My thoughts on the new 27" iMac after 3 days use

I've had my iMac for 3 days now so I thought I'd write about a few observations I've made. I previously wrote about the high calibre of the new display within the 27" iMac. After now using this display, I can attest that it is indeed a thing of beauty. Watching hi-res videos, whether from iTunes or Youtube, it looks great. The color gamut is awesome. The viewing angle is awesome, and I'm really enjoying using it with my new Bamboo Fun.

Speed

As for the speed question? It's fast. Application resource hogs that used to take many 'bounces' to open on the Dock now open in 2 or 3 bounces at most. Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta now opens in less than 6 seconds. I was able to import 400 RAW photos from my Canon 40D to Lightroom while also importing 30 minutes worth of video from my new Flip Ultra to iMovie at the same time the iMac handled the workload just fine.

Bluetooth connection issues with the Apple Wireless Keyboard & Magic Mouse

My major problem has been, so far, having the Apple Wireless Keyboard & Magic Mouse lose their bluetooth connection. I don't mind typing on this keyboard, although I dislike the fact that Apple felt the need to chop off the number pad. The Magic Mouse is leaps and bounds improved over the previous Mighty Mouse, but that being said, it still is not comfortable to use for any length of time if you hands are as large as mine. It feels tiny in my hand. Too small, too uncomfortable. Sure, it's beautifully designed but my Logitech G5 just feels NICE is my hand. Oh and it has a wire so if the CPU spikes to 100% for 3 hours when encoding video, the damned thing doesn't lose connection.

And while I'm on that topic....the keyboard & mouse only seem to lose connection whenever the CPU cores max out to 100% for any length of time (mostly video encoding so far). HA! As I type this post, and watch MacBreak Weekly on youtube in HD, the damned keyboard lost its connection again. iStat Menus reports my current CPU use at ~ 55% on both cores.

Really Apple? How do you expect people to use this thing? It wouldn't be quite as bad if it automatically reconnected on its own. Sadly, that is not the case. Even keying the bluetooth drop-down menu, selecting disconnect for the keyboard, and then selecting connect again will not cause it to reconnect. I have to toggle bluetooth off and then toggle it back on in order for it to pick up the keyboard once more. This process is sufficiently annoying and tedious to make this product unusable for me. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I should have the wired full-sized keyboard by Tuesday Monday (I love when the 2 day shipping arrives in 1 day).

Luxurious desktop screen real-estate

Did I mention how BIG this screen us? Under my previous desktop setup I was using a 17" MacBook Pro alongside a Dell 24" Widescreen LCD. I'm still at my family's farm in southern Virginia, so alas, haven't hooked the Dell up to the iMac yet. Under the previous setup, I used the MacBook's screen on the left to keep things like GMail, Adium, and Twitter displayed all the time. I use the 24" Dell as my main screen. Under this setup, I plan to use the 27" iMac as the main screen with the Dell as the secondary display for panels such as Twitter/email/IM. Even without the second display, I'm able to comfortably have a full sized Chrome window alongside my MarEdit markup screen + its preview screen. Also, I have Adium & Tweetie for Mac tucked up in the top right corner. All at once. On one screen. Without using Spaces. AWESOME.

Editing photos of the family I took during Christmas was a treat within Lightroom as well. None of the various control panels felt cramped on the screen as I was still able to see a fairly large image in the center for editing. I high recommend this computer to photographers or designers who regularly use Adobe products.

Now, a reminder, I've only used this machine for 3 days, so my experience is limited but overall I have found no faults with the iMac. Apple's peripherals on the other hand...

AT&T has only reduced spending on its network since the 2007 iPhone launch

AT&T has received a great deal of criticism for the abysmal quality of its network in major cities. They've always countered that they were going to, at some point in the future, upgrade the quality of service in those areas where it is poor. But according to their own SEC filings, they've actually been pulling back on spending on their network.

All this time they've been taking more and more iPhone owners on unlimited plans, they've actually cut their spending on the network that is supposed to carry their data. Is it any wonder that people are so mad?

Images courtesy of Gizmodo:

Morgan Stanley comes to the conclusion that the iPhone is dominate with pretty charts and graphs

"Morgan Stanley drinks the Apple Kool-aid":

In 1995 Mark Meeker researched, at length, and wrote a piece called "The Internet Report" which became known as "the bible" of the dot-com boom.

Graphics like the one at right charting the rapid growth of the iPhone/iPod touch/iTunes ecosystem — the fastest new-tech ramp up in history, according to Meeker's team of 27 research analysts — dominated the 92-slide PowerPoint stack.

This particular slide shows that the rate of adoption of the iPhone and iPod touch in their first nine quarters on the market outpaced NTT's DoCoMo two-fold, Netscape five-fold and AOL eight-fold.

Based on past performance, according to Morgan Stanley, Apple is in the "pole position" in the race to dominate mobile Internet computing, which is supposed to be for the 2000s what desktop Internet computing was for the 1990s, personal computing for the 1980s, mini computing for the 1970s, and mainframe computing for the 1960s.

"Apple has a two or three-year lead" according to Katy Huberty, thanks to an installed base of 57 million handsets, 100,000 apps and 200 million iTunes subscribers with credit card numbers on file. (She will keep her eye, however, on Samsung, Nokia and Google's Android.)

But much of the presentation was spent showing, in slides culled from research over the past two and a half years, that the iPhone is not like previous mobile devices, and its owners not like ordinary cell phone users.

For example, although iPhone and iPod touch owners represent only 17% of the global smartphone installed base, they account for 65% of the world's mobile Web browsing and 50% of its mobile app usage (see chart below).

Another slide, this one a pie chart, shows that the average American cellphone user spends 40 minutes a day on a mobile phone, making calls 70% of that time. The average iPhone user, by contrast, spends 60 minutes on the device but makes calls only 45% of the time. The rest of those 60 minutes are spent texting, e-mailing, listening to music, playing games and surfing the Web.

Finally, we have the Venn diagram below that compares Facebook's 350,000 apps and 137% year-over-year growth with the iPhone's 100,000 apps and 163% growth. The place where Mark Zuckerberg's 430 million users overlap with Steve Jobs' 57 million is the sweet spot of the mobile Internet. It's here, according to Morgan Stanley, where we find the future of computing.

There's lots more where this came from. You can see the 92 slides presented Tuesday at Morgan Stanley's website. But that's just an appetizer for the two main courses: a 659-slide key themes presentation and the full 424-page Mobile Internet Report.

The Mobile Internet Report

Use Your iPhone or iPod touch to Lock Your Mac - Airlock.app

Use Your iPhone or iPod touch to Lock Your Mac - Airlock - Gizmodo:

While I prefer to use a long password to protect my computer, I like the idea of being able to use a physical key to lock it. This is precisely what Airlock does, using your iPhone. It works great.

Airlock is a system preferences pane. Double-click to install it, associate it with your iPhone or iPod touch, set the security range, and that's it. I tried with my iMac 24 and my iPhone and it worked perfectly. You can even see a radar screen showing the distance between the two devices. The moment I stepped out of the limit, the screen locked. And then, as soon as I came into the perimeter, it unlocked automagically.

There is only one problem: If you use a wireless mouse or keyboard, it won't work due to a Bluetooth bug in Mac OS X. Otherwise, this thing will make you feel like James Bond.

Without the Aston Martin. And the Martini. And the laser watch. And the Scottish accent. And the hot girls. OK, so it won't really make you feel like James Bond, but come on, get on with the program here.

(Via John Gruber.)

I've been using Airlock at work for 2 days now and am loving it. Before, I was being lazy and not locking my computer when I step away from it, which is bad because I'm the webmaster and have access to...well everything. Now, It does it for me, automatically, when I leave my workstation. This utility is a really seamless and elegant solution. Also, if I ever leave my iPhone at home, I can still log in via the login/password prompt when needed. Another note - I HATE the ugly blue and black striped bar that is displayed on your screen when your computer is locked. I wrote the company that makes this App and they responded promptly saying that they've received a lot of feedback and that users should look for more lock options in the next version (screensaver, etc). More screenshots:

USGBC IT To The Rescue

Photography by the lovely Kristina Hopper. ( @khvafl )

The Lost Decade

Daniel Lyons, of Fake Steve Jobs fame, has written an excellent article for Newsweek regarding his thoughts on the differences between Microsoft when Bill Gates ran the company to how Steve Ballmer now runs the company. I am a firm believer that you should not have non-programmers managing programmers. If you do not understand how to do the job, you should not be managing the people that do. This is especially true for non-technical CEO's running technology companies.

The Lost Decade

Why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates

Last month Microsoft rolled out Windows 7 and opened the first of a chain of new retail stores. As usual with such announcements, there's been loads of hoopla and ginned-up excitement. But mostly people are just relieved. Windows 7 replaces Vista, one of the most disastrous tech products ever. It also caps the end of a decade in which Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, stepped aside, and the company lost its edge. (Click here to follow Daniel Lyons).

Ten years ago, when Gates appointed his longtime second in command, Steve Ballmer, as his replacement as CEO, Microsoft was still the meanest, mightiest tech company in the world, a juggernaut that bullied friends and foes alike and which possessed an operating-system franchise that was practically a license to print money. Techies likened Microsoft to the Borg on Star Trek, the evil collective that insatiably assimilates everything around it, with the slogan, "Resistance is futile."

That was then. Now, instead of being scary, Microsoft has become a bit of a joke. Yes, its Windows operating system still runs on more than 90 percent of PCs, and the Office application suite rules the desktop. But those are old markets. In new areas, Microsoft has stumbled. Apple created the iPod, and the iTunes store, and the iPhone. Google dominates Internet search, operates arguably the best e-mail system (Gmail) and represents a growing threat in mobile devices with Android. Amazon has grown to dominate online retail, then launched a thriving cloud-computing business (it rents out computer power and data storage), and capped it off with the Kindle e-reader. Microsoft's answers to these market leaders include the Zune music player, a dud; the Bing search engine, which is cool but won't kill Google; Windows Mobile, a smart-phone software platform that has been surpassed by others; and Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing service, which arrives next year—four years behind Amazon.

How did this happen? How did Microsoft let tens of billions in revenue (and hundreds of billions in market capitalization) slip through its fingers? Hassles with antitrust regulators distracted Microsoft's management and made the company more timid. But the bigger reason seems to be that in January 2000, Gates stepped down as CEO. It's been downhill ever since.

Ballmer is by all accounts an incredibly bright and intensely competitive guy. But he's no Bill Gates. Gates was a software geek. He understood technology. Ballmer is a business guy. To Ballmer's credit, in his decade at the helm Microsoft's revenues have nearly tripled, from $23 billion to $58 billion. The company has built a huge new business selling "enterprise" software—programs that run corporate data centers. Microsoft has also done well in videogames with its Xbox player.

But the problem with putting nontechies in charge of tech companies is that they have blind spots. Gates was quick to recognize that the Internet represented a threat to Microsoft, and he led the campaign to destroy Netscape. In those days Microsoft was still nimble enough that it could pivot quickly and catch up on a rival. Since then the company has become bureaucratic and lumbering.

Worse yet, as Microsoft slowed down, the rest of the world sped up. The new generation of Internet companies needed little capital to get started and could scale up quickly. Google got so big so fast that by the time Microsoft recognized the threat, it could not catch up. With Apple, the threat was not the iPod player itself but the Internet-based iTunes store; by the time Microsoft could create a credible clone of the Apple store, Apple had the market locked down.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's core business hit a snag with Vista. Its engineers have spent three years undoing their mess; Windows 7 doesn't leap past what Apple offers, but it's still really terrific. But while Microsoft has been distracted fixing its broken Windows, yet another new crop of Internet saplings has gained root: Facebook and Twitter in social media, Hulu and YouTube (owned by Google) in online video.

And so it goes. This is perhaps why, in the 10 years of Ballmer's reign, Microsoft's stock has dropped by nearly 50 percent, from $55 to $29. (Apple shares have climbed 700 percent; Google has gone up 400 percent since its IPO in 2004.) A spokesman for Microsoft points out that the company pays a quarterly dividend and in 2004 paid out a special dividend worth $32 billion. Still, it's been a pretty dismal 10 years. Unless the company can do more than focus on the past, the next decade might not be any better.

Hello!? Is this thing on?! Apple's new 27" iMac is breakthrough innovation!!!!

New Apple hardware was released last Tuesday. Like normal, Gruber had it right the night before. Also like normal, the Tech/Apple blogs covered the release of the new hardware extensivley the day of their release. There were some reviews and a few other commentary posts about the new hardware throughout last week, but not until Sunday, October 25th, did I encounter some commentary from Marco Arment.

Looking back on Marco's blog, I found his initial post to the new 27" iMac last Tuesday.

The 27” iMac’s base configuration is $1699. It has a 2560x1440 resolution and can be used as a standalone monitor from another computer. It’s a new LED-backlit IPS panel likely to have an excellent color gamut, contrast ratio, and pixel response time.

Now, IPS panels are the most expensive form of LCD panels available. They offer the most accurate color correctness (essential for designers, or anyone who works in Photoshop or with other graphc apps). Marco's followup post came yesterday:

The more I think and learn about the curious pricing of the 27” iMac, the more bizarre and incredible it seems.

It has a resolution of 2560x1440, which no other monitor in the industry seems to have (that I can find). 30” LCDs are the same width but 1600 tall. Shrinking 2560-wide into a screen that’s 3” smaller diagonally yields an impressive pixel density, especially given the panel’s still-immense size.

It has an IPS panel. IPS is the best and most expensive LCD type, giving the best viewing angle and the least color- and brightness-shifting as the angle increases in any direction. Nearly every panel on the market, including every laptop panel, is the cheap TN type. (TN panels wash out as soon as you move your head slightly, especially vertically, which is why it’s so hard to find a good viewing angle for your laptop lid while watching a dark movie.) Other 27” TN panels exist (only at the lower 1920x1080 resolution), but I can’t find any other 27” IPS panels.

It’s also LED-backlit.

So it’s a very high-specced, brand new panel that’s apparently not being mass-produced yet (since no other monitors for sale are using it). That must be expensive. How much of the base 27” iMac’s $1700 retail cost does this represent?

The closest existing panel for comparison, spec-wise, is the 30” IPS panel that Apple uses in their Cinema Display. It has the ultra-high resolution and size, but doesn’t compete with the 27” iMac’s panel for brightness, contrast, power efficiency, or color range. It’s overpriced by today’s standards at $1800, but not by much — Dell’s original 30” monitor with the same panel is $1200, and a newer version with better specs (although still not as good as the new iMac’s) is $1700.

A standalone monitor with the new iMac’s panel would be perfectly reasonably priced at about $1500. From Dell. Apple’s only charging $200 more than that for theirs, and there’s an entire high-end computer stuck to the back of it.

When they mentioned on last week’s quarterly earnings call that they expected lower profit margins for a new product, I don’t think anyone expected a change of this magnitude. How are they making anything — or even not losing money — with the base-model 27” iMac?

My guess: a massively successful negotiation with the panel’s manufacturer (most likely LG) to get not only an incredible price on these panels, but also apparent exclusivity for a while. It’s a hell of an accomplishment, and presumably a hell of an effort, for a computer that isn’t even Apple’s most-selling model (or even product line). That raises a more interesting question: Why?

Until we know why the panel is so cheap, I bet we’re going to see a lot of Mac Pro owners buying 27” monitors for $1700 and trying to figure out what to do with the free computer stuck to the back. For new-computer shopping, a lot of people are going to abandon whichever laptop or Mac Pro they were considering and get this instead.

That helps answer the “why” question: Maybe Apple wants to push more buyers away from today’s default system-type choice — laptops — and show them why they should consider getting a fast, spacious desktop instead. And, for the time being, it’s a desktop with absolutely no equivalent in the PC world.

First of all, this article made me very excited on a personal level. I will be the owner of one of these machines by late December, if all goes well. I was excited about the 27 inches of new desktop real estate but I had no idea what the implications of this new display meant - on a technical level.

To followup to Marco's post, Jim Cloudman replied to his post this morning:

The monitor is, by all accounts, the greatest piece of liquid crystal display heaven to ever grace the Earth. Marco Arment touches on a good point, though:

How are they making anything — or even not losing money — with the base-model 27” iMac?

His answer, that Apple scored a great deal from the panel manufacturer, has got to be a part of it. I think another part of it, though, is that the panel manufacturer must be drooling over the fact that this is really the only way to move a lot of high-end panels, and therefore gain access to serious economies of scale, driving the prices down and bringing IPS panels to a more mainstream market.

Not many people are very discerning about their monitor choice. Even many creative types look for a much cheaper panel - $1800 for a monitor, when you can buy a 13” MacBook for $1200 and find a good-enough HP or Dell display with what you have left? IPS monitors are a tough sell.

Now, you have IPS displays in the hands of everyone who buys the 27” iMac. This isn’t something that only designers will use - it’s something that every geek with enough disposable income or company funds will consider. It’s a much bigger market, and it’ll move many more IPS displays. Many sales -> many IPS panels moved -> massive economies of scale -> cheaper panels -> profit!

This is what I love about Apple. Nothing is driving innovation anymore in the PC market - the average computer today has little more capability than a computer from five years ago. Apple, however, is using the brute force of its market share to drive technology forward - by buying the latest stable technology and creating a vast market for it in the time it takes to make an update to the Apple Store, allowing it to mature and develop, while reaping the benefits. Then, the rest of the industry follows suit in a vain attempt to catch them, two years later, not realizing that as long as they keep seeking out the lowest bidder, they keep giving up the chase.

If you combine Marco and Jim's thoughts, they make a very strong case for the reasons why Apple is able to sell a computer of this stature. We, the customer, are the beneficiaries. Another important poing that Jim makes, which I feel need to be emphasized is Apple's ability to be an innovation driver within the Computer industry. I bolded his last paragraph with the hope that you will really take it to heart. Can you think of the last time Dell, HP, or any of the other crapware manufacturers lead the industry in new technology adaptation.

Broken Promises