apple talk

I see that Apple has announced a bunch of new things at their conference. Some were fairly predictable, but I think it's interesting in terms of the changes that will affect the ways we use computers over the next few years.

I'll ignore the speed and capacity increases on some of the laptops, but the new Macbook Pro is moving closer towards the MacBook Air form factor. A high resolution screen (2880 by 1800), solid state disk and no DVD. My Air (1.35kg) is about a year old, but if the new Pro (2kg) had been available it might have been a tough choice.

Then there's the addition of allegedly usable speech dictation. I've been pleasantly surprised with the speech on the iPad, although it beams the speech to the cloud where Nuance processes it, which makes it still a slightly disjointed operation. It's pretty accurate though, as you can see with this spoken blog entry.

The underpinning for the speech is Siri, which is already on iPhones and will go to Macs. It seems to be part of the integration of the messaging and notification environment too, one view everywhere, which already works pretty well.

It looks as if Siri will also be making its way into cars for sat-nav and similar. My car already has voice recognition for sat-nav and phone dialling in any case, but I can't ask it 'Are we nearly there yet?' which I suppose Siri will support (in fairness, my car already tells me this both in distance and time)
The interesting thing will be whether the new "Eyes Free" for cars is fully integrated or whether it will be a separate device plug in like the iPod/iPhone. I see that about half a dozen car makers (e.g. BMW, Mercedes, GM, Honda, Audi, Toyota) are adding a Siri button to the steering wheel. It's still important for the sat-nav console to not become a source of distraction so I guess Angry Birds is out of the question.

Another related concept is streamed traffic congestion data - which is an idea that has been around for years- and is where the sat-navs in cars can send in data from their GPS that provides communal road status updates. Nowadays it'll be called crowd sourcing or similar and presumably part of the new mapping offered by Apple.

I noticed my car in the USA was Microsoft Sync enabled, complete with a Setup and a rather ominous Reset button. I guess we'll also get the war of Google vs Apple vs Microsoft as part of the battle for mapping. There's a whole load of new 3D imaging and so on, but I must admit I usually revert to basic 'North Up 2D' mapping when I'm in the car, except if I want to show off 3D pictures of London buildings to passengers.

I guess its different on a computer and I sometimes replay bike routes that I've ridden and GPS'd using google maps. (My Garmin Edge 800 is great for that)

Then there's the new Mountain Lion OS/X and iOS 6 releases for Macs, iPads and iPhones which I'm sure I'll use. The iOS has a few features that I've already had on my Blackberry over the years like - 'Do Not Disturb' (i.e. in a meeting), 'Reply with Message' (i.e. I can't talk right now but here's a standard courtesy text) and similar.

We also see FaceTime over cellular although my corporate world still uses MS Lync for ad-hoc conference calls and sometimes Skype, so it will be interesting to see how pervasive this becomes.

There's also some catchup items for OS/X like TV screen mirroring (at last) and hooray finally Aperture and iPhoto get the same database for their photographs. There's plenty of other new detail features, but the basic way to drive the system remains the same so the new stuff is sort of optional for usage.

I suppose these changes are part of the definitions for the next generation of computers.

• Speech enabled
• Very high resolution screens
• Very lightweight form factor
• End of spinning hard drives for laptops
• Always connected - even when 'power napping'
• Cloud dependent for certain functions
• No more DVDs
• No more ethernet plugs
• Not announced, but they should have an option for non-reflective screens

I can't see this being the end for desktop machines though. There's still a different feeling sitting at a desktop system (e.g. iMac) compared with a laptop. But maybe the next iMac should also include a video in from a laptop?

beta testing the future

I've been reading some of the commentary about the Apple iPad over the last few days. First speculation about it, then quasi leaked pictures, then product announcements and then people giving it a kicking. I'll admit the branding was perhaps a little suspect, but that's an amusing blip.

I usually refrain from blogging more than minor discussion on information technology, but I don't really count iPad in the IT domain. Its a game changer, like the OS/X based Mac, iPod and iTunes were.

Before I used a mac at all, I was fully reared on Windows. I could proudly install device drivers, edit the registry and knew the secret commands to bypass the complex updates when the old Windows image had mysteriously failed during an 'upgrade'.

Then, somewhere in the pre-Vista era I bought my first Mac.

It just worked. I didn't even need any extra software for ages, apart from the brilliant Yellow Mug utilities. I realised I could spend time editing video, writing, attempting bad music, categorising photographs and similar without also having to spend almost equivalent time mending things.

Consequently, as other PCs around rashbre central collapsed, they transitioned to Mac. When I've subsequently updated them with new versions of OS/X, the machines get faster, or use less resources. Even my oldest pre-Intel Mac laptop machine was fully capable of editing video 'out of the box'. It still works.

Apple seems to understand how to build infrastructure. Maybe its partly locked down, but it stops people tinkering around the edges, unbolting important structural elements, which is a malaise of some parts of the Windows world.

I don't need 100 variations of a word processor. I just need one that works and doesn't get in the way.

As an example, I guess I'm like many people using Windows Excel in a commercial environment.

How we all loved the changes to the interface with the last cosmetic update. Let's hide the print functionality, let's move all of the formatting around. Let's make it more difficult to insert blocks of copied columns or rows. Let's make saving become a multiple choice test, where every option seems to remove or reformat something.

I don't think I'm being reactionary here, I'm all for progress. I embrace progress, but progress should move things forward.

My current queries include: Why does my brand new work Windows laptop freak out at least twice a day when I use it with a mouse? Why does Excel forget that its just loaded a new spreadsheet unless I minimise and maximise it? Why does it still refuse to link to the latest high speed wi-fi when I use it at home?

If this was an old hacked image I might understand it, but this is a two month old machine running a standard image. I know it's not just me though, because colleagues complain of similar phenomena.

The problem is that we all got used to it. Either learning to fix it or knowing someone who could do all the clever stuff. A sort of technician.

Possibly these same technicians make the first pronouncements about the new technology. The new iPad doesn't multi task. It only has 64GB of storage, the OS won't support Flash. It doesn't have camera.

C'mon.

They miss the point about what I call 'quiet technology'. Like the Apple slogan, 'it just works'. I don't want to have to fiddle about with printer drivers, IEEE 802.11n 54Mb wi-fi configurations and remembering the context switching key combination for when a background program fails.

Nah.

Quiet technology should be a gateway to what you really want to do. To read articles, to write to someone, to watch a television show, to listen to music. I suspect the portability of a compact personal black slate that just works will provide another game changing moment.

We'd better get used to it.

bikecam experiment number 1

A test of a few new components today. The updated Mac, with Snow Leopard, Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro, for video and music editing, plus the zero cost camera mounting for my bike.

A couple of drawbacks with the bike mounting though...It works fine mechanically, but the plastic clip I used was for a rear reflector and is too small for the handlebars on my road bike, so I've had to clip it to my boingy mountain bike.

Not a problem for the route I've taken except the front fork suspension coupled with a small HD camera and no image stabilisation makes even a fairly flat road run look bouncy. I also set a wide angle for testing, which doesn't give quite the sensation of speed of a more telephoto view.

Still, its given me a chance to try the components and discover that I need to try a different camera for the handlebars and ideally to fix it to a bike without 30 cm of front fork suspension.

I'll try my little Lumix with the image stabilisation next. I think that should work better.

I'm also aware that the camera just points where the handlebars are aimed, so when I turned around at the edge of a field, it just gave me 30 degree angled pan. I can see why people spend money on steady-cams and similar.

But for now, in the true spirit of pioneering low cost bicycle attachments, you can watch me judder around a few little lanes at the edge of town under various video editing treatments and to a stuttery Beatles remix.

mac reboot needed

Once in a blue moon, for sure, but I think I will need a reboot of the mac sometime soon.

It is ages since I posted anything Mac-related. Probably a sign that everything is mainly working.

The iMac update for Snow Leopard was flawless after a few clicks to start and then everything just happened in around 45 minutes. I had to answer 'yes' once at the end when it spotted a couple of teensy PowerMac applications and installed Rosetta to run them.

For my MacBook Pro I noticed the disk space appears to have an extra 12Gb back after the 35 minute update. Even the printers and my strange music hardware still work.

Now, after a few hours of use, I notice that the system does seem to be running smoothly and quite responsively. I seem to have a suitably excessive number of big programs (PS, FCP, Logic, Aperture, iMovie, tweetdeck, Safari) running and everything is still stable and quick.

Tomorrow I may update the Mini that runs the television's media support.

Then maybe Logic with its 9 DVDs and FCS with similar. Gulp.

scrolling through websites like album covers with Safari 4

The new version of the Apple web browser Safari has quietly installed itself on this machine. It has some fun features like the ability to scroll through web sites in much the same way as iTunes album covers.

It's quite a useful visual way to go back through history to an old web page when the name isn't too obvious. There's also a star trek multi display mode which provides around 12 top sites which can be easily selected.

My partial screenshot captures a few examples.

paparazzi enabled

T'internet ground to a halt for a while today whilst various services streamed updates from San Francisco about the new guitar and piano tuition available from GarageBand '09 and similar features.

One function that caught my eye is the new iPhoto software with face recognition technology.

Not just the little squares like those that appear in many compact cameras, but the addition of identification of the individual. Useful for family photo albums, and interesting when linked with the new place recognition and auto-uploads to facebook and flickr.

The uploaded pictures can be auto-tagged with who and where. It could bring a whole new dimension to the Facebookery of late night pub crawls and similar.

wheely silly

The icicles by the door this morning were an early sign of how frozen my fingers would be by the time I reached work.

Of course, typing on a keyboard is quite a challenge with iced fingers, but luckily I was testing one of those MacBook Wheels which have dispensed with tiresome keyboards completely.

The next version is also removing the display screen.

The absinthe arrived by airmail

84.71

Yup, the plan worked. My three year old Powerbook now has a new drive. It was 80GB, its now 160Gb, with more than half free. I copied everything to the new drive using Carbon Copy Clone (2-3 hours, overnight). I then re-booted from the external clone (hold down option key during boot). It still looked like my computer. I tried safari, mail and then Final Cut Studio. All of them worked and still found my files.

So power down, remove battery, unscrew case, flap up the keyboard and track pad, unscrew and wiggle out the disk. Swap them over. Re-assemble, cross fingers. And after 30 minutes, normal service resumed but with more space.

A three year old PC could be limping at this point, but this Mac still runs like new and is ready to edit HD video.

little box holds Powerbook's old drive

tags technorati : rashbre dismantle powerbook apple mac disk replace