The Whitehawk

To fill in one of the remaining blanks in Apple’s very popular laptop lineup, Steve Jobs introduced today a laptop that would have brought tears to Sony’s deceased X505 laptop. An incredibly thin, and light, laptop with full-fledged specifications.Although rumors about the arrival of this device had emerged time and time again, through the last quarters of 2007, I think that it’s safe to say that everyone was excited to see it in the “flesh”, or in this case aluminum. So what should and shouldn’t keep you from considering this laptop as a future purchase?First of all, I’ll say what I found negative about the device.

1. One USB port - I didn’t buy the “Macbook Air is your entry to the wireless world”. I find the wireless features included very nice and thoughtful. But one USB is just too little by today’s standards. If you want to make use of the port for anything other than a computer mouse, you’ll be “forced” to purchase the wireless Mighty Mouse, which is a fine mouse really… but I’d rather have choice.
2. External Adapter for Ethernet - In Apple’s attempt to thread the line between being very light and convenient, and cute but useless, they decided to not include an ethernet port, but created instead a USB ethernet port. Despite having the option for an Ethernet cable, the one USB port once again diminishes your options.
3. The Price - I have to be honest. Considering that this is an incredibly thin and light laptop, I find the price acceptable. But considering the device’s specifications, I don’t see that many reasons to pick one of these up, rather than a “normal” Macbook, which will leave you with a bigger harddrive, an Optical Drive, a faster processor, and so on. As small and light as it may be, you will get a much better bang for your buck with a Macbook. 
4. The Keyboard - although it’s boasted as one of the positive features, I find that the color picked for the keys feels wrong. Despite loving the layout and the touch-and-feel of Macbook keyboards, I think this color combination would have worked much better if they had made the aluminum black, or darker.

Not everything is bad though. What Apple managed to fit inside such a small device is amazing:

1. LED LCD, High Quality Webcam, Core 2 Duo processor and X3100 graphics card - You cannot find these specifications in such a small (or similarly small) laptop for less than $2000. They wanted to rival Sony’s incredibly sexy TZ series. They accomplished that, and then some.
2. The very first “Green” laptop. Although not many consumers have deep concerns for environmental issues, it’s nice to see Apple sticking by their words and maintaining their devices as eco-friendly as possible.
3. The laptop comes with Micro DVI to DVI/VGA adapters in the box. Not the most expensive components you’d need, but it’s still a nice touch.

Bottom line: For me the Macbook Air is a slightly smaller and slightly gimped Macbook. For the same price I’d rather purchase a Macbook with an upgrade or two or save a bit more and get it’s aluminum big brother.  

Today when I passed by the (only) local Mac shop in my island I, for no apparent reason, decided to go step in again. Even though the 2nd Gen iPod Nanos were already sold out, when I turned around I was in for a nice surprise. For the first time, on any shop that sells Mac products here, I saw an iTrip Nano for sale, and since I was already thinking of getting one before Christmas, I decided it would be best to buy it at the moment before someone else would.

That previous paragraph might sound a little pathetic, but since the product stock of our computer stores is so ridiculously low, if you have the chance to purchase a rare product you should take it (here). Of course, I could always order it later through the internet, but the price was decent in any case (65€). The online store I was going to purchase it from had it for sale for 5€ less, without counting with the shipping costs. So it was a good deal for me. In any case, onto the review!

First of all, unlike the iPod Nano, the pleasure didn’t start with the box. In fact, the iTrip’s box is horrible. It looks like one of those action-figures box with the plastic look-through. I compared it with the iPod Nano’s box. I think the result speaks for itself, but stick around! The device isn’t as bad as the box, I promise.

The device itself is pretty easy to setup, just plug it in the bottom of your iPod, and on it’s screen you will see the radio frequency it’s transmitting. You can then regulate that frequency with the side-joystick of the iTrip or press it a few times to access the other settings. Another neat feature, is that you can plug a USB cable to the bottom of the iTrip and charge up the iPod at the same time you transmit music to your radio.

After setting the device for European in the menu I synchronized the frequency in my alarm-clock radio (the only radio I have around the house) to the one being transmitted. And after a few seconds, voilá! I was hearing one of my favorite tracks from the Japanese artist/band: Suneohair.

So far so good, and it would have been perfect, except for one, little, design flaw. It’s very difficult for the iPod’s top to stay connected to the iTrip at the back. Not that that is influential on how the device works but it’s proof that it could have been designed a little better.

Even with this small flaw, the iTrip looks absolutely gorgeous with the iPod on it (specially if it’s black, like mine) and it works flawlessly also, at least so far.

I give the iTrip Nano a 4.7 out of 5 - if you have an iPod Nano, and a car (with a radio), I think that this is one of the best accessories you can get.

Yesterday, I received word that there was yet another update available for my iPod Nano, namely version 1.3. And in the (exact) same way I had problems updating it to version 1.2, due to an “unknown error 1417″, I also had problems updating to version 1.3, even though iTunes has already been updated once since this error occurred.

The following solution originally came from Chernick.org, which I then posted in ForeverGeek, and now I’m finally posting it here, since Apple hasn’t done anything about it.

Here’s the solution, once again:

1)Plug in your iPod and wait for iTunes to tell you an update for it is available
2)Click the Install button on that dialog and keep an eye on your iPod
3)When your iPod screen switches from the flashing “Do Not Disconnect” message to the Main Menu screen, unplug the iPod, wait a couple SECONDS, plug the iPod back in
4)You should notice some slow-down in the progress meter and a new dialog box should come up and tell you your iPod is being updated and to not disconnect it until the update finishes
5)That’s it. Wait for the update to finish and iTunes will re-recognize it and show its new up-to-date status.

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano, iPod error 1417, iTunes error 1417[/tags]

Just downloaded Flock. A browser built upon Mozilla that adds plenty of neat functionalities for bloggers. If you’ve never tried it, I definetely recommend it.

It will still take a while longer for me to get used to it, but at least for blogging and sharing pictures quickly, it’s the best tool there is for me.

If lust is a sin, then I must be a sinner.

Ever since I bought a few Apple products something just keeps pushing me to go back. The latest “straw” that was holding me back to Windows was the fact that a while ago Macs couldn’t run it. But now everything has changed with BootCamp.

So what’s different from Mac laptops or computers and other company computers?

Well, for starters, in terms of hardware, Macs are famed to be really reliable machines. My father-in-law has a very old Mac on his store that is well over ten years old and works as well, or so he says, as it did when it came from the store.

Secondly, they come with the presently most advanced operative system available. Even though Vista will help improve the Windows experience a lot it still struggles to meet up with Tiger’s functions, and with a new version of Mac OS X coming out this summer one can’t help but wonder if Microsoft will keep playing the cat-and-mouse game with Apple, and for how long.

Third, is the price. Most people associate the word “expensive” or the though “only for rich people” as soon as they hear Apple. This is very quickly becoming a myth, as the Apple computers are getting cheaper all the time. And these latest Intel versions seem to be even cheaper their older G4 models. For $1099 you can buy the lowest entry MacBook, or one of the cheaper Acer laptops as an example.

So if the lack of compatibility between Windows and Mac is now null, because their Intel machines can run it natively. And the price is now almost equivalent to those of the Windows laptops.

What is holding you back?

If there is such a thing as a forehead sign for “sold” feel free to glue it on my head. I’m looking forward to greatly improving my computing experience. I’ve been living with Microsoft’s promises of a faster, more secure OS for far too many years. I’m going to take the step myself, instead of waiting for their Vista 2 which will be better than the upcoming version of Mac OS.

After many months of drooling and envying the users of this particular cellphone, that was many times voted the best camera for these devices, I finally decided to acquire one. Well, it didn’t actually come as a decision, but as more of an opportunity to purchase one for a very attractive price, and carrying only 3 months of use.

When I received it I quickly inserted my SIM card and tried it on, and my first impression wasn’t very good. The phone software was horribly slow and it kept on restarting with a white screen randomly. After trying many things, such as resetting the phone’s settings and deleting files, I gave up on it, and decided to order a USB cable in order to do the firmware update, hoping it would fix the problem.

But then I had the idea of trying the phone with another SIM card, in this case my father’s, and when I did it seemed like the phone was breathing a new life and then I truly understand how great it was. I exchanged my SIM card for a newer model and started using and loving every second of it.

My previous phone, the Nokia 6230, had many things that I had grown accustomed to, like the quick dial, the four options you could quickly choose by using the 4 navigation keys: camera, calendar, contacts and SMS. After a bit of fiddling around with the options, I discovered that I could set the same 4 shortcuts on the joystick, but with a small difference, that I could choose *ANY* program/menu/folder as the shortcut.

After even further use, I discovered that I could do everything that I did before on the Nokia, with the difference that everything seemed a little better. Things that annoyed me before, like being unable to delete all SMS’es when I didn’t feel like filtering them are passive and easy to do with the Sony Ericsson. And having owned an older SE model, the T610, I can clearly tell the differences and improvements made. It feels like what Mac users must have felt when their interface and OS was made into what it is today.

With my Nokia, even though I did and still do like it a lot the software like it was built around their very old software from the days of the 3210 with very few slight differences (some color, images, camera software). Compatibility wise, I think that SE phones are *the* ones of choice. They work perfectly and equally well with Windows, Linux or MacOS X and you can even use the phone as a remote for your default Media Player (WMP in the case of Windows and iTunes/FrontRow in the case of Mac) with no fiddling around with settings at all (except for giving permission to your phone to do so). You can also control presentation programs, such as Powerpoint and even the Mouse Cursor.

The camera surpassed my expectations in some aspects and in others it was what I expected. It isn’t, by far, a substitute for any digital camera. Even Sony’s cheapest models can surely take better pictures than the k750i, but I’m not necessarily saying that it has a bad camera, it actually falls very little behind compared to my Sony T3 camera in some test shots I did (and I’m talking about a “full fledged” digital camera opposed to a camera phone).

Your flash is limited, night pictures are difficult (but not impossible) to take with good results and you must apply many Photo-shooting skills in order to achieve good results (do a quick search for k750i on Flickr and you’ll be surprised at the quality of the pictures you’ll find there).

The screen is wonderfully well lit and has excellent detail. When I was reading reviews, I feared that the screen would be similar to my old T610, in other words, impossible to view under sunlight, bad color interpretation, “blurred” text. I’m happy to say that I found none of those defects on the phone. I’m not saying the screen has the quality of my PSP’s, but I guess it’s the same, if not better quality of the Gameboy Micro, or the quality found on the most modern Nokias (the N series).

If you were thinking of buying this cellphone, I can guarantee you you won’t be sorry. And if you’re worried about the difficulty of migrating from Nokia to SE, you won’t find many barriers for getting used to it. I won’t list all the good features of the menus I like, but if you ever felt like your phone should have had an extra option, this phone probably has it. It’s software is very complete (feature wise).

If you enjoy gaming on the cellphone you’ll find this phone very nice for that purpose. I don’t know what’s the “best” gaming cellphone (the N-Gage perhaps?) but this cellphone can handle pretty similar graphics. I currently have Ridge Racer (yes, 3D), a “mobile” version of Virtua Tennis by Sega, and Sonic the Hedgehog 1. And I love all of them!

The only things I found inferior to the Nokia are the network coverage (it’s slightly worse that the Nokia’s) and the speaker is slightly lower. So if you have trouble listening to your phone ringing you might find that this phone is not good for you.

[tags]Sony Ericsson, k750i, cellphone review, k750i review, k750i camera[/tags]

Yesterday I had a bigger lunch break from college so I decided to go pickup the iPod Nano a bit earlier (since I was carrying the money on me) but it was only at around 7pm that had the time to actually open it up.

I was thinking of recording the moment with pictures and post them in this article, but then I thought to myself that it would be too cliche. Little did I know what I was about to find. Something that has drastically changed my vision and comprehension of some software and hardware companies, similar to finding out that women also get diarrhea sometimes (except that the feeling is opposite of that of course).

First, let me start off with Sony. If you’ve ever purchased any product from Sony (except headphones) you’ll understand that is virtually impossible to put the contents of the box exactly as they were when they came from the fabric. Those bending card-boards that fit together in ways more complicated than any Origami model I’ve ever seen.

You need 2 minutes to take everything out of the box, and 10 to put everything back in correctly. Ok, so I may be exaggerating a bit, but the boxes are exaggeratedly complicated with absolutely no reason for being so.

On the other hand, opening the iPod Nano’s package rates (in terms of difficulty) as easy as opening a DVD package. You take out the plastic wrapper, slide the content out and break the sticky tape. As you open the “book”, like a child opening a Christmas present you find the iPod on the right and and a container on the left with everything you need for the player.

To take out the iPod, you just need to apply a bit of pressure on the sides or on the back of the cardboard and it comes out nicely. You don’t need to strain your arms trying to break industrial plastic nor cut it with a small scissor as if the plastic was actually metal. The first rule every company that puts their products in boxes should follow is:

#1 - Don’t make your boxes as hard to get into as Fort Knox, we are customers, not robbers. Sure, there are reasons behind it, but the security of the reseller shouldn’t be your concern. The iPod is easily one of the most successful and sold products in existence, and one could easily pick up a box that isn’t sealed and just walk out with it from the Apple Store (at least where I live). That doesn’t mean Apple makes it impenetrable to users. We shouldn’t need to use scissors to open any product.

The second thing that struct me after I stopped admiring the nano was the rest of the package. The rest on the contents are placed inside a “box” attached the other half of the “book-like” package. When you open it you’ll find, 4 small papers, two of which are the manuals in english and french, and the other two are terms of usage and burocratical things. Companies, count: 4 small papers that are thinner than a music CD booklet. It took me 2 minutes to read the whole manual and learn everything there was about the iPod. I’ve had my Sony Walkman for many months and last week I found out the use for one of the “buttons” on it… I shouldn’t have to memorize a large instruction manual in order to use a product, ever!

Mind you, it’s not that I’m too dumb to understand how a product works, but, as an example, even though the Sony PSP’s manuals are rather big. Mine was imported from Japan, and still, without understanding any Japanese I’m able to use my PSP fully and know exactly how to use it (which I actually found surprising since Sony products are usually complicated to use or to understand all of the features).

I should probably create a new category for rants in which this would be the first, but I don’t want to suffer from a “disease” that many blogs come across which is the “too many categories for one or two articles only disease”, that happens to be very contagious also.

Anyway, as I continued unwrapping the contents of the package I found those 4 papers, two attached little grey bags with small cuts on them to help you open them (once again companies, take note), a small grey leather sleeve to put your iPod in and another small paper with two “Apple Logo” stickers. I’m trying to think hard to see if there was anything else, but I think that was all.

What did the two bags contain? Well, I don’t know exactly what was in each one, but this is what was in both:

• Phones with a small, easy to take out plastic strap around them
• Another two small bags with those black things that you cover the tip of the phones with(I’m Portuguese, please bear with my lack of dialect, I think they’re called “muffs”)
• A plastic base that helps you plug the Nano to any older iPod accessories you might have (docks, stereo speakers) without having to buy a new one
• The cable to connect it with the pc (with nice protective tips, that besides serving the purpose of protecting the tips of the cable also help in keeping it wrapped)

And unless my memory is failing, that’s it!

Why is this simplicity so hard to achieve for other companies?

If you’re keen on reading the internet news, there’s almost no doubt that you came across the “What if Microsoft redesigned the iPod package” video mentioned in many blogs like my friend David’s. But I think that it’s only when you open a box so well conceived as the iPod Nano’s that you’ll truly understand what a difference the package makes, not only on the outside, but also on the inside.

But enough about the box and onto the player itself.

The first thing that hit me when I looked at it, was how tiny it was. It easily is the thinnest and most pretty gadget I have ever owned, beating even top model gadgets like the PSP or even the original iPod.

After turning it around and seeing my reflection on the back I turn it on and look at it’s beautiful screen which is perfectly readable even under direct sunlight (what happened with the network walkman and the PSP Sony?).

The next step was obviously learning how to walk, or should I say, how to use the clickwheel. It took a while to get used to it (like an hour or so of use), but fortunately I was able to get the hang of it, and now it feels much more natural than my old walkman, and faster too!

With the exception of a touchscreen, I believe the clickwheel might easily be one of the best and fastest ways to access an interface on portable devices. Sure, it’s not fitted for every interface, like a PDA, but it could and should, be adapted for more things than just the iPod.

The interface is simple to use, and doesn’t really need any introduction, however, I do have some negative aspects to bring out, such as the EQ which doesn’t really seem to do anything, if it does, the difference is hardly noticeable, or I’m just not using the right tracks to try them out. Then again, it already sounds great without the need for any change in the settings, unlike what happens with the walkman.

Battery life is somewhat disappointing, but that is perhaps due to the fact that Sony “spoiled me” with a 50 hour battery life that I only got to see the end of twice, once when I forgot to turn off the player and left it on, and another when I purposely didn’t connect the player and wanted for the battery to run out.

PC Software/Connectivity. I am not a fan of the iPod proprietary port, actually no, let me rephrase that, I’m not a fan of any proprietary port. That’s part of the reason why I made the choice to buy an MP3 player and not an MP3 capable phone like the nice Sony Ericsson phones, they use proprietary ports for the headphones, and there’s no chance in hell I’ll be using things like that.

Since the PC/iPod cable is only used for connecting the iPod to the PC and I used to carry a mini-USB cable around with me any way (for the network walkman) it doesn’t really make much difference to me, oh wait wait, it does make a difference, thanks to the small clip on the iPod cable it stays tidier and doesn’t get wrapped around like spaghetti.

iTunes? Well, it pretty much beats every music playing software out there. Windows Media Player is pretty close, but as long as they follow Apple’s footsteps they will always be one or several steps behind.

So there you have it folks, everything I think and feel about the iPod and why I love it so much and why it quickly became my favorite gadget.

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano, iPod Review, iPod Nano Review, Apple, Apple iPod, Microsoft, Sony, Packages[/tags]

And tomorrow I’m going to purchase one. Ever since it’s release, I’ve been looking at it with puppy eyes anxious to get my hands on one.

I love my current music player, it plays it’s purpose perfectly, great battery life (has more than 4 times the duration of the Nano’s), great looks (though most resume it’s looks with “it looks like a lighter”), but, it also has it’s downsides.

Sony’s software is horrible.

Mind you, it’s more “usable” now than it was when I bought my old Minidisk player, but still, it’s slow, very slow, it crashes sometimes for no apparent reason and for some reason, whenever you change your registry, no matter how little the change was, the program needs to access the internet and rebuild something. While this process only takes a few seconds, it makes no sense to me except to annoy and delay the music transfer, and if I happen to be in my mother’s apartment in which I don’t have an internet access it completely blocks my ability to transfer music or open the program altogether, which has made me curse a couple of times.

The players usability isn’t one of it’s strong points either. If you’re familiar with Minidisk walkmans with the small “remotes” then you can probably consider the Network Walkman an upgraded version of them. Which works perfectly well for a playlist of, let’s say, an album for example. But when you’re trying to “scroll” down 40 tracks it becomes less entertaining. It’s terribly easy to pause, increase/decrease volume and skip tracks without removing it from your pocket, but that’s as far as it goes, as for anything else you need to take it our of your pocket and navigate through the menus twisting it once each time you want to move up or down.

Another downside is the lack of decent accessories in Europe for it. Japan has great accessories for it, and America is starting to see some of them appear, however in Europe it’s impossible, and it’s quite hard to find a trustworthy site that will ship them here. On the other hand I can get iPod accessories in almost any computer shop and I have one for each and every need I might ever have.

One for my car, one to hook up to a stereo, one for remote control, one for…

…God knows what!

Anyway, it’s almost time for bed, and I’m going to give my books a quick spin before hitting the sack and tomorrow I’ll be sure to bring you the first impressions I will get of my new gadget and hopefully I’ll even be able to study a bit tomorrow
[tags]iPod, iPod Nano, Apple, Sony, Network Walkman, Sony NW, Walkman[/tags]

Today has been a great day in blogging, I did too nice and very descriptive articles. One on a laptop mouse, the [tag]Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000[/tag] ([tag]Microsoft[/tag] needs to give it’s mice shorter names) I acquired today to replace my Intelimouse Explorer, and the other on the very debated [tag]Internet Explorer 7[/tag].

I’m afraid I have little energy left today to write much else here.

Tomorrow I intend on writing about a great [tag]PSP[/tag] [tag]shell[/tag] that came out yesterday called [tag]PSix[/tag]. I purchased the Pro version and now I’m basically sort of a beta tester with access to the most recent builds and access to a private forum to discuss ideas and bugs.

I’ve been following the project for quite a lot of time and I have high hopes for it. However I do think that they would would win a bit (development wise) if they were a bit more open with their code, or in other words, if more developers collaborated. Currently there is one programmer and one designer only building it
Oh and I forgot to mention, except for a really small thing (that doesn’t disturb the layout or content) this site renders properly in IE7
[tags]Mouse, Microsoft Mouse[/tags]

Surprising? Definitely. Disappointing? A bit, yes. Over the past days, I read a few blogs commenting on how there were no news of [tag]Nintendo[/tag] [tag]DS[/tag]’ redesign yet. Out of the blue, and after the expected date Nintendo pulls a white rabbit out it’s hat, and what a pretty rabbit it is.

This [tag]console[/tag] is, in my opinion, the most beautiful console Nintendo has ever designed and looks like something that came straight out of [tag]Apple[/tag]’s design labs. Which probably makes them happy. I’m not sure if I prefer it over the pearl white PSP that I, unfortunately, don’t have, but damn… it’s really close.

Yet another beautiful gadget to torment my innocent wallet.[tags]Nintendo DS Lite, DS Lite, DS Redesign[/tags]