connectors. This is known as "plugging the analog hole", without this "feature" it would be relatively easy to create high quality copies of any video stored on an iPod.

As the NYT suggests these technologies could be used to control music distribution as well.

These stories illuminate an interesting aspect of the copyright wars. They drive hardware sales. Each new front obsoletes a generation of hardware. Rather good news for Apple.

On a similar front, malware wars have been good for Microsoft. Malware mandates continuous software patches, and eventually malware driven product updates - like Vista.

Unanticipated emergent consequences, as always.

Speaking of unanticipated consequences, if I were the music industry, I'd be buying up used CDs and destroying them, while distributing new music by wire -- with full DRM support. Is anyone visiting used CD store looking for suspicious batch buyers?

What about the strategy of selling non-DRMd music on Amazon? Sure, it's good for beating up Apple, but I think it's really about destroying the CD. Buy up used CDs and destroy them, migrate consumers off CDs and onto the wire, then introduce robust watermarked identifiers so music can always be traced to the purchaser.

Not a bad strategy really, but it's sure to have unanticipated consequences. What will it mean when all thinks identify us? What will happen to the use and value of these identifiers? Will kidnappers force people to turn over their music collection? Will owners be able to "repudiate" their data, so it becomes unplayable? How will all this data be mined?

Lots of fun.

Salvaging the MacBook Air: Bluetooth tethering to the iPhone

The aggravating dockless MacBook Air, a bleedin' $2,000 peripheral that's basically an inferior reincarnation of the PowerBook Duo, is probably going to sell like mad. At first.

Then, one prays, reality will set in.

So what would make the Air less foul?

Daring Fireball suggests an out ...

Daring Fireball

...Totally agree re: ubiquitous wireless networking, but so far, judging from email from DF readers who’ve pre-ordered Airs, it all boils down to weight...

If Apple enables bluetooth tethering of the MacBook Air to an iPhone then it's possible to imagine tolerating that immense waste of design talent.

Grrr.

(Note that the current iPhone doesn't support tethering with anything, if it were enabled expect an additional monthly charge. If it happens it will likely require the 3G iPhone, thereby driving a surge of iPhone updates. Double grr.)

Bose QuietComfort 2 Mobile Communications kit connects to an iPhone

Sadly, Apple has not released an iPhone with a standard headphone mini-jack (the current recessed receptacle won't fit most mini-jacks). I'm getting the feeling they never will.

Sigh. Faust would understand.

I figured I'd have to buy a stupid dongle or whittle down my Bose QuiteComfort 2* headphones. Turns out there might be an alternative -- the $40 Bose QuietComfort 2 Mobile Communications Kit. Sure, it's much more expensive than whittling, but it includes a microphone so you can handle incoming calls. On the other hand it only works with post-2005 QC2s. (I might get away though, my original QC2 was replaced for free about a year ago.)

So if you have an older set you probably want to call Bose with your serial number before you buy.

* My one extravagance. There are now good alternatives for about half the price.

Broken iPod? Get 10% off a new one

iPods are rarely discounted, so this is worth remembering if you have a broken old iPod:

Reminder, 10% off new iPods with trade-in - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... Daniel Jalkut at Red Sweater reminded us that you can get a 10% discount on a new iPod any day at your local Apple Store if you do one simple thing: bring in an old iPod to trade in. The program's been around since 2005, but it's always worth another mention...

My old iPods become household music servers, but if it doesn't work this is better than nothing.

Multiuser machines and devices: the next most messed up part of OS X

I think Permissions are the most messed up part of OS X, but device management on a multi-user machine is a close second.

Specifically, management of owned devices.

So a drive that's shared between all users seems to work. CDs can get stuck though. They become invisible except by using Disk Utility to force an eject (sometimes the hardware eject button will work).

The real problem shows up with iPods however, and presumably with an iPhone as well.

Each user account tries to seize control of the iPod. So if I sync on my account, then switch to my wife's account, the iPod can go into a limbo state. It thinks it's attached, but the OS says it isn't.

Reset time.

It's almost as if Apple doesn't really support use of an iPod on a multi-user machine.

No, that couldn't be ...

iPhoto Hot Tips page is very good

Even Adam Engst found things here he didn't know...

Apple - Support - iPhoto - Hot Tips

Sometimes photos look better in a particular context when "flipped" horizontally... e.g., have your two kids face each other on a two up photo page. It seems few people know about the contextual menu option that allows you to do this easily. Simply cntrl+click on a photo in a book, card, or calendar and select "Mirror Image."

Definitely worth a close read. Short too.

This is why I wait for 10.5.3 ...

A very good example of why 10.5 is still not ready for me:

Spanning Sync Blog: Update on the Leopard iCal Sync Bug

...We've filed this bug with Apple (bug #5597932) and, given the number of people affected by it, are optimistic that it will be fixed in Mac OS X 10.5.2, rumored to be shipping later this month. In the mean time you should:

• Consider this bug before upgrading to Leopard from Tiger
• Make frequent backups of iCal (File > Back up iCal...)
• Disable the Address Book birthday calendar if you think you might be running into the problem

We understand and share the frustration this bug has caused our users—and all Mac users trying to sync their iCal calendars with other devices and applications. We look forward to a permanent fix from Apple...

Apple has a culture of innovation - obviously. Quality? Customer service? Not so much.

It's just not in their DNA. The saving grace is a very high quality customer base that notices problems and complains about them. If not for that customer base I'd still be on XP - no matter how excellent Apple's innovation.

When Apple makes a big move, experienced customers know they'll break stuff rather than miss dates or sacrifice secrecy. When 10.5 slipped last Feb I thought it wouldn't ship before March 2008. I should have said it wouldn't be ready to use before March 2008.

The good news, for those of us who can wait, is that by March of 2008 10.5 might be safe to use. Personally I'm thinking May 2008  looks better.

Hard on people who need new hardware though ...

Adobe Lightroom - kind of nice

Adobe Lightroom 1.0 Win/Mac isn't cheap - $300 list. There's a month free trial though, and since I'm kind of disgusted with Aperture I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm not using it to manage photos, for that I use iPhoto '08. I'm using it for my standard heretical workflow:

1. Import JPEG and RAW images from our Canon SD1000 and Digital Rebel XT.
2. Rename files to embed some roll and date info in the file name.
3. Import into Aperture, Adobe Lightroom or iPhoto for post-processing.
4. Export as JPEG 98%
5. Import into iPhoto '08 for archival storage and uploading.
6. Delete the RAW images.
   

So, for this purpose, how does Adobe Lightroom compare to Aperture?

It's better. Much faster for image browsing, a bit faster than Aperture on my slowish PPC iMac for image editing. LR is easier to learn than Aperture, even though I think the Library/Develop division is dumb.

It's even a better Macintosh application! Aperture uses weird GUI elements, LR sticks mostly to the Apple standards. It's the most Mac-like of all Adobe's apps, because it began life on the Mac.

Aperture's theoretical big advantage is that it can import an iPhoto Library -- but it can't handle video, Photo Books, etc. And, of course, Aperture doesn't support editing of image dates - so I can't use it as an image store anyway.

For what I do today, LR is a better solution.

Aperture is not looking very happy these days ...

Software for creating personal photo sports trading cards

I thought I'd have a fairly easy time making sports/trading cards for the MN Special Hockey Stingers, but it turns out to be harder than I expected.

Back in the days of MacOS 7 and Windows 3.1 I suspect there were lots of software packages to do this sort of thing. In the modern world they seem much harder to find.

Failing a traditional software solution, I figured I'd find an online service that would make cards. I did find one, but it was pretty expensive. This is definitely a niche business.

Thus far I've only found four solutions on any platform (Thanks Apple Discussions):

1. HP sports photo trading cards: This web app will, very, very slowly, create PDF you can print. Requires thick paper, scissors, and blue.
2. Portraits and Prints (OS X) claims some support for printing cards, but there's very little documentation. No free trial either!
3. Photoshop Elements (OS X and Windows): "Old Toad" tells me that it supports creating photo cards.
4. NCR Flip-Pix: My local Office supply store sells NCR Flip Pix (made in Germany?!) trading card sheets. The Flip Pix software for generating prints is a free Windows only download. (Funny note: the documentation says it works on "Windows on a Mac" - Boot Camp. It also says: "... If you are not able to do this by using Bootcamp or other Windows OS for Mac, then please call the customer support line for a CD of similar software that may work on a Mac." I suspect they have an old Mac classic version of this product.)
5. An Apple Canada site suggested iWorks, but didn't provide much detail.
   

I'll update this post if I find anything else. I think it was easier to search for software products 8 years ago ...

Nikon has Canon in a headlock ...

For years Canon has had Nikon on the defensive. Suddenly, Nikon has new life. The light sensitivity of the Nikon D3 is breathtaking. Screw those megapixels, give me ISO any day.

Nikon D3 / D300 Vs. Canon

... One of the things that has a lot of people really bent is that the Nikon D3 can shoot at ISO 25,600. This is three full stops faster than ISO 3200, which for the record is three stops faster than ISO 400. (Just to put things in perspective).

Some nay-sayers have commented, "Ya, so what. It's really noisy). As the teenagers say – "Duhhhh!". Of course it's noisy. It's freak'n ISO 25,600 for Pete's sake!

As in the old joke about the talking dog, it isn't so much what it has to say but rather that it can talk at all. And at ISO 25,600 the D3 really has a lot to say.

At 25,600 most of the noise is chroma noise. What this means is that by converting to monochrome and applying a bit of luminance noise reduction in Lightroom or Camera Raw, one ends up with a file that looks to my eyes like T-Max at ISO 1600, or ISO 800 Tri-X developed in Rodinal. That's 4 – 6 stops better than anything we had in the film days, and at least 2-3 stops better than anything to-date in digital...

I loved the tip for dealing with chroma noise. My puny Canon Digital Rebel XT can shoot at 1,600, but the noise makes this worthless. I'll experiment with this recovery technique.

Watch for this spring's Digital Rebel XT. If Canon doesn't produce a low end dSLR that can shoot good images at ISO 1,600, we'll know they've given up on the low end.

Google extends custom search: even easier to create and embed

I've written previously about Google's Custom Search engine:

• Google Custom Search with Bloglines Search OS X mashup


• Google delivers custom search pages


• Search gone mad - Custom AJAX API search

I like it, even though the last time I tried it the "use all URLs on this page" function was flaky and didn't work with JavaScript generated content. (See: my current custom search collection)

Now Google has added new "on the fly" searching based on page links. Google Blogoscoped has some examples including del.icio.us integration.

Foxit reader replaces Adobe Acrobat reader

I have the full Adobe Acrobat (ugh) on my XP box, so I haven't tried the Foxit Software PDF viewer. It's getting a quite a few positive mentions lately though, so worth remembering.

On OS X Preview is great.