The Whitehawk

Today I purchased the latest controversial mouse by Apple. It seems that no matter what Apple releases in this area, even if it’s genuinely good, has fallen into the curse of being criticized for having: a) and odd shape; b) no right click! c) something that breaks easily.

Apple isn’t a company that’s widely known for following the norms other companies do, and sometimes they do screw up when they try to do something immensely different. I just don’t feel that they screwed up with this device as badly as other people say. » Read the rest of this entry «

With all the buzz and negativity surrounding the iPad, and with lack of proper wording to put my thoughts in a 100 something characters, I decided to write a blog post (like everyone else in the blogosphere) about the polemic device.

The main reason why people dislike the iPad is, (I think) undoubtedly,  that it’s not exactly what they expected it to be.

There will never be a device released by any company that you will love 100%.

People want a user experience that is graphically nice, fast and stable. And you can’t have all three on the same device. Think about any line of devices, like Android, for instance, and you’ll see that there is no device that meets those three.

Although the very latest Android device, the Nexus, does come close(r) to that goal, I don’t think it’s quite there yet. These aspects are of course, debatable, to some people the Nexus is the perfect device, for my father, he couldn’t be happier with his Sony Ericsson, even though he doesn’t use 5% of it’s functions.

The cellphone market has never been better than it is now because of the technological leap we received, largely thanks to the iPhone (*).

This doesn’t happen with the tablet market, which Apple considers a “new” one. There is no device currently available that can compete with the iPad on anything more than a single characteristic.

Yes, you can get tablets with touch screens, but with nowhere as good gestures and interface.
Yes, you can get devices with similar form-factors, with physical keyboards, but they’re usually slow, tend to be fragile, and most importantly, are incredibly expensive.

No, you can’t currently get any device that has the same form factor, good design and fabrication, stability and speed, for the same price range as the iPad.

And that is the main reason why people dislike the iPad, it isn’t and will never be the device that has all the features people can conceive, and there is no direct competition with it.

I think that’s the main thing that gets under people’s skin. They don’t like it because you can’t do something-or-other on it. There is no Linux or Windows equivalent of the iPad, just as there wasn’t with the iPhone.

Once again, Apple stepped in quietly to a market that no one was exploring decently and took everyone by storm. And consumers are upset that Apple doesn’t make products the same way as their favorite brand does. Because the Operating System has limitations, because it doesn’t have a camera, because it’s rectangular, because it doesn’t fit a pocket…

If you want a full desktop experience on your lap, for any reason, you don’t buy an iPad.

It’s not the device for you. A touchscreen based device, at this day an age, made for hardcore users is a stupid device. The technology is getting there, but we’re still a few years too early. Our main Operating System’s user interfaces aren’t ready for it without some major revamping (like the iPad’s interface).

PS – For the record, I am not buying an iPad, I have absolutely no need for one.

* I have very little doubts in my mind that if it were up to Nokia (and other cellphone manufacturers),  the only difference between our phones 5 years ago and now would be more megapixels in the camera and an even more bloated operating system. Most of those companies still do mostly that and we all know how “well” they are doing.

As I write this article, I look down at my toolbar and observe the 4 browser icons there (try to guess which major browser isn’t there), all of which I love and despise for different reasons. I want one of them to become the ideal browser, but there’s always something that draws me back, either a technical or morale issue. » Read the rest of this entry «

As much as I disliked Safari 4 Beta’s new tabs, because they made the browser incredibly hard to use in terms of tab management, the new final version is almost flawless.

Being that “almost” means you can’t middle click to close an open tab, instead, by default you have to do CMD+W or click the little close button on the left side of each tab, which kind of makes the whole “fastest browser on earth” thing silly, since you take a bit longer to operate it.

Thankfully, a nice guy called Joey Gibson made a small plugin that enables this simple feature. In order to install it you need to first get SIMBL and install it (if you haven’t already).

Then you need to install the MiddleClickClose plugin following the instructions on Joey’s site.

1. Get the binary package: MiddleClickClose.zip
2. Create ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins if it doesn’t exist
3. Unzip the MiddleClickClose.zip into this directory. You should end up with a directory called MiddleClickClose.bundle
4. Restart Safari

And finally you need to apply this fix that Joey also explains in this entry with a small change:

You can edit ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/MiddleClickClose.bundle/Contents/Info.plist, changing 5525.13 to 5528.16

Note: in order to open the “MiddleClickCLose” bundle, you need to right click it and select “Show Package Contents”.

Instead of the number Joey gives, use this one:

• 5530.17

When I loaded Safari it instantly told me that the plugin had been made for the wrong version of Safari, and showed me the version number of the current version, so it was a pretty obvious fix. Even so, some people are less tech savvy, so I figured I’d post this to help them out.

I take no credit for this fix and only did this for the community. If you want to give anyone credit, then go to Joey’s blog and thank him.

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]