Consumer Reports finally gets it right!

Consumer Reports may not be the most influential voice in determining which computers are most preferred by the buying public. But it matters. Each year, for the past who knows how many years, the magazine has dutifully provided its assessment of the best and worst in computers. And almost from the get-go, its overall assessment of the Mac has been negative.

At best, the magazine viewed buying a Mac as an oddball decision, only advised for those willing to swim against the tide and venture beyond Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows universe. At worst, it downgraded and dismissed the Mac as being too expensive, too underpowered, and generally just too weird to be taken seriously. It never seemed to understand that the Mac OS was substantially different from (and, in the view of many, significantly superior to) Windows. It couldn’t see beyond the superficial similarities of the Mac and Windows desktop interfaces. And since Windows PCs ran much more software than a Mac (even if most of the software was crap), why get a Mac? This was the essence of the magazine’s logic.

I would regularly feel my blood pressure rise as I read these reports. “They just don’t get it,” I would wail. “They’re not taking into consideration how much extra stuff comes built-in to a Mac. They’re picking a low-end Mac to compare against a high-end Windows machine.” And on and on. I despaired of ever seeing Consumer Reports giving the Mac a fair shake.

Yet, over the past couple of years, the seemingly impossible has happened. Consumer Reports’ attitude has turned around. It’s been awkward and a bit slow, much like an ocean liner attempting a tight turn in a harbor. But it has happened.

Some may argue that the attitude shift is more due to improvements in the Mac than to a change in Consumer Reports’ perception. Or they may point to the ever-growing importance of the Internet, which has in turn minimized any software advantage of the PC. Plus, the Mac can now run Windows. Others might suggest that the shift simply reflects the increased status and popularity of the Mac, in this post-iPod world.

Perhaps. Or perhaps, after all these years, Consumer Reports at last gets it. Whatever. The completion of the pro-Mac attitude shift is readily apparent in the magazine’s current (June 2008) issue. Here are the ratings highlights:

The 15″ MacBook Pro was the highest rated 15″ workhorse laptop.

The 17″ MacBook Pro was the highest rated 17″ workhorse laptop.

The MacBook Air models were the second and third highest rated slim-and-light laptops (only slightly trailing the Sony VAIO). Even the MacBook made the list here.

Moving on to desktop Macs, the 20″ iMac was the top-rated all-in-one budget computer. Actually, it was in a category by itself here; there was no second place.

The 24″ iMac placed a strong third in the all-in-one workhorse computer category.

In the magazine’s separate Quick Picks listings (which consider value and tech support, in addition to test results and features):

The 15″ MacBook Pro was included in the “Best for features and performance” list.

The 17″ MacBook Pro was cited as a “Best desktop replacement.”

The MacBook Air was a Quick Pick in the “Best lightweight laptops” category.

The 20″ iMac was (no surprise) the lone Quick Pick for “Best inexpensive all-in-one.”

The 24″ iMac was cited as “Best for features and performance.”

In a separate assessment of companies’ technical support, Apple was far and away the winner. It received the highest ratings by a wide margin, both for laptops and desktop computers. Apple outpaced the second-best rated company by 17 points for laptops and 25 points for desktops!

The only place where Macs didn’t score was in the component desktop computer category. The Mac Pro is Apple’s entry here, but it didn’t even show up in the magazine’s listings. The high price of the Mac Pro was probably a factor in the magazine’s decision. With one exception, the rated computers in this category were $1300 or less, often much less. However, the one exception was the “high end” Dell XPS 420, listed for $2975. This is certainly in the same price bracket as a Mac Pro, which leaves me a bit uncertain as to why a Mac Pro was not included.

Apple’s Cinema Displays were similarly not included in the article on monitors. Once again, I suspect price was the primary reason. The most expensive rated monitor was $500; the least-expensive Cinema Display (20″) is $600.

Still, why quibble? Taken as a whole, Consumer Reports gives the Mac line-up a super solid endorsement. If you want a laptop, you want a Mac. If you want an all-in-one desktop computer, you want a Mac. If you’re concerned about technical support, you want a Mac. That’s just what I’ve been saying all these years. Now Consumer Reports is saying it too.

As you probably know, the mission of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization is to provide their $200 XO laptop computers to children in the developing world.

Back in December, I participated in OLPC’s “Give One Get One” promotion. The deal was that I donate one XO laptop and get to buy one for myself. [The deal is no longer offered; you can still donate an XO, but you can’t get one for yourself.]

I finally received my laptop about a month ago. I have been playing with it, when I have had the time, ever since.

From a hardware perspective, the XO is amazing. It would be a bargain at twice the price. The XO is small, lightweight and runs on a very power-efficient battery. Helping to keep battery use and weight to a minimum, it has neither an optical drive nor a hard drive. Similar to the super-expensive version of the MacBook Air, it uses a flash drive for data storage, although only a 1GB capacity.

The XO comes with a built-in camera, microphone, a slot for an SD memory card, and a color screen. You can even pivot the screen so that it closes with the display facing up (allowing you to use the XO as a tablet or ebook reader). The XO promises to get even better in the future, without requiring a hardware upgrade. As one example, its trackpad is designed to work with a stylus, although the software support for doing so is not yet there.

The XO especially shines as a network device, easily allowing you to find and connect either to nearby Wi-Fi networks or directly to other XO users via a “mesh” network. The only glitch here was that the XO’s ability to detect a network could be quite finicky. It failed to find my AirPort Extreme in the same room as the XO, while picking up my neighbor’s similar device across the street.

The XO’s water-resisitant keyboard is designed to withstand almost any abuse. However, the keys are too small and cramped together for my pudgy fingers and the cursor response to trackpad movement is often jerky. There is no way I could ever use an XO for any serious typing. But, as I sometimes need to remind myself, I am not the target demographic for this laptop.

While the XO’s hardware, despite my few complaints, is unquestionably impressive — the software is a different story. The XO uses a Linux OS overlaid with a graphical user interface, designed for the XO, called Sugar. In judging the software, it was very difficult to ignore my experience as a Mac user. There’s no getting around the fact that Mac OS X is a far superior OS to Sugar. Most of the software that runs on a Mac is similarly better, both in terms of its ease of use and its range of features, than what comes on the XO.

Still, even trying to put my Mac experience aside, I found the XO’s interface to be clumsy and often hard to navigate. As to the specific programs, a few (such as the Web browser) worked pretty much as expected. But others (such as some of the games and the music software) took a good while before I could discern exactly how they worked. I suppose you could argue that young kids would figure these out faster than me; I’m not so sure.

In any case, don’t expect any documentation to come to your aid. The laptop comes with none. To learn about the XO, you have to go online — which can be an obstacle if you can’t figure out how to get online or have no Wi-Fi access at the moment. Even if you do access the help site, you still won’t find details on most of the XO’s software.

I also have to question the decision to include advanced applications, such as Terminal and Analyze, right along side of the child-oriented software. There is no way for a kid to distinguish what is or is not appropriate for them to be using.

Most frustrating, I could find no equivalent of any sort of Finder utility. There was no option to easily see a listing of the files on the drive — or to copy, move, or delete items.

The conclusion of a review by Jon Fingas pretty much echoes my overall reaction to the XO’s software:

“The Sugar interface does a good job of simplifying computers in general for the educational world, even if doesn’t always mask the Linux software underneath as well as it should and is likely to require more help than should be the case in rural areas.

As a private purchase, however, the XO is not much more than a curiosity or a child’s first notebook. Once you venture beyond the surface, it becomes evident that the XO’s ease of use is only surface-deep: to be as useful in a conventional sense as a Mac or Windows PC, an owner either needs to have tangible knowledge of Linux text commands or else to wait for a far more elaborate file management system, neither of which are very probable given the audience.”

In the end, paraphrasing a familiar quote, I admire the XO not always for how well it does what it does, but for the fact that it does it at all. Especially for $200. If this computer were to be sold in the U.S. (presumably for more than $200) as a competitor to low-cost Macs and PCs, I wouldn’t recommend it. But for the children in its intended market, most of whom will have had no prior access to any computer, the XO will seem almost miraculous. And that, after all, is the whole point.

[P.S. If you are interested in reading other reviews of the XO, check out the articles by David Pogue and Joe Barr.]

Last week, I read Dan Frake’s intriguing column describing his re-evaluation of the MacBook Air. Essentially, after extended time using an Air while on vacation, Dan found that he did not miss the Air’s lack of traditional features nearly as much as he had anticipated.

This reminded me of a question I have been thinking about ever since the MacBook Air was released: What is the future of the optical drive?

The Air’s “missing” optical drive has often been subject to the same sort of criticism leveled against the original iMac’s lack of a floppy disk drive. The iMac did have a built-in optical drive, but it was not a CD-writer, so there was no way to save data to a CD. The lack of a floppy disk drive was thus not a trivial matter. Yet, over the next few years, not only did the iMac survive sans a floppy drive, it thrived. At the same time, the floppy disk drive was dropped from all computers from all vendors, relegating it to the dustbin of computer history.

Could the same thing happen to the optical drive? Not right away. But I believe it will happen, and sooner than you might think.

For the moment, Apple offers two solutions to compensate for the Air’s MIA optical drive:

The first is to buy an external optical drive, such as the one Apple now sells. This works fine for when you are at your base location, but does not fit well with the intended portability of the MacBook Air.

The second is for the Air to share a drive from another Mac via the new Remote Disc option. This works reasonably well, including for accessing an unbootable Air from an Install DVD — as long as you have a second Mac available. But it is not a total substitute. For example, you can’t use a shared drive to play movies. And it is no solution at all if you don’t have a second Mac or are on the road where no Mac is available.

What about the third option: Doing without an optical drive at all? Before this is truly viable, we’ll need two incremental advances in current technology:

1. Much faster Internet speeds. In one sweep, a significant speed boost could eliminate as much as 90% of the need for an optical drive. When you can transfer gigabytes of data in the time it now takes to move megabytes, it will be practical to use the Web to do just about anything you now do with an optical drive: play music, watch movies, purchase software, or backup your drive. Even at today’s slower speeds, we are already doing much of this. With much faster speeds (which are predicted for a not too distant future), it will not only be possible but preferable. I’ve already discussed this, as it relates to movies, in a previous blog entry.

2. Very cheap flash and card media storage. I see matters moving in two directions at once here.

First, to substitute for bootable discs, we’ll shift to bootable flash drives. [Note: In an upcoming column, I’ll have more to say about how these work.] The cost of these drives continues to drop — often dramatically. You can now purchase a 512MB drive for as little as $.05! That’s like free. A 4GB drive can be had for around $20. In a related “sign of the times,” after Sony discovered a firmware problem with the model of their LCD television that I owned, they sent me (and all other owners) a flash drive to update the TV’s firmware!

Second, for greater storage capability, we can shift to media cards, just like the ones now used in digital cameras. A Mac could access these cards via a USB card reader, which is a much more portable accessory than an optical drive (these could even be built-in to a MacBook Air down the road). Amazon already sells 4GB SD cards for as little as $19. Before too long, prices should drop down to about the cost of a DVD (at least a dual-layer DVD), making the cards a true competitive alternative.

For archival storage, media cards and flash drives may not be as durable as CDs and DVDs, but I believe they will be good enough that most users will be content to forgo an optical drive.

When all of these puzzle pieces fall into place, the optical drive will be ripe to join the floppy drive in the dustbin. This day is still at least a few years away, especially with the push to Blu-ray prolonging the life of optical discs. But the day is coming.

I have previously mentioned my admiration for Fujitsu’s document scanners. I was so impressed by the demonstrations I saw at Macworld Expo this past January, that I purchased a S510M scanner as soon as the Expo was over. I have not regretted it.

Although the S510M it is not a portable device, it is still quite compact. It certainly takes up less desk space than any flatbed scanner alternative.

From unpacking the ScanSnap to your first scan is just a matter of minutes. Once the one-time setup is complete, simply put a stack of paper into its feeder and press the Scan button. Then watch the magic. At a rate of up to 18 pages per minute, the pages fly through the scanner. It automatically scans both sides of a page (ignoring the back side if it is blank), effortlessly deals with different sizes of paper and even straightens out the image of sheets that fed through at an angle. When you’re done, one more click creates a PDF file of the entire stack of paper (or multiple stacks if you wish). There is no easier way to dispose of the collection of papers in your file cabinet, converting them instead to a series of PDF files—as you move towards a paperless office.

If you prefer, you can select to directly print your scans, rather than save them—converting your scanner to a photocopy machine.

A couple of weeks ago, Fujitsu started shipping their S300M scanner, a portable version of the S510M. I had the opportunity to test one out. While it is significantly smaller than the S510M, the S300M is not as portable as, say, a pen scanner. You’ll need a briefcase or backpack to carry this thing around. But (as I have covered elsewhere) pen scanners may be too portable to be practical.

Aside from size, there are only a few hardware differences between the two models. The portable can work directly from power supplied via your computer’s USB port, allowing you to use it with a laptop when there is no other power source available. The S300M is also significantly slower than the S510M, maxing out at 8 pages per minute.

While the S510M ships with a copy of Acrobat Professional, the S300M ships with Cardiris. The latter utility converts business cards to editable text, even importing the results directly into a program such as Mac OS X’s Address Book. When Cardiris works, it works spectacularly well. Unfortunately, I found that I needed to do additional cleanup at least 30% of the time, which seriously detracted from its convenience. For other OCR work, you’ll need to buy additional software for either scanner (although you may be able to get Readiris via a rebate, if you are willing to deal with the mail-in rebate game).

Beyond this, the S300M is every bit as magical as its larger sibling. Before you rush out and buy either model, however, there are a few caveats you should bear in mind:

Documents are fed through the scanner via a sheet feeder. This means that you cannot use the scanner for anything that is in a book or a magazine or whatever—unless you are willing to tear it out into single sheets.

Although the scanner can print color documents up to 600 dpi, it is not ideally suited for scanning photos. The quality will be less than from a good flatbed scanner.

These scanners aren’t cheap. The S300M retails for $295 (corrected price) while the S510M goes for $495.

If these caveats don’t rule out a ScanSnap for you, you owe it to yourself to try out one or both of these marvels. For me, they have turned the otherwise tedious task of scanning into something that is close to fun. I find myself trying to think of new things to scan, just so I can use the ScanSnap more often. If Apple made a document scanner, this is what it would look like. I can’t think of a much higher compliment than that.

Apple came out with new MacBooks and MacBook Pros yesterday. Aside from the new additional features announced, there was one subtraction: The laptops no longer ship with a remote control. It’s now a $19 option.

I imagine there will be some grousing about this among users, complaining that Apple is increasingly “nickel-and-diming” us, removing default components and charging extra for them.

But let’s be fair. Apple has gone both ways. For example, an AirPort Extreme card and Bluetooth support are both standard with laptops, even though they were optional when they first arrived on the scene.

In the case of the remote control, I suspect Apple simply made a decision based on cost vs. use. That is, if the vast majority of people who purchase a Mac laptop never or rarely use the remote control, then Apple is wasting money by providing it to people who will just let it sit in a drawer. Plus, there are the people (such as myself) who now have several of these remotes (after purchasing laptops, an iMac, and an Apple TV over the past few years) and who don’t need a new one with each new purchase.

So…make it an option for those who want it and save money (by not raising the price of the laptop) for those who don’t. Compared to the status quo (keeping the remote standard while not increasing the price), an optional remote can save Apple a significant amount of cash. Let’s suppose (and I am making a wild guess here) that a remote costs Apple $10. That’s $10,000,000 saving for every million laptops it sells.

On the assumption that most users won’t miss not having the remote, or won’t mind paying $19 to get one, that’s money well saved at little or no cost in customer satisfaction. Makes sense to me.

Leopard-compatible betas released!

Coincidence can be a funny thing.

Just last week, I emailed the folks at Unsanity software, requesting an interview. In case you don’t know, Unsanity makes about a dozen popular utilities for Mac OS X. By far, my favorite is WindowShade X. It has long been (together with LaunchBar) one of the first two third-party utilities I install on every new or updated Mac.

The problem has been that virtually none of the Unsanity haxies (as most of their utilities are called) have been updated for Leopard—even though Leopard has now been out for about four months and just about every developer who intends to come out with a Leopard update has already done so. Making matters worse, Unsanity has not exactly been forthcoming in explaining the reason for the delay or when it might be over.

In a blog entry from last October, Unsanity stated, “We have a build internally that works with Mac OS X 10.5… so it’s a matter of days for the compatibility update.” Unfortunately, the promised update did not appear in the next few days…or weeks…or months. Queries from users—as to what was happening—were met with silence. No further blog entries on the subject were posted. Postings from users began getting increasingly cranky and critical.

It was this backdrop that led to my request for an interview. I hoped they might be willing to sit down for a talk and explain what was going on.

Therein lies the coincidence. I received a reply from Unsanity today, politely declining my request for an interview. Instead, I was directed to a pair of blog entries, posted yesterday, for the answers to my questions: Pragmatic Disillusionment and Enthusiastic Trepidation. I don’t flatter myself to imagine that my email triggered the blog entries. As I said, I am sure the timing was just a coincidence.

Still, the entries do provide most of the answers I would have sought.

The main thing is that they announce the release of Leopard-compatible beta versions of much of Unsanity’s software. I quickly installed the beta version of WindowShade and — yea! — it works.

[Two troubleshooting notes: (1) Although the installer says that you can either log out or restart to get the software to work, I found that a restart was needed to get the essential Application Enhancer (APE) component to run; (2) After installing the new version of APE, any haxies that are not specifically recognized as compatible with Leopard will be disabled automatically. This includes haxies not made by Unsanity.]

When will these still not 100% complete beta versions be replaced by final released versions? When, if ever, will new versions of Unsanity’s remaining software be released? Don’t ask. Literally. All Unsanity will tell you is that “it’ll be done when it’s done.” Unsanity adds that any more precise ETA is likely to be wrong and so they won’t provide one. If you post comments requesting an ETA, they will be edited or deleted. At least Unsanity offers an apology for the delay in getting these two blog entries (and updated programs) posted, with health problems cited as a primary cause.

Most of the technical details in the remainder of the blog entries are directed at developers. Still, there are several nuggets of more general interest to be found.

The first blog entry (Pragmatic Disillusionment) is entirely devoted to explaining why the existing release versions of Unsanity programs do not work with Leopard. Although this has some bearing on what gets covered in the next entry, there really isn’t much value, in my view, in slogging through the details of why haxies and Leopard have not played well together.

The second blog entry starts off by similarly staying in the past. It offers a very lengthy defense for why a version of Application Enhancer may cause a blue screen crash at startup in Leopard (as described here). Noting that it only happened if you were using an out-of-date 2.0.1 version of APE, a version that was updated more than a year before, the blog entry expresses indignation toward people who asked the “loaded question”: “Why didn’t you test APE 2.0.1 before Leopard was released?” The entry goes on to add that it would have been impossible to test the older version anyway, as the final build of Leopard (which revealed the bug) was not available to developers until the same time it was released to the public.

So, no, Unsanity is not apologizing for any problems caused by APE under Leopard.

At last, the blog entry moves to the present and provides links to the current Leopard-compatible beta versions of its software.

And that’s all you are going to get from Unsanity, until they are ready to tell you more. Whenever that is.

P.S. The blog entries, in addition to discussing the status of Unsanity’s software, contain several intriguing troubleshooting tidbits.

Most notably, they provide explanations for blue-screen freezes/crashes at startup that have nothing to do with any Unsanity software. For example:

The blog entries also point out, at least twice, that InputManager software must not be installed in the user’s home folder (~/Library/InputManagers) in Leopard, as it will “prevent the InputManager from loading even if the InputManager is installed globally in /Library/InputManagers and meets all the requirements to load.” In other words, check your ~/Library/InputManagers folder. If you find anything there, remove it. Doing this at least offers a chance for other InputManager-dependent software to work. While most Unsanity Software does not use the InputManager, two do: Smart Crash Reports and Menu Extra Enabler. These will now install in /Library/InputManagers.

The HD-DVD format is dead. Toshiba made it official the other day, “conceding defeat to the competing Blu-ray technology backed by Sony.” With retailers dropping the format from their stores and studios opting out of releasing movies in HD-DVD, Toshiba had little choice.

For Sony, it can afford to breathe a welcome sigh of relief. They dodged a bullet and avoided going 0-2 in media format wars (its Beta format lost out to VHS in the previous round). But they can’t afford to relax too long. Blu-ray may be the victor here, but Sony may ultimately not have much to celebrate.

For starters, I doubt there will be a sudden upsurge in sales of Blu-ray DVD players. Most users will be content, for now, with their current DVD players. Only when the price of a Blu-ray player begins to approach what standard definition players cost today (under $100) is that likely to change.

On a related front: When I shifted from videotape to DVDs, I wound up repurchasing many of the movies I already owned in VHS. Doing so was worth it because the quality of the display and sound was so much better with DVDs. It was also a huge convenience to be able to skip almost instantly to any part of a movie (and not have to worry about rewinding). The added features that came with DVDs (such as deleted scenes and commentary tracks) were a bonus, although not critical ones for me.

I don’t expect to make a similar conversion to Blu-ray, even after I buy a Blu-ray player. First, many older movies will never be released in a true HD-quality version, because such quality will not be possible. Second, the improvement of the HD version over a standard DVD version is not enough to make it worth the cost (at least to me) of purchasing a second (or even third) version of the same movie. If studios had some trade-in policy (where you get a discounted version of a Blu-ray DVD by trading in your old standard DVD), I might be inclined to bite, but I don’t see this happening.

But all of this may well be moot. The DVD format, Blu-ray or otherwise, could be dead (or at least on life-support) before too long. It will take a few years, but it’s coming. Downloading movies is what will slay the DVD. The specifics are still a bit unclear, but my crystal ball sees a mash-up of the Rhapsody music service, the iTunes Store, Apple TV, and Netflix. Let’s call it TedFlix. I see it working something like this:

TedFlix will have a library that includes almost every film currently available (much like what the iTunes Store is today for music). Where an HD version of a movie exists, TedFlix will have both HD and standard definition versions of the movies. The HD version will be true 1080p. With devices similar to Apple TVs (let’s call them Ted TVs), you will be able to download the movie directly to your TV. With just slightly improved download speeds, you should be able to start watching the movie almost immediately after you click to rent it.

The rental period will be 72 hours. Further, you will be able to rent up to a maximum of three movies in any 24 hour period and up to a maximum of 60 movies a month. The cost? A monthly subscription fee of $24.95 (perhaps less if economics allow).

TedFlix, if successful, would effectively kill off most of the demand for Blu-ray discs, as well as the DVD rental business. There will likely be some market remaining for retail purchases of DVD packages (such as to give one as a gift). But the demand will be small.

Still, there may be a place where Blu-ray could survive, even thrive: Blu-ray DVD burners. Let’s include such a burner as part of each Ted TV unit. Why? Well, what if you want to watch all those “extras” that come on a purchased DVD, instead of just watching the movie? Or what if you want to be able to play a movie on a television other than the one to which your Ted TV is connected? Not a problem.

With TedFlix, you can optionally select to download and burn a complete DVD, an exact duplicate of what you would otherwise buy in a store. I foresee two variations here. In one case, the burned DVD only plays for 72 hours, and probably only plays on “authorized” devices (similar to how iTunes now works for purchased music). You pay a small fee (say $1.00) for each DVD that you choose to download and burn in this way. In the other case, you purchase the burned DVD (for a competitive price). It’s now yours forever and has no authorization restrictions. However, just as with a purchased DVD, you won’t be able to make copies of it. Admittedly, given the size capacity of Blu-ray DVDs, these burns may be impractical to do at current download speeds, but much faster connections are not too far off.

What about transferring movies to iPods and iPhones? I don’t quite have this worked out yet. But a model for doing this already exists in the iTunes Store; I am sure it can be adapted to work in TedFlix.

With TedFlix and Ted TV, you will be able to watch any movie you want, whenever you want—for just one monthly fee. Want to watch a movie for a second time, months after you first watched it? Just select it again. There’s no additional cost. And if movie technology improves, you’ll get the benefit of it, without having to repurchase your DVD library.

This may not be the future that Sony or the movie studios would prefer, but I doubt that will stop the train. I think I already hear the whistle in the distance. I certainly hope so.

Update: After writing this, I noticed that David Pogue also posted a column today on this topic. He takes a much more pessimistic view of downloaded movies. I don’t disagree with his assessment. However, he is talking about the present. I am talking about a hopeful future.

The HP-11C and HP-15C calculators are, quite simply, the best single-line display calculators ever created. If you don’t absolutely need a graphing calculator, they remain the best handheld calculators ever…period. This is true despite the fact that they date back to the 1980s. These HP marvels came with a sumptuous array of built-in functions together with a simple yet powerful method for programming (which allowed you to expand way beyond its built-in features). They also sported a sleek thin design that still surpasses any of the calculators on the market today. Best-of-all, they used RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) for data entry.

RPN, for those of you unfamiliar with this odd-named duck, is the alternative to the algebraic method of data entry. The algebraic method is found on virtually all other competing calculators (most notably the ubiquitous handhelds from Texas Instruments). You know you’re working with RPN if you use an Enter key instead of an Equals (=) key. Of course, the differences go beyond that simple distinction. Skipping over details, let me just say that, for anything beyond the most simple calculations, RPN is much easier to use, easier to keep track of what you’ve entered, and less prone to making mistakes. If you have ever been frustrated by entering a complex expression involving parentheses, for example, RPN will seem like a direct delivery from heaven.

Unfortunately, RPN lost out in the calculator wars. Even Hewlett-Packard largely abandonned it. They still make the HP-12C (a financial real estate calculator variation of the 11C). Beyond that, their calculators have either shifted to algebraic-only or a combined algebraic-RPN system. I am sure the reason for this is that, at first glance, RPN seems quirky and hard-to-learn. Admittedly, it does have a slightly steeper learning curve than algebraic entry. But once you make the minor effort to get over the hump, you are more than rewarded for your efforts. It may not seem like it at first, but RPN’s “inside-out” method of working through an expression mimics the way you would do such calculations in your head—much more so than the algebraic method.

I still use my trusty HP-15C. However, I must admit that it spends most of its time in a drawer of my desk. That’s because I now do almost all of my calculating on a Mac, via spreadsheets and such. And if I do want an HP-15C while working with my Mac, I simply launch a nifty emulation that’s almost as good as the real thing. The only remaining advantage of the “real” 15C is its portability.

This (finally) brings me to the main point of this blog entry. Last week, I was browsing through the list of programs available for my hacked iPhone (as viewed from the Installer utility) and discovered a set of HP calculator emulations (11C, 12C, 15C and 16C). I installed the 15C. It’s fantastic! After launching it, the phone becomes an HP-15C. The entire display is filled with an exact image of the calculator. To use it, you just tap the virtual buttons. The net effect is almost identical to pressing the physical buttons on an actual HP-15C. If you ever want to show off the advantages of a touchscreen interface, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example!

In a sense, I now have my HP-15C back in my pocket again. Actually, it’s even better. My “new” 15C doesn’t have to compete for space with my iPhone. The iPhone is the 15C. Ahhh…the joys of the iPhone…and iPhone hacks!

I only hope that, after the iPhone SDK is released in a few days, the HP-15C is one of the third-party programs that will be “officially” available, so I won’t need a hack to get it.

In my previous blog entry, I described the three features I liked best in the new Apple TV “Take Two.” A couple of reader comments made reference to a new feature in Take Two that was not on my list. In fact, I had not realized the feature was even there at first: the ability to use AirTunes to play iTunes content on an audio system connected to an Apple TV.

This is indeed a great new feature. So much so, that I decided to cover it here as a follow-up to my previous entry. As to why I didn’t notice the new feature in the first place—after accepting responsibility for failing to look closely enough—I would add that Apple has hardly promoted this new feature. In fact, if you go to the Apple page that lists the new features of Apple TV Take Two, the word “AirTunes” is not even mentioned. I could similarly find only one Apple support document that acknowledges its existence.

Complicating matters further, for many users, it will not be immediately obvious what this new feature adds. Apple TV “Take One” owners are already familiar with streaming iTunes content from a secondary shared computer (not the one that is synced to the Apple TV). Take Two continues to do so. The Take One version of Apple TV could stream movies and TV shows from a Mac. That’s not new either.

So what is new with AirTunes support? It provides the ability to stream any audio content in your iTunes Library to your Apple TV, even if it is not in a playlist. Actually, with AirTunes, you can stream audio content from any computer on the same network as the Apple TV, even if it is not a Mac being shared or synced with your Apple TV! Not only can you play all your music from your Library via this method, but you can play Audible content or Internet radio stations as well!

To do all this, just enable the connection via the same method that is used to connect a Mac to the AirTunes feature of an AirPort Express: At the bottom of the iTunes window on your Mac, access the Computer pop-up menu and select the name of your Apple TV. Next, select an item to play. Done. There is no setting on the Apple TV itself that needs to be enabled or selected. [Well, that’s not 100% true. There is an Apple TV setting to enable AirTunes, located in Settings > Audio. However, it is on by default.]

You can use your Apple TV remote to pause/play or skip items. If your Apple TV doesn’t respond to your remote here, you need to enable the necessary preferences item in iTunes: Go to iTunes’ Preferences and select Advanced > General. From here, make sure the AirTunes option to “Allow iTunes control from remote speakers” is enabled.

The key thing to remember in setting all of this up is that, unlike other Apple TV connections, you do not make the connection or select the music to be played from the Apple TV itself. Instead, you do it from iTunes on your Mac (again, the same way as if you were connecting to an AirPort Express rather than an Apple TV).

Note: If iTunes is open on the Mac that is synced to your Apple TV, you automatically have access to most content in your iTunes Library, via streaming, even without using AirTunes. Just make sure that the option to “Show only the synced items on my Apple TV,” in the Apple TV Summary pane, is not enabled. There is no longer a separate listing for synced vs. streamed content, as in Take One. This is just one more of the many differences between Take One and Take Two in the areas of streaming, sharing and syncing—most of them still not documented well (if at all) by Apple. Apple has some work to do here!

The AirTunes feature is apparently still a bit rough around the edges, as I have seen several reports of problems with it getting it to work. I have had one of these problems myself. When playing audio via AirTunes, if you select Music > My Music > Now Playing on your Apple TV, you should see the name and artist of the currently playing song. I don’t. Instead, all I see is “untitled” and “unknown.” I haven’t yet figured out why some users have this problem and others do not—or how to fix it. But I am working on it (I did see one report that said a “factory restore” of my Apple TV would fix this; I haven’t tried this as yet and am reluctant to do so). It is almost certainly an issue with the Apple TV rather than the Mac, as I have the same symptom no matter what Mac I use.

{revised slightly on 2/17/08}

Apple TV “Take Two” is definitely worth the upgrade. It so transforms your old Apple TV, it is almost as if you sold the old model and purchased a new one. And it’s free. There’s virtually no downside here.

Among all the new features in Take Two, I already have three favorites:

Podcasts. This is my #1 favorite new feature. While there are many podcasts that I would enjoy listening to, I rarely do—because I rarely want to take the time to sit down and listen for an extended time. With Apple TV Take Two, however, I can easily listen to podcasts from my living room TV, allowing me to (for example) prepare and eat dinner while the podcast plays in the background.

True, I could play a podcast from my iTunes Library even with the old Apple TV. But the new version makes it so much more convenient. I don’t have to subscribe to a podcast or worry whether the one I want to listen to is on my Mac or not, or synced to my Apple TV or not. I just directly start browsing podcasts on the Apple TV and play the one I want. As a bonus, you can play it without having to download it. This means that, once you are done listening, you don’t even have to remember to delete it from the Apple TV (assuming you don’t care to save it, as will usually be the case). The process is as simple to do as it is to select a broadcast TV channel to watch.

Some users have complained that you cannot subscribe to a podcast from the Apple TV. Personally, I don’t see this as a negative. If I really want a subscription, I can still do it from my Mac.

.Mac and flickr photos. I had already been using Apple TV “Take One” to displays photos from my iPhoto Library. With Take Two, I can now play slide shows from .Mac Web Gallery and Flickr accounts. This doesn’t add much value for playing my own photos at home (it’s just as easy to use my iPhoto Library directly for that). But it’s a great way to view other people’s photos—or even to show your own photos when you are at someone else’s house (if that someone else has an Apple TV and is willing to put up with watching your vacation slideshow!).

HD content. You can rent HD movies directly from your Apple-TV connected television. Unless you already own a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player, and prefer having physical discs, Apple TV is currently the best way to rent HD content for your television. With “Take Two,” you can even play theatrical movie trailers in HD. Very cool!

I do have one relatively minor complaint with “Take Two”: All the menus are organized around iTunes Store content. This means, for example, if you want to play music from the iTunes Library on your Mac, you first have to select “Music” from the main menu and then (from a submenu that lists Top Music, Music Videos, Genre, Search and My Music) select the last choice (My Music). This finally takes you to the menu for your iTunes Library; a menu that looks pretty much as it did in “Take One.” The net effect, however, is to make you feel as if your own music is semi-buried amid the iTunes Store options, as if Apple TV is now designed primarily as a device to sell iTunes content (and maybe it is).

On the other hand, as a music video fan, I welcome how easy it is now to browse through and purchase music videos directly from the Apple TV. If you purchase a music video (or any item, other than a rented movie), it is transferred to the iTunes Library on your Mac, automatically, the next time you sync your Apple TV.

One caution: I have my Apple TV connected via a 802.11n connection. I am not sure how much streaming and downloading would be negatively impacted by a slower 802.11g connection.