Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Special iPhone Edition

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhoneFor quite a few years, I've enjoyed getting Windows Mobile news from a traditional print magazine called Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine that does a great job of covering the use of mobile tech in the enterprise. The magazine was called Pen Computing back in the old Newton MessagePad / Palm days, but Executive Editor and Publisher Hal Goldstein moved with the market and changed the title and focus of the mag. They're following another industry trend, as...

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Apple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW

Filed under: Other Events11:12 SYNCS exactly like iPhone or iPod touch.Sync everything: media, calendars, apps, etc. Connect via usb sync 11:11 Great pricing! Want! Eng: 11:11AM And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc. 11:11: GIZ Jason Chen: What is Apple going to charge for each of the iWork apps? $9.99 each, so $30 if you want all. 11:10: Eng: 11:10AM It looks as though these new dropdowns menus are a major part of the iPad OS. Will be interesting to see how this translates to the iPhone and iPod touch. Is there going to be room? Or will they be left out entirely? 11:10 All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen. (via Macworld) 11:10: GIZ Jason Chen: So far we've covered ebooks and newspapers (TV and movies were already there from the iPhone), but we haven't covered magazines yet. I wonder what that's going to be like. gdgt: Showing the spreadsheet-centric soft keyboard. Auto-fields and sums showing as inferred. Pretty neat for a spreadsheet. Then again, it's still a spreadsheet. 11:10 Manipulating charts is a dream. 11:09: "I could see this being used as a cash register like the new card swipe systems at the Apple Store now. Be really easy to manage inventory too." -- Megan 11:08: Data entry keyboard. This is one of the amazing thing about touch entry keyboards. Showing that there are custom keyboards, all meant to help context entry. Over 250 options built in. Help built in. Mike Jones: "Nice new 10 key keyboard." 11:07: Now numbers demo. Let's do some typical spreadsheet tasks. Showing how you can manipulate tables. But what about data entry? 11:07: Mike Jones: "there's an awful lot of space around the screen that is making me wonder if they've added touch sensitivity to the edges" Sang: "one thing i notice about this, as opposed to the courier, is the lack of "floating" palettes. iPad's paletttes are more on-demand" 11:07: Demoing the page navigator. And showing the automated text wrap features. Yes. THIS: 11:06AM New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats. 11:06: Sande: "Spaces is *made" for the iPad". Mel: "I think this may kill netbooks if the price is right." Mike Jones: "I'm thinking if they do multitasking they will do it immediately after iWork" 11:05: Big applause after iWork presentation. Big. GIZ Jason Chen: I suppose the iPad would be a pretty good presentation device, letting you see the screens on your device and controlling it while it's being projected onto a wall through the 30-pin dock connector. (Video out is still unconfirmed, this is just my guess.) 11:04 "What about multitasking?" -- Megan 11:04: Eng: 11:03AM We'll say this -- iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data. 11:03: "Look! I just done a mask, an advanced technique and it's easy". Now demoing how to do animations. Easy built-in animations, scaling, translation, etc. These are transitions between slides right now. Very easy, "with just my finger!!" 11:02: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice! 11:01: How do you do this without keyboard or mouse? Demonstrating gestures. Sang:"how awesome would it be if steve's been doing the presentation the whole time using iPad's keynote" 11:00 Amazing software. Want to be the first to show you. Let's show keynote. It runs in landscape orientation, because that's the standard for slides.And you first see your slide library. Gorgeous templates. What you'd expect. 11:00 Completely new version of Keynote: Specifically for the iPad. Create presentations with your fingers. Most beautiful word processor you'll ever see. New version of numbers. 10:58 re: iWork: "What they came up with is really magnificent". About to do iWork demo. 10:58 And now for something exciting. Looking at creating a version of iWork for iPhone a year ago. iPhone? Really? But iPad! Win. 10:57: "i was expecting more "eye-friendly" text, i.e. e-ink. i can't picture myself staring at this screen reading a novel" -- Sang 10:56 Steve showing off the store. Book at $14.99. "And that is iBooks" gdgt: Tap right or left to change the page - or drag the page manually. Very nice! GIZ Jason Chen: You can skip directly to chapters from the table of contents, and there are photos, as you'd expect. gdgt: "We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well." 10:56 Eng: 10:56AM The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation. 10:56: amazon: 0.75 +1.27&lrm; (1.06%&lrm;) 10:56: "Still no mention of 3G connectivity. Is it WiFi only?" -- Mel Martinaz "Only WiFi so far" -- Mike Schramm 10:55 Five big partners...Penguin, McMillon, Simon &Schuster, and more. Mike R: Wil Shipley's head just exploded 10:54: *blink* This afternoon? Really? 10:53: NEW iBOOK STORE: Fully integrated with iBooks app. Read your eBooks right on your iPad, NY Times bestseller lists, 5 of the largest pubs in the world, all their books on the store. Open the floodgates with the rest of the pubs starting this afternoon. 10:52 Want to show you another one of *our* apps. Amazon pioneered with Kindle. We're standing on their shoulders and going further. This is reading a book on kindle. iBooks announced. 10:52: Apple iPad page still not up. 10:50 More details about Major League Baseball. By the by, the Apple Store? Still up. Nothing shipping today. gdgt Game video with overlays, this is pretty dope. If you're a baseball fan, seems like this is probably going to be your new preferred viewing experience. Scott's back. 10:49 Next App: Major League Baseball. Looking at live game experience. "unless somethign dramatic happens in the next 10 minutes it's just a flat iPod touch." -- Dave Caolo; Isn't this 90 minutes? -- Erica 10:48 It's so PRETTY! Want one, want, want, want. Engadget: "10:48AM Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool.", gdgt: Touch and accelerator-enabled (of course). Tap the mirror to look behind. "A game like NFS really pushes the limits, so we wanted to show you just how fast this can really go." 10:47 Demo of game. Showing really cool racing game, first person viewpoint. 10:47: EAGuy: "really excited about iPad. Showing demo. Gorgeous 3d, showing racing game. 10:46 Electronic Arts up next. Number One mobile publisher of games. 10:46: Eng: 10:46AM This is very slick -- probably the most impressive demo yet. A very sophisticated use of the screen real estate. Brushes for the iPad looks like you can go pretty deep. Available at product launch. 10:44: Showing undo/redo. Wide range of brushes, etc. Digital finger painting. Megan: "Could you imagine Photoshop on this? It'll kill the Cintiq tablet: apple-creation-0275-rm-eng.jpg" 10:44: gdgt: Next up: an app called Brushes, an art browser. Can zoom in up to 32 times. Engadget: "10:45AM "Today I'd like to show you how brushes looks on the iPad." This is nice. Context menus for brush and color options. We're loving these new pop-over menus. No more diving!" 10:44: Taking full advantage of iPad firmware 3.2 (It's 3.2, not 4.0) 10:44: gdgt: Reading [the NYT app] syncs to the iPhone app. Inline video clips. 10:43 Megan: "Needs to be designed better. HIRE ME!!" Sang: "imagine using Keynote on the iPad. it'd be money" Megan: "This is the future of newspaper design" gdgt "We're incredibly psyched to pioneer the next generation of digital journalism." Ha, Martin Nisenholtz said "psyched." 10:42 Steve showed you the NY Times website. It's beautiful. So why do a new app for iPad? Our iPhone app downloaded 3Million times. Want to create something special for iPad 10:42 "gdgt: Martin: "Steve showed you the NYT site on the iPad, it's unbelievably beautiful. Why did we come out three weeks ago to develop an app for the iPad?" Wait, three weeks? Scott said peeps had 2 weeks. Anyway! "We think that we've captured the essence of reading a newspaper... all in a native app."" 10:41 Martin Nisenholtz of NYT. Martin is EVP of digital for the times 10:40 Next up New York Times. 10:38 Really excited about poss. for devs on iPad. "The iPad version of Nova ships later this year..." Interesting. Scott is back. "Next up, the New York Times."" 10:38 Demos. "gdgt Showing a title called Nova. This looks pretty decent, but still a tiny bit choppy. But hey, this was done in two weeks, so I'm gonna cut these guys some slack." 10:38 Devs invited 2 weeks ago. Will show you what they came up with. Mark Hickey of Gameloft is up. 10:38 "By the way, if they're available today, I'll be running to the Apple Store imediatly - 4 miles away." --- Steve Sande 10:37: Rewrote all our apps for this display. New SDK supports devs for new size. Can automatically scale app to full screen, can save profiles, and have it work in both systems. 10:36: Eep. 10:36 NEW SDK OUT TODAY!!!!! Sorry, but I think I just have to *eep* 10:36 Eng: "So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display." 10:35 Interface Builder is going to have to be smart about using dual resolution apps. 10:35 Pixel doubling. Eng: 10:34AM Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth. 10:34 Showing game video, "Video works great on the iPad", And 10:33AM Gaming obviously will handle this better, but a text heavy app looks lonely or weirdly huge. 10:33: "It just works." Demoing facebook now. It just scales up. Facebook uses text, video, etc. What app really drives graphics hw? Games do! 10:33 Eng: 10:33AM "Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook. 10:32: Forstall: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. YAY! I think my inner Apple fangrrl just sqeed herself out. 10:32: All new built in applications. And Scott Forstall, sr vp of iphone softwar to talk aboutApp Store. 10:30: Scott Forstall on stage. 10:30 16-64 GB of flash storage. A MONTH, a freaking MONTH of standby. I am awed. Arsenic free, green and lovely. 10:30: Eng: "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10:30 Eng: 10:30AM "What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time." 10:30 This chip will *scream*. Latest in wireless networking. "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10 FREAKING HOURS OF BATTERY. 10:29: "as mentioned in every bit of upcoming advertising." -- Dave Winograd. 10:28: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It's realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display. 10:26: Now showing videos, movies. That is video on the iPad. That's a little overview of what the iPad can do. 10:26: "This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it's got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you've got a bunch of screen space.(via Macworld)" 10:25: Let's go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube. Again, let's go to landscape mode. And that's Youtube. Again, related clips, etc. Portrait, landscape. (Steve really really likes the portrait/landscape thing today) Movies, TV Shows, Music videos, etc. 10:24 Go to our current location in the maps app (Maps demo) in San Francisco. Should findall the sushi places nearby. mmmm sushi... And here's a sushi bar. Great demo. Mild, not wild, applause. That's maps. Let me show you video. 10:24 Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld) 10:23 Demoing iTunes now. Looking at calendar, again? Steve Sande: "I bet 24,343 Macbooks just went up for sale on eBay" Contact, calendar, address book, Also got a great maps app. Again, the eiffel tower,tap the corner, and pinch as big as we like. 10:22 TUAW staffers wondering about possible fingerprint tech for unlocking? Dave Caolo: "gotta agree: I think there's a 'wow factor' surprise lurking" jEng: 10:22AM Steve is playing more Dylan! iTunes: 10:22: Steve finishes slideshow demo to LOUD applause. Looknow at music collection, iPod, scroll through albums, tap to play. Eng: 10:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We've got a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to come. 10:21: NYT wonders if this is the end of the laptop. Mike Rose: "WE HAZ BROKE THE INTERNETS" 10:20 Show you a map of all the places you've taken photographs. e.g. Photos I took in Paris. Built in slide shows as well as single image display. Picka transition, pick music. (This is on the iPhone too, right now. So not a new feature.) 10:20 Really good closeup of the keyboard: 10:19 Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps. 10:18: Engadget: Wow, nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right. 10:17: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris...As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo'ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking. 10:16 Grab the tablet in the kitchen... A whole website in the palm of your hands. Read national geographic, for example. Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail. 10:12 Great slide show stuff built in. Built in a calendar, see a months' activities, a days', built in, a great address book, contacts, GOOGLE MAPS, satellite view, etc. iPad is an aweesome way to enjoy your music colleciton, and of course, ...iTunes, purchase movies, apps, music, etc. HIGH DEF YOUTUBE 10:12 Whole web page. It's phenomenal. It's incredible. Focus inon a message, see your inbox, turn it sideways (landscape and portrait support), keyboard pops up. It's almost lifesize, it's a dream. Your photos, your albums, your events, etc. 10:10 Very, very thin. Can change the background, Winterboard it out the wazoo (Winterboard is the jailbreak theming app) "Best browsing experience you'll ever have with a whole web page right in front of you. Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone" 10:10 It's the iPad. Mike R: "My iPad, let me show it to you. PREEECCCIIOOUS." Let me show it to you. Wild wild applause. 10:10: Some people have thought about netbooks: sThe problem is netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING." Applause. "They're just cheap laptops." We think we got something better. AND WE'D LIKE TO SHOW IT TO YOU TODAY. 10:09: Something better for browsing the web than a laptop? Watching videos? Something better? Media collection, playing games? If there's going to be a 3rd category of device, has to be better at these tasks. 10:08 Is there room for a third category of device? It's the tablet, of course... Steve is making a case for the mobile niche of Apple. gdgt: "In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks - important things - better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web..." 10:06 In 1991,In Apple shipped first modern laptop computer. Apple invented it. With an LCD screen. In 2007, Apple reinvented the phone. 2 years later, the iPhone 3GS. Apple is laptops, Apple is smart phones. 10:05 Steve: "Apple is a mobile devices company" How does Apple stack up against other companies that sell mobile devices. By revenue, is largest Mobile Device company in the world. More than Sony, etc. 15.6B in revenue. Bigger than Nokia. "apple is larger than sony mobile products division" -- via twit gdgt: "Lastly, we started apple in 1976 - 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter with 15.6 billion in revenue." Big applause. "That means Apple is over a 50 billion dollar company - I like to forget that, because that's not how we think of Apple, but it's pretty amazing." 10:05: GIZ Jason Chen: Next update: App Store. There are over 140,000 applications in the App Store. "A few weeks ago we announced a user downloaded the 3 billionth app from the App Store." 10:04 gdgt: "Last holiday quarter we had over 250 million visitors to our stores." Talking about the new New York stores. "It's so wonderful to be putting these stores right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels good. Next update: app store." WE ARE SWITCHING TO TRADITIONAL LIVE BLOG. Cover It Live is not responding. Happy Tablet Day! Here at TUAW, we are so excited to be able to share the moment with all of you stopping by. Today, we'll be metaliveblogging all the major outlets including Engagdet, Ars, and so forth. And adding to the metaliveblogging goodness, we'll be layering TUAW's own special touch of analysis and opinion on top of the summaries we'll be scraping from other sites. So thank you for joining us. Today we'll be covering feeds from: Today we'll be covering feeds from: Engadget Macworld Ars Technica MacNN Gizmodo and more..."Our Latest Creation" The Apple Media Event TUAW MetaliveblogTUAWApple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - Engadget - Macworld - TUAW - Ars Technica
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

Daniel Eran Dilger Today's broad array of smartphone operating system contenders are offering lots of potential answers to a problem that only requires one. It appears the market has two options ahead: either pool generic hardware makers behind a single operating system and deliver a smartphone marketplace that resembles the Windows PC market, or watch them fall to a dominant leader and have a smartphone market that resembles Apple's iPod ecosystem. This decision isn't going to be made by a class of intellectual elite, or by government mandate. it's going to be made by the market itself. Here are the factors that will influence the outcome, either marginalizing Apple's iPhone into a niche as the company has twice experienced previously at the hands of DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1991, or positioning it as the dominant leader as Apple has achieved for itself with the iPod since 2001. The third segment in this series looks at Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance as a possible “DOS-attack” against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Nokia's newly opened Symbian and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Will Symbian Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Google Acquires Android. In 2005, Google purchased a startup named Android, which had been in business for nearly two years. The secretive startup was known only to be working on software for mobile phones. It was being run by a who's who of mobile industry veterans, including Andy Rubin, the founder of Danger. Rubin had earlier worked at WebTV along with Chris White and Andy McFadden, both of whom had also joined Android. Richard Miner of Orange and Nick Sears of Tmobile also brought their mobile provider experience to Android. At the time of the acquisition, Google didn't announce any plans for Android and instead only told BusinessWeek, “We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here.” It appeared that Google was only going to be expanding its search services for mobile phone users, along the lines of the Google SMS answer system it had recently released. Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal - BusinessWeek Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV: The Fall of WebTV The GPhone Myth. As reports began to leak out about talks between Google and hardware makers throughout 2007, rumors began to fly about “the GPhone,” a competitive offering that was supposed to take on the iPhone. Some phone enthusiasts hoped Google would jump in to rescue the struggling OpenMoko project and turn it into a viable project that could attack Apple's new smartphone. In October 2007, I printed the Great Google GPhone Myth, taking apart the idea that Google would be directly competing against the iPhone, and describing that Google was really working on a free alternative to Windows Mobile as a conduit for getting its search and related services on a broader variety of mobiles. Google's services were already on the iPhone. In November, Google played its hand: it had organized a consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance to develop open standards for mobiles. The first product from the group would be Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Google wasn't getting into the phone handset business at all; it was only making sure that its mobile search products would not risk being marginalized by the threat of Windows Mobile on phones in the same way Microsoft had been working to leverage its PC monopoly to push Google search off the Windows desktop. The Great Google gPhone Myth Introducing Android: Leader of Linux. Two weeks later, Google released an early version of the Android software. On top of a Linux kernel, Android uses a specialized version of a Java Virtual Machine that takes Java language code and turns it into what Google calls “Dalvik bytecode” rather than Java bytecode as a standard JVM would. This allows Google to leverage existing and familiar Java language tools without paying Sun for a Java license. Like Mac OS X and its fraternal iPhone OS, Android includes a variety of open source libraries, including SQLite and WebKit. On top of that, Google developed a series of frameworks that handle the tasks Cocoa Touch does on the iPhone. Android also bundles a set of applications. While Apple adapted its existing Mac OS X to work in a mobile environment to create the iPhone OS, Android is more like a customized Java environment running on a specialized mobile Linux variant: elements of maturity in an otherwise experimental new platform. What is Android? -Google Android was by no means the first mobile OS using Linux. Both Palm and its amputated ACCESS software arm have Linux-based mobile platforms. Nokia has Maemo, which it uses in its Internet Tablets, and also recently acquired Trolltech and its Qtopia mobile Linux platform. Motorola has teamed up with MontaVista Software to use its Mobilinux. Intel created the Moblin project for mobile Linux, aimed at Internet devices. Google's OHA also isn't the first consortium to attempt to standardize a mobile Linux platform. The OSDL started the Mobile Linux Initiative to define requirements for hardware; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) then worked to define various phone profiles aimed at the Japanese market; the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS) Forum tried to do the same thing in Europe. In 2007, LiPS was folded into the new LiMo Foundation, along with the OSDL. All of these committees have had some overlap and some complementary features. Several of Google's OHA partners are also LiMo members, including NTT DoCoMo, Wind River, and Motorola. So why didn't Google just join LiMo? “LiMo, very candidly, wasn't moving fast enough,” OHA board member John Bruggeman told CNET. Google hopes to herd the Linux cats into a progressive, structured platform that can battle against Symbian and Windows Mobile to succeed as the new DOS of smartphones. Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux? The Presumption of the Necessity of DOS. The previous segment examining Windows Mobile pointed out how the PC industry as a whole assumed that Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly would easily take over dominance in the MP3 player market, pushing Apple into a niche position. This was expected because DOS had pushed Apple's early computers into a reduced role starting in 1981, and Microsoft had repeated this again in 1991 when the DOS world migrated to Windows, effectively pruning Apple's Macintosh into a Bonsai platform. The inability of one company to dominate any product category has been frequently repeated by PC industry pundits as a given, despite the fact that history is full of examples of this happening. Sony dominated personal music players for two decades under the Walkman brand even while equally large competitors tried to push it from this position; Nintendo has similarly owned handheld gaming despite ill-fated efforts to grab a piece of its pie by products running a generic platform such as Microsoft's WinCE (Gizmondo), Linux (GP32), and Symbian (N-Gage). In fact, outside of the Windows/DOS PC, there are actually few examples of a generic platform taking over an industry. Nearly every other consumer-facing product uses proprietary platforms: car makers, stereo equipment, appliances and so on typically all use designs custom to their maker. The paradox of the Windows PC market has been that Microsoft's broadly licensed software supposedly saves hardware makers from investing in software development while ensuring compatibility, when in reality it adds significant costs to PC makers while limiting their ability to differentiate themselves. That explains why PC makers have been perpetually merging together and going out of business while Microosft has rolled in money over the last two decades. Parallel efforts to copy Microsoft in broadly licensing an operating system have regularly failed: IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, Palm's PDA OS, even Microsoft's own efforts to duplicate Windows dominance in other markets, from copy machines to PDAs to smartphones to SPOT watches to music players. The closest copy may be Symbian, but its customers are partners, not simply consumers of a generic third party's operating system as Windows licensees are. That indicates it is not necessary to duplicate the dominance exercised by Microsoft over the PC industry in the smartphone market. Google's Android and Symbian exist more as technology sharing pacts among manufacturers, but both aspire to take Microsoft's DOS role among smartphones. However, the idea that Apple's iPhone must be dethroned by a modern-day DOS, whether Windows Mobile, Android, or Symbian, is not just debatable, but does not sync with the reality of more recent events. Apple's recent history of the iPod further refutes the idea that a software analog to Microsoft is needed. The iPod Emergence: Apple & Pixo vs IBM & Microsoft. Apple's iPod in 2001 made no effort to clone the DOS business model; it actually did the opposite. When Apple entered the market, there were a number of existing MP3 devices using custom software, hardware designs, and DRM codecs. The iPod used off the shelf components to deliver a custom MP3 player using third party software, but Apple also added its own technologies: easy to use sync with iTunes, a fast Firewire interface that made uploading music far faster than the prevailing USB 1.0, and an attractive industrial design. With the iPod, Apple played the role of IBM in 1981, using Pixo's embedded operating system to enter the market quickly, just as IBM had used DOS. The difference was that Apple didn't direct any market attention toward Pixo and added a lot of value on top of that core embedded OS. A modern day Compaq couldn't simply clone the hardware and license Pixo to run on it in order to compete against the iPod, because the iPod was much more than just generic hardware running Pixo software. As the iPod developed, Pixo's role diminished and was eventually displaced. Just like IBM, Apple jumped into a new market just as demand was beginning to explode. Apple made MP3 players far more attractive to a general audience by delivering greater playback capacity than most entry level devices offered, along with an ease of use that encouraged buyers to jump in at the higher end of the market. That left Apple with not only the lion's share of the market, but also by far the most profitable segments of the market. Two decades prior, IBM badly fumbled its play with the early PC and ended up irrelevant in the PC world by the late 80s, sideswiped by Microsoft's DOS and the cloners who were licensing it in parallel, notably Compaq and later HP and Dell. Steve Jobs had witnessed that happen, and was determined to not let it happen again to Apple. Rather than being manipulated by a software middleware vendor as IBM had, Apple worked to incrementally develop the iPod market itself. After consuming the hard drive-based player market, Apple took on the Flash RAM-based market with a tiny hard drive system used in the iPod Mini, and followed up with Flash-based devices of its own in the Nano and Shuffle. This allowed Apple to progressively serve an increasingly wider market, incrementally growing upon an established foundation. With the iPod, Apple became, in effect, an IBM with its own internal Microsoft. Microsoft's Failure Despite Features. In contrast, Microsoft entered the music player market by promoting music player hardware reference designs around WinCE. However, it was unable to ship a finished design until the iPod had become firmly established around 2005. Later branded as PlaysForSure, the devices were sold by various hardware makers and all purported to support the same DRM and the same music subscription services while also offering a broader array of hardware that presented video before the iPod did, supported wireless before the iPod, and so on. Despite these unique features, all of those PFS designs still failed. Microsoft blamed the failure of PFS upon its music store and hardware partners and decided to take Apple on itself in 2006. It relaunched a Toshiba PFS player as its own device under the Zune brand, adding WiFi music sharing features and a larger display than the current Pods had. It failed dramatically as well. Did Microsoft's attempts to float a new DOS among music players fail because of Apple's success, or due to Microsoft's own problems? The failure of the Zune, which followed the iPod model rather than the DOS model, seems to suggest that Microsoft itself was to blame. Consider too that Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones, which use the same underlying operating system as its failed PlaysForSure music players and the Zune, had similarly flopped even before Apple could release a charismatic phone equivalent to the iPod. Of course, when the iPhone was released, it hit Windows Mobile hardest. The iPhone made Windows Mobile Smartphones look ridiculous and underpowered, and made Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones look clumsy and awkward, despite the fact that they both supported a variety of features the iPhone didn't, including the ability to edit documents, capture video, send MMS, and so on. Simply adding on features did not enable Microsoft to compete against Apple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that competing against Apple requires more than just having a feature arsenal. Microsoft's failures in themselves do not necessarily mean that Google's Android will fail in its attempts to float its own smartphone platform. Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Will Google Succeed where Microsoft Failed? Microsoft's demonstrated inability to successfully enter consumer markets for MP3 players and smartphones has given observers little faith that the company will somehow turn things around in late 2009 when its next generation of devices are expected to be released. However, prior to that the first fruits of Google's efforts to build its own smartphone operating environment will arrive. Will Google's Android take over Microsoft's crown as the “DOS vendor” among smartphones? Supporters of Google's Android project point to some parallels between Android for smartphones and Windows on the PC: Android will allow hardware makers to differentiate in ways that can offer features Apple can't (or doesn't want to); it should allow software developers to offer features Apple does not allow on the iPhone; it embraces open, hobbyist experimentation in ways that Apple currently isn't; and it opens the potential for content providers that Apple is not interested in allowing. Openness is Android's key competitive feature. Will all this openness allow Google to unseat the iPhone to become the primary platform developers want to participate in, and subsequently soak up the market for third party hardware makers that Windows Mobile serves? While Google currently has no market share due to the fact that no Android phones have yet shipped, it does have broad vocal support from a variety of the same kinds of hardware manufacturers that supported DOS and Windows and helped to make those platforms successful in the desktop PC market. HTC and Android. The first Android phone is expected to be the HTC Dream; Taiwan's HTC (High Tech Computer) also manufactures Palm's Treo Pro phone as well as many of the most visible Windows Mobile devices. In addition to models produced under its own name, HTC also sells Windows Mobile devices under the Dopod brand, as well as no-name phones branded by providers, such as AT&T, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and others. HTC will also be building the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile phone for Sony Ericsson. HTC was quick to throw its support behind Android despite its long term alliance with Windows Mobile. Why would it so enthusiastically support an unproven platform from a company that has no experience in consumer hardware platforms? One can only assume that HTC is not happy with the current state of Windows Mobile, and desperately wants another “DOS” to succeed where Microsoft's has so spectacularly failed. As an Original Design Manufacturer for Palm, HTC watched as Palm adopted Windows Mobile in place of the Palm OS and subsequently fell even deeper into crisis. Palm's only successful phone since has been its Palm OS-based Centro. HTC undoubtedly sees Android as its ticket to becoming the next Dell, but without a similar dependance upon Microsoft. Android for mobile phones is essentially playing the role of Linux for PCs, except that it has the backing of a major company behind it. Can Android Take on the iPhone with Openness as its Feature? As great as this sounds, it's important to consider that Linux on the desktop has made no significant progress in eating into Windows dominance after a decade of trying. Being open, free, flexible, and decentralized hasn't been enough of an advantage to get consumers to migrate from Windows to Linux in any fraction of significance. Similarly, in the music business, Linux-based MP3 players have had no impact on the iPod, despite offering more features, flexibility, support for additional codecs, and so on. In the mobile phone area, Linux enjoys a sizable portion of the smartphone market, but this is almost entirely due to phones sold by Motorola in China, where the advantages of Linux' openness are void. Motorola's Linux phones offer nothing to users in terms of openness or flexibility, and are really no different in terms of features than other appliance 'feature phones' based upon closed operating systems. And again, a key problem with assaulting Apple in a feature war is that neither the iPod nor the iPhone became popular by being “highly featured.” They both delivered perhaps 80% of the functionality found in all other devices in the market. Rather than trying to match every feature and cater to every niche as Microsoft had with Windows Mobile, Apple's devices did a few things very well at launch, and incrementally developed into full featured devices that still lack some of the more unique features of their competitors. Further, in terms of openness, the demographic that embraces Linux' characteristic freedoms is not the same as the demographic that buys smartphones in quantity and then pays for data service. This is a critical fact to consider because a big part of the iPhone's success stems from the fact that it is being pushed by mobile providers who want to capture the cream of the market willing to pay a premium for data services. The Frankenphone. Combining the fractured aesthetic of HTC's Windows Mobile phone hardware with Android's software, based upon Linux' perpetually unfinished DIY openness and Google's Java-like development platform, will not result in a product similar to the iPhone. Instead, it will look a lot like phones that have already failed in the market. Apple's advantage comes from slick hardware designs with a close attention to detail, combined with software that purposely does less so that it can do what it does better. Even Apple's own conservative attempts to broaden its software capabilities with iPhone 2.0 have resulted in instability problems that can be blamed upon both Apple's early releases of its phone operating system and software from inexperienced third party developers new to the platform. Would the current frustrations with iPhone 2.0 be somehow mitigated by additional openness that also embraced all kinds of variables from different hardware makers with less quality control than Apple, a loose committee of additional cooks working to serve up operating system features targeted at every possible conceived need, and a wider third party software group with fewer constraints on illegal behaviors? The Failure of Open. While it is politically unpopular to criticize the well meaning efforts of open source contributors, the failure of Linux on the desktop, the failure of the vaporware Indrema game console, and the failure of the OpenMoko project to deliver a workable phone within a year of its deadline all underline the serious problems open development faces in the world of consumer oriented devices. Open has simply failed to deliver on its promises in the world of consumer hardware. OpenMoko was supposed to release its first mobile phone to consumers for $250 several months in advance of the iPhone. When the iPhone shipped, the group then announced new plans to get its phone out by the end of 2007. Instead, this spring the group announced new plans to move to an entirely different development platform, and ship its phone mid year for $400 with limited functionality and incomplete software outside of basic GSM phone features. Linux's notable successes, from Motorola's Linux phones to the Tivo DVR to Linksys Routers, have often come without any associated openness or freedom, and were instead delivered simply to provide their manufacturer with a free kernel to build upon. This indicates that while Linux may find its way into an increasing number of smartphones, it will likely not be accompanied by the glorious freedom of an open development environment Google has said it would offer with Android. Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone Can Google Succeed Where Open Has Previously Failed? Despite “openness” being Android's strongest competitive feature compared to Apple's iPhone, Google recently revealed that its wide-open development model is intentionally gravitating towards a closed association of top tier partners due to practical considerations. In July, Google accidentally sent out a notice that revealed that it had been seeding private SDK updates to only a subset of its contributors, angering those who believed that Android would be as open as Linux on the desktop or the OpenMoko project. Further, Google has restricted initial development to higher level APIs just as Apple did, further indicating that Google itself realizes that being wildly open to impress a minority of hobbyists will not result in the commercial success of its new platform. That serves to neuter Android's primary advantage over the iPhone. Without delivering on the premise of being wide open, Android is really just a less mature set of Java libraries used to create a specialized binary that runs on a Linux foundation. Unlike Apple's iPhone, Android phones won't have a slick user interface developed by professional artists, nor the iPhone's legacy of mature software development frameworks crafted over the last thirty years, nor the iPhone's tightly integrated hardware with award winning industrial design, nor its marketing power tied into the iPod and Apple's retail stores. Android won't be an open iPhone, it will only be a Windows Mobile phone with a better kernel that runs specialized Java software instead of Win32 or .NET code. Don't expect consumers to be impressed by that. The Biggest Missing Feature. There is one remaining factor that strangles to death any last remaining hope that Android might assassinate the iPhone and assume the crown of the “DOS of smartphones.” That is: Android delivers zero price advantage to consumers. In 1981 and 1991, consumers who wanted Apple computers faced the sticker shock of a somewhat arrogant price tag. Apple sold its computers, as it still does, at the higher end of the market, but there was simply far more range in prices available. In 1981, that meant the Apple II was $2600 and the new Apple III was $3500, even before you added a monitor. On the low end, Commodore sold its far less powerful, but “still a computer” Vic-20 for $300, while IBM entered the market with the IBM PC at $3000. Over the next few years, Apple focused on delivering additional sophistication at the same price, releasing the $10,000 Lisa and then the $2,500 Macintosh. IBM continued selling PCs in the same $3,000 to $10,000 range, but other DOS PC vendors began selling machines at prices that ranged as low as $1500. That left Apple with a roughly $1000 price premium over low end PCs. The products weren't really comparable, but consumers only saw the huge price difference. In 1991, Apple was still selling moderate to high-end Macintoshes for $3,800 to $10,000; the crippled Mac LC was $2500, and obsolete-at-birth Mac Classic ranged from $999 to $1500. Windows allowed PC makers to ship a functional $1500 PC and claim a rough approximation to Apple's $2500 entry level system, maintaining that apparent $1000 price premium. Today, pundits are lucky to find a Dell or HP system that is even a couple hundred dollars less than a comparable Mac. However, in the smartphone business, the iPhone 3G is now the same price, if not less, than generic competing phones on the market. Even more significant is the fact that the price of the phone hardware is nearly nothing compared to the cost of the service plan. This fact simply eases any price premium that could cause buyers to flock to a smartphone running a generic operating system over buying the iPhone 3G, regardless of whether it runs Windows Mobile or Android. 1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds Android Partners Have Already Failed. That same pricing principle similarly prevented buyers from considering many of the alternatives to the iPod. While Apple's original iPod models were more expensive than many of the first MP3 players on the market, they were price competitive with models offering similar features. By 2004, it was Apple who was undercutting MP3 competitors on price. Microsoft offered zero price advantage when it began selling the Zune, a major factor in its failure, but Microsoft simply couldn't out-price the iPod; it was already losing money offering the Zune at the same price as the iPod. Apple now has tremendous market power in buying RAM and other components that will prevent any competitors from being able to offer a huge discount over the iPhone's $199 price tag. Even if competitors were to give their phones away, they would only offer a $200 discount to users who would then still need to pay the same mobile fees to use the phone. Android's other partners, including Samsung and LG, have already failed to capture any significant market share in the music player market. Are they going to maintain their position as smartphone makers now that they face similar competition from Apple, its iPod ecosystem, its iTunes Music and Apps Store, Apple's retail store experience, and other factors that are pushing the iPhone? If they can, it is not obvious how partnering with Android will help. Other Problems for Android. Android was announced in early November 2007 and was followed with an early preview SDK within a couple weeks, a month ahead of Apple's initial announcement of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. However, between March and July 2008, Apple delivered nine progressive releases of its SDK, opened its App Store, and sold 60 million apps, raising $30 million to support iPhone software development in just the first month. It has since released three more SDK updates to developers related to iPhone 2.1, which is expected next month. Android just published its first open SDK beta update earlier this week, warning developers that “applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0.” Additionally, Android still has no phones available. By the time the HTC Dream is expected to launch, Apple will have an installed base of around ten million iPhone (and iPod touch) users supporting software development through iTunes. The business model for selling Android apps is no better than that for selling jailbreak iPhone apps: there is no iTunes Apps Store to promote them, so users will have to track them down on their own. Android developers also have no real freedom that jailbreak iPhone developers lack. The only difference is that there are ten million iPhones to sell jailbreak apps to, and currently zero Android phones. If selling a jailbreak iPhone app sounds like more trouble than its worth, imagine trying to sell Android apps to a non-existant audience. Now add the official iPhone App Store into the mix, where publicity, promotion and profits are booming. What platform is going to have the most applications? How many users will flock to a smartphone platform with no apps? The wisdom of releasing a desirable phone and achieving a significant installed base before releasing an SDK makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Additionally, while Apple has a decade of experience in shipping regular updates to Mac OS X and its Xcode developer tools, Google has only shipped a random assortment of web-oriented SDKs (a number of which have been abandoned) as a tangent to its core business of selling advertisements. When the Android SDK 1.0 is finished later this year, developers will not only lack an installed base to sell their apps to, but will also have no high profile market for selling their apps in, and subsequently no financial incentive to develop applications that add value to the Android platform, just like Linux on the PC desktop. Around the same time, possibly within the next month, Apple will be shipping its second major OS release: iPhone 2.1. Apple will also be upgrading its entire user base to the new software so that developers will have a cohesive platform to target. This mirrors the efforts Apple has taken to upgrade its Mac OS X users to the same reference release. Mobile developers will be seeing money pouring in via iTunes while crickets chirp in the Android section of various mobile online stores. Apple’s iPhone Vs. Other Mobile Hardware Makers: 5 Revenue Engines Same Same, But Different: DOS Model Problems. Android developers will also have a series of other problems to manage. Like Windows Mobile, Android is intended to support everything, from BlackBerry-style keypad phones with a small touchscreen to the simple Windows Mobile Smartphone form factor lacking a touch screen to iPhone-like full size touch screens. Also like Windows Mobile, Android phone makers will have the option to leave off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS location services, graphics hardware acceleration, and so on. Each Android phone will also have unique camera hardware, support for different video and audio codecs, and varied support for other differentiating proprietary services demanded by mobile operators. This will force developers to to make complex decisions regarding the lowest common denominator they choose to support. So while the iPhone will have a cohesive feature set, a managed software environment, and a functional market, Android will be a loose federation of hardware makers selling the same random features found on Windows Mobile today, with a chaotic development environment that lacks any central market for users or developers. And it will be run as an experiment by a company with no experience in consumer hardware or platform development. The Missing Tap. One specific example of the “DOS model problem” is that Android currently does not support multitouch. It's not touched on in the API, and Google quietly tap dances around its omission. Why no multitouch? Because multitouch screens are expensive, and most OHA hardware members are more interested in making a profit in a competitive phone market rather than impressing consumers as Apple did with the iPhone. Most existing smartphones, even those trying to directly rival the iPhone, use a stylus driven, pressure sensitive tap screen or a simpler, cheaper touch technology that lacks support for sensing multitouch. The iPhone's screen can actually sense up to five fingers at once, but the primary feature multitouch offers on the iPhone is the two fingered tapping and the pinching effects everyone associates with it. Android could certainly support multitouch if there were a demand for it, but that's the point: Google knows that its hardware partners are cheap and unlikely to put out hardware that actually competes with the iPhone. Instead of using expensive technologies that deliver clever yet largely invisible functionality, OHA members, just like PC makers, are far more likely to add flashy, impractical gadgety fluff that's cheap to tack on, such as slide out keyboards, neon tubes, and scratch and sniff stickers. That's how you impress gullible nerds on the cheap. Google itself is blowing smoke and erecting mirrors to distract from the reality that it being a “DOS vendor” means supporting bargain basement hardware from penny pinching duplicators. Android has been demonstrating some “wow” features such as a Street Maps app that pans around based on an internal compass in the demonstration phone. The problem is that that kind of thing only makes for a fun demo. Nobody needs to twirl around their phone in the air to see a view of the other side of the street, but everyone who has used an iPhone will wonder why they can't pinch to zoom out. Even worse, most Android phones aren't going to have a compass built into them, so Google is demonstrating features most Android users won't be able to use. That Sounds Like Microsoft… Google's design decisions are beginning to look a lot like Windows Vista; rather than actually working to make laptops boot faster, Microsoft came up with the idea of adding a small screen to the back of Vista laptops so users could check their email without having to wake the system up. But this was a stupid idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that most users just want a laptop that boots up quickly. Few laptops got the mini screen, but every user who tries Vista on their laptop will wonder why it doesn't boot up as fast as Mac OS X Leopard. In the same way, Google is advertising features for Android that most users won't ever see in their actual phones while ignoring things people will expect based on their exposure to the iPhone. Android is simply selecting the wrong features. Android will offer the advantages of supporting MMS, recording video, and the list of other features Windows Mobile already supplies. Those features didn't stop Apple from firing past Microsoft in the smartphone arena however, just as the Zune's highly touted WiFi and screen didn't phase iPod buyers. Incidentally, just months after the Zune, Apple had not only demonstrated a larger display but a higher definition multitouch screen, and not only WiFi, but functional WiFi that could be used to browse the web or check email. This suggests that Apple, with its faster release schedule, won't stay behind any of the leading features potentially offered by Android for very long. Android partners, however, will find it as difficult to catch up with Apple's unique features, just as Microsoft has been stymied to keep up with Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone. The underlying reason: both Google and Microosft are tasked with maintaing support for a huge variety of hardware options demanded by all their partners. Apple has the unique circumstances to do only what it needs to do itself. Android in Windows Mobile's Shoes. Like Windows Mobile, Android faces a difficult market. In the US, it competes against the popular BlackBerry in corporate markets and the iPhone among consumers. Worldwide, it competes against entrenched market leader Nokia. The difference is that Google, unlike Microsoft, has no in. Windows Mobile was adopted by Windows-bound IT shops despite its weaknesses. Nobody has any preexisting reason to try an Android phone apart from hobbyists and open software enthusiasts, a demographic that has done little to move Linux on the PC desktop. Google also lacks Microsoft's installed base; it's starting from zero. The smartphone industry initially doubted Apple's chances of making much progress with the iPhone, despite the company having the Mac platform, the iPod, retail stores, platform development experience, marketing savvy, industrial design prowess, and so on. Google doesn't have any of those things. Mobile Providers vs Android. Apple also started with an exclusive partnership with AT&T, a three legged race that demanded effort from both. Google is hoping that hardware makers handle the hardware details and that mobile providers will be excited to sell its Android phones. While hardware makers such as HTC clearly appreciate having found a free alternative to Windows Mobile, it's not obvious why providers would be excited about Android, as it promises an openness that most mobile providers strongly oppose. AT&T took a big risk in getting behind the iPhone, as the phone encouraged users to use email rather than fee-based SMS and MMS, it supported WiFi for data access, and it bypassed AT&T's MEdia Net services to plug into iTunes instead. Verizon refused to parter with Apple and grant it those kinds of concessions. Is AT&T going to take a similar risk to partner with a phone that is not exclusive to it, and is Verizon now going to open its arms to support phones that do not exclusively support BREW, VCast and its other proprietary services? While Android may well eat into Microsoft's Windows Mobile business by stealing away its hardware makers, it seems unlikely that Android will ever serve as more than free alternative to Windows Mobile in a market where Windows Mobile is increasingly irrelevant. Android may have the dubious distinction of swallowing Microsoft's mobile business the same way Microsoft ate up the Palm OS, but even if it accomplishes that goal, Google will likely find itself unsustainably hungry immediately afterward. It will also find itself swimming in a shark tank of hungry rivals, including Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. Symbian is the final generic platform vying for the opportunity to play DOS in the smartphone market. The next article will examine Nokia's chances in its bid to match Microsoft's PC dominance in the mobile market while setting out in a new venture to copy Android's open software model. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
50 of the Most Burning Apple Questions Answered

You asked for help with the thorniest problems facing Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners, and we answered, providing 50 foolproof solutions that’ll come in handy for anyone who uses Apple gear.�For months now, we’ve been asking you to send us your most burning Apple questions, and to put it mildly, you came through. The queue in our inbox looked longer than the lines that curled around NYC’s 5th Avenue Apple Store for the launch of the very first iPhone. And when we dug into the meat and potatoes of your queries, we could only marvel at the insightful list of vexing technical issues and twinkle-in-your-eye trivia tidbits that you challenged us with. We distilled all those inquiries down to the 50 best, most burning questions about Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple itself. Then we put our crack team of experts on the job of coming up with this ultimate answers guide for all things Apple. Struggling with iTunes syncing? iPhone backups? RAID cards? iPad printing? Or just wondering exactly what Steve actually wears every day? The answers await, backstopped and bulletproofed by the pros at Mac|Life.�1. Duplicates in iPhoto�I can’t find any options in iPhoto for removing all duplicate pictures in one fell swoop, and I don’t want to find and delete them all myself. Any ideas?iPhoto lacks iTunes’ duplicate-deleting prowess, but the shareware app Duplicate Annihilator can fill this gap and free your photo library of clutter. Despite the name, it identifies and tags duplicate pictures with a keyword so you can collect them in a Smart Folder to review and annihilate at your leisure.�2. Wi-Fi DropoutsSince upgrading to Snow Leopard, my Wi-Fi connection randomly drops for no reason. I still get Wi-Fi reliably on my iPhone, and my wife gets it on her PC. Any advice?This problem seems to be affecting many Snow Leopard users, so we’ve come up with a series of steps that should resolve it. Start with the first and work down until the problem goes away:» Update to Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.» Restart your modem and router.» Upgrade your router’s firmware to the latest version, particularly if it’s a non-Apple router.» Turn AirPort off then on again from your menu bar.» In your Network System Preference, create a new location and delete all of the previous locations.One of our best tips for troubleshooting Wi-Fi connection problems is to create one brand-new location and then delete all of your previous locations.» Within your new location, drag AirPort to the top of the service order by clicking on the gear icon and choosing “Set Service Order.”» Delete all of your preferred networks. To see your preferred networks, click on AirPort in the left margin, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab.» Within that Advanced area, click on the TCP/IP tab and turn off IPv6. Then, go into the DNS tab and make sure that your DNS servers are correct. If in doubt, try Google’s DNS servers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.» Run Keychain First Aid in Keychain Access, which is located in your Utilities folder.» Manually change your router’s wireless channel to another channel to avoid interference with other wireless networks. See which channels are being used by other networks with a utility like AirRadar ($20, koingosw.com).» Turn off 802.11n mode on your router, leaving it in 802.11b/g mode only.» Change the security settings on your router from WEP to WPA/WPA2.» Zap the PRAM on your Mac (get instructions here).�3. Multitouch Gestures�Why can’t I do the one-finger double-tap to open documents in Snow Leopard?You can absolutely use the one-finger double-tap on your Multi-Touch trackpad to open documents in Snow Leopard. Simply go into your Trackpad System Preference and make sure that “Tap to Click” is checked. Your confusion may also stem from the fact that your Multi-Touch trackpad is capable of understanding many gestures. So if you’ve enabled “Dragging” or “Drag Lock,” you might be holding down your finger too long after the second tap. If you’ve enabled “Secondary Click,” you might be tapping in the wrong area of your trackpad.�4. Syncing iPhone Photos�When I sync my iPhone, all 6,000 of my MacBook Pro’s photos move to the iPhone--very uncool! How do I remove them from the phone and ensure one-way photo transfers to the Mac in the future?That’s at least 5,950 pictures too many. Just connect your iPhone to your MacBook, then select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Click the Photos tab, where you can choose to transfer none of your pictures or just specific iPhoto Albums, Faces, and Events to your iPhone. Re-sync to apply your new settings and get back a few gigabytes on your iPhone.�5. Uninstalling�My Mac still runs processes from a program I deleted. How do I delete an application entirely and prevent this from happening?Unfortunately, there’s no standard way to remove a program from your Mac, but some developers simplify the job by including an uninstaller with their application. It may lurk in the main folder of the app you want to terminate--check those subfolders!--or it might be in the original installer itself. Launch the installer and proceed through it carefully. An uninstall feature may be obvious, or it could be hidden among options to customize the installation process. Be sure to quit the program you want to delete before uninstalling it.If an application didn’t come with an uninstaller, then the only way to delete it is to drag it to the Trash. However, this won’t remove preferences and other support files left behind on your Mac. You can use Spotlight to search for the deleted application’s name to find these strays, but if you have a lot of applications to remove, consider investing in a dedicated uninstaller like CleanApp, AppZapper, or AppCleaner. These programs automate the process of zapping unwanted programs--and their stuff--off your drive for good.�6. File Compression�I’d like to save hard drive space with the Finder’s Compress command, but I’m not getting useful results. I recently compressed a 117.4MB file to just 116.7MB. Am I doing something wrong?Not all file types can be compressed with the same space-saving results. For example, compressing a ZIP archive won’t make a significantly smaller ZIP file. Some files, such as JPEGs, MP3s, and other media formats, have a certain level of compression already built in, but the sizes of text files and uncompressed image file formats can be dramatically reduced with ZIP compression.�7. Remote Control�When I use my iPod touch as a remote for my Apple TV, it appears to only give me access to the Apple TV’s library as if it were an iPod. Is there a way to use the iPod touch like the traditional Apple remote? For example, can I use the touch to navigate to the YouTube app and search for videos, or to browse the movie rentals?Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch lets you control the playback of media that you’ve already purchased or downloaded. But for content that doesn’t live on your Apple TV, such as YouTube videos or the iTunes Store, you’ll still need your traditional Apple remote to navigate to those screens. However, the good news is that whenever an onscreen keyboard appears on your Apple TV, the Remote app will display its own keyboard, which lets you quickly type what you’re searching for.�8. Photo Migration�Can Faces and Places data in iPhoto ‘09 be moved to another Mac, or do I have to click on all those faces and enter all those locations again?All your vacation sites and friendly faces will transfer to another Mac with OS X’s Migration Assistant, or you can drag your iPhoto library file from your Pictures folder to the same location on a new Mac. When you launch iPhoto on the new machine, you’ll be told the locations of pictures containing GPS data must be retrieved again, but custom locations you’ve entered yourself (for pictures taken with older cameras, say) will remain intact.�9. Gmail, Behave!�I sync Gmail with OS X’s Mail, but when I delete a message from Mail, it remains in Gmail’s All Mail folder in the sidebar. What’s the right mailbox setting to move a message deleted in Mail to Gmail’s Trash?All your Gmail goes into the All Mail folder, whether or not it’s been recently deleted and no matter which Gmail folder label is attached to the message. Google’s default IMAP Mail settings (available here) are correct, but to send a Mail message directly to Gmail’s Trash, you’ll have to drag it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder in Mail’s sidebar.�10. Crash-Tastic�It always happens at the worst possible time: I’ll be using my PowerBook G4 when the screen suddenly dims and shows a Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages telling me to restart the computer. Why does this keep happening, and how can I stop it?Ouch. What you’re describing is a kernel panic, a cute name for a not-so-cute problem. An operating system’s kernel acts as a bridge between applications and the computer’s hardware, and kernel panics are the last-ditch efforts of the operating system to recover from serious conflicts between them. The chief causes of kernel panics are faulty RAM and software incompatible with the operating system you’re running. Unfortunately, that range could include any number of bad things that may be happening on your poor PowerBook.Happily, even a kernel panic isn’t the end of the world, and we can offer some pointers to help you figure out what’s wrong. The first step is to look at your Mac’s history. Was there a time when it didn’t get kernel panics? Think back to any (and we mean any) new hardware or software you installed before the panics began. Update or uninstall them one item at a time to isolate the panics’ cause until you narrow down the trouble. Also note which hardware and software you’re using just before they strike--there may be a pattern. Whatever the issue, your Mac isn’t happy, so be sure to back up important files and verify your hard drive with Disk Utility regularly.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�11. Get Zippy iPhone Backups�How can I speed up iPhone backups so I’ll never have to cancel mid-backup again? They seem to take forever when a couple minutes really should do it.A. First off, keep your iOS software current. Not only will the latest updates squash bugs and add features, they can improve backup times. To update, sync your iPhone, select it in the iTunes sidebar, then go to the Summary tab.B. Pare down the number of applications on your iPhone. Application data like in-app purchases, saved games, and new documents are all backed up when you sync, and that can add up to a long wait while the backup progress bar creeps by. To start cleaning house, connect to iTunes, select the Apps tab, then delete your most infrequently used applications. You’ll lose the data saved in these apps, but you’ll gain speedier backups.Ask yourself this: Are those apps you never use on your iPhone really worth slowing down your backups?C. Sync often. If you sync at least once or twice a day, fewer applications will have new data to back up when you reconnect to iTunes. If you can’t bear to part with any of the applications on your Home Screen, making multiple faster backups will let you keep all your favorite apps at your fingertips.D. Keep Camera Roll clean. While the contents of your iPhone’s photo library aren’t backed up during a sync, the photos, movies, and screenshots in Camera Roll are. Transfer this media to iPhoto as soon as you begin a sync, and delete the files from Camera Roll when the transfer is complete to get this data copied onto your Mac while excluding it from being backed up in iTunes.More photos = slower backups.E. Connect to a USB port on your Mac instead of an external USB hub. Not all USB ports are created equal, and connecting to a powered, full-speed USB port that’s built into your Mac will ensure the fastest possible transfer speeds during backups. That means you can be off to your next port of call quickly, secure in the knowledge that your iPhone data is safe on your computer.F. Before you sync to iTunes, purge unnecessary SMS messages, old call histories, and non-essential files downloaded by apps that store data on your iPhone. For example, if you regularly copy files to your iDisk app or productivity apps like DocsToGo, make sure you’re only carrying what you need before a backup. Odds are these files live elsewhere on your Mac or iDisk, so there’s no need to back them up again.Junk your old, unused files, too.�12. Time Travel�I’ve been running Time Machine for months in Mac OS 10.6.3, but I’ve never seen instructions about how to go back in time and retrieve information. Help!Mount your backup drive, then launch Time Machine from your Mac’s Applications folder. Your desktop will be replaced by a timeline and Finder windows showing your Mac’s contents as they were in the past. Just click a Finder window (or click within the timeline) to return to a specific date. You can also search within Finder windows for specific filenames, and more. When you find a missing file, select it and click Restore to return to the present with your document.�13. Rip Encrypted Movies�I want an easy way to download a DVD to my computer so I can put it on my iPod or iPad. I used to use HandBrake, but that no longer works for encrypted DVDs.HandBrake (free, handbrake.fr) is still the quickest and most reliable tool for directly converting DVDs into video files that will play on your iPod or iPad. But you’ll also need to install VLC (free, videolan.org) if you want to decrypt commercial DVDs. Place both HandBrake and VLC into your Applications folder, and you’ll be able to convert encrypted DVDs with HandBrake once again.�14. Dump Discs�I want to go disc-free on my MacBook, but a few of my games require a CD or DVD to play. Is there any way to make OS X think the disc is in the drive when it’s not?OS X’s Disk Utility can make a duplicate of your game’s CD or DVD and save it to your Mac as a file called a disk image. Once created, disk images can be double-clicked to open and mount on your desktop just like a conventional disc (you’ve already seen them in software installers downloaded from the internet). But there are two things to remember: copy-protection schemes on the disc may prevent duplication, and you should have plenty of room on your MacBook’s hard drive before you begin. A DVD’s disk image will take up several gigabytes.To get started, insert the disc you want to dupe, then launch Disk Utility from your Utilities folder. Select the disc in the sidebar, then click New Image in the Disk Utility toolbar, set the image format to DVD/CD Master in the resulting sheet, and save the disk image to your Mac. Next time you want to play your game, double-click the image file, then launch your game normally once the virtual game disc mounts. When you’re finished, you can drag the mounted disc to the Trash to eject like any conventional media, leaving the disk image on your Mac for the next time you want to get your game on.�15. Branching Out�Which operating systems—and I mean all of them, not just Mac versions—will run on a PowerPC-based Mac?The PowerPC processor has become something of a museum piece since Apple abandoned it for Intel’s chips, but these Linux distributions can help you breathe new life into G5- and G4-powered Macs. Ubuntu, Yellow Dog, and Fedora all maintain builds that run on PowerPC hardware. When you’re looking to run a worthwhile alternate operating system on older Mac hardware, the penguin has you covered.�16. The $1M Question�When will Adobe Flash content be viewable on iPhones and iPads?Never. In April, Steve Jobs had this to say about Flash on Apple’s website: “Flash was created during the PC era--for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces, and open web standards--all areas where Flash falls short.”�17. iLife Oops�I accidentally deleted iMovie and the Apple Loops that came with GarageBand. Can I reload them from the original disc without losing all my other iLife files?Sure! First, launch the iLife ‘09 installer from your disc. At the bottom of the final screen is a Customize button that lets you install iLife components individually. Click it, then select the items you want to reinstall. The installer will insist on installing GarageBand along with your missing loops, but your missing applications and files will return to your Mac without affecting other iLife applications and documents, including GarageBand preferences. Just remember to run Software Update afterward to ensure that everything’s up to date.�18. iPad Printing�What are the best ways to print from the iPad?Until Apple decides to build printing into iOS, there unfortunately isn’t a “best” way--although there are several apps in the App Store that might meet your needs.Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint for iPhone runs on the iPad and will print photos to certain Canon printers. And the App Store is full of plenty of third-party apps that promise printing from your iPad, although in our experience the results are decidedly mixed. PrintBureau ($12.99) searches your network for shared printers. It reliably printed to one--but not another--of the printers on our home network without any intervention. There’s an optional free helper application you can run on a Mac to give PrintBureau access to your printers (a solution common to several iPad printing apps), but we’d hardly call that true iPad printing.We also had success with Air Sharing HD ($9.99), which is packed with features for moving and sharing files with your iPad. It didn’t work immediately with our Wi-Fi–enabled printer, but turning on Printer Sharing on our Mac made all our printers visible to the app. But--like using a companion app--that also requires that you have a Mac running. Ultimately, the least fiddly solution often ends up being emailing yourself a document and printing from a computer. Hopefully Apple has something better in the pipeline…�19. Tame Bookmarks�I have tons of Safari bookmarks on my Mac. I don’t want them all on my iPhone, but Apple only allows syncing of all or none. Is there a fix?It’s almost elegant. Xmarks (xmarks.com) syncs bookmarks across multiple browsers, and its profiles let you decide which bookmarks appear on specific devices, including your iPhone. Best of all, you can view (and even search) them in a layout formatted for Mobile Safari. Just sign up for Xmarks, follow their instructions, and disable iPhone bookmark syncing in iTunes. Unfortunately, Xmarks doesn’t sync new bookmarks made on your iPhone back to your Mac. Like we said…almost elegant.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�20. Stay Safe�How can I tell if someone is using my Wi-Fi?�Elementary, my dear Wi-Fi user! The mystery’s solution lies in MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, which are unique codes that identify network devices. Different routers have different ways of showing which addresses (and thus, devices) are accessing your network. If you have an AirPort router, launch AirPort Utility from your Utilities folder, double-click your router’s icon, then click the Advanced icon in the resulting window. Click Logging and Statistics, then Logs and Statistics. In the Wireless Clients section, you’ll see a graph showing the address of each device connecting to your network. The list will include your Mac, the AirPort router itself, and any other computers, iPhones, game consoles, or other devices using your Wi-Fi connection. Next, match the MAC addresses to your network devices. We’ll get you started: your computer’s address can be found in the Network section of System Profiler. When you’re finished, you’ll know the addresses of devices you want on your network, so you can tell when something with a foreign address is using your Wi-Fi. Then the game’s afoot!�21. Sim-plify�I have a 1G iPhone that I want to use as a simple iPod touch, leaving aside the phone features entirely, but I don’t have the original SIM card. What are my options?Your options are slim. Unlike later models, the 1G iPhone requires a SIM card to operate as a basic iPod, even after AT&T service has been terminated or transferred to another phone. You can get a new SIM card from AT&T, but this will require signing up for a new phone service contract. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this limitation besides jailbreaking your iPhone with one of the methods floating around on the internet.�22. Merge Partitions�Is there any way to un-partition a non-boot hard drive in OS 10.6 without wiping the data?You’re in luck. Since 10.5, OS X’s Disk Utility has been able to add and remove partitions from disks without affecting other data on the drive. However, Disk Utility won’t merge data from the deleted partition to another partition on the drive, so back up all your data--especially files on the partition you’ll be removing--before you begin.Once all your data’s securely backed up, launch Disk Utility from your Mac’s Utilities folder, then select the drive in the sidebar (be sure to choose the icon noting the drive’s capacity, not just its name). Click the Partition button, then in the shaded box showing the drive’s Volume Scheme, select the partition you want to remove. Click the minus button below the Volume Scheme chart to remove the partition (don’t worry, it won’t disappear right away). Click and drag other partitions to resize them and fill the empty space that will be left behind by the deleted partition. You can also click the plus button to add a new partition that can also be resized. Click Apply to commit your changes and begin Operation: Un-partition.�23. No Scratching�I just bought a new 21.5” iMac (late 2009 model) and found a serious design flaw: the CD slot has sharp aluminum edges that can inflict permanent, irreversible scratches to valuable CDs. Help!These days, Apple’s really into razor-sharp edges. For example, the unibody MacBooks also famously have sharp edges where users rest their wrists, and those very same sharp edges have made it onto the slot on the side of the iMac where CDs are loaded. Luckily, those sharp edges are just on the outside, not on the internal drive itself. So if you carefully and slowly slide in your CD without touching the outside edges, you may avoid scratching your CD. But here’s a more practical solution: Put electrical tape around the edges of the slot. This isn’t the most beautiful thing to look at, but it’s almost guaranteed to keep scratches at bay. Another option would be to purchase an external CD drive to either use as your primary CD drive or to make copies of your valuable CDs. That way, if a CD gets scratched, at least it’s not the original.�24. Font Fixes�When using Mail, any font that I use in my outgoing email always shows up on recipient PCs as Courier--that archaic, typewriter style font. How can I get my Mac fonts to translate onto PCs?In order for a font to be successfully seen on somebody’s computer, they need to already have that particular font installed on their machine. If your recipient doesn’t have the same exact font as you, their computer will substitute your font with a font that is already installed on their system. This applies to emails, websites, Word documents, almost anything. If maintaining the integrity of fonts is important to you, you’ll need to create PDF files or images and attach them to your outgoing email message.�25. App-Update Errors�When I try to update apps from my iPhone, I get a “Cannot Connect to iTunes Store” error, yet I have no problem downloading new apps, and no problem updating them in iTunes on my computer. What gives?Assuming the problem is reoccurring and not a freaky networking accident, it sounds like your iPhone (or the problematic apps themselves) may be confused about the status of your iTunes account. This could be because a different user has logged into your iPhone, because you have multiple usernames or passwords tied to your iTunes account, or even because your billing information was recently changed on another device. The easiest place to start is by navigating to Settings, tapping Store, and confirming that yours is the currently active account on your iPhone. If it is, try signing out and signing back in with your most recent iTunes account information, then verify that your address and billing information are correct. If the problem persists, the apps may the culprit. Try updating them in iTunes, then deleting them from your iPhone. Reconnect your iPhone to your computer to sync the updated apps back to the phone. If, down the road, these same applications refuse to update from your iPhone again, deleting them from your Mac and re-downloading them from the iTunes Store may fix this.�26. Make Windows Behave�I have various finder windows set to appear in different views depending on their content. But certain windows stubbornly--and randomly--refuse to remember my preferences. Is it a bug, or am I missing a setting?Setting a specific folder to open in a particular view (such as columns, icons, or lists) can make browsing files in the Finder a lot easier. Just open and set each folder to your preferred view, then select View > Show View Options in the menu bar and check the topmost button in the resulting window to force the Finder window to always open in that view. Unfortunately, the Finder has ignored these helpful preferences since the earliest days of OS X. Your stubborn folders aren’t the first!Your folders may be confused by corrupt .DS_Store files, the invisible files created by the Finder to store icon sizes, window backgrounds, and more. System utility apps like TinkerTool and Cocktail can reveal or delete these files for you, or you can use the Terminal to delete them yourself if your UNIX Fu is strong.If those options don’t do the trick, your Mac may think you don’t have permission to reset the view options of certain folders. Some, like the Applications folder, don’t technically “belong” to any user except the system itself, and only the system (also known as the root user) can make permanent changes to these directories. What looks like random stubbornness may be OS X remembering that it’s in charge of these folders, not you.To show your Mac who’s boss, log in as the root user, then set uncooperative folders to the view setting you prefer. Just be careful, and remember to log back into your normal user account and disable root access when the job is done. Moving or deleting the wrong files while logged in as root can have serious consequences for your Mac. Apple explains how to log in as root here.�27. Just Open!�I used to double-click any photo, and it would open in Photoshop. When I installed 10.6, this feature disappeared. Now I have to drop the photos onto the Photoshop icon.Snow Leopard ignores “creator codes,” which changed its file-opening behavior--it’s all about file extensions now. Right-click a JPG, choose Get Info, and under Open With, choose Photoshop, and click Change All. Do this again for PNG, PSD, TIF, and any other photo file types you want Photoshop to get first dibs on.�28. iPads Kill Wi-Fi�When enough of us use iPads on the office Wi-Fi, it can crash the Wi-Fi itself! I’ve heard this is a common problem--is there a fix?You’ve heard right, and it’ll take an OS and/or firmware update from Apple to vanquish this annoying glitch. Until then, know that the issue is caused because an iPad can stop renewing its DHCP lease when it goes to sleep, so if you set your iPad to never sleep (Settings > General > Auto-Lock > Never), you’re good. That’s hardly ideal, and at Mac|Life HQ, we set up an iPad-only Wi-Fi network, which creates a smaller pool of DHCP leases and keeps the main Wi-Fi network safe. Interestingly, iPads are also prone to other Wi-Fi glitches, like sketchy signal strength, frequent drops, and slow speeds. Bizarrely, one of the first things you should do is increase the brightness upward and turn off the Auto Brightness option (Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper). We can only guess that something’s screwy with iPad power management…�29. Mac Pros Are Hot�I just wanted to bring to your attention a widespread, frustrating issue that exists with all 2009 Mac Pros. Whenever you play any audio, the CPU rapidly heats up (core temperatures as high as 90ºC, CPU heat sink 60ºC). This problem exists in 10.5 and 10.6, but does not happen in Windows running in Boot Camp, so it appears to be a Mac OS X bug. And after spending $8,000 on Apple’s top machine, I feel like I have been had.Yes, this seems to be a prevalent problem with the 2009 Mac Pros. Playing any type of audio heats up the Pro precariously close to--but not quite at--dangerous heat levels. If your Mac actually reached dangerous heat levels, it would shut itself down. This increased heat also causes decreased performance. Unfortunately, we don’t have any solutions for you, but we’re publishing your letter in the hopes that greater publicity on this issue will help get a speedy resolution from Apple.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�30. What a Mess!One of my co-workers spilled juice on his older MacBook Pro, and now the keys are sticky (when pressed down, they don’t pop up right away). What’s the best way to clean up?Sounds nasty! Although this particular spill has long dried, we’ll start these cleanup instructions from the moment right after spillage to make them more widely useful. So: Immediately power down, disconnect the power cord from the MacBook, and remove the battery (if it’s removable). After doing as much as you can with paper or cloth towels, turn the machine over with the lid partly open to allow the liquid to drain, making sure that the laptop doesn’t close all the way. Give it about 72 hours to completely air dry and then take apart the machine to thoroughly clean the innards. The website iFixIt.com has great step-by-step guides to taking the keys off and getting your MacBook back to normal. When dabbing at disassembled keys and other parts, we recommend a bit of gauze lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol.�31. Airport Fizzles�I stream my music from iTunes to an AirPort router, but it frequently cuts out. What can I do?First, make sure your iTunes and AirPort software are up to date. If the problem persists, move your router away from possible sources of interference. Wi-Fi is convenient, but it’s not an exact science. Signals can be impeded by microwaves, wireless phones, thick masonry, and more. If dropouts continue, try changing the channel on which your AirPort broadcasts in the Wireless tab of the AirPort section of AirPort Utility.�32. Family Planning�My wife and I have our own iPhones and iTunes accounts, and we’re adding an iPad to the happy family. Can we sync both iPhones and the iPad (plus our Apple TV) to a single iTunes account, and share our apps on all devices without affecting our current library and future purchases?Bad news first: there’s no way to merge multiple iTunes accounts into one, so your family will have to keep juggling separate accounts and purchases from your iPhones, Apple TV, and bouncing baby iPad. The good news is that apps, like DRM-protected movies and TV shows, can be used on up to five authorized computers and the iDevices that sync to them. Just open iTunes, select Apps in the sidebar, then drag iPhone applications you want to share from iTunes to a networked computer or removable hard drive. Select File > Add to Library in iTunes on the second authorized computer, then choose the exported apps to load them into that computer’s library. These apps won’t retain saved data from the original computer, but otherwise they’ll be fully operational and can be updated normally. Apple TV purchases, however, will still be tethered to one of your computers. But even these files can be synced and transferred to multiple computers and iDevices.Here’s the better news: Home Sharing, introduced in iTunes 9, simplifies this process by allowing users to drag and drop media to shared computers within iTunes. Activate Home Sharing by selecting Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing. Repeat this step on all your computers, entering one iTunes account username and password on each. Then you can drag media from shared libraries in iTunes’ sidebar into a computer’s local library at will. Future purchases can be shared automatically by clicking the Settings button at the bottom of Home Sharing iTunes library, then selecting which media you’d like to share. Once you set up all computers on your network, syncing works automatically, zapping new media off to each machine.�33. Double the Addresses�Why do I have duplicate Contact entries on my iPhone but not on my Mac?Odds are your iPhone has gained multiple groups of contacts after syncing them both wirelessly through MobileMe and through iTunes when you connected your iPhone to your Mac. Whatever the cause, check your iPhone Contact app’s Groups. If you see a group named From My Mac in addition to groups you’ve created in OS X’s Address Book, it’s a sign your iPhone thinks you have two distinct sets of friends.It's hard enough to find the contact you're looking for--who needs duplicate entries?To fix the problem, first back up your Mac’s contact data. Connect your iPhone to iTunes, uncheck Sync Address Book Contacts in the Info tab, then re-sync. If that doesn’t remove the extra contacts, turn off MobileMe contact syncing in Settings on your iPhone, choosing to delete the existing contacts on your phone. Next, turn Contact syncing back on, and choose to merge MobileMe’s data onto your iPhone if asked. Now you should have just one set of contacts shared between your iPhone and Mac. You’ll have half the friends, but half the hassles.�34. Conquer Syncing�What's the most elegant way to sync iTunes libraries between work and home computers?We use SuperSync, a program that lets you sync your iTunes library among multiple computers on local networks or over the Internet. SuperSync’s busy interface can seem a little daunting, but in just a few quick steps, you can start copying music from your crib to your cubicle and back again. Casual Fridays will never be the same.A. Buy the SoftwareSuperSync looks and feels kinda like iTunes, but is a whole different beast.To get started, you’ll need a copy of SuperSync running on both your home and work computers. Two licenses will set you back $24, or you can snag ten for $34 and give one to your manager for Boss’s Day.B. Make the ConnectionsWhen you first launch SuperSync on your home Mac, it loads and displays your iTunes library in an iTunes-alike window organized by genre, artist, and playlist. While SuperSync may look a little like iTunes (and it can even play some unprotected audio files), it’s really a conduit and control panel for syncing, not a jukebox. Your DRM-protected files must still be played by an authorized copy of iTunes, although SuperSync will transfer them just fine.SuperSync can even keep metadata updated across different Macs.If your music collection doesn’t live in your Mac’s Home folder, you can point SuperSync to a library stored on a remote or network drive and share from there. To set up sharing, just check the obvious boxes and enter a password in the application’s Network preferences. While you’re there, you can fine-tune what you sync and how. For instance, you can keep specific media types--all videos, for instance--out of your shared library and pick which metadata changes will be synced back to your home machine. Whether you simply want to copy files or meticulously update their play counts, ratings, and more across your computers, SuperSync has your back.C. Start the SyncTo sync your library, install and launch SuperSync on your work machine, then turn on sharing and connect to your home computer. This is easiest (and fastest) on a local network, but you can sync your music over the internet by manually forwarding ports on your home router, or by using a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) router and letting SuperSync do the work for you.When the syncing starts, SuperSync's interface gets pretty busy.Once you get both computers talking to each other, you can synchronize your entire library in one go, sync individual files, or transfer albums, artists, and whole genres at once. You can even sync your playlists--both their music files and the lists themselves in the iTunes sidebar. Naturally, files added to iTunes on your work computer can be synced back to your home Mac. Just finish your download in iTunes, then phone home with SuperSync. New files will be noted automatically and can be transferred with a click.�35. Hot Flash�My MacBook Pro has been acting strangely. It will become sluggish, get hot, and the fans will come on at full speed. Activity Monitor shows that a process called “PTMD” is taking over 60 percent of my CPU. How do I prevent PTMD from taking over my Mac?This may not be a common question, but it certainly is a burning one! According to Apple’s Mac OS X Reference Library, PTMD stands for “platform thermal monitor daemon,” and it communicates any OS notifications effecting thermal conditions to your hardware. This daemon is supposed to automatically quit itself when it’s done communicating, but apparently your Mac erroneously thinks that its thermal conditions are continuously changing, so it’s trying to let your hardware continuously know this incorrect information.This seems to be a new problem that has cropped up for some users in Mac OS 10.6.3, so hopefully it will be fixed in a future update to the operating system. In the meantime, you can manually quit out of PTMD in Activity Monitor (launch it from your Utilities folder) whenever it starts acting up. You may also try resetting your Mac’s System Management Controller, which is responsible for thermal management (follow the directions here).�36. It's a RAIDI have Apple’s RAID card in my Mac Pro, and it always pops up this error message: “Write cache disabled due to insufficient battery charge.” But...what is a RAID card, and what should I do?Apple's Mac Pro RAID Card improves RAID performance and reliability.RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks, and it’s a tech that lets you combine multiple hard drives so they appear as one. RAIDs can either be mirrored or striped--in the first, each drive is an exact copy (or mirror) of the other drives, so if one fails, you’ll still have all of your data intact on another (known as redundancy). If you configure your drives as a striped RAID, the storage space of all of your drives is added together into one larger drive. This will give you increased performance and increased storage space, but no redundancy unless you’ve configured your RAID with parity handling (which uses a portion of each drive to hold identical copies of data from one of the other drives). RAIDs can be controlled by software like Apple’s Disk Utility or the excellent SoftRAID ($129, softraid.com), or they can be controlled by hardware like your RAID card. The main advantages of a hardware-controlled RAID are increased performance and reliability. With the error message you’re receiving, it sounds like the battery on your RAID card has died, so take it into Apple to get replaced.�37. iPad 2�What upgrades will we see in the next version of the iPad? (We emailed a trio of well-known tech experts for their predictions.)��Daniel LyonsNewsweek"I'd guess the following:» Front-facing camera for videoconferencing» Multitasking (duh, already announced)» Higher-resolution screen» No Flash» Gorgeous ads that will change your life» Unicorn tears"��Christopher NullYahoo! News, Technology"Dual cameras--a front-facing camera for videoconferencing will be huge for opening up a whole new market for the iPad."��Dylan TweneyWired"One of the things most obviously missing from the current iPad is a webcam. This would instantly transform the iPad into a videophone, and its size—just slightly bigger than the human face—would be perfect for face-to-face video chats. It’s also likely that the next iPad will have more memory and a faster processor. If we’re lucky, it might have an HDMI port too, so you can hook it up to a TV to show off photos, videos, and apps. One thing it definitely won’t have, though, is support for Adobe Flash. That door is closed, probably forever."��38. Mac Van Winkle�When I wake my MacBook Pro from sleep, it doesn’t connect to my Wi-Fi. Sometimes it even forgets the Wi-Fi password. How the heck do I get it to remember?First, check out the extensive troubleshooting steps that we gave in Question #2 to see if any of those ideas solve your problem. Beyond that, your problem may be caused by one of the following issues:» Two Wi-Fi networks with the same SSID (wireless network name). For example, do you connect to one wireless router that’s named “Linksys” at work and then another router that’s named “Linksys” at home? If so, your Mac may be trying to apply the password from one router to the other router. Rename one of the wireless networks.» Keychain problems. Launch Keychain Access (in Utilities) and delete any AirPort Network password entries for the wireless networks that are giving you problems.» Preferred Networks problem. Go into your Network System Preference, click on AirPort, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab. Delete any unused networks, and drag your current network to the top of the list.» Corrupt preference file. Trash the file located at Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and restart your Mac.» Security incompatibilities. Try changing the type of wireless security on your router (for example, WPA instead of WEP).» Wireless interference. Turn on interference robustness on your router or change the wireless channel.» Your system may need a general maintenance. Run Disk Warrior on your machine, repair permissions with Disk Utility, empty the caches, and run the UNIX maintenance scripts with Cocktail.�39. Style Manual�What exactly does Steve wear on a daily basis?We asked our team of fashion experts, and they said, “The same dang thing no matter what.” So we made them stalk the streets of Cupertino and watch hours of keynote footage to bring you the scoop on Steve’s sartorial secrets. That’ll show ’em.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�40. Sad Mac�My iMac flat-out freezes when I try to wake it from sleep. I ran DiskTools Pro, which verified and repaired my hard drive, but it still hangs after waking from sleep.This is often a symptom of a failing graphics card or a failing logic board inside your Mac, in which case you would need to take your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider for repair. However, before assuming the worst, you can perform a series of basic troubleshooting steps to rule out other variables that may be causing this symptom.» External devices: When your Mac fails to wake from sleep, try unplugging any external hard drives or peripherals to see if doing so makes your Mac suddenly wake from sleep. If so, those external devices may be to blame. » RAM: You may also have bad RAM inside your machine. You can try to pinpoint bad RAM by either removing one of your RAM chips and see if the problem continues, or by running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it can identify any bad RAM. To run the Apple Hardware Test, take a look at the DVDs that came with your Mac; one of them will say that the Apple Hardware Test is on it. Insert that DVD and restart your Mac while holding down the D key on your keyboard. » Reset your Mac’s System Management Controller (get instructions here).Next, try to rule out the software problems: » Trash the following files and then restart your Mac: Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist and Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist » Reboot your Mac in single-user mode and run fsck (file system check)--get instructions here. » Back up your Mac, then erase and install Mac OS X.If all of these steps fail, it's time, sadly, to bring your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider.�41. Stop Time�When Time Machine is running, my Mac virtually comes to a stop. What is happening, and what should I do?Any time an application such as Time Machine is actively reading or writing to a hard drive, you may notice a tiny bit of a speed loss if you’re also trying to access your hard drive as well because the read/write heads take time to physically move to different locations on the hard drive platter.However, the key phrase is “a tiny bit of a speed loss,” meaning that the speed loss should be negligible to most computer users. Time Machine is designed to be fast and extremely lightweight, so if your computer is actually coming to a standstill, then something else is going on. The best way to troubleshoot this is by eliminating variables. First, make sure that you do not have any virus software scanning your backup drive. This is a known factor that could slow down your Time Machine backups to a crawl and that may affect your computer’s overall speed as well.Then, eliminate the possibility that your backup drive has a hardware problem by swapping it out with a different backup drive. If you don’t have another drive handy, a utility such as Drive Genius ($99, prosofteng.com) or Disk Warrior ($99, alsoft.com) can help you sniff out failing hard drives. Your backup drive must also be partitioned properly, as explained at tinyurl.com/3zne68.Next, use a different backup program like ChronoSync to see if the slowdowns continue. If they do, ChronoSync will let you see which file is actively being backed up while the problem is happening. It could indicate a problem with that particular file or with your internal hard drive.Other than that, you can try some general tips to speed up your Mac overall: Upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard; purchase faster internal and external drives (7200 RPM or SSD); use a faster connection interface (eSATA or FireWire 800); add more RAM to your Mac; and turn off hard disk sleep in the Energy Saver System Preference (this last one has a huge impact if your hard drive is powered via USB only and has no separate AC power).�42. Display Despair�Why has Apple used so many display interfaces recently, and is the current Mini DisplayPort standard the best tech for the job?Mini DisplayPort meets VGA with this adapter.Apple’s flirtation with different video interfaces makes it seem like a puppet of the International Dongle Cartel, but it’s really all about doing more with ever-shrinking video ports. That includes today’s Mini DisplayPort, which can carry video and audio and connects to VGA, DVI, or HDMI displays at resolutions up to 2560x1600. We’re not sure if that makes it the best technology, but if it lets us carry just one small adapter that works on both MacBooks and iMacs, we’re happy.�43. Feelin' Social�Does Apple have a Twitter account or Facebook page of any sort whatsoever?YouTube has your favorite Apple commercials.Steve may be cool with answering emails, but the company isn’t too keen on Twitter. There is no official Apple Twitter account. Facebook is a bit more complicated. While Apple hasn’t set up an official company page, it has created an App Store Facebook page: facebook.com/AppStore. Our preferred destination, though, is the Apple YouTube channel, which lets us check out all of our favorite Apple commercials: youtube.com/apple.�44. Feelin' Blu�When will Apple include USB 3.0 and Blu-ray in Macs? What’s taking so long?USB 3.0 gear is already trickling onto the market, so it’s probably just a matter of time before the first computers sporting the blazing new standard roll out of Cupertino. Unfortunately, Blu-ray is another story. Apple’s interest in promoting its HD iTunes movie downloads and Steve’s declaration that bringing Blu-ray to the Mac is “a bag of hurt” don’t bode well for Blu’s chances on the Mac.�45. Photo Downloads�There seems to be no way to download my photos from my iPhone directly to my Mac without using iPhoto. Even then, I have to drill down through some crazy iPhoto directories in the Finder just to copy the photos somewhere else. Can’t I just pull these photos off my iPhone and put them wherever I want?Any photos that are in iPhoto can be easily and quickly copied somewhere else on your Mac simply by dragging and dropping them out of iPhoto. For even more control over the size, format, and name of your photos, use the File > Export command in iPhoto. You don’t need to--and you really shouldn’t--be drilling down into any iPhoto directories on your Mac.Now, onto your next question of bypassing iPhoto altogether. In Mac OS 10.6, the Image Capture application gives you a significant amount of control over what happens when you connect your iPhone. If you have multiple cameras or iPhones, Image Capture even lets you set different preferences for each individual camera.Image Capture is the place to go to directly download photos from your cameras or to set what happens whenever you connect your cameras.You could have your iPhone launch Image Capture itself, which lets you manually download your photos into the directories of your choice and then delete those photos from the iPhone. You could have your iPhone launch Preview, which lets you import iPhone photos from the File menu. You could have your iPhone run an AppleScript.But perhaps best of all, your iPhone could launch AutoImporter, a hidden application that automatically imports photos to the directory of your choice, without you intervening at all. It’s located at Macintosh HD/System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter, and you can set this application’s preferences by choosing AutoImporter > Preferences.�46. Tame MobileMe�I have four Apple devices: two MacBooks, an iPhone, and an iPad. It would be wonderful if MobileMe would do its job and sync all of my calendar and contact information, but I continually have glitches. One of the devices will often stop syncing, and then I have to wipe out data and start all over again. Is there any way to alleviate these problems?We’ve heard from an Apple support representative that syncing problems with MobileMe are very common because the MobileMe servers are not yet robust enough to handle more than 1,000 synchronizations before everything needs to be reset from scratch again. While 1,000 synchronizations might sound like a lot, consider that a sync takes place every single time you make a change to a contact or a calendar. The good news, however, is that this same representative told us that Apple is aware of its MobileMe syncing shortcomings and is continuously working to increase the competency of its servers.In the meantime, if you want to stick with MobileMe syncing, your best bet for solving the glitches you’re experiencing would be to follow our extensive guide from our November 2009 issue (or find it online here--scroll down to #37) on how to reset your MobileMe syncing from scratch on all of your devices.Alternatively, you may want to ditch MobileMe altogether and explore alternatives such as the web-based calendaring and contact solutions from Google, which can synchronize to your iPhone and iPad using Google Sync (google.com/mobile/sync). On your Mac, you can synchronize to Google using Spanning Sync ($25 for one year, spanningsync.com) or use the built-in (but more limited) syncing tools within Snow Leopard’s Address Book and iCal.If you have an extra Mac that you can use as a server machine, you can even take syncing into your own hands by using a product like Apple’s Snow Leopard Server ($499, apple.com) or the outstanding Kerio Connect ($540, kerio.com).�47. The Other Team�I’m running Windows 7 on my Mac using Boot Camp. How do I maintain my computer so both the Mac and Windows platforms stay healthy? And how can I make a clone of my computer that captures both?For tips on how to keep your Windows 7 partition healthy, you’ll want to turn to our sister magazine Maximum PC (this is a good place to start), where you’ll find the experts on all things PC-related. Although conventional wisdom about PCs dictates that you’ll want to defragment your Windows hard drive regularly and immediately install antivirus software on your Windows partition, those are two things that Mac users are not required to do.Your Mac will continue to maintain its health as long as all those hundreds of thousands of Windows viruses can’t reach your Mac files from within the Windows 7 environment. And they won’t be able to since Boot Camp only allows you to read your Mac partition but not write to it.If you gotta run Windows 7, Boot Camp can get it done on your Mac.However, if you install a program like MacDrive 8 ($49, mediafour.com), you’ll have full read and write access to your Mac partition...and so will all those Windows viruses. So be doubly sure to have antivirus software on your PC side.To clone your entire computer, you’ll need to make two clones: one for your Mac partition and one for your Windows partition. For the Mac partition, use a tool like SuperDuper ($28, shirt-pocket.com) or Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested, bombich.com). For your Windows partition, we recommend Winclone (donations requested, twocanoes.com).�48. Log Me OutMy iMac has separate user accounts for my wife and me, plus a Guest Account for when we have parties and people are drawn to the 27-inch screen to play. Can the Mac automatically return to the login screen after some period of inactivity? I don’t want guests to have access to our accounts, and I don’t want my wife to have to remember to log out when she’s finished. I just want it to go back to the login screen to force the next person to log in as a user or guest.No problem--head to System Preferences > Security and check the box for Log Out After X Minutes of Activity, setting X to be any number you like. While you’re there, make sure Disable Automatic Login is checked too. That way, the login screen always appears when you start up, instead of a default administrator account.The auto-logout option is in System Preferences > Security.It’s also easy to lock down the Guest Account with System Preferences > Parental Controls, which lets you select which applications will be available. By default any files in a Guest Account’s Home folder are deleted when they log out, but you could park an alias in the Dock to a shared folder on your hard drive, called, say, “Save Stuff Here.” While you’re sprucing up the Dock, add some big, pretty icons for party-startin’ apps like Photo Booth and Camera Bag.Set up a Guest Account with System Preferences > Accounts, then manage--or spy on--it with Parental Controls.�49. Silence�How do I disable voice control on my iPhone 3GS? I never use it, and it's annoying when it's in my pocket and accidentally activates.Good news: You can shut off Voice Control dialing. Bad news: Voice Control everything else stays on. To shut down Voice Control dialing, you need to turn on the Passcode Lock option for your iPhone. To do this and turn off Voice Control Dialing, navigate to Settings > General > Passcode Lock. Once you turn on Passcode Lock, you can turn off Voice Dial.�50. Behind the Black Shirt�What does it take to become a Genius Bar technician?There are fewer great occupations in life than working at the Genius Bar. Think about it: When someone asks you what you do for a living, you get to tell them that you’re a Genius. On top of that, you get to manhandle Apple computers all day long, dealing with situations like figuring out what in the heck is going on with a MacBook that a carpenter impaled with his drill (remember to tell him it’s no longer under warranty). Check out our handy chart to see what it takes to become a Genius Bar employee.�A. Get Smart!�First things first: You gotta have plenty of knowledge about past and present Apple products. Geniuses must know hardware ranging across entire generations of Apple products, as well as software offered for all of the latest operating systems. After all, you never know what to expect when you work at the bar. For all you know, a customer might bring in their Performa 460 and ask you to transfer their hard drive data to one of those newfangled Mac Pros.�B. Be Happy--and Discreet�Employees at the Apple Store must be like employees at Disneyland--you’re in the Happiest Place on Earth, so smile…and keep your lips zipped tight about any advance knowledge of upcoming Apple products you might have. Or else.�C. Magic Hands�Before you can get your hands on customers’ gear, you need to get trained. A lot. Applying to be a Genius begins with a battery of tech questions--and we’re not talking the ins and outs of GarageBand, either. Applicants are expected to have deep knowledge about how to diagnose and fix serious hardware and software issues--after all, most of their job involves coping with damaged or seriously broken gear. Survive that hurdle, and it’s off to Cupertino for four weeks of sessions that include acquiring three Apple certifications (OS, Desktop, and Portable) and practice time with fake customers who are really good at being a pain in your backside. After that, the apprenticeship continues in a real live Apple Store for as much as another month before you become true blue Genius material.�D. Black is Boss�The shirt color is an essential part of working in the Apple store. The shirt depicts what department you work in and makes it so that customers know who exactly the Geniuses are who can help them with their waterlogged iPhone.�E. Load-Bearing�Can you diagnose a problem and solve it within 15 minutes? The Geniuses at the Bar can. Appointments taken at the back of the store are only supposed to take as long as it takes to get you halfway through your favorite sitcom, which ensures that even stores with heavy traffic volumes have a chance to help everyone out.
★ The iPad

Back in December, here’s how I concluded my piece on what I expected from Apple’s then-still-unannounced tablet: If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small — the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing. After the iPad was announced, I got two types of emails from readers. The first group saying they were disappointed, because they had been hoping I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. The second group wrote to tell me how excited they were because I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. Count me in with the second group. Apple hasn’t thought of everything with iPad, but what they’ve thought about, they’ve thought about very deeply. I got mine Saturday morning, and I’ve been using it since — or at least as often as I could get it away from my son. Here are my thoughts. The Big Picture The whole thing feels fast fast fast. The only thing that feels slow overall, so far, is web page rendering. Not because it’s slower than the iPhone — it’s not, it’s definitely much faster — but because it’s so much slower than my MacBook Pro. It’s easy to forget on modern PC-class hardware just how computationally expensive HTML rendering is. The funny thing is, the iPad, in raw CPU terms, is a far slower machine than a modern Mac. But the iPad is running a lightweight OS and lightweight apps. It’s like a slower runner with a lighter backpack who can win a race against a faster runner wearing a heavier backpack. Thus, many of the things you do are faster, or at least feel faster (which is what matters), on the iPad than the Mac. Like, for example, launching applications. The built-in apps, and many of the third-party apps I’ve been using the most, are ready to use within a moment of launching them. (Games tend not to load instantly, but that’s true on high-power consoles like Xbox and PS3, too.) There’s something fundamentally strange about how fast the iPad feels considering how underpowered it is versus a modern PC or Mac. How can a computer with so much less CPU speed feel faster? What Apple has done is re-think several fundamental aspects. The iPad was designed from the ground up with a different set of priorities. I think Tim Bray summarizes it well: For a 1Ghz device with limited memory, the iPad is unreasonably fast. I suspect this accounts for a whole bunch of the “Wow!” reaction the iPad obviously provokes. Since there’s no free lunch, I think it’s really important that we understand what they sacrificed to get that performance. My bet would be on some combination of windowing and virtual memory. I tend to work on lots of things at once, but in fact I look at things in rapid succession, my eyes can really only focus on one thing at one time. Given sufficiently fast switching, maybe we all ought to be getting less WIMPy. The iPad (and iPhone OS across all devices) does indeed lack virtual memory. The only memory is honest-to-god RAM. RAM is fast, virtual memory is slow. The tradeoff is that without virtual memory, the iPad can do far less at once, but what it does do is never going to require hitting virtual memory. Without a windowing system, drawing is simpler and faster. Apple has made other significantly different tradeoffs as well. Battery life on the iPad is simply stunning. Reviewers across the board are getting real-life results that beat Apple’s promise of 10 hours of battery life. This is a function both of software (which does less and works hard to keep the CPU from drawing power while the iPad is being used) and hardware — iFixit’s teardown shows that, internally, the iPad looks more like a battery with a computer than a computer with a battery. The iPad, so far, never gets warm. Browse a bunch of web sites. Play some video. Play a game. It still feels as cool to the touch as when it’s turned off. It is also dead quiet — no fan, no humming, nada. This is the future of computing. The iPad was designed with an entirely different set of priorities than Macs or PCs. Someone may well produce a worthy iPad rival in the next year, but it’s not going to be something like HP’s Slate that runs Windows 7, an operating system that epitomizes the traditional set of computer design priorities. The iPad is also eminently affordable. $500 for this thing seems hard to believe. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it at double the price. But clearly there were tradeoffs involved to hit this price point. Build quality is not one — the thing feels perfect in hand. But it only has 256 MB of RAM — perhaps the single biggest hardware weakness of the device (see the section on Safari below). It is super high-quality, but clearly designed for the mass market. Anyone who thinks Apple only makes high-priced products has completely lost sense of reality. “Affordable luxury” is the sweet spot for mass market success today, and Apple keeps shooting bulls eyes. In fact, the only thing that makes my heart ache regarding the iPad is when I start imagining a hypothetical Pro model — imagine what Apple could put in an iPad that cost as much as a MacBook Pro. (My dream iPad Pro: double the display’s pixel resolution and include a gigabyte or two of RAM.) Affordability presents itself in other ways, too. Nothing is included in the box other than the power adaptor. The dock and case are separate SKUs, and it doesn’t even come with headphones. It’s like buying a Honda, not an Acura — the base model is not “well-equipped”. $500 is affordable but not cheap, and the iPad does not feel cheap in any regard. The build quality is outstanding. The brushed aluminum back makes my plastic iPhone 3GS feel cheap. The iPad takes more cues from the current iMacs than it does from the iPhone. The seam between the glass and the aluminum is nearly perfect. It’s just one piece of aluminum and a piece of glass — there is no superfluous chrome bezel between the glass and the backing as there is on all iPhones and iPod Touches to date. Even without turning it on it looks and feels a step beyond the iPhones and iPod Touches we’ve seen to date. The Killer App One thing that’s making it hard for some people to grasp the purpose of the iPad is that no one has an answer to what precisely it is for. This was not so for the iPhone. The answer to the question of what the original 2007 iPhone was meant for was right there at the bottom of the iPhone home screen, in the “dock”: phone, email, web, music and video. The other apps were icing on the cake. The four apps in the dock were what Apple designed the iPhone to do. The iPad also has a “dock” on the home screen, and the default apps in that dock are clearly important: Safari, Mail, Photos, iPod (which, on the iPad, is only for audio). But some are treating the iPad as, fundamentally, an e-reader. Others as a gaming device. Others as a movie player. None of those things are represented in the iPad’s default dock apps. The truth is that the App Store is the killer app. The iPad is meant for anything that can be represented on a 10-inch color touchscreen. Back in January when we were playing the “What’s Apple going to name the tablet?” game, my favorite, by far, was “Canvas”. I’m not saying here that Canvas would have been a better name than iPad, but the word conveys perfectly what the iPad is. Adam Engst captured this: The iPad becomes the app you’re using. That’s part of the magic. The hardware is so understated - it’s just a screen, really - and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. As did Cultured Code’s Jürgen Schweizer: Steve Jobs said about the iPod that “it is all about the music”. With the iPad, Apple has done the same for personal computing as it has done before with the iPod: it made technology go away. But if the device is gone, and the operating system is gone, what is left? The iPad is an empty canvas that invites us to imagine what is possible. It inspires our imagination and it makes us want to create, because never before were we able to create software that was so close to the user. The iPad hardware and OS are profoundly humble — they put all the focus on whatever app it is that is open. Out of Box Experience One thing that is very iPhone-like about iPad is that when you first take it out of the box, it wants to be plugged into your Mac or PC via USB and sync with iTunes. In some ways, that’s understandable. USB syncing is how you load your iPad with music and videos and transfer over stuff like your email accounts, and, if you’re not using MobileMe, your contacts and calendars. But, on the whole, it feels retrograde. It’s creates an impression that the iPad does not stand on its own. It’s a child that still needs a parent. But it’s not a young child. It’s more like a teenager. It’s close. So close that it feels like it ought to be able to stand on its own. Android devices do not have this problem. You can sync an Android device with a desktop computer via USB, for transferring things like music and videos, but you don’t have to. Out of the box, a Nexus One is ready to go. Google’s big advantage here is that they’re using online services as primary data stores. The Google Way is to use Gmail for email and contacts, and Google Calendar for events. You just tell your Android device your Google ID and password, and your email, contacts, and calendars start syncing over the air. Apple has MobileMe, but because it’s a paid service, they can’t (or at least won’t) assume that all iPad owners are going to use it. But then even those of us who do use MobileMe get stuck with a first-run iPad experience that involves a tethered USB connection to a computer. The Apple Way is to assume that your primary data stores for these things are locally stored on your Mac or PC — Address Book, iCal. At the very least, these things ought to be able to sync between iTunes (on your Mac or PC) and your iPad over your Wi-Fi network. Third-party iPhone OS apps like Things do a great job with this — there’s no reason iTunes and the iPhone OS shouldn’t too. Those Heart-Stopping ‘Scratches’ On the iPhone (and iPod Touch; assume from here out that when I say “iPhone” I’m referring to both), app icons on the home screen sit atop a plain black background. On the iPad, they’re spaced further apart, which is why I think Apple has added wallpaper — making the iPad home screen look a lot more like a Mac or Windows desktop. The default wallpaper shows a sunset skyline of a mountain range in front of a like. There’s a meteor shower in the sky. And the streaking meteors look, at a glance, like a series of severe scratches on the display. It’s a curious choice. The Touchscreen Keyboard It’s a lot like the iPhone’s, but, it’s different. Because it’s bigger, there are no pop-up indicators showing which key you hit as you type. They’re not necessary. The feel, overall, is pretty much like typing on a really big iPhone. If you’re in a position where you can set the iPad down on your lap or a table top, it’s not too hard at all to type with all your fingers when the iPad is in landscape (horizontal) orientation. Now, to me, it’s nowhere near as good as even the worst full- or nearly-full-size hardware keyboard I’ve ever used. You can’t just rest all eight of your fingers on the home row keys, and you can’t feel where the key cap edges are. You have to look at the keyboard a fair amount as you type. On a hardware keyboard, I hardly ever look at the keys. But for a touchscreen, it’s good. In portrait (vertical) orientation, I can type on the iPad using just my two thumbs, as I do on my iPhone. I have relatively large hands, though — I don’t think most people can do it. The keyboard in this layout is way too small for me to type with all of my fingers, though. In portrait orientation most people will type using one finger, I expect. Now, the funny thing is, in general, bigger keyboards are easier to type on than smaller ones. That’s why big laptops are easier to type on than compact ones, and, indeed, that’s why the landscape iPad keyboard on the iPad is easier to type on than the portrait one. But at a certain point, the curve flips around and smaller becomes faster. I type much faster on my iPhone using the smaller portrait orientation keyboard than the wider landscape keyboard. In both modes, I use just my two thumbs. With the smaller iPhone keyboard, my thumbs have to travel less from one key to the next. People who aren’t very proficient at the iPhone keyboard, or who have very large thumbs and therefore have trouble precisely tapping the smaller keys, may well prefer the iPhone’s wider landscape keyboard. But for me it’s not even close. I never type in landscape on my iPhone. And in fact (and this is the aforereferenced “funny part”), I type faster on my iPhone than I do on the iPad. That’s especially true for when the iPad is in portrait mode, which puts the keyboard size in a no-man’s land — too small to eight-finger-type, too big to thumb-type. But it’s also true for when the iPad is in landscape mode. I’m hopeful that this is just a factor of experience and muscle memory — I have nearly three years of experience typing on the iPhone, and only two days experience with the iPad. Last Friday I watched Andy Ihnatko eight-finger-type on his iPad — which he’d been using for over a week — and he was typing pretty goddamn fast. One problem I’ve run into is that Apple has subtly changed the layout of the keyboard from the iPhone’s. On the iPhone, the Delete key is on the lower right, above the Return key. On the iPad, it’s in the upper right corner, and the Return key is next to the L key. The iPad adds a right-side Shift key. �� The iPad layout makes perfect sense — both these keys are now where they reside on traditional hardware keyboards. Their weird positions on the iPhone are a compromise forced by the extreme lack of space on the iPhone display. Apple has also added a new key to the iPad keyboard’s numeric/punctuation mode: Undo. It’s a good idea — I have the feeling most iPhone users don’t know about the system-wide shake-to-undo gesture, and even for users who do, the iPad is harder to shake (and, when docked, downright silly to shake). But this new Undo key moves the period and comma keys over to the right by two positions. The iPhone keyboard layout is so firmly ingrained in my mind that these changes are problems for me — I keep hitting the (new to the iPad) right-side Shift key when I mean to hit Delete, and I keep hitting Undo when I mean to type a period. I’ll get used to it soon, I’m sure, but I find it interesting that my iPad typing muscle memory is based on the iPhone keyboard, not regular keyboards. I think this is because, overall, it really does feel like a big iPhone keyboard. Hardware Keyboard Support I don’t have (and did not order) the iPad keyboard dock, but I have been using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, I’m using it to type this entire review. It works great. Pairing (via the iPad Settings app) is easy and quick. And it works great. Several essential text-editing shortcuts from the Mac OS work system-wide on the iPad: Command-Z, -X, -C, and -V work for Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. Command-A works for Select All. You can use the arrow keys to move the insertion point. Option-Arrow keys work to move the insertion point one word at a time. Command-Left/Right moves the insertion point the beginning/end of the current line; Command-Up/Down moves the insertion point the start/end of the current text field — which, in the case of something like Pages, is the beginning/end of the entire document. Holding down Shift extends the selection range, and works in conjunction with the Option and Command keys as expected. (Certain of Cocoa’s long-standing Emacs-style text editing shortcuts work too: like Control-K (kill) and Control-H (backspace).) Certain of the function keys on the Bluetooth keyboard are useful on the iPad. The brightness keys control the iPad’s display brightness. The volume (and mute) keys work. The playback buttons — play/pause, next, previous — all work to control the iPod app. By default, once you’ve started using a hardware keyboard, the on-screen keyboard no longer appears, which is great, because the full display is now available for displaying content. But if you want to use the on-screen keyboard while a hardware keyboard is active, you can toggle it using the hardware keyboard’s Eject key. The Esc key dismisses the auto-complete suggestion — it’s like tapping the little “x” next to the suggestion under the current word you’re typing. While a keyboard is connected, you can wake up the iPad by hitting any key — completely bypassing the iPad’s slide-to-unlock screen. Very nice. The iPad is fundamentally a touchscreen device. You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you’re hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you’re going to want one. There are a few places in the iPad UI where I really wish the keyboard was useful but it isn’t. For example, Safari location field suggestions. On the Mac, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the list of suggestions. On the iPad, you must use touch to select from the list. Since you’re already typing if you’re entering a URL, this is just begging for arrow key support. (Ditto for suggested results from the Google search field in Safari.) The Esc key does not dismiss popovers, but that’s probably OK. It’s only possible to invoke popovers via touch, so it seems OK that you must dismiss them via touch as well. The Tab key can be used to switch between text fields; Shift-Tab goes in reverse order. (When using the hardware keyboard, I do find myself hitting Command-Tab, without thinking about it, when I want to switch to another app; it does nothing on the iPad.) Display The iPad display is, overall, wonderful. Colors are bright and (unlike the Nexus One’s OLED display) accurate. Photos and videos looks great. Touches seem precisely accurate. The glass feels good. Viewing angles are shockingly good. You can lay the iPad flat on a table while you eat or drink and it looks just fine at a decidedly skew angle — far more so than with the iPhone. This IPS stuff is the real deal; here’s to hoping for an IPS display in this year’s new iPhones. The only complaint I have about the display is that the pixel resolution isn’t all that dense. The iPad’s 1024 � 768 display has a resolution of 132 pixels per inch. The iPhone’s 640 � 320 display has a resolution of 163 pixels per inch. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s definitely noticeable. Type looks crisper on the iPhone than the iPad, and type rendering falls far short of even newspaper-caliber resolution, let alone glossy-magazine caliber. (Those of you who doubt that the pixels-per-inch resolution isn’t high enough, just wait until you see the type rendering on this summer’s new iPhones.) Safari The iPad is so good as a web reader, that, if you’re a web junkie, everything else the iPad does is just gravy. It’s good. I’m so used to Safari on the iPhone, though, where the toolbar is at the bottom, that I’m having a hard time getting adjusted to the toolbar at the top. I’m not saying it’s a bad decision on Apple’s part. In fact, the iPad HIG is quite explicit that iPad toolbars should go at the top, not bottom — which makes me think Apple thought about and tested this and has concluded that the top works better for the iPad form factor. It’s just that I use Safari on my iPhone a lot, and I am really used to the button placement. When you create a new page in Safari on iPad, text focus goes to the Google search field by default, rather than the URL location field. That’s a change from both desktop and iPhone Safari. I’m finding this hard to get used to, but I can see how this might be a better design for typical users. It makes the default search engine all the more essential to the web browsing experience, though. Zooming and flicking are essential to the experience, just like on the iPhone. Flicking is how you scroll, no surprise. The zooming, though, may come as a surprise. It wasn’t too long ago when 1024 � 768 was considered a large display for full-size web browsing. But: what matters on the iPad (and iPhone) is not the pixel count of the display, but the physical size. 9.7 inches diagonally is a bit small for non-zoomed web browser. But the action of zooming — whether through double-tapping or pinching — is so smooth, fast, and natural that it feels better, not worse, than old-school desktop web browsing. There’s one severe problem in Safari for iPad, though: memory crapping out. MobileSafari for iPhone has always allowed you to open up to eight pages at a time. It tries to keep them all truly open, in RAM, so that you can quickly switch between them. But when it runs out of memory it starts flushing some of the pages. It doesn’t forget the URL for those pages, and, in recent versions, it saves a static thumbnail image of the rendered page, but when you switch back to those purged pages, MobileSafari must reload the page — thus, you must wait both for the contents of the page to download and for the page to actually render (which — the rendering — often takes longer than the downloading). It’s very noticeable. Switching between unpurged Safari pages is instantaneous. Switching to a purged page takes as long as opening it from scratch. Wolf Rentzsch, linking to this complaint from Peter-Paul Koch, wrote a brief technical overview of why Apple might have designed MobileSafari this way. (Keep in mind that iPhone OS does not use virtual memory; thus RAM is severely constrained.) This purging problem got a lot better with the iPhone 3GS. The original iPhone and iPhone 3G only had 128 MB of RAM. The 3GS has 256. MobileSafari’s ability to keep more pages in memory is probably my single favorite aspect of the 3GS. The iPad also has 256 MB of RAM. But, in my use, iPad’s Safari isn’t able to keep nearly as many pages open as I can on my 3GS. In fact, sometimes it seems I can only have one, and every page I switch to gets completely reloaded. This is more than just annoying — it can lead to data loss if you have unsubmitted form data sitting in an “open” iPad Safari page. I’ve run into this posting items to DF from the iPad — my posting interface is a web page form. When I want to link to the current page, I invoke a bookmarklet which opens a new page with the title and URL fields of the posting form set to the title and URL of the page from which I invoked the bookmarklet. Often, though, I want to switch back to the page I’m linking to copy another URL or a bit of text to quote. Twice so far, when going back to the posting form, it’s been purged and must reload from scratch — in which case I lose anything I’ve already written. I never run into this problem on my iPhone 3GS when switching between just two open Safari pages. The problem is also severe for AJAX web apps, which tend not to be designed with full page refreshes in mind. I hope this can be improved significantly in an iPad software update, but I worry that it’s endemic — that because the iPad screen is so much larger than the iPhone’s, that MobileSafari must allocate significantly more memory per page for the framebuffers. 256 MB of RAM simply may not be enough for MobileSafari to keep more than two or three pages in memory. If so, Apple really needs to consider some sort of caching or serialization scheme rather than completely flushing away purged pages. Pages I wrote the entire 4,828-word first draft of this piece on my iPad using Pages.1 I didn’t use any of the formatting or layout tools — I used it as a text editor rather than a word processor. It’s quite serviceable. What I like best is that it opens very quickly. Switching between, say, Pages and Safari and back to copy-and-paste a URL feels more like switching than quitting, launching, quitting, relaunching. You don’t need to (and can’t) save manually. Whatever you do in a document simply persists automatically. When you go back to the list of documents, they’re presented as big thumbnails — very much like the list of open web pages in Safari. Pages’s toolbar and ruler are only visible when in portrait mode. In landscape mode, all of the chrome disappears. It’s just a full-screen editing view, a la WriteRoom. I’m writing this piece in this full-screen (landscape) mode, with my iPad propped up on a table in Apple’s iPad case. It’s a nice setup, and I can genuinely imagine leaving my MacBook at home for trips in the future, with the addition of few missing iPad apps (like, say, a good SFTP client). But when I say there’s no chrome in the landscape mode, I mean none. Pages has a decent simple little find and replace feature, but it’s only possible to invoke it in portrait mode. (I must have hit Command-F a dozen times so far, to no avail.) There are already complaints piling up that the iWork apps don’t support the complete feature set of their current Mac counterparts — open a file created in a Mac version of Pages/Numbers/Keynote on your iPad and certain document features may be removed. (The iPad apps prompt you with an alert telling you which aspects of the document have been changed or removed.) Another way of looking at it though, is that the iPad iWork apps are to their Mac counterparts what the iPad as a whole is to the Mac — simpler, more focused, but in some ways faster. Pages launches and is ready for input far quicker on my iPad than on my MacBook Pro. Writing this review, I’ve been switching back and forth between Pages and Safari. It doesn’t feel like quitting Pages, launching Safari, copying a URL, quitting Safari, and re-launching Pages. It feels more like switching — it only takes a moment after tapping the Pages icon on the home screen to be back where I was in my open document. (My only complaint is that you lose the insertion point when leaving and coming back to Pages — the document re-opens to where you left off, but you must tap the screen to place the insertion point. When switching several times, that becomes slightly tedious.) This is obviously not even close to a full review of Pages, but I can say without hesitation that it’s easily worth $10. Syncing There is, however, a severe shortcoming inherent to the iWork suite of iPad apps: document syncing between Mac and iPad. It’s a convoluted mess. In short, the only way to edit a document on your iPad that was created on your Mac, or vice versa, is to go through a convoluted multi-step process of exporting, copying, syncing or downloading, and importing. Ted Landau has copiously documented the entire situation in this article at The Mac Observer. Read it and weep. What it boils down to is that there is no syncing really. Real syncing is something like IMAP for email, or the way MobileMe handles calendars and contacts. When I read a bunch of new email messages using my iPad or iPhone, when I next sit down at my Mac, those messages are marked as read in my inbox. I don’t have to do anything on the Mac for that to happen. That’s just how IMAP works. I can add a new calendar event on my Mac, then walk away from my computer, take my iPhone out of my pocket, and the event is there. I can add a note to that event using my iPhone and a few moments later the note will be synced to the event on my Mac. Certain of my favorite iPad and iPhone apps sync like this too. When I read a bunch of RSS items using NetNewsWire on my iPad, they’re marked as read on my Mac. Sitting at my Mac in my office, I can send a long article to Instapaper. I go downstairs, pick up my iPad, sit on the couch, launch the Instapaper iPad app, and a few seconds later, there’s the article I just added to my Instapaper queue. This is the sort of data flow that makes me feel like I’m living in the future — using multiple hardware devices to view, edit, and modify the same data. I don’t worry about where separate copies of my data exist. Conceptually it’s just there in the apps, and the apps do all the hard work of pushing and pulling changes made on other clients. The data flow with these iWork apps isn’t like that at all, and needs to be for them to be truly useful. It doesn’t matter how good the user interface for viewing and editing spreadsheets is in Numbers for iPad if my spreadsheets aren’t there. Here’s an example. I keep the schedule for Daring Fireball RSS sponsorships in a Numbers document. What I’d like to be able to do on my iPad is launch Numbers and access the current version of that spreadsheet. But the only way I could possibly do that today would be if I went through the following steps every single time I made a change to the document on my Mac: Before opening the current version of the file on my Mac, check to make sure there isn’t a more recent version of it on my iPad. Open the file on my Mac and make changes. Save. Dock my iPad to my Mac via USB. Switch to iTunes and go to the Apps tab for my iPad. Add the newly-saved revision of the document to the file sharing list for the iPad’s Numbers app. Sync. Even after going through all of this, when I do want to open this file on my iPad, I have to remember not to open the last revision of it listed in the iPad Numbers app’s “My Documents” list, but instead remember first to import the latest revision from Numbers’s file sharing list to Numbers’ “My Documents”. And, again, it’s effectively up to me to keep track of which machine, Mac or iPad, has the most recent revision of the file. To say the least, this is a recipe for disaster, and even if you don’t make a mistake and inadvertantly make significant changes to an out-of-date version of the document on one of the two machines, you’re stuck with a preposterously, mind-bogglingly convoluted workflow each and every time you make a change to the document. The bottom line, obviously, is that there is no way that anyone is going to use these iPad apps in the way I describe above. As-is they’re only useful to me in two ways. First, I can imagine using Pages on the iPad to compose original new documents — posts for Daring Fireball — while I’m using my iPad. I’ll either finish them there and then copy-and-paste the result into the web-based posting interface for DF, or, I’ll send the draft to my Mac for further editing (which is what I did for the piece you’re reading right now). I can also imagine creating finished Keynote decks on my Mac and then moving them, once, to my iPad, and taking only my iPad with me to the presentation — i.e. using Keynote, Numbers, and Pages on the iPad as viewers for finished documents. (And, conveniently, they’re viewers that can make edits if you notice a mistake or want to make a last-minute change or addition.) But there’s no possible way to use these apps as clients alongside their Mac counterparts on an ongoing basis. The sort of over-the-air syncing I’m imagining for iWork is, admittedly, a difficult problem to solve. But the bad news for Apple is that their top competitor in this space has a solution: Google Documents. With Google Documents, there’s no making copies, importing/exporting, manually invoked syncing, or USB tethering involved if you want to edit a single instance of a spreadsheet from multiple machines. You just make changes on one machine, and when you next look at that document from another machine the changes are there. The workflow for iWork is downright antediluvian. It’s not just pre-Cloud, it’s pre-network. It’s effectively the “Who’s got the latest revision of this file?” workflow of the days when we moved files from one machine to another via floppy disks. What in the world is iWork.com for if not for solving this problem? At least iWork.com lets you avoid having to physically tether the two machines via USB to get a document from the Mac to the iPad (or vice versa), but it’s no better than file sharing through iTunes conceptually. When you send a file to iWork.com (from either Mac or iPad) you’re pushing a copy, a snapshot of the document from that moment. After making subsequent changes, you’ve got to push those changes to iWork.com all over again. And to get them on the other device, you must manually import — making just another copy. What you ought to be able to do is specify iWork.com as the canonical shared storage location for an iWork document. iWork.com doesn’t serve as any such purpose today. iPhone Apps I predicted it’d be crummy to run non-iPad-optimized iPhone apps on the iPad — like Classic apps running on Mac OS X — and I was right. It’s OK for games — they look jaggy, but jaggy games aren’t that uncommon. But regular (non-game) apps just look and feel weird. When you run them pixel-doubled text doesn’t scale dynamically — everything is pixel doubled. It’s a good way of proving that the iPad is not “just a big iPhone”, though. The only iPhone app I find myself using on my iPad is Simplenote, for copying and pasting bits of text to and from my Mac and iPhone. Needless to say, I’d love an iPad-optimized version of Simplenote. iBooks and Kindle The iBooks app is free, but doesn’t ship with the iPad by default — you have to download it from the App Store. Apple hasn’t explained why this is so, but there are several reasons I can think of. For one thing, e-book rights are managed on a country-by-country basis — it seems likely that the iBooks store won’t be available in every country where the iPad will soon be sold. Making it an App Store app will also allow Apple to update the app on its own schedule — built-in system apps only get updates along with the entire system. So in some ways, the iBooks app is on equal footing with other e-book readers available in the App Store, particularly Amazon’s Kindle app. But iBooks does get some special treatment — the first time I launched the App Store app on my iPad, it prompted me with a dialog box asking if I’d like to down the free iBooks app. It’s impossible to miss. The iBooks app also has display brightness controls that are not availble through public APIs. Winnie the Pooh is included as a free sample, and the choice is genius — it’s a beloved story, a good read, and best of all (from Apple’s perspective) it can’t be read properly on the Kindle because the color illustrations are a big part of the experience. No book on the Kindle will ever look this good. The Kindle has its own advantages — its books are generally cheaper, its selection bigger, and e-ink works better in bright sunlight — but Winnie the Pooh epitomizes the iPad’s advantages. iBooks’s page-turning animation is delightful — it doesn’t just track your finger-swipe precisely, but even renders the type faintly in reverse on the other side of the “sheet”. The practical minded can simply tap the right and left edges of the screen to turn pages. Amazon’s iPad-native Kindle app is good, too. Oddly, to my mind, it is superior to their recent Mac app in every way. It looks better, feels better, renders text better, and has more features. I say this is odd because the iPad was announced just two months ago; Mac OS X was announced over a decade ago. I suspect part of the reason the Mac version is so crippled is that they were more worried about keeping Mac users from un-DRMing Kindle content than they were about making the Mac app an actual good-to-use app. The Kindle doesn’t do animated page-turning, but that’s not a big deal. Reading is great. And the Kindle’s ace-in-the-hole, of course, is the far larger selection of e-books in its store — hundreds of thousands versus Apple’s tens of thousands. I bought When the Game Was Ours, a new book by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. It is not available in the iBooks store. So Kindle’s advantage is library size (and, secondarily, price per title). iBooks’s advantage is the color display. I’d be shocked if every single piece of advertising Apple produces for iBooks doesn’t focus entirely on screenshots of books with color illustrations, photos, and video. I think it’s going to be easier for Apple to improve the iBooks store library than it will be for Amazon to create a Kindle hardware model with a color display. I think Amazon would do well to add color support to Kindle e-books for use on iPads and iPhones. Kindle has a better chance of long-term success as a software platform than a hardware one. Third-Party Apps in General Given that most iPad-native apps in the store right now were developed using only the simulator by developers without access to actual iPads, you might expect apps to be buggy and UIs to be awkward. I’ve found the bugginess to be true, but the UIs are actually good. I think the physical prototypes developers jury-rigged for themselves paid off, design-wise. There’s no question that UIs are going change rapidly in the coming weeks now that developers have the real deal to measure the feel of their apps against, but for the apps I’ve been using the most, they’re pretty damn good already. As for the bugginess, I’m not saying it’s inexcusable or even surprising — the SDK simulator is not a perfect simulation. Several of the bugs I’ve reported are only present when the apps are running on actual iPad hardware. On the whole, though, the quality of iPad apps on day one is better, by far, than I had expected considering that developers had to build them in the dark, as it were. Prices, so far, are significantly higher than for iPhone apps — but still far cheaper than category equivalent Mac apps. For example, NetNewsWire is $10 (and going to $15 in May); Things is $20; and OmniGraffle is $50. No doubt there are going to be wildly popular 99-cent iPad apps, but it’s also shaping up as serious platform for serious tools. Games are a bit more expensive, too, but, to me, reasonably so. The final word count is just short of 7,300, so admittedly I wound up writing quite a good chunk of it in BBEdit on my Mac.�↩
The Complete History of the Macworld Expo

For anyone who attended the very first Macworld San Francisco and then skipped the next 24, this year’s event might seem awfully similar to that very first show. Hot on the heels of the runaway success of the Mac and its own successful launch, Macworld magazine tapped event coordinator Peggy Kilburn in 1985 to develop a conference that “will bring (attendees) in contact with the people who best understand the far-reaching effects the Macintosh will have in business, schools and at home.” It was held in Feb. 21-23 and Steve Jobs didn’t even step foot in Brooks Hall, let alone address the crowd. Similarly, this year’s event won’t take place until February--abandoning its traditional January time slot held since 1986--and Jobs won’t be attending. But there’s something fitting about Macworld returning to its roots for its 25th anniversary. Before Steve turned it into his personal showcase and the Apple booth had to be draped in black curtains, Macworld was a place for fans and professionals to share ideas free from the prying eyes of PC users, where product announcements were welcome but not necessary, and the keynote was the least interesting part of the show. ��Macworld Expo the 1980s - The decade of the Mac Macworld Expo San Francisco 1985: When the doors closed on the first Macworld, which shared exhibit space with a boat show double-booked for the same weekend, more than 10,000 attendees had walked through its doors, and the bad taste from the Super Bowl XIX “Lemmings” ad was all but washed away. Hot items for the fledgling Macintosh included the Lotus Jazz office suite (but surprisingly, not Macintosh Office), MacPrompter for scrolling text, and a slew of video and imaging apps that leveraged the Mac’s powerful graphics capabilities. � Macworld Expo Boston 1985-86: While Apple kept a decidedly muted presence at the first two Macworld Boston Expos, the east-coast show quickly became cemented on the calendar of Apple fans and developers. With more than 500,000 Macs in circulation and the resignation of Steve Jobs fresh on their minds, attendees had more than enough to talk about at that first event, held Aug. 21-23, 1985, at the Bayside Exposition Center, and touted as a chance to see “all of the elements of the Macintosh Office. ... The 512K Macintosh, the LaserWriter, and AppleTalk, as well as Jazz from Lotus, are just a few of the products you’ll get to see.” �MWE SF 1986: After observing such a successful inaugural show, Apple CEO John Sculley--who reportedly credited Macworld for reinvigorating Apple after a disappointing end to 1984--took full advantage of the second annual expo, which expanded to the Civic Auditorium to accommodate larger crowds. While not quite worthy of Stevenote status, Apple’s less-than-charismatic leader unveiled the SCSI-equipped, 8MHz Macintosh Plus and pricey LaserWriter Plus during his keynote presentation. �MWE SF 1987: A heavy focus on desktop communications and networking brought the long-awaited AppleShare file server software and AppleTalk PC Card, and delivered effortless, cross-platform file sharing long before IBM developed its own solution. A major component of the floundering Macintosh Office, AppleShare survived long after Apple’s desktop publishing suite was sent to the junkyard. �MWE Boston 1987: Apple landed in Boston ready to show off HyperCard and script language HyperTalk, one of the first apps to utilize the hotlinking hypermedia concept that would become the cornerstone of the World Wide Web. Also making their debut were MultiFinder 5.0, the AppleFax modem and ImageWriter LQ.�MWE SF 1988: With some 350 exhibitors and 25,000 attendees, MacWorld kicked off its fourth annual San Francisco show with an emphasis on the Mac’s business capabilities. In his keynote speech, Sculley stressed Apple's commitment to networking and connectivity advancements, and introduced the zippy Laserwriter II family, with up to 8 pages per minute of printing power. � �MWE Boston 1988: Apple CEO John Sculley may have landed in Boston to show off the Apple Scanner, but the buzz on the trade floor was all about the Macintosh II, as developers showed off an array of drawing, writing and CAD tools to leverage the power of Apple’s newest Mac.�MWE SF 1989: Breaking a pattern of adding an “X” to Macs fitted with a Motorola 68030 processor (maybe Sculley didn’t want to announce the Mac SEx to a raucous convention crowd), Apple used its biggest stage to release the SE/30 upgrade, a Mac that would be as popular as it was long-lasting. Among the show favorites was the streamlined Claris MacWrite II, one of the last times a Claris product would be among the show favorites. �MWE Boston 1989: For the fifth anniversary of the Macworld Expo, Sculley opted to keep the anticipated Macintosh Portable (which would make its debut a month later, on Sept. 20) under wraps, and instead showcased the Mac’s educational possibilities with the Visual Almanac, an interactive multimedia demonstration kit for the classroom that utilized Apple’s groundbreaking HyperCard.�NEXT: Macworld Expo: The 1990's �Macworld Expo the 1990's - On the brink MWE SF 1990: The 40MHz Macintosh IIfx made a big splash at the first Macworld of the 90s, despite its six-figure price tag. One of the reasons for all that speed was the launch of a Mac-only graphics-editing program by a little company named Adobe, which generated quite a bit of interest on its own. � MWE Boston 1990: HyperCard 2.0 was all the rage at the subdued summer Macworld, but even Apple’s own booth had a hard time competing with the DTS’ dogcow buttons inscribed with her famous catchphrase, “Moof!” �MWE SF 1991: Developed to optimize the 68000 line of Macs, the slick, streamlined System 7 was the co-star of Macworld, sharing the limelight with Apple’s new multimedia app. Sculley’s keynote was its usual shade of dull, save the impressive QuickTime tour of Ben & Jerry’s Vermont factory, which roused the crowd from its slumber. Also unveiled were a series of networking products, including the Macintosh LC Ethernet card. �MWE Boston 1991: While PowerBook rumors were flying and many Mac users were getting their first glimpse at System 7, the trade floor was still buzzing about a bombshell announcement just weeks earlier. Industry rivals Apple and IBM (and Motorola) put aside their differences and entered into a unique partnership that would eventually produce the microchip that would power the Mac for more than a decade.� Macworld Expo Tokyo 1991-1992: Just because Apple didn’t bother to release any new products (although CEO John Sculley did cut the ribbon on opening day) doesn’t mean Macworld Tokyo had a hard time filling the Makuhari Messe convention center when it opened its doors on Feb. 13, 1991. A rabid overseas fanbase was eager to get their hands on the latest and greatest in Mac apps and accessories, and Apple embraced its new audience with open arms. MWE SF 1992: Continuing the theme of the prior year’s conference, Macworld 1992 featured hundreds of new applications using QuickTime and an astute prediction from Sculley: “I believe pervasive networking will be the driving force of the information industry during the 1990s.” The Mac may have been this crowd’s “ideal multimedia machine,” but an ex-Apple employee’s latest OS was making some noise up the road as the NeXTWORLD Expo opened its doors to those who wanted to think slightly differenter. �MWE Boston 1992: After a successful PowerBook launch the prior October, Apple used Macworld Boston to upgrade its best-selling model with more RAM and a lower price point, setting the stage for a series of dockable PowerBook Duos that would be released in the fall. MWE SF 1993: Held entirely at its now-permanent Moscone Center home, Sculley used his final Macworld San Francisco keynote to unveil a host of imaging products, including ColorSync, LaserWriter Pro workgroup printers, StyleWriter II personal printer, Apple Color Printer and Apple Color OneScanner. Making all those projects that much easier were the Apple Adjustable Keyboard and ADB Mouse II, Apple’s first teardrop-shaped clicker. � �MWE Boston 1993: The best product Steve Jobs didn’t have a hand in, Sculley finally rolled out the Newton MessagePad at Macworld Boston, more than a year after publicly demonstrating its prototype. Unlike anything on the market, Newton was a bold device with a brilliant interface that ought to have been as popular as the iPhone. Instead, only a few hundred thousand were sold over its four-and-a-half-year reign. �MWE Tokyo 1993: Apple’s first product launch outside the United States brought a slew of new hardware, including the Macintosh Color Classic, Macintosh LC III, Macintosh Centris 610 and 650, Macintosh Quadra 800, PowerBook 165c, and the LaserWriter Select 300 and 310 laser printers. All those new products paid off, as the expo attracted nearly 100,000 attendees in just its third year.� MWE SF 1994: With more than 70,000 attendees on hand to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mac, the sprawling Apple booth didn’t disappoint. Visitors were met with a slew of new products, including a walking tour of its online service, eWorld, along with the recently released Macintosh TV and Powerbook Duo 270c. But buzz on the floor was mostly surrounding the upcoming PowerPC transition, which promised faster, more powerful Macs for the next decade. �MWE Boston 1994: The critical, if not commercial, success of Newton brought some 70,000 attendees to the following year’s Macworld Boston, forcing Apple to set up its booth across the street from the World Trade Center. It was worth the trip, as new Power Macs showed off the capabilities of the first PowerPC chips and System 7.5 introduced users to Stickies, WindowShade and the Control Strip. �MWE Tokyo 1994: Instead of showing off OS 7.5 for umpteenth time or adding another PowerPC model to its Power Mac line, Apple took the wraps off the QuickTake 100 digital camera. Designed in association with Kodak, the QuickTake looked more like a pair of binoculars than a camera but made an instant splash with the expo crowd. Also introduced was Color StyleWriter printer, to make sure all those photos looked their best. � MWE SF 1995: As expected, the chip transition was in full swing, with PowerPC Power Macs drawing attention at the expo, but the most excitement centered around Power Computing, the first company to take advantage of Apple’s licensing program. �MWE Boston 1995: Trying to steal some of the thunder from the forthcoming Windows 95 release, Apple demoed Copland in all its buggy, crashy glory on brand-new AppleVision displays. Be thankful it failed; if not, Steve might never have come back. �MWE Tokyo 1995: Apple welcomed a new clone manufacturer to its ranks, Japan-based Pioneer Electronic, and proudly took the wraps off the active-matrix PowerBook 5300c, which thankfully didn’t explode on the stage. The same can’t be said about the Singapore plant that was manufacturing them. MWE SF 1996: Sinking revenue and executive board shake-ups cast a dark shadow over Macworld’s 12th annual event, which saw a continued push away from Apple’s proprietary platform with the release of the PC compatibility card, capable of turning any Power Mac into a dual micro-processor system capable of running Windows 95. �MWE Boston 1996: The first U.S. keynote by CEO Gil Amelio made some attendees long for John Sculley, but the 20 percent across-the-board price cut on the Performa line was certainly welcome, as was the Performa 6400’s new InstaTower case. Before dousing the Copland project with a giant bucket of cold water, Gil got the crowd riled up by declaring Apple was “transitioning from a dialogue that has centered on survival to a dialogue that’s going to center on excitement.” We think the excitement he was referring to had something to do with the imminent launch of the first issue of MacAddict magazine. That, or the return of Steve Jobs, we’re not sure.� �MWE Tokyo 1996: CEO Gil Amelio announced the fruits of its partnership with Bandai in the form of a gaming console based on Apple’s Pippin technology. Officially called Pippin Atmark, the device was supposed to combine the best parts of each company into a super-computer-video-game-machine, and if you had stopped by Apple’s booth, it certainly seemed that way. Sadly, we know how the story ended. � MWE SF 1997: Steve Jobs’ first appearance on a Macworld stage was preceded by a lengthy, rambling Gil Amelio, whose three-hour, teleprompter-plagued speech may have inspired Jobs to take over speaking duties. Amelio was supposed to rev up the crowd by showing the stunning Twentieth Anniversary Mac and outlining Apple’s NeXT-based OS strategy, but botched the whole thing up, effectively ruining Steve’s big moment. �� MWE Boston 1997: As late as July 2, Amelio was planning to deliver the keynote address at Macworld Boston, so when he was abruptly forced out July 5, all eyes turned to the new kid on the block. The excitement was palpable when the lights finally dimmed, and when Steve stepped out on stage to a 30-second standing ovation, a new era in Apple had clearly begun. And then he announced a partnership with Microsoft, drawing boos. �MWE Tokyo 1997: Before Steve killed the project later in the year, Apple teamed with Fujifim for its last attempt at a digital camera, the QuickTake 200, which used removable cards to store pictures but was lost in a sea of cheaper, smaller entries. Also introduced at the show were the Power Macintosh 4400, 7300, 8600 and 9600, and the Powerbook 3400c, which immediately assumed the short-lived position of the world’s fastest laptop. MWE SF 1998: Just months before the iMac would turn the industry on its head, iCEO Steve’s first full Macworld San Francisco keynote brought no new products, but still had the crowd in awe with a surprise “one more thing” announcement: Apple’s profitable again. � �Macworld Expo New York 1998: Making the move south to the Big Apple could have been disastrous for Macworld, but diehard Mac fans would have jumped a motorcycle onto a speeding train to catch a glimpse of the iMac. Attendance dipped noticeably from the prior year’s Boston show, but enough shows up to give Macworld East a permanent new home in New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.�MWE Tokyo 1998: The Macworld Tokyo crowd cheered politely for the debut of the first Japanese-language Think Different ad, but went absolutely wild when Steve Jobs appeared on stage (via a taped message). He didn’t show off any new products, but assured the audience that Apple wouldn’t be leaving them out of their new OS strategy: “Apple is committed to having the best kanji (Chinese characters) systems in the world, and we're pouring even more into R&D toward that end.” MWE SF 1999: A rainbow of iMacs greeted visitors to Apple’s booth, but all eyes were on “the world’s most open-minded personal computer,” a sleek tower dressed in blue and white with a hinged door for easy access to its G3 processor. And the color-coordinated Apple Studio Displays weren’t too shabby either. �MWE New York 1999: Say hello to the iBook. But first, say hello to Noah Wyle, star of “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” who fooled the crowd momentarily with his nearly-spot-on Steve Jobs impersonation (though he forgot to unscrew the cap to his water bottle). After a demo of the imminent OS 9, the real Steve unveiled Apple’s newest laptop, a candy-colored clamshell book that had a handle and looked strangely like a potty seat.� MWE Tokyo 1999: Steve’s first keynote at Macworld Toyko was basically a rewrite of January’s Macworld San Francisco presentation, with the exception of an untimely crash of the Power Mac G3 during Microsoft’s Internet Explorer demo. But all anyone really cared about were iMacs. �NEXT: Macworld Expo: The 2000's �Macworld Expo the 2000's - Apple's return MWE SF 2000: With the renaissance in full swing, Steve announced Apple’s next-generation operating system in earnest at the first Macworld of the new millennium. With “state-of-the-art plumbing,” “killer graphics” and a 12-month, “gentle migration,” Steve introduced the masses to the blue-tinged world of Aqua of the Dock and kept his promise: A public beta was in our hands by September. � MWE New York 2000: Indigo, Ruby, Sage and Snow iMacs, dual-processor Power Macs, optical mice, translucent keyboards, iMovie 2, and 15-, 17- and 22-inch displays. None stood a chance against the star-crossed star of the show, the jaw-dropping Power Mac G4 Cube. Everyone wanted to take one home, but strangely, few people actually did. �MWE Tokyo 2000: After an quiet debut in 1999, Steve pulled out all the stops in 2000, unveiling brand-new portables and Power Macs, including the iBook Special Edition and Pismo PowerBook. Steve also made good on his ’98 vow to include the highest-quality Japanese fonts in OS X. � MWE SF 2001: One of Jobs’ shining moments (even by his standards), the 2001 Stevenote featured a shipping date for Mac OS X, two more pieces of the digital hub (iDVD and iTunes), SuperDrive-equipped graphite Power Mac G4s, and the piece de resistance, the “mega-wide,” one-inch thick Titanium Power Mac G4. Suddenly, all was right-side up with the world (including the Apple logo on the case). �MWE New York 2001: A preview of Mac OS X Puma (and a few lengthy third-party demos) brought scarcely any new features, but faster iMacs and Quicksilver Power Macs promised an all-around zippier experience.� MWE Tokyo 2001: The final aesthetic flourish for the iMac brought the trippy Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian patterns and added CD-RW drives to accompany iTunes 1.1 Joining the art-deco all-in-ones were new Power Mac G4 Cubes, which also added the elusive CD-RW drives. MWE SF 2002: A 14-inch iBook joined the wildly popular 12-inch “ice-book” family and iPhoto rounded out Apple’s digital hub vision, but the show-stopper was the flat-panel iMac G4, an overdue update that was well worth the wait. Part-computer, part-sculpture, the “Sunflower” iMac firmly cemented the Stevenote as the greatest show on earth. �MWE New York 2002: A notably lackluster presentation eliminated Apple’s free e-mail in favor of a paid service and delivered a rehash of the Jaguar demo Steve gave two months earlier at WWDC. No killer new products to speak of, but iSync, iCal and iTunes 3 made their debut, along with solid-state iPods (with Windows support) and 17-inch iMacs, but attendees couldn’t help but notice the spring was missing from Steve’s step.�MWE Tokyo 2002: Steve crammed another 5 gigabytes into the diminutive iPod music player as the Macworld Tokyo expo was moved to the more spacious Big Sight convention center for Apple’s last overseas splash. Turned out the switch was prophetic, as Steve took the wraps off the stunning 23-inch Cinema HD display, Apple’s largest to date. � MWE SF 2003: Final Cut Express, Airport Extreme, iLife, Keynote and Safari would have been enough for most company’s trade shows, but not Apple. After nearly two hours of nonstop announcements, Steve saved the best for last: The largest (17-inch) and smallest (12-inch) PowerBooks ever, dressed to the nines in classy aluminum. �MWE New York 2003: After Steve bailed on his annual keynote to protest IDG’s plan to move to the expo back to Boston the following year, the show, now known as Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo, found itself in a tailspin. Apple fulfilled its commitment to exhibit--and even announced the availability of Soundtrack as a standalone product--but the thrill was most definitely gone.�MWE Tokyo 2003: On the heels of the east-coast shake-up, Apple abruptly pulled out of the Japan show, too, and IDG cancelled the event altogether. MWE SF 2004: A somewhat disappointing keynote delivered Garageband and way too much John Mayer, but still finished on a high note as Steve unveiled the product no one knew they needed: a smaller iPod in a rainbow of flavors. �MWE Boston 2004-2005: A pair of intimate Boston expos closed the book on Macworld East for good, as IDG vowed to focus its efforts on the sole remaining show in San Francisco. MWE SF 2005: Also known as the keynote that brought down ThinkSecret, Steve took to the Moscone stage in 1995 looking to capitalize on all the attention Apple was getting. Along with a new iLife and a surprise successor to the defunct AppleWorks, two low-priced products sought to dispel the notion of Apple as a high-priced niche company: the $99 iPod shuffle and $499 Mac mini. MWE SF 2006: Apple kicked off the Intel transition by fitting its two most popular Macs with Core Duo processors. Little was changed from the new iMac aside from its new brain, but the PowerBook underwent a series of tweaks and refinements, including the retirement of its famous name “because we’re kind of done with Power and we want Mac in the name of our products.” �� MWE SF 2007: The last great Macworld keynote ever. Nuff said. MWE SF 2008: With the near-impossible task of following the launch of the iPhone, Steve took the stage for his last Macworld San Francisco keynote with a bag full of assorted treats--cheaper Apple TVs, iTunes movie rentals, iPod touch and iPhone software updates, Time Capsule--and one big trick. Steve’s lasting image as the master of Macworld ceremonies: sliding the Macbook Air out its plain manila envelope. MWE SF 2009: Apple’s final Macworld appearance was preceded by letter from Steve explaining his “nutritional problem” and “decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote,” so attendees were prepared for a lackluster event. Apple surprised some with the new 8-hour, 17-inch Mac Book Pro, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09, but it just wasn’t the same without the man who made it all happen. � Macworld Expo elsewhere Building off the success of U.S. shows, a number of expos around the globe tried to capitalize on the Macworld name, to limited success: 1989: Macworld Canada 1991: Macworld Mexico, Hong Kong, Stockholm and New Zealand 1992: Macworld Barcelona, Paris (cancelled due to popularity of Apple Expo) 1994: Macworld Expo Summit (Washington, D.C.) 1996: Macworld Taiwan 2004: Macworld UK 2005: Macworld on Tour (only schedule date, in Kissimmee, Fla., cancelled) �
Gear of the Year 2009

Apple and its partners released hundreds upon hundreds of compelling products this year. We scoured the hardware universe, tested the heck out of the most intriguing gear we found, and now share our exclusive list of the 15 very best.Apple doesn’t make product design easy for its third-party partners and the rest of the hardware-manufacturing universe. Jonathan Ive and his design team craft the most emotionally inspiring gear in all of computing and gadgetdom, which only sets the bar higher for those companies aspiring to make products that work with Apple gear. Add in the fact that Steve Jobs keeps many of Apple’s development plans private, and you have third-party vendors essentially “designing blind,” as they anticipate products that complement the Apple oeuvre.But, oh well, such is the price we pay for gear that moves the soul. Apple’s design process creates the coolest family of products on the market, and the best third-party manufacturers always find a way to create gear and accessories that match Apple’s hallmarks of slick design, simple operation, and clever, cutting-edge features. On the following pages, we present the very best of the hardware we tested this year, as well as the iPhone and iPod touch apps that made profound impacts on the screens of our handhelds.�Notebook: 13" MacBook Pro�Pretend it’s January 1, 2009, and you’re in the market for a 13-inch Mac laptop. Your choices are few: Either a plastic MacBook starting at $999 (for which you’d get 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, and a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo “Penryn” chip), or the svelte aluminum MacBook Air starting at $1,799 (2GB of non-upgradeable RAM, the same 120GB hard drive, and a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo “Penryn” chip).The gulf between their prices: significant. The difference in their specs: yawn-inducing.The 13-inch MacBook Pro does a happy dance every time we sing its deserved praises.Thankfully, Apple introduced the 13-inch MacBook Pro in June, giving mobilistas the same features as the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros in a smaller, more portable package. Compared to the Air, it’s got more ports, a faster chip, upgradeable RAM, and a bigger and faster hard drive--and starting at $1,199, the 13-inch MBP is a few ducats cheaper too (the Air now starts at $1,499). From its all-day battery life to its oh-so-convenient SD card slot, the 13-inch Pro quickly became the favorite new Mac in our offices and a hands-down shoo-in for Gear of the Year honors.COMPANY: AppleCONTACT: www.apple.comPRICE: $1,199 and up��Display: LED Cinema Display�Apple’s LED Cinema Display isn’t necessarily perfect. It’s kinda expensive and only works with Mini DisplayPort–equipped Mac models (unibody MacBook Pros, the now-defunct unibody MacBook, the MacBook Air, and the latest Mac Pro and iMac). If your machine sports a DVI or mini-DVI port instead of a Mini DisplayPort, you can’t use this display, even with Apple’s adapters. Yes, at press time, Atlona was releasing an adapter that purports to connect any DVI Mac to this display, but we haven’t yet been able to test it yet.Behold: 24 inches of wow.So, yes, it may present problems for the budget- and DisplayPort-challenged, but none are serious enough to rob this incredible display of GOTY recognition. The 24-inch LED-backlit screen is sublime, even without a matte option, and the $899 price tag doesn’t seem so steep considering that the monitor can also power your laptop with its built-in MagSafe power cord. It’s like having a second power adapter, which typically would cost you $129. The LED Cinema Display also reflects the environmental strides Apple made in 2009: The glass is arsenic free, the cables are PVC free, it meets Energy Star requirements, it’s free of BFR and mercury, and the glass and aluminum enclosure are highly recyclable. OK, OK, and it’s great looking too. We’re just shallow like that.COMPANY: AppleCONTACT: www.apple.comPRICE: $899 ��Camcorder: Zi8 Pocket Video Camera�Kodak’s pocket-size Zi8 edges out the Flip MinoHD (4 out of 5 stars, Mar/09), thanks to its uncanny versatility. Nearly the same size as the Flip, the Zi8 can shoot in full 1080p at 30 frames per second, 720p at both 30 and 60 frames per second, widescreen VGA (848x480), and also take 5-megapixel stills. Removable SDHC cards let you swap in new memory, and the rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery is also removable, so you can pack extra cards and batteries and keep shooting all day, weekend, vacation, or bender long. A tripod mount, macro mode, 2.5-inch display, and stereo microphone input round out the package.Removable memory and batteries keep you shooting all day.Oh, and it’s $20 cheaper than the Flip MinoHD too (though you will need to shell out for an SDHC card; an 8GB one goes for about $25). Even the PC-only software doesn’t rain on the Zi8’s parade too much--the MOV files play in QuickTime and can be imported into iMovie for further editing. We hear ArcSoft Media Impressions, the included software, is no picnic anyhow, although we really wouldn’t know, as we’re all Mac Lifers. (Mac Lifers who are now videotaping each others’ every move.)COMPANY: KodakCONTACT: www.kodak.comPRICE: $179.95��Printer: Epson Stylus Photo R2880�With multifunction printers like the Epson Artisan 810 running about $300 for quite impressive photo reproduction, some might think us decadent for choosing a photo-only printer that costs twice as much. Well, price isn’t a major consideration in Gear of the Year voting, and when we consider the Stylus Photo R2880’s special talents for black-and-white printing and fine-art reproduction in general, we can’t help but turn to Epson’s most prosumer-oriented wide-format printer.An eight-cartridge ink system includes special magenta pigments for breathtaking tonal range in color prints. But where the R2880 really excels is in the grayscale reproduction of black-and-white prints. Three levels of black pigments and a special Black-and-White Photo Mode eliminate all of the unfortunate colorcasting that occurs in black-and-white prints from lesser photo printers.Only the fancy blue lighting in our photo studio casts impure color on the R2880's neutral B&W reproduction.The R2880 also supports a huge array of paper sizes and types. Formats range from 4x6 inches to 13x19 inches and 13-inch panoramic rolls. Supported paper types include Epson’s own velvet, watercolor, and canvas mattes, each of which feature its own unique fine-art texture. You can even feed in 1.3mm-thick art boards! The R2880 is the artist’s choice. We love it.COMPANY: EpsonCONTACT: www.epson.comPRICE: $599.99��Camera: EOS 5D Mark II�Pro photographers would likely give the stink eye to anyone who even suggested using one of those toy digi-cams that shoots both still images and video. But the Canon 5DMII isn’t a toy--it’s a game-changing digital SLR that adds the ability to shoot 1080p video to an already unbelievable package. That’s right, kids: This thing shoots HD video out of the box.The 5DMII takes insanely detailed still images with its 21.1 megapixel, 35mm CMOS sensor, which is 60 percent larger than the sensor in most other DSLRs. This translates into crisper images all around and low-light photos with zero to little grain or noise. And thanks to an enormous 3-inch LCD screen, you’ll be able to preview your shots with amazing detail, all in real time.Doesn't look like a video camera--but it is.When you get tired of still photos, you can shoot up to 12 minutes of HD 1080p video per each 4GB of flash memory. Video quality is good, and if you eschew the stock lens for a manually operated Canon lens, you can achieve superb video quality that rivals that of pro-level HD video cameras. Will the 5DMII replace those expensive HD video cameras? No. But it does take one step closer to leveling the playing field.COMPANY: CanonCONTACT: www.usa.canon.comPRICE: $2,699 (Body Only)��Desktop: 24-inch 3.06GHz iMac�There was a time not so long ago that when a pro content-creator needed a new Mac, we would emphatically point him or her to the fastest Mac Pro. You need to edit video? Get a Mac Pro. You got some huge photo files that need retouching? Get a Mac Pro. Mixing your latest album? Well, you get the point.The granddaddy of all iMacs is a winning mix of everything we care about in Apple computers.But now we’re not so sure, considering the sheer raw power and screen size of the 24-inch, 3.06GHz iMac. The biggest iMac in the Apple corral, this machine screams, thanks to its Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia GeForce GT 130 videocard, and cutting-edge DDR3 RAM. Throw in a 1TB of drive space and that huge beautiful display, and you have a desktop rig that’s gloriously well appointed for consumer enthusiasts and pretty damn zippy for professionals. The 24-inch iMac doesn’t beat the Mac Pro in terms of sheer processor power and expandability, but it’s perfection in terms of its price-to-performance-to-convenience ratios.COMPANY: AppleCONTACT: www.apple.comPRICE: $2,199��iPhone Case: Feather�The Feather case is less than a millimeter thick. That’s thin, y’all. Made of a light but strong polymer, it snaps around your iPhone with a satisfying click, providing a layer of scratch-n-bump protection and a splash of color without adding any bulk whatsoever. The Feather comes in more than a dozen colors, including eye-catching, limited-edition fluorescents. Incipio even includes two surface protectors (removable film for your iPhone’s touchscreen) and a soft cleaning cloth.The NBC peacock would be so proud.The bottom is open so you can dock your device in nearly any accessory without having to pull the case off first. Not every case can do that, which is why the Feather quickly became the iPhone case of choice in the Mac|Life offices. Our iPhones are nearly as busy as we are, in and out of docks, speakers, and other accessories all day long. Stylish, rugged, and thin. That’s the hat trick for an iPhone case, and the Feather scores big on all three points.COMPANY: IncipioCONTACT: www.myincipio.comPRICE: $19.99��Networking Device: Verizon MiFi 2200�At first glance, the MiFi doesn’t look impressive--it’s just a shard of shiny black plastic and a few LEDs. But once you charge it up and slip it in your pocket, it becomes a tool of furious networking utility.The MiFi achieves the seemingly impossible: making networking hardware sexy.MiFi uses Wi-Fi to form a bridge between your computer and Verizon’s 3G data network, allowing you to access the Internet from anywhere Verizon has 3G coverage. That means you can take your MacBook to the beach and iChat with your pals with your toes in the sand--or grab online copies of the dreaded quarterly TPS report. You can also work from your favorite café, park bench, or even a moving vehicle (as a passenger), all without having to worry about finding an open Wi-Fi network. Better still, unlike USB or ExpressCard devices that only work with a single computer, you can share your MiFi connection with up to four additional computers.Oh, sure, there are probably a bunch of Wi-Fi home network routers that did a bang-up job in 2009. Yay for them. Give them all cake and ice cream. We’ll still take the MiFi, a networking product that actually does something new.COMPANY: VerizonCONTACT: www.verizonwireless.comPRICE: $149.99 with two-year service contract��Set-Top Media Player: Western Digital WD TV�Sorry Apple TV, but the WD TV gets the nod for being the best device to deliver content from your Mac’s multimedia collection directly to your TV. In April, we gave the WD TV a tepid 3-star rating for some awkward interface issues, but since then WD has issued firmware updates addressing some of the nits and adding support for more video formats. Yes, we’re still waiting for network connectivity directly from Western Digital, but an active hacking community has been expanding the WD TV’s feature set, including getting it to play nice on Wi-Fi networks.Firmware updates and community hacks elevated the WD TV to greatness. Nine months and several different set-top boxes later, we still find ourselves skipping more complicated competitors and using the WD TV to play media files on our HDTVs. This box seems to support every file format one can throw at it. And unlike Apple and other set-top box competitors, Western Digital takes a very hacker-friendly stance with the WD TV, which we applaud, as great developments often flow from a passionate hacker community. It may not be the highest-tech device in our entertainment center, but for ease-of-use and rock-steady reliability, it’s the media box we love most.COMPANY: Western DigitalCONTACT: www.wdc.comPRICE: $99.99��Gadget: Pulse Smartpen�This überhandy pen records audio, all while a teeny infrared camera in the tip links the sound to whatever you’re writing at the time. This lets you sit back and really listen to a lecture, meeting, or presentation without frantically scribbling notes. Instead, you can just jot the quickest of notes (even a single number or letter--whatever you like) on Livescribe’s special dot paper and then easily find the associated audio clip later. To do this, just tap a note with your pen as you’re playing back the audio, and the recording instantly jumps to the portion that was recorded when you wrote that note. Docking the pen uploads your recordings and a digitized version of your notes to the Livescribe Desktop app, which lets you archive, search, organize, and share your notes and audio.The notebook in this photo isn't a random prop. It's a volume of Livescribe's special dot paper.It’s difficult to explain how useful the Pulse and Livescribe Desktop are (and they do more than we’ve outlined here), but the genius behind the idea, the pen’s classy design, and the “it just works” simplicity dropped the jaws of every single Mac|Life staffer when we got our paws on it earlier this year. It’s our Gadget of the Year--take a note.COMPANY: LivescribeCONTACT: www.livescribe.comPRICE: $169.99 and up��iPods: Fifth-Gen iPod nano�The fifth-gen iPod nano is the first iteration of the nano since the original to not receive a perfect 5-star score from Mac|Life, but it’s still undoubtedly the iPod of the Year. Its 2.2-inch screen is the biggest for a nano ever, it plays FM radio--something we’ve requested for years--and, oh yeah, did you notice that it shoots video? (Apple might have mentioned something about that in the commercials, but we just wanted to make sure.)The video camera interface includes a generous collection of 15 special visual effects, including ones that mimic thermal heat maps, creepy X-rays, old-timey sepia tones, and trippy motion blurs--just like when the vampires speed up in True Blood! This latest nano also includes a pedometer function that shows you how many steps you’ve taken on your latest hike. All in all, the fifth-gen nano has a cunning array of talents and is our iPod of choice, especially if price is a consideration.An honorable mention should go to the third-gen iPod touch, now at a lower price to bring App Store goodness to more people (cue the zombies: “One of us! One of us!”) without subjecting them to the slings and arrows of an AT&T contract.COMPANY: AppleCONTACT: www.apple.comPRICE: $149 (8GB), $179 (16GB)��Earbuds: Future Sonics Atrio�Two bills for a set of earbuds isn’t exactly an impulse buy, but certain things in life warrant dropping a bit of extra coin. World-class computers, fine bourbon, and audiophile-caliber earbuds all make our short list of entirely justifiable splurges. Future Sonics manufactures “in-ear monitors” for professional musicians, and the Atrio earbuds reflect that professional pedigree. They’ve outlasted several other pairs of comparably priced ’buds, which is no small feat, considering the daily abuse we put them through. But it’s really their impressive bass response--even at low volumes--that kept us coming back to them during Gear of the Year deliberations.Comfort and excellent bass response are worth $200.True to their roots in performance gear, the Atrios are comfortable for extended wear, and their treble is crisp and clean, without becoming fatiguing after listening for long periods. We’ve used the Atrios in a wide range of playback scenarios, from listening to the latest Kid Cudi record on the train, to the new Beatles box set at home, all with stellar results. In fact, we like them so much, we’ve been tempted to spring for optional custom-fit sleeves--but that would require a trip to an audiologist to take molds of our ear canals. Oh well, the included tips still sound mighty sweet.COMPANY: Future SonicsCONTACT: www.futuresonics.comPRICE: $199��Speaker Dock: SYD 5�After testing a lab full of iPod speaker docks this year, we’ve determined an incontestable truth: Either go big or go home. Indeed, after being bombarded with flimsy, tiny, tinny docks festooned with clocks, radios, cute graphics, and other distracting “features,” we found audio excellence in the Kanto SYD 5. It’s large, it bumps deep, deep base, and its only “feature” is the color you choose for its smooth, shiny shell. At 22 lbs, the SYD 5 feels like speakers of days gone by--and when a speaker has heft, it usually also has the audio to back up the extra weight.The SYD 5 system comes in black, green, and blue--and a curious note on the Kanto website reads, "other Pantone colors possible." Someone out there please order Flame Orange, 15-1157 TPX!The SYD 5 accomplishes its feats of strength with four speakers hidden behind a removable front cover. Two 5.25-inch drivers and a bunch of reflex ports push deep, rich bass for your hip-hop mixes, while two 3-inch drivers deliver the high end for all the wailing guitars you can handle. Weeeee!The SYD 5 includes an audio auxiliary input and AC power outlet for Hessian-caliber iTunes rocking with an AirPort Extreme. RCA and S Video outputs allow you to watch videos from your iPod on your TV. The weight lifter’s belt for your lower back? That one’s on you.COMPANY: KantoCONTACT: www.kantospeakers.comPRICE: $359��iPhone Headset: Griffin TuneBuds Mobile�Apple has a headset problem. The one it bundles with the iPhone is, well…the dictionary definition is “craptacular.” And we’re pretty sure that cramming hard plastic into one’s ears doesn’t meet anyone’s definition of comfortable. And don’t even get us started on the sound quality. Bottom line: We’re now on the third iteration of the iPhone, and Apple still hasn’t managed to include a set of ’buds that is comfy, stays in place, sounds good, and includes a good mic.Griffin Technology’s TuneBuds Mobile succeeds on all four points, and we dig its reasonable price. We don’t have anything against expensive, audiophile-level gear, but we absolutely love affordable accessories that do a really good job, and that describes the TuneBuds quite succinctly.No more tangles! Thank you, Griffin.The TuneBuds will work with your iPhone or any recent iPod that sports VoiceOver or Voice Control. The cable is covered in braided nylon and feels sturdier than most headset or earbud cables. And when you wind up the TuneBuds and stuff them in your pocket, the cables don’t tangle quite as much as other headsets. A small detail for sure, but that’s the kind of quality that helps a product transcend from great to awesome.COMPANY: GriffinCONTACT: www.griffintechnology.comPRICE: $39.99��Smartphone: iPhone 3GS�Internet fanboys will hurl slander that we’re secretly on Apple’s payroll. Mac computer enthusiasts will say we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid for a silly little pocket toy. And iPod touch owners will cry that we just don’t get it--that the iPhone is considerably more expensive than the similarly featured touch and isn’t even a very good device for voice calls, which is a bit of a problem for any gadget with the word “phone” in its name.To our critics, we say bah! We’ll see your cynicism and raise you 100 chips of we don’t care. Ever since June 2007 when we all bought our first-gen models, we have been using, loving, and hourly depending on some version of the iPhone, and the improvements in this year’s 3GS only reaffirm what most of our readers already know: Apple’s smartphone is the coolest, most useful piece of technology to hit the market since the personal computer itself.Let us reiterate the key improvements introduced in the 3GS:» Significantly faster app load times and better graphics performance in games.» Higher-res, better-looking photos thanks to a new 3-megapixel camera, now with automatic focus, exposure, and white-balance control.» Video support care of the fancy new camera.» Voice Control, which lets you find contacts, call phone numbers, and play music simply by talking into the iPhone's microphone.» A compass function that orients maps correctly, among other sweet benefits.Six Mac|Life editors, but only five new iPhones. Who's the 3GS holdout!?Did you really think any other mobile phone could knock the iPhone from our top spot? Of course not. But because the iPhone 3GS is so incredibly handy and has become so thoroughly integrated into the flow of our daily lifestyles, we are also compelled to name it Mac|Life Product of the Year. The apps we use entertain us, inform us, and have disruptively replaced a slew of other products and tools that we used by rote only a few years ago. And the new wave of augmented reality apps bring a certain Minority Report fantasy function to a device that is already firmly sci-fi.So don’t come crying to us with protests of “AT&T sucks!” and “there’s no physical keyboard!” We acknowledge those shortcomings, but remain resolute in our conviction that the iPhone 3GS is quite simply the finest, most innovative piece of personal technology by a wide, wide margin.COMPANY: AppleCONTACT: www.apple.comPRICE: $199 (16GB), $299 (32GB) (Pricing for both capacities is for new AT&T customers and eligible current customers) �
New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press

� �What will be Apple's next super-product--its next spectacular, game-changing "one more thing"? We asked five Apple experts to brainstorm with abandon and then brought their ideas to life.�Apple doesn’t develop category-creating products. Instead, it enters categories that already exist, deconstructs the competition, burrows deep into R&D mode, and returns with gear so dominant, you’d think Apple invented the category in the first place. This approach doesn’t require rocket science. It only requires a commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible--and not release a product until it offers enough innovative new features and clever design to make people switch away from the competition.Consider: The iPod has become a synonym for any portable music player. The iPhone has redefined what a smartphone can be. The MacBook enjoys near complete control of the $1,000-plus notebook market. And iTunes? It’s the world’s largest music retailer.Apple watchers are well aware that the company is planning to release some sort of tablet computer, and given Apple’s recent history of making surprise announcements, that could very well happen between the day we put this issue to bed and the day you read this article. But what if the tablet rumors are bunkum? And even if the tablet is announced, what comes next? Jaw-dropping products can take years to develop, and Apple surely has tablet-eclipsing wonders brewing in its labs.For answers, we turned to five tech journalists, people who follow Apple every day and are straight-A students of its products. Each expert was asked to fill out the same worksheet, wherein we requested details on the features, specs, wow elements, and essential “Appleness” of the gear they envision Apple making. We then took their worksheets and turned their ideas into the fully rendered fauxtotypes you see on the following pages. We did our best to stay faithful to our experts’ visions, but sometimes we did add elements of our own. But, of course, this entire little game is an exercise in interpretation: We asked our experts to interpret Apple’s magic mojo, and then we interpreted what our experts gave us. We hope we served our experts well.Want to play too? You can enter our "Apple Fauxtotype Challenge" in January. But for now, please begin your tour of Apple’s future vision.�The Fauxtotypes� �iRead�The Internet's everywhere-at-once tech reporter envisions the first mainstream application of full-color electronic paper.Veronica BelmontOmnipresent Video Host & BloggerBona Fides: Belmont was a producer/reporter for CNET and now hosts Sony's Qore video magazine and cohosts the Tekzilla video podcast. She is also a columnist for MaximumPC.com, regularly updates her own tech blog (veronicabelmont.com), and has 1,442,554 Twitter followers as of this writing--making her Twitter's most-followed tech journalist.With its Kindle device, Amazon proved that e-readers aren’t lame pieces of junk. You just have to use eye-soothing “electronic paper” (aka e-paper) instead of not-so-reading-friendly LCD displays. And just this October, Barnes & Noble released the nook, an e-reader with two screens: a grayscale e-paper screen for reading and a smaller color LCD screen for navigation.Yes, e-books are hot, and its against this backdrop that Belmont conceived the iRead--because you didn’t think Apple would pin all its e-book aspirations on the upcoming tablet, did you?Click to embiggen for more details.Belmont’s iRead concept uses two screens, but they’re nearly identical in their generous specs: 8 inches high, multitouch-enabled, and full-color-capable. That’s right: full color. The left-side reading screen uses e-paper, but it’s color e-paper--the first available in a consumer device. The right-hand screen, meanwhile, uses a regular LCD to display movies, games, and other traditional digital content. Belmont explains: “You can hold it open like a book to view rich media alongside corresponding text, or you can place it like an easel on your table top to watch videos or read hands-free.”Click to embiggen for more details.E-reader on one side, full-featured media player on the other. Sounds like the iRead could boost sales on iTunes, right? Indeed, Belmont envisions downloadable e-books that complement text with video snippets, author interviews, and other treats that only digital technology can provide. For example, “premium edition” e-books could have an audiobook component that syncs automatically to your text--so you could segue from reading a novel in a café to listening to that same novel in your car, all without missing a word.Click to embiggen for more details.Think your iTunes bills are getting expensive? Just wait until the iRead arrives, and you begin downloading e-books with abandon. It’s a pricey proposition, but if it reverses our descent into illiteracy, it’s a price worth paying.�The Fauxtotypes� iTenna�Gizmodo's top gadget expert posits a cynical response to the AT&T clusterfrick.Brian LamEditorial Director, Gizmodo.comBona Fides: As the editorial boss of the gadget site Gizmodo, Lam enjoys unparalleled hands-on access to the product developments of Apple, a company that makes early looks of new gear as rare and valuable as Wonka’s golden tickets. Lam is often awarded “first seat” at Apple press events and has established Gizmodo.com as the world’s fastest live-blogging source of breaking Apple news.The year is 2011. Apple is still locked in its suicide pact with AT&T. The reliability of voice and text-messaging service over the iPhone is as reliable as electricity service in Pyongyang. Anti-Apple protest rallies are a weekly occurrence, complete with cries of “No more telecom totalitarianism!” and placards of Steve Jobs bedecked in Kim Jong-il’s pompadour and glasses. Apple can no longer wait for AT&T to fix its network crisis, so it does an end-run around the iPhone’s greatest threat--it releases the iTenna, an add-on that allows users to tap into any cell network other than AT&T’s.Click to embiggen for more details.Or at least that’s the vision we saw when Brian Lam provided a bare-bones overview of his concept. Here’s Lam in his own words: “It’s a repeater. Perhaps an antenna, or a set of mini bunny ears. The thing could be attached. Or not. It connects to Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile, and routes everything over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or perhaps a dock connector.”Click to embiggen for more details.From this product brief, we extracted two features that really caught our fancy. First, we decided that connectivity over the dock connector made the most sense, so our fauxtotype integrates iTenna technology into a slide-on case. Second, we were smitten by the allusion to VHF rabbit ears, and thus begat the twin nubbins at the top of the device. The whimsy of the design matches the whimsy of the entire iTenna concept. As Lam himself states, “I’m perfectly aware that this product makes no sense, given the way Apple works. But, hey, neither does an iPhone that gets no reception in a major metropolitan city like San Francisco. Hello, I live four blocks from Haight Street--why do I have a zero percent call success rate for anything even resembling a human voice?”�The Fauxtotypes� iVision � The internationally focused gadget guru sees augmented reality making a quantum leap forward.Michael BrookEditor, T3 Bona Fides: One of Mac|Life’s sister magazines from across the pond, T3 (“Tomorrow’s Technology Today”) not only publishes in the UK, but also has 21 country-specific international editions, making it one of the world’s premier sources for gadget news and reviews. With 10 years experience reporting on technology, Michael Brook leads this formidable charge.Augmented reality apps bring science-fictiony data overlays to the iPhone--which isn’t a terribly ideal place for them, as the iPhone keeps reality (augmented or otherwise) at arm’s length from our eyes. Brook’s iVision concept fixes all that by placing augmented reality mere millimeters from our corneas, letting it integrate perfectly with our natural vision. Viewing life through iVision--with digital data served directly on top of all that we see--completes the promise of everything augmented reality technology has to offer.Click to embiggen for more details.“Each lens will have a built-in HUD,” Brook says, “so you’ll be able to view the output of your augmented reality apps directly on your glasses. No need to hold up the iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or a more advanced wireless standard, for connectivity. Low power, no need for constant charging. GPS positioning, etcetera, will be done on the iPhone with info relayed to the glasses for processing within the unit. Features like caller ID will naturally be viewed on the glasses, and when listening to music, track data will also appear on the head-up display.”Click to embiggen for more details.And then there’s the curious Oakley/Apple logo on the iVision frames. We told our experts that it’s common for Mac|Life fauxtotypes to imagine a marriage between Apple and some equally iconographic megabrand. In years past, we conjectured Apple synergizing with LEGO and Audi, and we were thrilled when Brook followed our lead, and used Oakley in his product brief.Click to embiggen for more details.“Apple has most areas of tech covered with the iPhone and computing products,” Brook says. “The glasses idea brings them squarely into the world of fashion, which, let’s face it, they’re already knee deep in from a tech point of view. Teaming up with a forward-thinking brand like Oakley allows them to be first to market with a groundbreaking product that makes more of existing tech.”�The Fauxtotypes� exerPod � The maven of mobility wants his exercise data completely bespoke.Mark McClusky Products Editor, WIREDBona Fides: As the senior editor in charge of products at Wired, McClusky is the magazine’s gear and gadget gatekeeper, leading the charge in covering technology that’s actually shipping today. He was also an editor on Mobile (a former sister magazine of Mac|Life), where he honed his expertise in handheld technology.There once was a day when just a single iPod ruled the portable audio universe. It had everything we needed in a music player--or so we thought. Now there are four iPods, with each version offering a form factor, feature set, and price point skewed to specific consumer needs. Could this same type of fragmentation and specialization be applied to the iPhone line? After reading McClusky’s exerPod brief, we’re excited by the possibilities.Click to embiggen for more details.The exerPod is an Apple handheld devoted wholly to physical fitness. As McClusky says, “It makes the act of tracking your exercise and health totally transparent--it’s a thing you throw in your pocket, and it just does it, if you’ll pardon the Nike reference.”Click to embiggen for more details.Actually, we like the Nike reference, because with the exerPod, we see more companies teaming up with Apple to create highly integrated telemetry systems that marry real-world gear (shoes, bikes, home gyms, and so on) with custom apps--much like the existing Nike+ system. But let’s let McClusky explain how this works:“It’s the ultimate tracking device for athletes, and other folks looking to monitor their health and performance. For example, using built-in accelerometers and GPS, it tracks speed and distance for runners. There’s also ANT+ wireless support to hook up to heart-rate monitors, bike-speed sensors and power meters, and gym equipment like treadmills. Any time you’re doing anything active, it’s tracking and capturing the associated data. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi let it beam information to your computer, as well as the ecosystem of sites that will spring up to let you slice and dice the data.”Click to embiggen for more details.Some might scoff that the iPhone can already do much of what McClusky envisions. Well, it can but at a hefty price--and not nearly as well. The exerPod is an inexpensive device (we see it costing $99) for folks who don’t want an Apple cell phone and simply need a small, rugged gadget that includes a battery of special features dedicated to a fitness lifestyle.�The Fauxtotypes� iMake � The mischievous master of DIY sees us making our own Apple gear in the future.Mark FrauenfelderEditor-in-Chief, MAKEBona Fides: As the founder of BoingBoing.net, one of the world’s first tech-culture websites, Frauenfelder has the longest career in tech journalism of all our five experts. He was also the founding editor of Wired Online, and today he’s the top editor of MAKE, a quarterly devoted to creating DIY tech projects.Good googamaloo, what has Frauenfelder asked us to imagine here?! His iMake concept came to us exceedingly well fleshed out, so we’ll turn the podium over to him:“iMake is a desktop manufacturing system based on the RepRap (reprap.org), an open-source 3D rapid prototyping technology. Apple led the way in the desktop publishing revolution, and now it’s leading the way in the desktop manufacturing revolution. With iMake, you can make your own small products at home, such as Bluetooth headsets, iPods with unique form factors, wristwatches, eyeglasses, door knobs, and more.Click to embiggen for more details.“To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part.Click to embiggen for more details. “It seems counter-intuitive that Apple would allow its customers to have a hand in designing its products, but after witnessing the runaway success of its iTunes App Store--which has thousands of apps created by third parties--Apple realized that quality rises to the top and that enabling people to design and create their things is even cooler than giving them the tools to design and create their own media, as Apple did when it put the power of publishing in the hands of everyone.”Thank you for this fascinating glimpse at the future, Herr Frauenfelder. And thank you for not spec’ing the iMake to have the ability to make its own parts, a feature of the RepRap.Uh, hello?! Skynet?! Anyone?!�The Fauxtotypes� �
Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone

Daniel Eran DilgerThe history of the Office Wars provides interesting context for Apple’s software strategy with the iPhone today. While third party software development offers all kinds of tantalizing potential for the new mobile, there are a half dozen reasons why Apple may not ever deliver the iPhone fully open to third party development, following the model of gaming consoles.Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolySoftware Lessons For the iPhone: 1997 - 2007.When Steve Jobs gained the opportunity to retake control of Apple in 1997, he immediately set out to build and assemble a software business for the Mac platform. Apple restarted serious development of QuickTime, much to the chagrin of Microsoft, which had targeted its sights on quickly destroying it to make way for monopolistic expansion of its Windows Media. [Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime][How Microsoft Pushed QuickTime's Final Cut][Why Apple Failed][How CPR Saved Apple][Why Apple Bounced Back]In addition to repurposing NEXTSTEP as Mac OS X and buying and building a series of professional and consumer software suites, the new Apple also developed the iPod platform. The iPod used intuitive software to differentiate Apple’s hardware, launching the computer maker into a new market for sophisticated, data-driven consumer devices. Microsoft’s own efforts in consumer electronics have flopped miserably with the failures of its Handheld PC, Pocket PC, UMPC, Windows Mobile, Media2Go, Mira, SPOT, and Personal Media Center initiatives, among many others.[Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft][The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile][Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV]Microsoft Outgunned in Software by a Hardware Maker.Microsoft was late to realize the software threat posed by the new Apple. Five major revisions and over thirty free updates to Mac OS X have ran circles around Microsoft’s capacity to deliver one desktop operating system software update and a couple service packs since 2001.[Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture]Apple also introduced three generations of iWork as an expanding productivity suite during the four year hibernation period Microsoft left since its last version of Office for Mac. Apple delivered support for Microsoft’s own proprietary OOXML file format on the Mac even before Microsoft itself could. At $79, iWork will eviscerate sales of the $400 Office for Mac, which has until now been a cash cow lazily ruminating for years between releases.This year, Apple also targeted and destroyed Microsoft’s fledgeling efforts to repurpose WinCE as a smartphone platform, seemingly overnight. That has given Apple a significant new platform in the iPhone, soon to be joined by the new iPod Touch. [What’s New in iWork 08][Apple's Secret iPhone Application Business Model][Curious Stuff About the New iPods]Six Reasons the iPhone Will Stay Closed.Will Apple give third party developers the keys to its new vehicle and allow them to drive off with the value it has created? It hasn’t yet, and there are a number of reasons to think that Apple won’t. Note that I am not expressing an opinion that the iPhone should be left closed, but rather simply presenting why I think it is unlikely Apple will ever open it up in the same way the Mac is open to any and all development.First, the company has lined up a suitable outlet for third party expansion via the standards based web platform available within Safari. That’s not enough to do everything developers want to do--it has serious constraints for creating games, for example--but it offers a good enough alternative to serve more than 80% of most developers’ needs.  [Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software] [iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse!] Second, the company has developed and begun production testing of online software sales through iTunes, currently limited to 5G iPod games. This mechanism appears too sophisticated to simply be designed for a half dozen $5 games. Apple is quite obviously going to distribute other software through iTunes for the iPhone. If it were going to be open, there would be no need for such a secure software distribution system.  [Apple's New Dual Processor Game Console] [Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works] Third, historical perspective suggests that once a solid platform has been established, a vendor can sell software as fast as it can deliver it without even trying very hard. Apple’s Claris, Microsoft’s Windows, and the game consoles from Sony and Nintendo all provide examples of this. The iPod’s success suggests Apple can establish a viable mobile platform without the need for software partners. It can handle software transactions as fast as it can sell iTunes songs. That’s big.  [Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork]  [Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits] [Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly] [Nintendo Wii vs Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3] Fourth, depending upon large third party developers has caused Apple--and Steve Jobs--some severe headaches. Microsoft's late 80s betrayal of the Macintosh led to Apple’s enslavement to Office, and induced CEO John Sculley to sign away broad intellectual property rights to Microsoft, which Microsoft then immediately used as a weapon against Apple.  In the mid 90s, Microsoft led Adobe, Macromedia and other large companies to abandon the Mac platform. In the late 90s, those same companies refused to support Apple’s new Rhapsody plans following the company’s acquisition of NeXT, forcing Apple to spend half a decade retooling the Mac OS, primarily so those developers could sell their existing apps to Mac users without much effort, even while they were earning fantastic software profits and delivering minimal innovation.  In other words, Apple’s technology game plan was delayed for a half decade so that Microsoft could sell its $400 copies of Office and Adobe could sell suites of its $500 and up creative applications, all while Apple did all the work in adapting its $99 operating system to run their Classic Mac OS code with minimal effort.   Prior to returning to Apple, Jobs experienced his own betrayal and abandonment at the hands of partners--including IBM, HP, Digital, Data General, and Sun--related to NeXT and OpenStep.   In all of these cases, the third parties were simply acting in their own best interests. With the iPhone, Apple will act in its own best interests. It will carve out a phenomenally powerful software platform for itself.  [Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC: The History of NeXT] [Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly] [Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody] Fifth, open Application Programming Interfaces involve complex management and maintenance. This is not a problem unique to Apple; it exists for Microsoft and every other company that offers an API for developers to build upon. An API is an interfacing boundary between the software supplied by a vendor and the software supplied by third parties.   Ideally, an API allows third parties to do everything they need very cleanly. That allows the vendor to make changes on their side of the API curtain without causing any compatibility problems for software on the other side. In reality, nearly every change and update has significant impacts for third party developers. The more complex and low level of an API being exposed, the more difficult it is to manage significant changes without introducing problems for third party partners.   Apple has worked to develop objective APIs that are stable and resilient to internal changes, but if developers are unsatisfied with the level of performance or portability provided, they will work around the API boundary, almost guaranteeing that any significant changes made on Apple’s side will break their applications in the future.   Microsoft has often accommodated such “bad programming�? by expanding APIs and creating new ones, and lugging around a legacy of old APIs to retain broad compatibility with existing applications. The result is that it is very difficult for Microsoft to actually innovate, or to offer OS level enhancements that upgrade existing applications.   This is particularly a problem for Windows Vista, which is hamstrung between the problem of providing entirely new hardware driver APIs on one hand while also maintaining a boatload of crufty legacy APIs on the other. It is absolutely the worst of both worlds.   [Five Windows Flaws] [Leopard vs Vista 5: Development Challenges] Sixth, as is the case with software APIs, closed hardware platforms offer a vendor open flexibility for future expansion, portability, and upgrades.   With the Xbox, Microsoft didn’t provide a wide open set of APIs for developers, only a subset for building very similar types of games. This closed API allowed Microsoft to move the console from Intel to PowerPC hardware in the Xbox 360 without extreme problems, something the company was unable to maintain earlier when it tried to deliver Windows NT for various hardware platforms in the late 90s.   Apple has already benefitted from the flexibility of a closed hardware platform on the iPod. Had Apple allowed developers to write applications for the iPod, it would have to string along support for those old applications across every new generation of the iPod. Having to do that would complicate Apple’s own efforts to deliver new iPods.   Additionally, customers would be upset with Apple’s iPod if the apps they downloaded crashed, installed spyware, or caused performance problems. While a rogue Mac app isn’t likely to drain a laptop battery down dead, power management is far more critical on handheld mobile devices like the 11 mm thick iPhone.   Given that many consumers are already flummoxed by the reality that batteries wear out after a few years, imagine their rage at finding out that Apple allowed them to install a some worthless Tamagotchi pet that destroyed their battery early.   Similar problems plague Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices. In particular, Microsoft’s attempts to provide a “one size fits all�? solution and broadly license it to hardware developers results in API constraints that limit supported screen size resolutions, break compatibility with existing versions of applications, and severely limit the power management performance of those devices and their ability to deliver acceptable battery life.   If there were any meaningful installed base of Windows Mobile phones, it would also be plagued with spyware and viruses, just as Windows is on the desktop.   [Inside the iPhone: UI, Stability, and Software] [Device Problems In Search of a Solution] [David Sessions Tries to Milk iPhone Battery Panic in Slate]A Safe API Boundary for Third Party Development.The simple solution to all these issues is to not offer a custom, wide open API at all, and instead leave third party developers to build applications that make use of open web standards. Nothing new to learn, no barriers to adoption, no proprietary development tools to maintain, no pleading with developers to support a new platform that remains unproven in the marketplace, and no third party crisis to manage when the hardware and software are significantly upgraded.No API, no problem! Hackers can discover how to install tools and handy mini-apps, but Apple’s next software update or hardware revision won't have to figure out how to maintain compatibility with those hacks. That allows the hackers to hack without holding things back. Meanwhile, Apple can reserve the right to offer highly integrated applications of its own that take full advantage of the underlying system without revealing or sharing its intellectual property secrets with third parties that may choose to use those secrets against it--just as Microsoft did to Apple with Windows in the late 80s, or as Sony did to Nintendo with the original PlayStation just a few years afterward.[Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software]Closed Development Involving Third Parties is Not Open.Incidentally, this is the same closed model that resulted in great success for Microsoft and Sony after they betrayed and then supplanted their former partners. Microsoft set up the illusion of an open, developer-friendly platform with Windows, but then used its home field advantage to plot out the assassinations of any and all of the potential rivals it didn’t want to compete against: WordPerfect, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Netscape, Sun, and today’s targets such as Google and Symantec.The unsurprising result was that Windows users ended up using Microsoft’s Word, Excel, Access, Fox Pro, language tools, web browser, media software, desktop search, anti-virus, spyware management, etc ad nauseam. With Windows users completely enslaved to Microsoft’s own applications, it was easy to erect significant barriers to prevent the emergence of any new competitive applications from rivals. Clearly, Windows is only an “open platform�? in areas where it suits Microsoft. Further, Microsoft’s idea of who a “competitor�? is can change. For example, Windows desktop search wasn’t a rival feature for Microsoft to kill until it decided it wanted Google’s business.[Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Windows Enthusiasts’ Slavery to a Vicious Master. Whether Microsoft’s closed Windows platform is a bad thing is a matter of debate; Windows Enthusiasts celebrate their enslavement. It is my opinion that Microsoft’s closed Windows platform isn’t bad simply because it is closed, but rather because Microsoft’s insatiable greed is holding back innovation that would otherwise flourish. One example is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which rapidly advanced until Microsoft destroyed Netscape. After that, it went into maintenance mode hibernation and didn’t budge until Firefox began to threaten Microsoft’s position years later. That’s anti-consumer; Microsoft won’t do anything for its enslaved users until a would-be savior threatens to set them free. Microsoft isn’t bad because it is closed; it is bad because it is disgustingly greedy. Windows Enthusiasts need to stop deluding themselves into thinking that they live in a free world of an open platform. They are slaves, and their master is not only vicious, but also incompetent and has no taste. [Safari on Windows? Apple and the Origins of the Web][Apple in the Web Browser Wars: Netscape vs Internet Explorer][The Web Browser Renaissance: Firefox and Safari]Closed Without Pretense.At the same time, it is possible to voluntarily join a closed platform and benefit from its advantages. Nintendo carved out a closed video gaming empire that required third party developers to pay it licensing fees in order to develop any games to sell for its system. Nintendo’s closed business model worked better than Atari’s with the 2600, which had earlier allowed third party games developers to glut the market with bad games, resulting in the video game crash of 1983. Consumers were left thinking that home video games were done to death and would never recover.Sega, Sony, and Microsoft’s Xbox group have all similarly managed closed gaming platforms to deliver high quality expectations, even subsidizing game consoles to establish user interest. The only differences for Apple’s closed iPhone may be that:Apple’s iPhone hardware sells at a sustainable profit without a desperate subsidy, removing risk and allowing for regular feature upgrades.  Apple is likely to use software downloads as a way to integrate the iPhone into Mac hardware sales and its online services, rather than simply trying to make a killing selling $50 to $75 game software titles as the console makers do.[Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security]Software as a Great Differentiator.By offering free or low cost software in the model of $5 iPod games, Apple will be able to use its closed platform to deliver software designed to:attract more iPhone and iPod Touch hardware buyers.earn iPhone mobile service revenue fees.earn commissions from WiFi iTunes sales and related deals. direct new iPhone users to iTunes and Apple TV.draw attention to the Mac, which will offer iPhone integrated features Windows does not. Microsoft does some of the same things with Windows Mobile, which ties into the company’s Windows Server products--including Exchange Server--and is also deeply integrated with the desktop sync services of Windows and its Office applications. The problem for Microsoft is that it does not sell phones or make money on service revenues as Apple does. Microsoft charges expensive client access and software licensing fees, but still can’t make a sustainable profit on its Windows Mobile business. It’s also stuck with lame vendors such as HTC, which make poorly integrated hardware that is embarrassing to use. Microsoft could make its own phone, but like the Zune it would alienate its existing hardware partners; further, the Zune disaster indicated that hardware sales isn’t a core competency of the company anyway. [Phone Wars: iPhone vs TyTN, Treo, Pearl, E62, P990, Q][iPhone Sales vs Zune, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile]Selling Hardware with Software vs Selling Software Licenses.Using software to sell hardware fits in with Apple’s past and present use of free or low cost software to differentiate the Mac. In the distant past, that included HyperCard and QuickTime; today it includes the shareware-priced but highly regarded iLife and iWork apps. The full version of Mac OS X costs $129, while Microsoft’s Ultimate Windows Vista is an absurd $400, the same price as an iPhone!Apple’s strategy of using low cost, high quality software to differentiate its hardware plays well against the fact that consumers simply don’t want to pay for software, while they think nothing of paying big money for desirable hardware. Nobody would pay much for an iPod “OS�? or a software music player, but millions of people have paid hundreds of dollars for an iPod.That principle has worked in Microsoft’s favor in the past, as it hides the cost of Windows by invisibly bundling it into PC sales. However, its recent fantasy that consumers will widely upgrade their PCs to more expensive versions of Vista indicates Microsoft is highly delusional. Pro-Microsoft wags can chart out their predictions of “impressive Vista adoption�? based entirely upon OEM bundled copies, but consumers don’t want it, and no significant number of people are going to pay big money to upgrade to the $400 Vista Ultimatum. [Windows 95 and Vista: Why 2007 Won't Be Like 1995]The Commodity Future of PC Software.What will happen instead is an increasing commoditization of the consumer PC and its software, driven towards standards by an industry that demands interoperability. Microsoft couldn’t hold back the web with its proprietary MSN a decade ago, and companies that once pushed Windows are now behind Linux, including Novell and IBM. PC OEMs are also rethinking their unilateral relationship with Microsoft as they struggle to survive in the shadow of Microsoft’s vast profits. Rather than paying $400 for a PC with a $50 OEM copy of Windows running IE and Outlook, nagging you to verify your software as Genuine and to upgrade to the $400 version of Vista and to hand your credit card number to the dancing paperclip recommending a subscription to Windows Live OneCare terrorism protection, the $250 PC of the near future will come with a standards based web browser and email client. It will be called an iPhone, and it won’t run Microsoft Office.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! 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Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly

Daniel Eran DilgerOffice Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork Office Wars 2 - Microsoft’s Outrageous Office ProfitsOffice Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office MonopolyMicrosoft’s Office monopoly gives the company more revenues and delivers nearly as much profit as its Windows software. How did it gain such a powerful position in productivity applications? The history of Office is rooted in decisions Apple made in the 80s with the Lisa and Macintosh, and also has an interesting correlation to Apple’s iPhone strategy today.The Origins of Office.While Microsoft has overwhelming power in desktop productivity applications today, it entered the market late. In the early 80s, Microsoft principally sold language software and struggled to license copies of AT&T’s Unix under the name Xenix. In 1981, Microsoft teamed up with IBM to license a copycat version of CP/M as the DOS for IBM’s new PC. Microsoft didn’t really get started in applications until Steve Jobs approached the company that same year with a proposal to develop for Apple’s new Macintosh.Entrusted with prototype Mac hardware and inside access to Apple’s development tools, Microsoft made an agreement with Apple in 1981 not to ship any mouse-based products of its own until a year after Apple introduced the Mac. In exchange, Apple promised to give Microsoft a rare opportunity to enter the competitive desktop applications market using its entirely new Mac platform as a launching pad.[SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1970s][SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s]Software Sells Systems!Prior to the Mac, Apple had released the Lisa as its first graphical desktop computer. Since developing new graphical apps for the Lisa was very different and required special training, Apple delivered its own complete productivity suite for the Lisa. It planned to open up the Lisa platform to third party development at some point after the initial launch, but the immediate focus had been to deliver a unique set of applications to demonstrate the power of Lisa’s new graphical interface.Recalling the software focus of the Lisa development team, reader Jim Hoyt emailed me several months ago in response to “Why Apple Bounced Back,�? an article crediting Apple’s recent internal software development efforts with a large role in the company’s turnaround over the last decade. Hoyt wrote, “In 1979, John Couch, the soon-to-be head of the Lisa project, was in charge of all software at Apple Computer. He commissioned this poster: Software Sells Systems.�? I’ve been meaning to publish the otherwise long since lost to history poster, so here it is, belatedly. Thanks Jim![Why Apple Bounced Back]Apple Delivers Lisa Suite Seven Years Ahead of Microsoft Office.The poster’s premise was obvious: the Lisa wasn’t going to sell itself; it needed practical software applications to usher in the future of the graphical desktop. Apple developed an entire suite of seven productivity applications that shipped with the Lisa system in 1983, including word processing, spreadsheet, database, drawing, graphing, project management, and terminal emulation programs. It was seven years later before Microsoft would first package its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications together as Office 1.0 in 1990. In his February 1983 review of the Lisa for Byte magazine, Gregg Williams concluded: “As you can tell, I am very impressed with the Lisa. I also admire Apple for deciding to make the system without being unduly influenced by cost or marketing constraints. The Lisa couldn’t have been developed without such a deep commitment, and no other company I can think of could afford such a project or would be interested in doing it this way (the Lisa project reportedly cost over $50 million and used more than 200 person-years of effort!). In terms of the actual, as opposed to symbolic, effect it will have on both the microcomputer and the larger-computer market, the Lisa system is the most important development in computers in the last five years, easily outplacing IBM’s introduction of the Personal Computer in August, 1981.�?A year later, Lisa ended up being replaced by the much less expensive Macintosh, which delivered much of the Lisa’s functionality at a quarter of the price. However, the Mac did not include the Lisa’s expensive megabyte of RAM, its hard drive, or its productivity application suite. The Mac only shipped with a word processor and painting tools.Why Apple didn’t port its Lisa applications to the Macintosh is a confounding riddle, because it had more than a half decade of opportunity to do so. The main reason for this was a paranoid fear of alienating outside developers, along with jitters related to IBM’s rapid poaching of the desktop computing world after the arrival of its PC in 1981.[“The Lisa Computer System�? Reprinted from Byte, issue 2/1983] [The Lisa, Apple's First GUI-Based Computer System - VAW][How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One]Apple’s Lisa vs the Third Party Mac Platform: 1980 - 1984.Competition inside Apple between the Lisa development group and the Macintosh team led to a different software strategy for the Mac. Since the smaller Mac group didn’t have the resources to develop a full suite of applications in advance of its launch, it planned to leverage third party development in the same way as the Apple II had.Sales of Apple II computers had exploded in 1979 with the release of Dan Bricklin’s VisiCalc spreadsheet software. That success was a large reason why IBM decided to get involved in the microcomputer business with the PC in the first place. It wasn’t until 1984 that Apple began making lots of money selling AppleWorks, its word processing, spreadsheet, and database package for the Apple II. It continued to sell the software with only limited updates well into the early 90s.Apple management failed to see the potential for delivering its own suite of Mac applications as it had on the Lisa, and as it very profitably would later do for the Apple II. Instead, it became increasingly enamored with the idea of partnering with third party software developers and delegating away the work--and the profits--of creating its own Mac software. Motivated by fears of inhibiting a third party software industry like the one that had grown up around the IBM PC, Apple intentionally stifled its own internal software development efforts and later spun them off into the Siberian gulag of Claris. That move would prove to be a devastatingly expensive mistake that would nearly destroy Apple over the next decade.Incidentally, three of the most important products Apple would release during that decade of decline were software products: the profitable AppleWorks for the Apple II in 1984.the free 1987 HyperCard for the Mac.the free 1991 QuickTime for the Mac.[HyperCard: Apple and the Origins of the Web][1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds][QuickTime: The Secret Weapon Inside iTunes]A Fearsome Future VisiOn for the PC: 1981 - 1983.Another contributing reason for Apple’s rush to embrace third party developers on the Macintosh may have been related to the fear of VisiCorp’s new mouse-driven VisiOn graphical desktop environment. VisiOn originally appeared on the Apple III in November of 1981, but the complete commercial failure of that new machine after the delivery of IBM’s PC prompted VisiCorp to announce moving its support to the PC in 1982, with a promised release target of mid-1983. Apple was still scrambling to release the Lisa and the Mac, both of which had slipped repeatedly.While clumsy, slow, and expensive--the base VisiOn software and a mouse cost $790, each application cost between $250 and $400, and it required a $5000 hard drive upgrade on top of a $2000 PC--VisiOn was backed by the legendary VisiCorp, the company that had helped launch the Apple II to fame with VisiCalc. VisiOn also tapped into IBM’s “up is down�? PC, which despite its high price and low level of performance and innovation, had cut deeply into Apple’s business expansion plans, almost entirely due to IBM’s reputation and its monopoly position in business computing. After witnessing its first big failure with the Apple III, and then seeing a tepid response to the $9,995 Lisa in 1983, Apple was no doubt very concerned about IBM’s PC being converted into an ugly frankenstein Mac knockoff with that $7,500 VisiOn upgrade bolted on, cheered on by a press giddy at the prospect of being bamboozled by IBM’s overpriced and under delivering PC.The only way to compete with the threat of such a graphical system for the PC would be to deliver the new Macintosh as quickly as possible at a much lower cost with lots of applications from a variety of third party developers. Fortunately for Apple, VisiOn also slipped several months and wasn't delivered until the end of 1983. Right up until it completely fizzled, the press hailed VisiOn as a promising competitor to Apple’s Lisa and the forthcoming Macintosh.By 1983, VisiCorp had fallen apart; its star development manager Mitch Kapor had left to found Lotus Development. Kapor’s new spreadsheet product, Lotus 1-2-3 for the DOS PC, destroyed the remains of VisiCorp and its VisiOn.[VisiCorp Visi On - Toasty Tech][1980-1985: 8-bit Platforms]Frying Pan to the Fire: Apple Runs to the Arms of Microsoft: 1981.Finding developers willing to commit to investing in Apple’s next new platform was difficult after the failure of the Apple III and the wildly successful launch of the PC. Apple later found that its developer relations would suffer at the release of the “no other software needed�? Lisa. For the Mac, Apple decided to copy the PC model by directing the majority of its efforts into courting third party developers and downplaying its own software releases, which were only intended to serve as basic placeholders. Even so, many PC developers planned to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to supporting the Macintosh.Hoping to prime an early and explosive business success for the Macintosh in the same way VisiCalc had launched sales of the Apple II, Steve Jobs made plans with Microsoft to deliver a graphical Mac interface for its struggling Multiplan--a VisiCalc spreadsheet clone--and a new Chart application.Microsoft had also secretly begun another Mac app initially called MultiTool Word, based on the Bravo word processor developed by Xerox PARC’s Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie; Microsoft hired both in 1981. The company didn’t tell Apple about its new word processor project because the Mac team had already started developing a word processor for the Mac called MacWrite.[A Rich Neighbor Named Xerox - Folklore.org][An Office User Interface Blog - Microsoft’s Jensen Harris]Apple’s Problematic Partnership with Microsoft: 1981 - 1985Next to IBM, Apple was among the first companies to realize that getting into a business partnership with Microsoft was a really bad idea. Throughout 1983, Microsoft employees began intense discussions with Apple about how the Mac system software worked internally, involving issues unrelated to desktop application development. The reasons for this became obvious when Microsoft made a surprise pre-announcement at the Comdex trade show in November 1983 of a clone of Apple’s Mac environment for the PC called Windows, along with the release of a text-based Word for DOS using a mouse. Apple had previously worried about VisiCalc’s independent VisiOn appearing for the PC, but now its own partner had taken its internally developed graphical desktop work to deliver a competing product on IBM’s platform. Microsoft had discovered a loophole that allowed it to ignore its exclusive agreement with Apple because the contract had tied the year-long waiting period to the Mac’s planned ship date in 1982; that contract date wasn’t updated as the project slipped into 1984.It turned out that Word for DOS wasn’t very popular, since DOS PC users didn’t see much benefit from only using a mouse with a single application. It also turned out that Microsoft couldn’t deliver on its promise to ship Windows 1.0 by early 1984; it wasn’t actually available until 1985, and even then was a complete joke of a product and fully unusable. However, the problems Apple would suffer for trusting Microsoft were only just getting started. Windows 1.0 wasn’t much to look at, but it did offer an advancement beyond the neanderthal text interface of Word for DOS. Apple also had reason to worry when it found Microsoft was directly collaborating with IBM in 1985 to deliver a new DOS replacement called OS/2. [1990-1995: The Race to Deliver The Next New Platform][Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered]Apple Grows Dependent upon Third Party Software: 1985 - 1990.Apple’s partnership with Microsoft continued to worsen. Microsoft finally shipped its spreadsheet for the Mac in 1985, but threatened to also release it for the PC as well, prompting Apple CEO John Sculley to sign away rights to a variety of Mac system software details to Microsoft in 1985 in exchange for exclusive Mac development of the graphical Multiplan for two years. Microsoft’s Multiplan and Chart applications for the Macintosh were among the strongest software features Apple touted in its 1984 advertising. (Click to view full size).A very young Bill Gates appeared next to Mitch Kapor of Lotus Development in Apple’s Mac ads to observe, “To create a new standard takes somethings that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that captures people's imaginations. Macintosh meets that standard.�? Were he not trying to sell Windows Mobile today, he might say the same of the iPhone!Sculley had been arrogantly dismissive of Bill Gates’ July 1985 suggestion that Apple work quickly to broadly license its Mac technology to Northern Telecom, Motorola, and AT&T. Instead, Apple sought to retain control of the unique Mac desktop as a way to sell its hardware.At the same time, Apple grew increasingly reliant upon Microsoft to deliver updates to its applications for the Mac, and worried about threatening any of its third party Mac developers with its own internal application software efforts.However, in 1984 Apple had released AppleWorks for the Apple II. That program rapidly became the top selling software title of any computer platform, despite Apple’s minimal efforts to market it. It was nearly an embarrassment for Apple, which wanted to push the graphical new Macintosh, not a text-based 8-bit program. By 1987, Apple had spun off its own apps--including AppleWorks, MacWrite, MacDraw, and MacPaint--into the Claris subsidiary. Claris went on to profitably develop and acquire a suite of Mac productivity apps, but operated at an arms’ length distance from Apple. By 1990, Sculley realized the vast profit potential in application software. Apple had two solid platforms: the Apple II and the Mac. The company’s minimal efforts to market any software for them was clearly a huge mistake. Sculley subsequently decided to retain Claris as part of Apple rather than spinning it off, but that late decision shattered the subsidiary because its employees and managers had been given the expectation that a Claris IPO would make them rich. Many left in disgust.[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork]Microsoft Becomes an Applications Company: 1985 - 1989.At the same time, Microsoft’s graphical Multiplan for the Mac--which ended up being combined with the Chart app and renamed as Excel in 1985--became a huge seller for Microsoft. In contrast, the textual DOS version--which retained the Multiplan name--couldn’t compete with the top selling Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC side.Two years later in 1987, Microsoft’s deal with Sculley expired and the company released Excel 2.0 for the PC, along with Windows 2.0, which copied more of the Mac desktop, including the basic ability to display overlapping windows. No OEMs shipped Windows 2.0 on their PCs, but anyone buying the new Excel got a copy of Windows and a taste of the graphical Mac environment, albeit with Microsoft’s garish colors and its horrific MDI-style interface.Apple Sues to Stop Graphical Copycats, But Only On the PC: 1985 - 1988.While a number of companies delivered graphical environments in the pattern of VisiOn for various computer systems of the time, Apple was only threatened by those that promised to deliver the Mac look on the PC.For example, Apple ignored Berkeley Systems’ mouse-based, windowing GEOS environment, offered initially for the Commodore 64 and later Apple’s own Apple II systems.However, when CP/M maker Digital Research introduced its GEM/1 for the DOS PC, Apple sued and won an injunction that forced the company to remove certain features Apple had originally developed for the Mac, the most obvious of which was its use of graphics regions to draw sophisticated overlapping windows. At the same time, GEM/1 was also being sold for the 1985 Atari ST, but Apple completely ignored that product, enabling Atari to deliver a system so similar to the Mac it was commonly called the Jackintosh, after Atari CEO Jack Trammell. Apple also ignored overlapping windows in the 1985 Commodore Amiga, and a similar graphical desktop in the 1987 RISC OS developed by Acorn Computers. Apple was certainly aware of the British Acorn’s RISC OS, as the two companies had partnered to form ARM in order to develop a new generation of RISC based processors powering Acorn’s RISC PC and later, the Newton. Those same ARM processors now power iPods, the iPhone, and the vast majority of all mobile devices. [Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn't Symbian]However, Apple went ballistic upon the release of Microsoft’s Windows 2.0 in 1987. One reason was that Microsoft was pointedly using the product as a way to move its Mac applications to IBM’s PC, a move Apple correctly feared would quickly erode the unique value of the Macintosh. Additionally, Microsoft was also describing Windows as the basis of a new interface for IBM’s promised OS/2. Apple was livid that the trusted partner it had launched into the applications business would immediately sell it out and migrate those same applications to directly benefit its main hardware competitor. Despite the fairly insignificant sales of Windows 2.0, Sculley’s Apple sued Microsoft in 1988 over the use of Mac software details it had taken from Apple in its 1985 agreement. It also sued HP over a Windows 2.0 add on pack called NewWave, which supplied additional Mac-like features to the PC. Meanwhile, sales of Excel on the PC gradually began to grow and Microsoft worked increasingly hard to replace its Mac partner and then destroy it, using Windows as a tool to port its Mac applications to the PC instead. [Apple's Billion Dollar Patent Bluster: Patent vs. Copyright]Apple Loses Jobs, Opportunities: 1986 - 1988.In 1986--as Apple’s panic over Microsoft moving its Mac apps to the IBM PC was just getting started--Steve Jobs’ plans to rapidly move the Macintosh into the business and server arena were getting shot down by the more conservative minded Sculley. Apple’s board feared that increased investment in the Macintosh might spread the company too thin.[Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers]Jobs subsequently left Apple in frustration to form NeXT, Inc, and develop his own ideas for business oriented workstations. Sculley replaced him with Jean Luis Gassée, who shared Sculley’s vision for dabbling in impractical technology ventures like the Newton and keeping Mac models configured for high end markets.Apple continued to make outstanding profits from increasing sales of the Mac and continued sales of the Apple II, but the company had made a grave mistake in ignoring and avoiding the software business. Even worse, it was now dependent upon a rival company to maintain key software titles for the Mac.Apple was also losing key engineering talent to Jobs’ NeXT, which by 1988 was delivering the first release of what Apple itself should have been working on: its next generation of hardware and software. [Newton Lessons for Apple's New Platform][Why OS X is on the iPhone, but not the PC: The History of NeXT]Sculley’s Apple Bungles Office Applications.While Sculley’s Apple fought Microsoft’s Windows in the courts, it did little to effectively compete in the marketplace, either with the Mac as a platform or in the applications arena to take on what would become the Microsoft Office suite in 1990. To deliver Office, Microsoft simply paired Word and Excel with PowerPoint, a Mac presentation application Microsoft acquired in 1987. Had Apple simply ported its Lisa applications to the Mac, it would have had a head start of several years to develop and refine its own applications suite, and could have maintained them as unique to the Mac without giving away its crown jewels to Microsoft in 1985. After ten years of trying, even Microsoft could eventually deliver a good enough copy of the Mac with Windows 95 in late 1995. After that, Microsoft pulled the plug on Office development for the Mac and didn’t release another update until 1998.[Office Wars 1 - Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork]Apple’s Squandered Opportunity in Software Sales.The bizarre thing was that Apple was making money selling AppleWorks on autopilot, and continued to do so from 1984 into the early 1990s. Additionally, the new ClarisWorks for the Mac easily captured the top spot in Mac software sales from Microsoft’s Works within its debut year in 1991. Even so, Apple did little to capitalize upon the discovery that software would indeed sell systems, just as Couch had foreseen back in 1979. Apple had a printing press for creating money, but simply left it idling while Microsoft delivered low innovation software titles and raked in millions of dollars in Mac software revenues. Sculley’s Apple essentially sat back and granted Microsoft full opportunity to clean out its entire business model without a fight, hoping that the law would rush in to correct the inequities at some point in the near future. Instead, the court deliberated for a tech eternity until 1994, and then threw out Sculley’s “look and feel�? lawsuit, largely on the basis that Sculley had earlier granted Microsoft limited rights to Mac ideas back in 1985 in his desperate bid to keep Microsoft as a Mac developer. The bitter irony was that between 1985 and 1995, Microsoft needed the Mac at least as much as Apple needed Microsoft. Even in 1997, Steve Jobs could get Microsoft to agree to a half decade of continued development of Office for the Mac by simply adding Internet Explorer to the Mac desktop. Jobs turned down the hardball demand that Apple kill QuickTime, and even got a public relations coup out of the deal by having Microsoft announce a $150 million investment in Apple.Sculley’s penny wise, pound foolish conservative greed destroyed Apple and directly transferred the vast potential wealth of value Apple had originated at great expense for its 1983 Lisa graphical office suite to Microsoft, which subsequently ran with it and deserted the company. [Mac Office, $150 Million, and the Story Nobody Covered][Apple’s NeXT Server Offensive on Microsoft]Microsoft Betrays IBM and Uses Office Against OS/2.Apple wasn’t the only partner Microsoft exploited, turned on, and then tried to drive out of business. The earliest and most obvious example was IBM, which had launched Microsoft into significance as a reseller of DOS. Microsoft betrayed IBM in the development of OS/2, first by pulling out of the operating system partnership, then by canceling Office for OS/2 after shipping an initial version for it in 1992. IBM later bought up Lotus and worked to compete against Microsoft’s growing influence with Office. Microsoft responded by using its new monopoly positions to punish IBM in various moves documented in the Microsoft monopoly trial. That story follows in Office Wars 4. Using the Office Monopoly Against NeXT.Jobs carried lessons learned from watching the implosion of Apple under Sculley to NeXT. His initial goal for NeXT was to build a software platform. However, nobody was shipping hardware up to the task of running an advanced operating system, so NeXT began following the business model of Apple, selling new hardware with advanced software.While Jobs had found it challenging to find software partners for the Mac at Apple, the task was even more difficult at NeXT, which Apple had forced into the ultra high end of the workstation market using a non-compete agreement. NeXTSTEP pioneered advanced rapid development frameworks to make it easier for third parties to deliver software for the new system. When Jobs discovered that Lotus was working to deliver a new spreadsheet paradigm for OS/2, he gave the Lotus team a NeXT system and got involved in refining the software to show off the features of his new platform. In contrast, Microsoft used the productivity applications monopoly it had been handed by Apple to impede adoption of NeXT. When asked about writing software for NeXTSTEP, Microsoft’s Bill Gates famously fumed, “Develop for it? I'll piss on it.�? Gates also announced plans to immediately deliver his own advanced operating system with object oriented development frameworks called Cairo, which turned out to be a vaporware lie Microsoft repeated from 1991 until NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997.[1990-1995: Microsoft's Yellow Road to Cairo]Microsoft’s Murderous Partnerships.Microsoft helped to ensure that neither NeXT nor OS/2 could acquire a broad enough computing platform to drive a self-sustaining software business. Apple was able to maintain a struggling niche platform on the Mac, but fears of stepping on third party developers’ toes actively prevented the company from actually building on that potential until the late 90s. Ironically, Microsoft did just that, by developing its solo PC platform with Windows and then using it to destroy third party developers it viewed as competitors. By tying its Windows and Office products together, Microsoft could strangle its own former partners--the top developers of MS-DOS applications--including WordPerfect, Lotus’ 1-2-3, database and developer products from Ashton-Tate and Borland, and really every major developer on the PC that in any way challenged Microsoft.Microsoft’s coldly calculated murder of every rival DOS application developer and later many of its Windows developers, from Novell to IBM and Sun to Netscape, is an oddly public fact treated as a taboo secret by Windows Enthusiasts, who avoid all mention of it as they talk about how Apple “can’t work with partners�? in the rich, supportive way Microsoft supposedly has. Any competition between Apple and third party developers--even with shareware programs--is paraded through the insufferable blogs of ZDNet and the pages of IDG’s InfoWorld/PCWorld/Computerworld and described as unconscionable conduct. This is from writers who all witnessed first hand Microsoft’s massacres of any and all “partners�? the company decided no longer suited its fancy. Have these wags all been brainwashed, or are they just lying for money? As a side note, the Office Wars and Microsoft’s monopoly position in applications provide interesting insight into how Apple is deploying its iPhone software strategy, which the next article will examine.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
Hot Future Tech Coming to Your Mac, iPhone and iPad

Some seriously cutting-edge tech is cresting the horizon, ready to take your Apple devices and other gear to the next level of awesome. We’ve searched out the breakthroughs on the verge of becoming reality to discover how Macs, iDevices, and other tech are about to become even more impressive.�Illustrations by ArtBombersIf you’re a regular reader of Mac|Life, you know that every January we look at the fanciful future of Apple, ranging from the prototype cars to the VR goggles that might emerge from Cupertino one not-so-soon day. This is not that story. This story is about real tech that genuinely works--it’s visible on the horizon, and it could be in your Apple gear in a year or three. Think of this story as a preview of the near future.Of course, we can’t say for sure that all this technology will end up in future products (we’re good, but we’re not psychic). Some of it may never leave the lab. What you can rely on is that old standards will hit their technical limits, and progress will march on. But for a reasonable-guess preview of how Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, and other tech will grow, evolve, and improve in the coming years, continue reading.�The Display's the Thing�Since the original Macintosh, our screens have been passive windodws into Apple's machines. That's about to change.�3D in Your Home�Three-dimensional TV has been a glimmer in the eye of television and movie studios since House of Wax and other 3D features first popped out at audiences in the 1950s. But the gimmick never caught on, thanks in large part to clunky technology that sacrificed picture quality. As James Cameron would be happy to explain to you, times and tech have changed, and in 2010, 3D is making the jump from the big screen into our homes…and hands.Despite technological advances, the principles behind 3D haven’t changed much in 60 years. When a 3D image is displayed, two pictures of the same scene taken from different perspectives are shown. Those spiffy glasses make sure each is sent to only one eye, then our brain combines the two images into one, complete with the illusion of depth. A more mysterious part of the brain is responsible for deciding if it’s worth paying 10 bucks for popcorn at the multiplex.But really, we can’t picture Steve wearing those dorky glasses at the introduction of the iMac 3D (but when we do, it always puts us in a good mood). Simplicity is Apple’s mantra, and what’s simpler than 3D screens that do the filtering for you, providing a 3D picture while eliminating the need for special eyewear? Such screens--called autostereoscopic displays--exist today. Some are peppered by tiny lenses that direct images to each eye; others use a layer of fine slits to split the display’s light in two. One of these technologies is about to get a boost from Apple’s biggest mobile-gaming rival, Nintendo. Announced this March and due for release in spring 2011, the Nintendo 3DS will be nothing less than a shot from the House That Mario Built across Cupertino’s bow. This next-gen upgrade to the popular DS handheld will sport sophisticated dual touchscreens, motion control, and--mamma mia!--autostereoscopic 3D.Competition is another Apple mantra, and it’s no secret that Apple sees games as a big part of the success of its Multi Touch devices. Steve won’t sit still if competitors like Nintendo can gain an advantage that draws gamers away from Apple and back to the Mushroom Kingdom. If Cupertino can improve on the 3D experience offered by Nintendo’s next handheld, you can bet that App Store games--and maybe even the iPhone and iPad OS--will enter the third dimension too.�OLEDs...So Pretty!�Today we watch videos everywhere from the living room to the hotel room on our HD TVs, MacBooks, and iPads. As great as those devices are, couldn’t they all stand to have even thinner, brighter, and more energy efficient screens? Trick question--of course they could. The good news is they will, thanks to OLEDs, an acronym for organic light-emitting diodes.OLED screens aren’t grass-fed, free-range displays sold at Whole Foods, but they do use organic material (that is, material derived from the element carbon) to produce a picture. Unlike traditional LCD screens that require power-hogging backlights to project their images, OLEDs generate their own light when electricity passes through the organic polymers sandwiched between layers of film in the display. Because those layers are only about 500 nanometers thick (that’s even skinnier than a human hair) and don’t require much else besides a power source to work, OLED screens can be dramatically slimmer and lighter than conventional displays now on the market.Better still, large OLED displays are relatively easier to make than LCDs, and their gorgeous picture makes your spiffy plasma TV look like a 1950s Zenith. That’s because there’s no need to grow sheets of fragile crystals. Instead, organic molecules are sprayed onto film in a process much like inkjet printing, and that film can be transparent, flexible, or even foldable. An OLED screen’s flexibility and toughness make it suitable for use in a wide range of gadgets, most of which haven’t been invented yet. From giant HDTVs and miniaturized smartphones to futuristic heads-up displays in cars, OLEDs can potentially be incorporated into almost anything--potentially even woven into clothing. And because of their brightness, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles, you’ll always look great in your 720p iSweatshirt Pro.But don’t camp out in front of your local Apple Store for certified-organic MacBooks or casual wear just yet. While OLED screens are popping up in more and more devices (perhaps most famously in Google’s Nexus One smartphone), the technology’s best days are yet to come. Manufacturing OLED screens is still an expensive proposition, leading to high prices and tepid consumer interest. But as OLED’s momentum builds and costs drop, expect to see a gradual shift in the computer and electronics world away from LCDs, much like the transition that phased out bulky, inefficient CRTs. And expect to see Apple jump on the OLED bandwagon when the time and money are right. With its combination of energy efficiency, size, and image quality, we think OLED has a bright future in Apple’s Macs and its growing line of sleek mobile devices.�E-Papers, Please�Popularized by e-readers like the Kindle, e-paper has plenty to offer a company focused on mobile devices. Its slim design is durable, lightweight, and legible in bright sunlight. The secret lies between the sheets--plastic sheets holding tiny wells filled with black and white particles suspended in liquid. When the wells are charged, the particles move to the screen to appear as text. No backlight is required, and because electricity is only used once to draw the contents of each page, e-paper sips power compared to the LCDs in Apple’s portable lineup. Color e-paper is so hot, you gotta wear gloves. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Photo: LG.Phillips LCD., LTD.But while e-paper does monochrome well, most of today’s e-readers use filters to colorize their black and white text with pictures--and they simply can’t compare to LCDs. That will change. Philips is working on new technology using colored particles in a process much like blending ink dots in traditional print. The results should finally make good on e-paper’s promise, but they’re still years away.Even then, will Steve subscribe to e-paper? The iPad’s LCD screen would seem to be the last word on the subject, but Apple could always use multiple displays in its devices. For instance, e-paper battery monitors could offer much more information than the little green lights they use today.�The Wireless War�If you’re like us, your living room entertainment setup is the second most precious collection of gear in your home (next to your beloved Mac, of course). Every night, you’re on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in front of an HD screen complete with a Blu-Ray player and 7.1 sound. Trouble is, that sweet setup means fistfuls of wire to fuss with. But those knots may not stay tangled much longer.As home entertainment setups get more complex, something has to give. If two competing wireless standards--WirelessHD and Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI)--have anything to say about it, that something will be our HDMI, DVI, and other AV cables. Both standards promise something like Wi-Fi for multimedia. Compatible devices (laptops, game consoles, and mobile phones) will use them to find your HDTV automagically over the air in a system that “just works”--and the whole idea of ditching all those cords works in a big way for us.WirelessHD devices may be available from Panasonic, LG, Vizio, and other manufacturers by the time you read this. WirelessHD delivers uncompressed video up to 1080p, multichannel audio, and other data--including Hollywood-approved DRM--at speeds up to 4Gbps, with a theoretical ceiling of 25Gbps. That’s a lot of data, but WirelessHD will only carry it up to 33 feet. The WHDI standard will move your movies as far as 100 feet, but at only up to 3Gbps. You’ll be able to compare how the two standards fare against each other when WHDI devices hit stores late this summer or early fall. Only time will tell which of these standards will be a hit with consumers or whether Apple will adopt one or play a waiting game. Let’s hope we’re not kept waiting for the release of Avatar 2 before we can stream movies, games, and more from our iPads to our televisions.» Future Apple Devices: iPad 3, iMac 3D, Cinema Display» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: HDTVs, handheld game consoles, displays» Future Awesomeness Rating: Deeply AwesomeNext page: Printers and Processors >>Powerful Prints�Yes, print and printers have a future in our networked world. No, they won't be like anything you've seen before.�Fab It Yourself�Teleporters and matter replicators may be the stuff of science fiction, but with 3D printers, you can create physical objects with your Mac out of thin air (and a lot of plastic). Apple hasn’t sold printers since 1997, but if anything could get them back into the game, 3D printing is it.For decades, 3D printers have been used to create “rapid prototypes” for manufacturers and architects. The idea is much the same as conventional printing--you design something on your computer, and the printer produces a hard copy. But these hard copies need time to cool. 3D printers take designs built in 3D modeling programs and melt plastic to “print” them with thin strands built up layer by layer into a finished product. The idea is about to get a big boost from HP, which will begin selling 3D printers this year at “bargain” prices expected to start under $15,000. So much for 3D printing for the rest of us, right?The MakerBot prints...in 3D! Want.Not quite! If you have a techie DIY streak, 3D printing can be yours today for under $1,000. MakerBot’s compact Cupcake printer is available as a kit that, once assembled, lets you manufacture objects up to 4x4x6 inches using Lego-quality ABS plastic. The idea is catching on, and other low-cost 3D printers (like the RepRap and Desktop Factory) are poised to slowly do what HP’s high-end offerings probably won’t--make 3D printing the desktop publishing of the next decade.Of course, it will take a while for 3D printing to catch on, but if it does, expect Apple to take note. After all, our Macs have helped us make things since 1984. There’s no reason to stop now.�An Inkless Job, But Someone Has to Do It�Let’s face it, next to Mafia Wars and Farmville, printing is one of the biggest energy hogs in an office. The paper and toner cartridges required by today’s printers consume a lot of energy to use and recycle. But greener workplaces may be one step closer to reality thanks to two new inkless, reusable printing technologies that are poised to send old-fashioned hard copies sailing on a one-way trip into the wastebasket of history.Late last year, Japan’s Sanwa Newtec company introduced the PrePeat 3100 II, a compact black-and-white printer that prints using heat instead of ink. The secret’s in the “paper”--flexible, waterproof, recycled plastic that reacts to the PrePeat’s thermal mechanism. Best of all, when you don’t need a page any longer, you can just feed it back into the PrePeat to erase it or print a new document as many as 1,000 times per page. Right now this green new world will cost you (the PrePeat retails for $5,600), but expect prices to drop if the technology becomes more widely adopted.Meanwhile, researchers at Xerox are using ultraviolet light to develop a technology called Erasable Paper. The process hits specially coated paper with a specific wavelength of UV rays to print your document to the page, and you can erase and reuse a sheet whenever you need to. If that sounds like a tanning bed for interoffice communications, you’re more right than you know. Like a tan, these printouts fade away over time, and within 24 hours, a UV-printed page will be blank again. While self-destructing Mission: Impossible documents are cool (and well-suited to sharing data with short lifespans), the limitation is one reason Erasable Paper is still being refined in Xerox laboratories.» Future Apple Devices: iLife '13» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: iLife '13» Future Awesomeness Rating: Fit To Print�Dueling Processors�Current technology can only take CPUs so far. But don't worry--tomorrow's breakthroughs are being designed today.�More Cores for Your Buck�Smaller processors offer greater speed and improved energy efficiency, but engineers racing to make the best chips possible are running afoul of the laws of physics. Conventional manufacturing methods can only make circuits so small, and even the power of Steve’s reality-distortion field can’t change that. But some amazing new technologies might.For years, multi-core technology has given us Apple chips that pack the power of multiple CPUs into a single chip. Intel’s Xeon, Core i7, and venerable Core 2 Duo processors deliver up to six cores, and eight-core machines are coming soon. We hate to break it to those processors, but a new prototype from Intel unveiled late last year promises that a lot more muscle is on the way to the Mac.Intel calls it the single-chip cloud computer (SCC), and it boasts a whopping 48 cores on one processor…with room to grow to over 100. Computers derived from the SCC will bring the brawn of today’s massive data centers (the “cloud” of the chip’s name) to desktop-sized machines, paving the way for smaller, greener clusters. Initially, Intel is planning to build only 100 of these experimental chips so engineers can figure out what to do with all that power before it lands on the market. Intel is just one of the companies now developing “many core” processors, but given its relationship with Apple, it’s a good bet that the first Mac with the power of the cloud will have Intel inside.�DNA Processors�Meanwhile, another company is taking a radically different approach to building tomorrow’s processors. Last year, researchers at IBM announced a chipmaking breakthrough that uses something called “DNA origami,” and it’s as cool as it sounds. The process arranges strands of DNA into shapes used as scaffolding for carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires, the tiny structures that could one day move data through really, really small processors.DNA origami is a “bottom-up” approach to chipmaking that builds the chip’s circuits, as opposed to more conventional “top-down” methods that carve silicon away, and it has a promising future. DNA designs could potentially deliver chip circuits as small as 6 nanometers--that’s just dozens of atoms wide! So Apple has good reason to keep an eye on how its story unfolds. They’ll have to be patient. The technology is still evolving and likely won’t produce commercial chips for another five years at the soonest.» Future Apple Devices: MacPro Extreme» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Windows PCs, Skynet» Future Awesomeness Rating: Sheer GeniusNext page: New Wires and New Storage >>Magic Buses�Our future gadgets will do more wirelessly than ever before. But they'll be able to do even more with wires.�It's USB's World, We Just Live Here�Once an upstart newcomer, USB has become an elder statesman in the electronics world with a presence in almost every device on Earth. But USB’s data-transfer speeds, last boosted by USB 2.0’s introduction in 2001, haven’t aged gracefully. Thankfully, USB 3.0 is here to breathe new life into an old favorite.USB 3.0 cables definitely lose the beauty contest to Light Peak (below).At first glance, USB 3.0 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB) doesn’t seem like a radical departure from its predecessor, and that’s a good thing. It’s backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and even uses the same rectangular port we all know and love, so your old devices will work just fine with the new standard. So don’t worry, you won’t have to buy a new USB beverage warmer for your cubicle.But USB 3.0 brings two new tricks to the table. The first is speed--its transfer rates reach up to 5Gbps, or 10 times USB 2.0’s performance. The second is improved power management, which means reduced power consumption and more juice for devices that need it. USB 3.0 gear is already on the market, so it’s only a matter of time before Cupertino rolls out the first Macs with the SuperSpeed standard. We hope they come soon--we’ve got HD video to import!�One Wire to Rule Them All�Fiber optic cables, long used by telephone companies to connect landline phone calls, have numerous advantages over traditional copper wires. So why haven’t they made it to the desktop yet? Intel hopes to put that question to rest with a new technology called Light Peak.Light Peak is Intel’s answer to…well, just about every cable in use today. From HDMI to USB, if it carries data, Light Peak can replace it. That’s because Light Peak’s bandwidth starts at 10Gbps, and its theoretical ceiling is a whopping 100Gbps. And since Light Peak’s flexible fiber optic cables transmit light, not electricity, they can carry data up to 100 meters without a hitch. That’s plenty more meters than we need, but some room to grow can’t hurt, right?Light Peak brings fiber optic speed to computing. And pretty colors, too.However, despite a planned 2011 rollout, don’t expect to sync your 5G iPhone with Light Peak. Intel is still working out ways to combine power with Light Peak to charge devices while beaming data at warp speed. One thing’s for sure, though--when Light Peak finally strikes, it’ll be fast.» Future Apple Devices: Almost all of 'em» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Every gadget on Earth» Future Awesomeness Rating: Blazing Hot�Reading, Writing, Revolutionary�Say goodbye to your old drives. Say hello to a new world of speedy storage.�It's RAM! It's a Hard Drive! It's Both!�There’s nothing New Age about “universal memory,” but it could usher in a new age of computers and electronic devices. Universal memory is any next-gen storage that combines the speed and affordability of today’s DRAM with the permanence and capacity of flash memory. Two technologies are fighting to rewrite the rules, and the winner may be coming to the Mac sooner than you think.Phase-change memory (PCM) gets our vote, if only for its cool name, which is derived from the use of chalcogenide glass that changes from a crystalline to an amorphous state with heat. It’s the same material used to make rewritable optical discs, but in PCM, the two states represent different electrical charges, or a zero and a one. PCM represents a major leap in durability over flash memory, and can be written to up to 100 million times versus flash’s upper limit of just 100,000 read-write cycles. Samsung has already begun producing 512MB PCM modules for use in mobile phones, but 1GB modules are still on the way. Looks like phase-change doesn’t happen overnight.The race for better memory is run on a tiny field, though, and IBM’s racetrack memory may have the inside track. It uses something called spintronics--don’t you want to hear Steve say that at a keynote?--to manipulate electrons into moving magnetic bits down nanoscopic, U-shaped “racetracks” to read and write data at blazing speed. Yet racetrack memory’s biggest asset may be its scalability, theoretically allowing HDD-size capacity to be squeezed into a much smaller area than competing technologies allow. But until racetrack memory is ready to leave IBM’s labs, this dark-horse contender will be one to watch, not buy.�Kind of Blu�Steve famously quipped that bringing Blu-Ray to the Mac was “a bag of hurt,” but Sony’s multimedia power-platter is still rolling along after years of Cupertino’s cold shoulder. Movie lovers--and anyone who wants to share giant files--can take comfort that when Blu-Ray finally arrives on Macs, it’ll be better than ever. Having long shed its 25GB limit, Blu now boasts capacities of up to 400GB, and 1TB discs are coming in just a few years. The promise of this year’s 3D Blu-Ray players is just one more feature that will keep Mac fans gazing longingly--sigh--at Big Blu’s bag of tricks.» Future Apple Devices: MacBook nano, Apple TV Blu» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, PCs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Memorably CoolNext page: Networking, Power, and Interaction >>Network It Out�Tomorrow's wireless communications will be more important than ever. Good thing our networks will be able to keep up.�4G or Not 4G?�Poor AT&T. Just as it’s getting the hang of supporting the iPhone on its 3G network, 4G networks will begin popping up from Sprint this year and from archrival Verizon in 2011. What does that mean for us, besides catty PR fights among the carriers? A blazing fast mobile internet with enough bandwidth for HD movies, video chats, and--we hope--fewer dropped calls.Like 3G wireless networks, 4G isn’t a single new technology. It’s a blanket term for a range of technologies and specifications that add up to the same thing: speed. Current 3G offers downloads of roughly 1.4Mbps. Compare that to 4G’s promised bandwidth of at least 100Mbps, and you’ll see what the fuss is about. 4G works its magic in part by using MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) technology to broadcast using several antennas simultaneously on multiple frequencies.4G’s strengths make its eventual adoption by Apple a no-brainer, no matter which carrier has the iPhone next year. Apple is serious about establishing the iPad as a mobile media device, and it’ll want a big pipe to carry movies and music to cellular customers. That’s just what 4G provides. As for the iPhone, who knows? Steve may decide to stick with AT&T and its 4G network expected to roll out alongside Verizon’s in 2011.�Crank Up the 802.11AC�Closer to home, we’ll use 802.11n Wi-Fi, but at faster speeds than we’ve seen before. Apple has sold 802.11n devices since 2007, but the protocol’s final standard was only approved in 2009. Happily, that means the business of making Wi-Fi as fast as possible can begin in earnest. Like 4G, 802.11n uses MIMO to improve performance, but manufacturers couldn’t take full advantage of the technology before the protocol was complete. Now that it is, devices can officially support maximum speeds between 400 and 600Mbps…if your hardware has the antennas to deliver the boost. Expect that hardware to start arriving in stores later this year.But the Mac life is never a simple march of progress, and there’s always something new on the horizon. Sweet! Work drafting the next Wi-Fi protocol, 802.11ac, has already begun. Devices supporting the new standard aren’t expected until 2012 at the earliest, but they’ll boast speeds of up to 1Gbps when they’re available. At press time, Ethernet’s agent was unavailable for comment.» Future Apple Devices: 2G iPad, Airport Express Plus» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, netbooks» Future Awesomeness Rating: Wildly Wireless�More Power to You�Apple is going power mad. Its future devices will charge up almost anywhere.�Powered by the Sun�Solar power is overdue for a makeover, and if anyone can do it, it’s Apple. In 2008, it applied for a patent to slip solar cells beneath a device’s LCD screen, and early this year, it applied for another patent to cover portable devices with solar collectors.Solar-powered MacBooks? Yes please!�Wilder still, a March 2010 patent describes a MacBook with a solar panel that folds to collect sunlight or even to illuminate the LCD screen without drawing power from the battery. We’re still waiting for these designs to see the light of day--ha!--but it’s clear someone at Apple has spent a lot of time looking at the sun.�Go Wireless�Besides flying cars, wireless electricity is the ultimate in futuristic convenience. Today’s charging mats come close, but the magnetic induction they use keeps devices tethered to one spot. That’s why we hope Apple adopts WiTricity’s technology for truly wireless power up to several feet away from the base station. The science involved would baffle the DHARMA Initiative, but it involves something called sharply resonant strong coupling to generate an oscillating magnetic field that’s captured and converted to electricity by a sensor in your device. Or it will, anyway, when WiTricity-powered gear reaches stores sometime in the future.Wireless power? As in, electricity beamed through the air? Shocking.» Future Apple Devices: iPod solar, ElectroMagneto MacPro» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Nice weather, mad scientists' lairs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Simply Electrifying�Your Valuable Input�No matter how cool Apple’s upcoming products are, they’ll only be as good as what we can do with them. Here’s how we’ll interact with the future.�Touchier Mice�The mouse has plenty of life left, at least according to Microsoft. It’s produced some stellar mice over the years, but Redmond’s recent Multi Touch prototypes could be the best yet. The FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) Mouse’s high-res camera tracks finger gestures through a curved piece of clear acrylic so you can scroll, swipe, and pinch around on the acrylic in order to manipulate onscreen objects. The Orb Mouse works on much the same principle, but offers a whole hemisphere to interact with in your hand.The shrunken Side Mouse looks more like a wrist rest than a traditional rodent--its tiny camera tracks your fingers as they move across your desk or whatever surface you happen to be working on. Best of all, these mice incorporate the Multi Touch equivalent of keyboard shortcuts to perform zooms and other common commands quickly. Cupertino, start your copiers!Microsoft's FTIR Mouse makes magic out of a high-res camera and a piece of acrylic that together create Multi Touch-style input.But the coolest input technology on the horizon for Apple’s gear lies in--big surprise--touchscreens. Future Multi Touch devices will sport haptic feedback, or the sort of physical response you’ve gotten for years from vibrating gamepads and cell phones, to help make input feel more natural. In 2011, Artificial Muscle is bringing to market its EPAM (Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscle) technology, which tenses and relaxes touchscreens in response to input. That sounds pretty fascinating all by its lonesome, but Apple’s recent patent applications show it has something more subtle in mind--a layer inside the touchscreen that delivers vibrating feedback localized to specific onscreen buttons and switches. That level of fine-tuned feedback would make typing on the iPad’s large screen even more satisfying and could pave the way for MacBooks without physical keyboards.» Future Apple Devices: Majestic Mouse, MacBook Touch» Expected Arrival Date: 2012» You'll Also See It In: Microsoft's mice» Future Awesomeness Rating: Terrifically TactileNext page: Too Wild for Apple? >>Too Wild for Apple?�Some of these technologies may seem out there even for Apple, but yes--chuckles aside--they’re real. Besides, today’s head-scratchers could be tomorrow’s game-changers. Maybe.�Huff and Puff into the Mic�You’ve finally gotten your mind around Multi Touch, but are you ready for Multi Puff? Zyxio’s Sensawaft technology lets you control a mouse cursor, scroll through text, or do just about anything else with your electronic devices using only your breath. The assistive possibilities for disabled users are obvious and awesome, but breath control could have other, less practical uses, too. Imagine blowing into your earbuds’ microphone to control music playback, skipping an annoying voicemail with a hiss, or puffing on your iPhone to zoom in for a kill while playing your favorite shooter. Apple’s engineers could do so much with this, it’s breathtaking.�Keep Your Finger on the Pulse�An iPhone fingerprint scanner makes a lot of sense, especially considering that Apple has so many intriguing patents out on the idea. Sure, a fingerprint-savvy screen would simplify security--and make “slide to unlock” really mean something--but we like to think about the possibilities for everyday iPhone control hinted at in Apple’s patents. With the iPhone of tomorrow, specific fingers could be used for certain functions, letting you change settings without even looking at the screen. You could use your thumbprint to play a song, your index-finger print to rewind, and your middle-finger print to...er…emphatically skip a song for those tunes so bad that a one-star rating just doesn’t cut it.You might not be able to remember a passcode that unlocks your iPhone, but we're betting you'll be able to remember your fingerprint.�Project Your Ideas�Pico projectors--low-power, handheld projectors--are handy for quickie presentations or impromptu slideshows with the family. Some of them even project with RGB lasers instead of white light for a picture that’s always in focus. But the image of these mini projectors will really improve if Apple ever makes good on recent patents to integrate them into MacBooks and iPhones. Sure, you could strike up a Keynote presentation on the go with a MacBook Pico, but throwing up movies, music, iTunes visualizations, and photo albums anywhere sounds like a lot more fun.�Wii Want Our Apple TV�Motion control brought gamers flocking to the Nintendo Wii, but can it do the same for Apple TV? Someone in Cupertino must think so, judging by a patent for a Wii-like motion-controlled remote to go with Cupertino’s set-top box. Sounds good to us. Apple’s Remote iPhone app is great, but it’s always seemed very “un-Apple” to require another device to deliver a satisfying Apple TV experience. Motion control--especially with the enhanced precision and reliability brought by the floating magnetic compass noted in Apple’s patent--would be a slick solution, and not just for easier navigation. Apple’s patent also describes using the remote to draw on the screen and manipulate photos with the flick of a wrist. That could give Steve’s favorite hobby product some much-needed pizzazz to help it catch the public’s eye. After all, the day will come when Cupertino will update the Apple TV again, and when it finally does, you may not even recognize it. What can we say? We want to see the little guy make good.Next page: Patently Awesome >>Patently Awesome�Apple’s patents are tea leaves that portend what technology’s cutting edge will look like for years to come. Here are some of tomorrow’s ideas Cupertino thinks are worth protecting today.�Nine Lives, Three Dimensions�OS X is the big cat that makes Cupertino’s products tick, but it’s Apple’s hardware that usually captures the public’s attention. That oversight will finally be corrected if a patent for 3D OS X becomes a reality.The 3D in question depends on parallax, the effect by which objects appear to change their position relative to each other as a viewer’s perspective changes. By keeping tabs on your position (likely with a head tracking iSight camera), this “OS parallaX” would alter the appearance of onscreen objects to form a simulated 3D space in which you could interact with files, study 3D objects, and more. While this could open up exciting new ways to use your Mac, it would also require complex new hardware and software, so don’t count on peeking behind alert boxes anytime soon.�An iPhone Gamepad�Judging by a recent patent, the iPhone and iPod touch might have more than just high-tech improvements in their future. Thanks to a unique accessory, someday soon we may be gaming old-school--with a twist--on our Multi Touch devices.In a few years, near field communication will let your iPhone be the boss of your videogame console, TV, and even your sprinkler.We love playing games on the iPhone, but sometimes we pine for the 20th century simplicity of physical controls. Call Apple’s potential solution the “GameFrame,” a shell that fits around your iPhone to add a D-pad, buttons, and other handy moving parts to the iPhone experience. Too old-fashioned for you? The device could also communicate wirelessly with HDTVs, opening the door to big-screen App Store gaming on the go. Hero of Sparta 3 on a 40-inch flatscreen? We’re so there!�"Home Screen" Gets a New Meaning�The iPhone’s superpowers seem to be growing by the day, but you haven’t seen anything yet. In the future, you won’t think twice about using it to lock the door, turn on the lights, and even water the lawn of your personal fortress of solitude.Apple’s recent home-control patent hinges on a technology called near field communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that’s slower than Bluetooth while offering a much quicker pairing time. That’s just the thing to control the Xbox, DVD player, and garden-sprinkler system shown in the patent application. Unfortunately, this remote-control magic requires NFC-enabled devices that are, like the iPhone that will interact with them, years away.�Slice the Mac into Pieces�To create, sometimes you must destroy, and the most intriguing Apple patent we’ve come across yet takes apart the familiar Mac we’ve used for decades and scatters it into…well, something else. We’re not sure if what it describes is a portable computer, a desktop machine, or something in between, but we call it the “MultiMac.” And we want one.The "MultiMac" splits a Mac into its component parts, which live where you'll use them.If it was built today, MultiMac’s components--a projector display, input devices, and a CPU--would be separate components, each powered wirelessly and communicating with each other over the air from wherever you wanted them to be. You could tuck the CPU on a bookshelf, surf from the couch, and project a movie on the wall as if using one device. Apple’s focus (pardon the pun) seems to be on the projector, which would do more than just show vacation pictures. The patent describes it as a networked device with multiple sensors controlling focus, color, or even built-in cameras. What are the chances those cameras could power a 3D OS X? Hey, we can dream.Will MultiMac be a novel new computer that ties together exciting new technology, a sophisticated Keynote presentation system, or a hub to synchronize a home full of mobile devices? We’re not sure, but that’s half the fun of being a Mac fan. Only Apple knows what’s coming next, and they’re not telling…yet.�

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