Tag Archives: technology

That’s a lot of Wi-Fi!

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A strange realization hit me during all this Wi-Fi router nonsense. When asked “how many wireless devices do you have?” I found to my surprise that the answer is nine.

How’d that happen? Well, there are two Windows laptops and one Mac laptop–that’s three. There’s two Android phones and one iPhone–that’s six. There’s two Apple TVs–that’s eight. There’s one iPad–nine.

Wow. And when you consider that two of these devices do almost nothing but stream video, you can see that my insistence on upgrading to simultaneous dual-band 802.11N wireless was completely warranted.

Further Adventures in Wi-Fi

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Good news! I completely resolved all the problems with my Cisco/Linksys Wi-Fi router!

…by ordering an Apple AirPort Express which I will pick up at the local store tomorrow on my way home from work.

I tried, though. You’ll remember that I tried to set it up myself. Then I consulted their tech support. Things still weren’t right. I chatted them up a second time. I kept waiting for them to tell me that there was some known issue, some incompatibility between something on my network and the settings on the router–but no. In the end, they tried to tell me that there was some kind of interference in my apartment.

Interference. With their router in the exact same spot, serving the exact same devices the old Netgear had done for years without issue. Basically they were grasping at straws and had no clue. Meanwhile, I had two Wi-Fi SSIDs, no idea if I should leave them separate or not, a slow web experience on the MBP, intermittent streaming issues on the Apple TV, and I discovered I could no longer push video or audio to the TV from the laptop.

I’d even done my own research, consulted some other clever people I know, and come up with nothing.

So I’m done. I’m casting it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came–Best Buy. And I’m picking up my new Apple unit. The Linksys cost me $82. The Apple cost me $20 more. If it works as well as I expect it to, it’s money well spent.

Good buds

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I have a new obsession today: earbuds.

You probably remember about a year ago when I went on a similar mission with over-the-ear headphones and eded up with the terrific Sony MDR-V6 studio monitor-style cans. I still love them, no regrets.

But I do get tired of folding them up, putting them in their carrying bag, toting them to and from work in my backpack, taking them on and off when I want to listen to something at work or at home. I’ll always take these to the studio. I’ll always use them for headphone-based music practice at home. But for everyday listening? I could use something a little smaller.

If they are affordable and sound great!

I already know that this is possible. I found Connie’s SUBJEKT “HerPhones” petite earbuds for women around the apartment a few days ago. She says she got them a while back on deep discount, like $6.

Wow. They’re definitely colored, mid-scooped, compared to my Sonys. And they don’t have the same clarity. Still, for cheap earbuds they definitely passed my listenability test.

Armed with the knowledge that cheap earbuds can be good, I went to Amazon to find a few options. In-ear-style earbuds. Under $20. Excellent reviews–reviews that specifically mentioned their faithful reproduction of a full range of frequencies.

I took delivery of my Panasonic RPHJE120D earbuds this evening. In orange. I could instantly tell the audio wasn’t as good as with the SUBJEKT earbuds. The very tail end of the bass frequencies were shelved off–as were the crispest of the high frequencies. Basically, not very hi-fi sounding earbuds. I did A-B them with the SUBJEKTs just to make sure. No mistake. I should have spent more money.

Fortunately I’m only out $5 and change. Maybe I’ll throw these in the car glove box or give them to a homeless person. Then I’m going back to the drawing board.

One obvious answer is to just order the SUBJEKTs. It isn’t their “for women” moniker that deters me. It’s that they aren’t technically available anymore. There’s a newer model, earbuds that include a mic for talking on the phone. But how do I know they’re of the same audio quality? And they do cost $20, not $6.

Sony and Philips both have well-reviewed models around the same price point.

Not sure what to do.

The Technological Singularity

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I woke up this morning thinking about the so-called technological singularity. Not familiar with the idea? Here’s the gist.

For a very long time human technology has been racing forward at an ever-accelerating pace: Hand axes and clothes, fire and the wheel, the microscope and the telescope, atom splitting and genetics, microprocessors and artificial intelligence. And there is every reason to think it will continue accelerating, eventually leading to machine intelligence greater than our own. It’s not inconceivable that such intelligence will design even greater intelligences and that this will trigger a cognitive explosion, an intellectual event horizon beyond which our ability to predict future events goes dark. The genie will be out of the bottle–way out.

Optimists believe that this event, this singularity, will rapidly solve many of our most vexing technological, economic, social and political problems, ushering in an unprecedented age of peace and prosperity.

Pessimists say it will lead to Skynet and inexplicably Austrian-accented cyborg assassins.

Whatever the case, it will be a watershed event in the history of the earth. Perhaps it is these beings, artificial though they may be, who will go forth and explore the stars. After all, we are hardly suited for million-year journeys to distant galaxies. Will our artificial intelligences meet others like themselves from remote corners of the universe? It’s more plausible than we doing so ourselves. This has probably already occurred to SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence: they should be listening for alien beeps and boops instead of our biological counterparts. (See Neuromancer by William Gibson.)

Living in the future

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I just had another one of those breathtaking we’re-living-in-the-future moments.

Back around 1995 I bought my first new computer: An Apple Macintosh Performa 630CD. I’m guessing I paid $1500 or more. It had a 33 MHz microprocessor, 8 megabytes of RAM and 250 megabytes of storage.

Today I have a computer whose CPU clock speed is 3000 times faster and which has 13,000 times the storage capacity. In addition to being less than a third of the price, it has wireless internet connectivity, does video conferencing and is battery powered.

It also shoots high definition video, takes terrific photographs, knows where I am at all times, fits in my pocket and makes phone calls.

Flying cars notwithstanding, the future really has delivered in some ways. Now I’m trying to imagine what technology will look like in another fifteen years.

The Real FoxConn

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I found this Bloomberg piece to be very enlightening.

If you’ve ever tweeted about how bad Apple is, blogged about the evils of Foxconn’s sweatshops, or “Liked” a Facebook post excoriating how iPads are made, then you should listen. Don’t take the word of the dozens of bloggers and news outlets who’ve tried to summarize the whole saga into bite-sized morsels—go listen for yourself.

Android v. iOS: This time it’s personal

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Religious wars are never pretty. Take iOS and Android. I’m sure there are lots of agnostics in both camps–people who use one or the other without strong opinions about it–but there are plenty more whose feelings run very deep indeed. Just today I tweeted about a piece at PC Mag entitled The iPad Wins Because Android Tablet Apps Suck: An Illustrated Guide by Sascha Segan. Twitter pal and Android user VicWu took offense. Her charge against me: I’m being as unfair and dickish as the unfair dicks I decry on the other side. But am I?

Nobody’s perfect. I’m sure I have my moments of high snark-to-content ratios. But here are some of the things I genuinely think are problematic about Android.

1. An emphasis on being feature-rich at the expense of usability. I know which side of this issue I’m often on–and, techies notwithstanding, which side I think most users of consumer technology should be on.

2. Android devices often get software updates slowly–if at all. I’ve been hearing about the miracles of the “ice cream sandwich” release for ages, but I read that the percentage of Android users who actually have it is in the single digits. Carriers and handset makers simply have no incentive to distribute new software to their customers–and Google can’t usually do it independently of them. So there you are. iOS updates are immediately available to all handsets that can support them.

3. The Android app store has had quality control issues. From copyright-infringing ringtone ripoff artists to outright malware, you simply don’t see that kind of thing in Apple’s store.

4. In their effort to one-up each other and the iPhone, some Android handset makers have stuffed their phones so full of features–larger screen! super fast networking! unlimited tethering!–that many of them can’t last a whole day on a single battery charge.

5. Android evangelists laud the platform’s “openness.” I’m not sure what they mean by this. None of them can just download the source code of the Android operating system. The real openness I see on Android is that it’s open for handset makers and carriers to fuck it up with bad user interfaces and ham-handed attempts to shunt users into their own shoddy services and products.

You may not think these observations are reason enough not to use Android, but I don’t think any of them are grossly unfair criticisms.

There are legitimate criticisms of Apple’s iPhone, too. I generally don’t take umbrage at these. You want to cast aspersions on Apple’s app store control freakery? Have at it. I don’t share those concerns, but it generally doesn’t anger me if you bring it up. You want to vilify Apple for its relative lack of customizability? Go for it. I myself am pretty comfortable with its level of customizability, but if it’s not to your liking, knock yourself out.

Here’s what does bug me about Android enthusiasts.

1. They often accuse us Apple customers of being thoughtless victims of “slick marketing.” They say we are shallow and vain, chasing after whatever is new, shiny and fashionable without regard to its actual utility or value. There is rarely any acknowledgement of an Apple products genuine merits.

2. There’s a feeding frenzy of bad tech press and free software zealots who absolutely go apeshit every time something Apple does isn’t perfect. Even worse, they occasionally just make shit up. Have you read that the new iPad has battery problems? Well, it doesn’t. But doesn’t it overheat? No. Have you somehow gotten the idea that Apple is especially ruthless with regard to Chinese laborers and that the responsible thing to do might be to avoid their products? Well, they aren’t and you shouldn’t. Every time some Linux nerd gets out his calipers and claims that the iPhone is .002 millimeters thicker than Apple’s spec sheet it hits the front page of Slashdot where the snark runs high and the misinformation runs deep…only to have the issue debunked later.

That stuff bugs me. Because it’s unfair or wrong or unnecessarily personal and ad hominem. I think if you take a glance back at my list of Android concerns you won’t’ find anything like that.

So I’m not as much of a dick as those other guys.

No, seriously. I’m not.

Speaking of headphones

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Remember when I bought some excellent $65 headphones? I’m still loving them. They compared quite favorably to $90 studio monitor headphones. But how do they compare with even less expensive over-the-ear headphones? I avoided overpaying for the $90 set, but could I have gone even cheaper?

To find out, I compared my Sony MDR-V6′s to some inexpensive–but very well reviewed–Sennheiser HD201′s.

The verdict? The Sennheisers did sound great. I recommend them for people on a budget. But I can easily tell the difference between them and my Sonys. The Sennheisers have a decent bump in the bass response, but the clarity of the mids and the crispness of the highs make my Sony’s really shine in comparison. Even wannabe audiophiles will appreciate the difference.

Summary. If you want excellent, flat-response headphones get the Sony MDR-V6 set. If you’re on a budget and still want good over-the-ear headphones, try the Sennheiser HD201 set. I see no reason to pay top dollar for the Sony MDR-7506 model, however.

Apple will make a TV

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Yes, an actual television set.

Stop and think about what it’s like to sit down and watch television. You grab a remote that looks like the dashboard of the space shuttle. Then you figure out how to put the TV to the correct input. Then you push the same button 100 times to go through an enormous list of channels and programs, trying to find the four things that might interest you. The interface is terrible, inconsistent and ugly. And if by chance you do find something to watch, you get channel badges and crawlers fucking up the whole experience. Plus commercials. Lots of commercials. And people pay $50-$100 a month for this shit.

You should be able to tell your TV what you want. “I want to watch television” should put it to the correct input. “What movies are starting in the next 15 minutes?” is definitely within Siri’s capabilities. “Is there any Sci-Fi on?” should work, too.

Apple is really, really good at identifying what is broken about our current technology and fixing it. They did it with mp3 players. They did it with smartphones. They did it with tablet computers. They’ll do it with televisions, too, if they can get the content people on board. And remember: they did get the content people onboard for the iTunes store. So it’s not unprecedented.

That’s what I hope will happen, anyway.

Steve Jobs, giver of hope, dead at 56

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Don’t you love how everything Apple makes feels like someone loved it? Like someone gave a shit about it before it was put in a box and given to you? I’m convinced that someone really did. Maybe a lot of someones. But Steve was the head carer, the top give-a-shitter. He wasn’t a programmer, he wasn’t a hardware engineer, he wasn’t even a trained businessman. He was a product guy. He sat in a room with a big table. Some people would come in and put something in his hand. His job–I’m convinced of this–his job, at least in part, was to say “this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen”–or “did you just shit in my hand? Take it away and start over.” That iPod gave you the impression that it was washed in unicorn tears precisely because someone refused to let it be sold until it looked and worked that way. His name was Steven P. Jobs.

And this attitude of his raised the bar. Technology doesn’t have to be ugly. Much of what personal technology offers us is about as inspiring as a couple hours at the airport: equal parts fear, boredom, discomfort and bad taste. Using an Apple product, by comparison, is like having a transcendental experience while walking through a Japanese garden as cherry blossoms fall softly around you.

But Steve didn’t just deliver shiny laptops and new software. It was hope itself. Because when the world went to shit–terrorism, war, economic collapse, political chaos–Uncle Steve was always there. He walked out on stage a couple times a year, took a fucking miracle out of his pocket, and said not everything is shit; some things are awesome, look.