Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

Review: HP TouchPad – First Thoughts

Persistence paid off, and I was finally able to get an HP TouchPad at the unbelievable price of $99.99.

I got to use it for about an hour last night, so this review is truly first thoughts from a tech geek that swapped his iPad 2 for an HP TouchPad for one night.

The model I’m reviewing here is the 16GB WiFi.

Packaging: I’m only mentioning it, because it was impressive. I’d say it was on par with the quality of the iPad packaging.  An inner box slides out of an outer shell, and the TouchPad is well cushioned and separated from the accessories.  The accessories are under a flap, and also divided from each other.

Accessories: You get a USB cable and a power adapter.  The power adapter is big. . in fact, it’s a bigger then the old-style plastic 35-mm film canisters, and the same shape.  The outlet prongs fold into the cylinder, but it’s still BIG.  If you’re packing light, it’ll be frustrating that the adapter is this big.

The actual quality of both is nice, and it seems like they went out of their way to ensure this.  I bet someone in mgmt said, “OMG, we have to justify the cost of this mediocore product, make everything it comes with look like Bentley made it”.

Device: The TouchPad itself, in my opinion, is of a lower quality than both the iPad 1 and 2.  The chassis is plastic, and the buttons are “ok”.  It’s very similar to the design of the iPhone 3G, which, in my opinion, is also of inferior quality compared to the iPhone 2.5G, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPad 2.   I’ve heard rumors folks are having issues with cracking around the speakers and bottom port, and I believe it.  The design and build quality doesn’t instill the same confidence I have in other portable electronics.  That said, compared to Chinese import cheapo tablets in the $90 – $200 range, this thing is tank.

The screen is gorgeous.  No flaws here whatsoever in my limited play session.  Color rendition is good, brightness is good, viewing angle is good.  Job well done here.  The speakers are also pretty good.  I fired up Pandora and had no complaints.  I think the “beats” name is a bit of a stretch here, and I wonder how much better it could have sounded if they spent the money on the speakers instead of the licensing.  Regardless, it’s better than expected for the size of the device, and loud enough for quiet to moderately noisy environments if it’s right in front of you.

OS/Interface: Wow, such mixed feelings here. . .   I love the way multitasking is handled, and I love that it handles flash, but it feels sluggish and scrolling often pauses or stutters.  Speaking of flash, it did leave me thinking, “wtf Apple, just gimme Flash already”.  99% of the flash I  surfed to worked just fine and didn’t bog the device any more than other pages.  C’mon Apple, make it happen :)

Settings, App mgmt, and customization are all poorly implemented.  To be fair, some of the settings are easily adjusted, but most are buried intuitively leaving you feeling like you’re running Windows 3.11 all over again.  Seriously HP, is this the best you could do?

Media: This was a big fail for me.  Admittedly I spent very little time with it, but I copied an H.264 movie to it that I’ve successfully watched on my iPhone, iPad, Samsung Smart TV, Windows Media Center, VLC, etc., and the TouchPad choked.  I’m sure if I re-encoded it, it’d be fine, but that’s a real pain in the ass if you just want to get some movies on there for the kids before running out the door.  I hear there’s an app that’s a lot more flexible around media types, but I wasn’t dropping any coin on apps with Android on the horizon.

Final Thoughts: This thing is a STEAL at $99.99.  If you see one, buy it.  The original price tag was not realistic, not with the current polish of this device.  The most I would have paid if I was in the market for another tablet and it wasn’t fire-sale’d is probably about $250.  That’ll change if cyanogen is successful with their Android port.  It easily adds another $50 to $100 to what I’d pay, and I’ve got my fingers crossed I’m reviewing this same tablet again in a month or two with Android on it, much more favorably.

Verizon iPhone 4 exhibits same antenna issues as the AT&T model

Awwwwwww c’mon seriously Apple??????

/fail

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/02/25/consumer-reports-confirms-death-grip-in-verizon-iphone/

Engadget posts video review of iOS 4.2 on iPad

Engadget has a video review of iOS 4.2 running on an iPad over at their site:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/15/ios-4-2-on-ipad-preview-video/

It looks pretty sweet, and most importantly of all, performance doesn’t seem to suffer.  I’ll admit, I’ve been using my iPad less lately since it can be frustrating not to be able to pull off a chat and simple browsing session at the same time without wasting half your time logging in and out of AIM and waiting for Safari to re-initialize.

iOS 4.2 for iPad is slated for a November release according to Apple.

Apple should embrace jailbreaking to maintain market share

IDC released their worldwide quarterly numbers for mobile device operating system market share last week, and whether you look at the current market, or the predicted 2014 market, it doesn’t look good for Apple.

The skinny: Android is kicking Apple’s ass.

To figure out why, let’s go back in time, to January of 2007.  Apple releases the original iPhone, and the usual suspects of Apple-loving zealots (the crowd that buys and loves *EVERYTHING* that Apple makes) buys one, and shows their friends.   Some of these friends end up being real people, not already drinking the Apple kool-aid, and they realize pretty quickly that Apple was onto something big here.

Much like they did with the iPod, Apple entered the mobile phone game at a time when the technology had matured enough to truly make a “smart phone”, where some tasks that we previously relied solely on our PC’s and laptops for, started to make sense in our pockets if done right.  The iPhone did them right, from the web to rich email, youtube, maps, and eventually: apps.

Within a year, since Apple successfully proved the fees-ability of a “smart phone” to the mass market beyond early adopters and business users, everyone and their brother in the carrier and handset business tried to copy their success.  They all failed.  .  .  miserably.  Why buy the imitation handset, with imitation OS tied to it, when you can buy the original.  Google however, in their infinite wisdom, and with their deep pockets attacked from a different angle and started developing Android, a mobile OS that would run on not just their own hardware, but hardware from other vendors that chose to license it (or license the functionality of a “store” for apps, etc.)  By this time, Apple had amassed zillions of apps in it’s own app store, and had a pretty damn big chunk of market share.  The general public, if they could afford it, had totally adopted the idea of “smart” in their pocket, and everyone wanted an iPhone.

In October of 2008, Google rolls out Android, and all the “Apple haters” that secretly wanted an iPhone, but wouldn’t be caught dead with anything Apple-branded, instantly buy an Android device and start consuming/writing Android apps.  It takes a while, but adoption gains traction, and the UI becomes friendlier, more stable, and more standard.   Most important of all, carriers and handset vendors, still licking the wounds from their failed-iPhone-copycat-devices start seeing that you CAN compete with Apple’s iPhone, you just have to work together.

Fast-Forward to present day, late summer 2010.  Apple had a rocky iPhone 4 release (antennagate, pre-order hell, etc.), and the folks that bought an iPhone, but aren’t married to Apple otherwise are starting to get sick and tired of Apple telling them which apps they can and can’t run.  This didn’t matter so much when they were the only game in town, but now there’ s competition, and it’s looking a whole lot more “open” on the other side of the fence.

Need proof?  Here’s the chart from IDC:

Let’s just concentrate on the 2010 column for now.  Android commands 16.3% of the market, while Apple holds 14.7%.   Symbian, the 800lb gorilla here is almost irrelevant since the 40.1% they hold reflects folks with std. handsets no different that what’s been out for the last 10+ years.  I view all of these as consumers that will eventually be buying Android devices, iPhone’s or Windows Mobile devices.

What about BlackBerry?  Personally speaking, I think they’re on their way out.  Their time has come and gone, and unless they do something drastic like re-write their UI to run on Android, and license the Android app store. . goodbye.

Windows Mobile has probably the best shot at gaining some of that Symbian market share alongside iPhone and Android.  Their previous mobile OS’s have been such shit, that at this point the fact that they’re brazen enough to even release the next version has a lot of people convinced they’ve done their homework this time.  I guess the jury’s out until Windows Mobile 7 is 3-6 months into release and the numbers talk, and we see if they can carve out a space for a 3rd app “store”.

Apple biggest strength in this game is their biggest weakness.  It’s their private, locked-gate community built atop their closed OS and tightly-controlled app store.  While cautious parents, and technology illiterate consumers love the ease of knowing that most of the apps they can buy are reasonably safe, the savvy folks that bought iPhone’s for their sleek industrial design, quality, and hardware features are fed up, and in many cases going underground for what they want.

Jailbreaking has started to become mainstream on  iPhone’s and the latest news of a jailbreak based on a HW-level exploit is just fuel on the fire.  With each release of iOS, Apple closes the old exploits, the jailbreaking community finds new ones, and life goes on.  Why jailbreak?  Jailbreaking let’s users run any application they want with or without Apple’s approval.   In the past, the jailbreaking community was looked-upon as a bunch of shadowy figures operating outside the law, but on July 25th, 2010 the Library of Congress ruled that jailbreaking was explicitly exempted from provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, making it now more mainstream than ever.  Apple, undaunted by the ruling, maintains jailbreaking is naughty, continues to close exploits, and refuses to support jailbroken iPhone’s in any way at all.

Let’s look at that chart again (scroll up if you don’t have photographic memory).  As you can see in the 2014 column, the tech-savvy folks not joined to Apple at the hip have moved on and bought Android or Windows Mobile devices.  I don’t agree quite as enthusiastically with the chart regarding uptake on Windows Mobile, but hey, if they finally get it right, it could happen.  Like all closed-gate communities, with tight rules and regulations, there’s only so many people that WANT to live there, and as the smart handheld device marketplace gets better overall, more folks are willing to live on the other side of the fence.

The solution?  Apple needs to embrace jailbreaking.  Now, I’m not suggesting they open the app store to ANY application, or permit any OS to run on their hardware, but what if you had a choice?

Take the blue pill, stay inside the gated community, and run the apps Papa Steve says are good.  Unsigned code doesn’t run, you go to Apple heaven at the end of your life, and the geniuses at the Apple bar are happy to help you with every little thing.

OR

Take the red pill, accept the long winded agreement accepting the risk of running un-signed code, etc, etc. and unlock the ability to use other non-apple app markets or stores, and your support is limited to the hardware itself.   Direct all other complaints straight at yourself.

The consumer still gets kick-ass Apple hardware, with the choice of living ultra-safe, or taking a few risks and increasing the usability of their devices, while Apple can quit wasting money on thwarting jailbreakers and keep their support costs low.

BAM. Everyone wins.

Apple’s image cracking under iPhone 4 antenna issues

Steve, it’s time to concede the iPhone 4 isn’t quite a flawless home run.  It’s like cutting the video to black just short of seeing the hitter round 3rd and trip, heading face first into the sand.  Stop calling it a “stumble”.  It doesn’t matter if the ball is already outta the park.  Take the fall, get up, brush off and talk about how Apple is going to resolve this issue, and then make it happen.

The longer you wait, the bigger the roar of unhappy customers that are figuring out their recent increase in signal issues isn’t just a coincidence.

I’d love to see some charts from AT&T that show trending for signal degradation across handsets, specifically the iPhone line.  I bet the iPhone 4 leads the pack in sudden degradation.  Who knows if they trend any of this already, but I can guarantee you’ll never see any of it made public.

Apple stock is down, and Consumer Reports, while offering a GLOWING review based on features/functionality is recommending against purchasing until the issue is resolved.  Even devoted fans are cursing their phones due to dropped calls and degraded signal.

Personally speaking, I’ve noticed the issue somewhat intermittently, and believe that, like so many other variables that affect wireless performance, it’s not an issue that by itself can bring the signal to an unusable level, but drastically exacerbates the other pre-existing variables.

What do I mean? Well, think about it.  .  .with any phone, your signal often seems to rise and fall for no apparent reason at all.  Maybe the tower is a bit overloaded, maybe the weather is changing, maybe your “dome” is blocking some of the signal as you move around.   There’s literally thousands of reasons wireless signal may degrade.  If none of these are impacting you, and you degrade your signal by shorting that gap on the iPhone 4, all is well, even if it cuts your signal by up to 50%.  However, if you were in a low coverage area to begin with, or any of the aforementioned issues are affecting you, goodbye call.  This makes it really hard for the end user to identify what’s really causing the issue.

Consumer Reports did their test in an enclosed area with special equipment to virtually eliminate other variables, and determine the real impact of signal attenuation alone.  Guess what?  They’re suggested fix is a piece of tape over the joint to stop attenuation.

Wake up Apple, we want a fix. . a REAL fix.

Boston rocks, iPhone 4: woes, wins & humor, & Why can’t pet AT-AT’s be real?

Back from Boston!  Ok, well, I got back late last Friday night, and I’m just posting now, but I’ve been B-U-S-Y.

Boston rocked.  Complete 180 from other big cities I’ve been to.   There’s open space, richer history, and the atmosphere is just calmer and more cohesive.  NYC, for example looks recycled, regurgitated, and temporary in comparison.

Trip Pics

Boston seamlessly blends “trendy new” with cobble stone, granite, brick and nature.  It’s got it’s skeletons and armpits too, but hands down, my favorite urban blend.  If I could change one thing it’d be the time chit closes. . .   On a FRIDAY night in the SUMMER, half the bloody city shuts down at 6pm, and the rest is closed by 9pm.  No, I don’t mean there’s a curfew, but good luck finding anything open.  I literally couldn’t find an open Startbucks at 9:45pm.  No joke.  If you’re a night owl, stick to NYC.  In comparison it literally is the city that never sleeps.

Got home late Friday night, and low and behold by iPhone 4 had arrived while I was gone.  In fact, it came Wednesday, a full day before the official release. Go AT&T.  You mind-fucked me with your nonexistent status and bullshit answers when I ordered, but a full day early . . . rock-on.

Saturday morning: Wake up, activate iPhone, call AT&T to swap #’s around (had to purchase on my wife’s number originally to get the upgrade pricing) and wow, kickass features in order of importance:

1) Amazing screen

2) Kickass screen

3) Jaw-dropping gorgeous screen

4) STFU and look at the screen

5) Everything else

The “retina” display is truly remarkable.  It’s mesmerizing to look at stuff on it.   It’s “realer” than “real”.  In fact, MOVE over real, the new real is whatever I’m looking at on my iPhone 4 screen. Real is yesterday.

Sunday morning: I wake up,  grab by phone to catch up on the news until my daughter wakes up, and 10 minutes in, the screen flickers like a campfire in the wind, splits into double vision, fades to white, fades to black, fades to sparkly silver, and finally: fades to black.

Power button = no response.

Home button = no response.

Hard reset = no response.

Hold down home button = voice dial prompt!, but screen still blank, so obviously the screen had gone off the deep end.

I call AT&T, who has me step through the usual hoops and perform the usual steps, and after 45 minutes they pronounced the screen dead.

What now?  Well, AT&T offered advanced replacement with  a ship date of 5-6 wks.  No thanks.  Other option was to show up at Apple, and give them the case #.  A quick call to Apple yielded a 3:15pm genius bar appt the very same day, and the expectation of  a “replacement phone”.  Surely this sounded a little nuts since I know damn well they’re sold out, but I figured worst case scenario I could at least get a 3GS loaner until more 4’s are on the shelves.

Arrived at Apple, and lo and behold, they maintain a seperate stock of replacement phones and they had 1 16GB 4 left!!!!  YAY, back in business.  I’ll spare you the part of the story where I went to 3 different places shopping for a case, but they turned out to be as scarce as the phones themselves.

This video, while bashing the iPhone 4 pretty much sums up why:

. . .and while you’re at it, check this one out too.  If you don’t want a pet AT-AT after watching this, you’re broken:

AT&T ships my iPhone 4!?, and some first thoughts on iOS4

Just checked my status at AT&T again for my iPhone 4, and it shows shipped!.  The FedEx tracking # doesn’t work yet, but this really does seem to solidify that at least I’ll be getting a phone sometime this month.

I’m loving iOS4 on my 3Gs so far.  It’s a little cumbersome at first to scroll through the running apps after a double click, but feels intuitive.  The unified inbox is also nice, but it leaves we wondering: why didn’t they color code the messages based on the account received through, or present an option for this?  Maybe it -is- there and I’m missing it.  If not, Steve, can you hear me?? Color coding on emails. . kthx

Pandora runs in the background just as expected (continues to play), and didn’t cause any noticeable lag.

Wallpapers on the home screen just feels right.  Just like a good case adds a custom look and feel to the iPhone, so does a customizable home screen, and this should have been an option for day 1.  Folders is another great feature that works exactly as you’d expect it would, but again, it should have been there since day 1 :)

iOS4 has been released!

iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS), has been released and is available for download through iTunes.  If you haven’t updated your iTunes recently, you’ll need to update that as well before performing the firmware upgrade on your iPhone.  If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS, you can look for the following new key features:

Multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, iBooks, 5x Digital Zoom, Tap To Focus Video, Faces and Places in Photos, Home Screen Wallpaper, Gifting Apps, Spell Checking, Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard Support, and much much more!

If you own a 3G, most of these features will be available, save for multitasking.  The 3G just simply doesn’t have enough juice (mem/cpu) for multitasking to work well.  If you’re still kicking around an “original” iPhone, you’re out of luck, as this update doesn’t support that model at all.

Happy updating!

UPDATE:

Looks to be about 378MB, and is downloading  at ~5mbps for me.

iPhone 4 order madness!

I may or may not be receiving an iPhone 4 on the 24th.  I honestly have no idea, and I’m in the same boat with about 3/4 of a million other people.

Here’s how things went down:

June 14th, 10:00pm – Considered staying up till midnight to put in the pre-order, but couldn’t find any confirmation it would even be available that early, and I was on vacation in Florida, so I figured the hell with it, I’d get up early and try the pre-order as soon as possible.

June 15th, 7:30am – Woke up and started my pre-order on AT&T’s website.  Site was responding a little “slow” but seemed to be working “OK”.

June 15th, 7:45am – Got to the final checkout page, had my credit card info in, etc. and hit “Checkout”

June 15th, 7:55am – AFTER A PAINFUL TEN MINUTES, the checkout page fails with a proxy timeout error and a long numerical string.  I check my bank account, and there’s a $1.00 auth from AT&T, so I figured it probably went through and just never spit back a confirmation.  We were on vacation and I had other stuff to do, so I quit worrying about it and went about breakfast and planning the day.

June 15th, 10:00am – After reading reports of widespread complete failures in the ordering process at both AT&T and Apple, I figured I better give customer service a call and see if they have my order.

June 15th, 10:15am – After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I finally get on with a rep who tells me there’s no order on my account, and the system is completely overwhelmed with orders.  I request she process an order for me, but she states she doesn’t even have the ability to do so.  When I ask what I should do, she states I should “just keep trying”, and suggests I give Apple’s site a try as well.

June 15th, 10:30am – Upon trying to order again at AT&T’s site, it won’t even let me proceed past the upgrade screen.  Immediately kicks back an error page and tells me for non-iPhone upgrades I can contact customer service.   I later learned AT&T had actually started blocking upgrades while they tried to make sense of what was going on, but their reps never stopped telling people to “keep trying”.  Assholes.

June 15th, 10:45am – I try ordering at Apple’s site.  The site is slow as molasses, and fails repeatedly never reaching all the way through to the part where I can actually order.

June 15th, 11:30am – I throw my hands up in the air and give up, frustrated I’d sunk that much time in trying to give a co. money for something that doesn’t even exist yet.  It’s one thing to fight for a credit or a correction in service.  It’s another to have to FIGHT to give a company money.  How dare I.

June 15th, 2:00pm – My wife, bless her soul, decides to give it a try and repeatedly attempts ordering through AT&T website, Apple’s website, and the iPhone Apple Store App after reading reports of occasional “successes” reported on twitter, etc.   I head out to pickup lunch wanting nothing to do with it at this point.

June 15th, 3:00pm – After a FULL HOUR of trying, she succeeds!  AT&T’s site comes through with an order confirmation, which she wisely “saves” since we had no printer available to us on vacation.  At this point I’m cautiously happy, but did breathe a sigh of relief.

June 16th, 1:00pm – I receive an email from AT&T stating my order has been canceled, claiming: “Unfortunately, we were either unable to verify the information you provided or you have exceeded the number of lines of service that we allow customers to purchase online. As a result, your order has been canceled.”  I was so angry, I didn’t even do anything right away.  The reality that I wasn’t likely getting a phone until mid to late July set in, and I gulped it down like a 10lb rock with jagged edges.

June 16th, 5:00pm – Again, my wife saves the day by calling AT&T and finds out there were “multiple orders” and they show that while one was canceled, a second one “appears” to be “in process”.

June 16th, 9:40pm – I get a second email from AT&T claiming that my iPhone 4 pre-order has been received and is being processed in the order it was received.  It includes an order #, and I plug it into AT&T’s site under order status, it simply shows “in-process”, but with an order date of the 16th.

Fast forward to today, my order still shows “in process” with an order date of the 16th, and several calls to AT&T have yielded no answer as to when my phone will ship.  Reports from various sources online state orders received before late afternoon on the 15th SHOULD ship for delivery on the 24th, and my order was definetely placed in that range, but nevertheless the date states the 16th.

I guess at this point, I wait until the 23rd and see if the order shows as “shipped”, and if it doesn’t the most I can do is call AT&T and complain.  Never in my life have I gone through such a bullshit ordeal to buy something, let alone on a pre-order.  From what I understand AT&T and Apple have together accepted over 3/4 million pre-orders with the first 600k occuring on the 15th alone!  While this is a record-setting number, the process was still completely unacceptable and has likely left each and every one of the 600k people that did succeed in getting an order through pissed at AT&T for not stepping up to the plate with a queuing system, or a slimmed down process for completing checkout at any time throughout the day.

So tell me, did you get an order through?  If so, what’s your order date, and have you gotten a delivery estimate from AT&T?

UPDATE:

June 19th, 3:30pm – Spoke with another rep from AT&T, and was told that due to the overwhelming response, NO orders are expected to ship for delivery before the 26th (and more likely the 28th).  This was from a single source at AT&T, and I don’t see anyone else reporting it, but she insisted nothing would be shipping for delivery on the 24th.  I guess we’ll see :)

UPDATE:

June 21st, 10:00am – Received a voicemail from AT&T stating my order “should” ship for delivery between the 25th and 28th of June.

iPhone 4: pure, industrial class for your pocket

I followed the Apple WWDC 2010 loosely via a liveblog since I was at work during the event, but since then I’ve been closely following the reviews and reports on the iPhone 4. I’m impressed, REAL impressed.

Specs avail from apple here:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

but, let me break down what matters most to me:

1) Class. The thing is fucking gorgeous. . . . I’m a huge sucker for industrialesque design where form follows function, and the iPhone 4 does this in a way that just shuts the door on other smart phones out there, including their own 3G and 3GS iPhones. The “original iPhone” with it’s metal back, and game-changing all glass front is a close second to this, and I’m SOOOO glad they’ve gone back to this type of design. The metal sides on the iPhone 4 are actually antennas, and the front and rear are a special engineered glass that’s stronger and more durable than anything found on a smartphone before.

2) 720p 30fps HD video. Damn straight, HD video onboard. Quit shopping for a newer video cam to replace your aging Hi8 or miniDV behemoth you currently haul to “events”, because the iPhone 4 just obsoleted them. It’s not that there aren’t dedicated cameras out there that will do a better job than this one, there are. But, this one will do a better job than what 99% of people already own for a video cam, and it’ll always be at the ready, in your pocket. I won’t even talk about the convenience of quick edits and youtube/email straight from the phone. It’s a given.

3) 960×640 display. Apple calls it a “retina display” which I’ve never heard of, so their marketing dept. probably invented it. Regardless, that’s a HUGE amount of pixels for such a tiny screen. Reviewers are saying even at a distance from their eye of only a few inches, they can’t make out the pixels in the image. I’m sold, porn will no doubt look amazing :P

4) Front-facing 2nd camera. To be honest, it’s about time the iPhone gets this. Ever since the original iPhone came out in 2007, people have had half-baked ideas about some crazy mirror to use the rear cam for video calls as the iPhone seems otherwise so well fit for this type of use scenario. Now folks can quit pretending to be inventors, and just go buy the new iPhone. Apple didn’t talk about supporting anything other than “FaceTime”, but Jobs did promise to make it an open standard, and with the app store, I’m sure the front cam will have 5000 uses a week after launch date. Chatroullette anyone?

5) Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet. Just kidding, wanted to see if anyone was even still reading :)

Bottom line, it’s available June 15th, and you’ll find me hitting refresh on the order page starting at 11:55pm on the 14th.