Recently in Hardware Category

I've blogged about my recent encounters with @Verizon when upgrading the TiVo with the Fios service here at the house.  In addition to the Twitter replies to me from Verizon following up, today I got a followup phone call from Ralph, the technician who installed the M-CableCard and got everything working wonderfully.  He wanted to be sure everything was satisfactory.

Since I groused about my really, really bad customer service experience, I feel equally compelled to rave about my current really, really good customer service follow up experiences.   OK, so Verizon and I have kissed and made up.  This was really pretty easy for me to do because I do so love their Fios* service and my MiFi card that I use all over the country.

Also of note:  loving the new high capacity TiVo Premiere XL in HD!

*According to an independent report that has nothing to do with Verizon, here in Manhattan Beach we're in the top 1% of household internet access speeds.  It just rocks my world since I do so much work on the internet!!  And I'm reading that Verizon just announced a whopping 150 megabit up and 35 megabit down upgrade from our supposedly current 15 up and 10 down!  (Our actual speed just clocked in at 30.54 Mb/s up and 22.51 Mb/s down.) My God, that's fast!  This makes cloud computing a bit more realistic.  Their goal:  10 gigabits per household in a few years!  That's just insane.

Related articles

• Verizon FiOS Readies Super Fast 10GB Per House Connection (beet.tv)
• @Verizon Customer Service Is Horrendously Wretched! (timtyson.us)
• Corporate Offloading (timtyson.us)

I railed against @Verizon last week (link) because of my inexcusably horrid customer service experience.  Well, I'm happy to report that the Verizon installer, who I think was an independent contractor, arrived this morning, on time, properly de-installed my two single-stream cards (called S-cards) and installed a new multi-stream card (M-card) in my TiVo.  He was pleasant and knew what he was doing.

The process was a little more involved than I thought it would be.  The technician had to connect and log in to my router and run a special program to do his voodoo to make it all work.  He then downloaded a desktop program to my computer which I am expected to use before calling Verizon Technical Support if I have a problem with picture quality. He did a good job, and everything is working great.

I have to say though, that I rather resent this corporate strategy:  off-load as much of your workforce onto your customers to increase profit margins by reducing personnel and operational costs.  Corporations do this more and more.  What I find so offensive is not that corporations expect me to use my unpaid time to do their work (though I do resent this), but that it reduces jobs for wo/men on the street that need them!  (And I don't even want to hear the bull about keeping prices down.  I don't think it does at all.  It keeps profit margins and CEOs bonuses going up while the powerless little people lose their jobs.  That's what it really does.)

The only thing that makes me even more disgusted is when corporations turn offloading their work onto their customers into an even greater profit center through advertising. Classic example:  @Delta has reduced ticketing personnel so drastically (increase profit margins) that any savvy traveler is forced to print out the boarding pass at home.  Delta has offloaded their workload onto their generally unsuspecting (even grateful!) customers.  Since you use your own paper and toner/ink Delta saves even more money.  Clever!  Sneaky!

But the real insult is that Delta sells advertising space on the boarding pass you have to print out.  You use your paper and your toner to print an advertisement most of us don't want at all but are forced to see.  You can scroll down to the bottom of the boarding pass to print it without the advertisement, but, based on casual observation from all of my traveling, almost everyone prints the stupid advertisements but me!

Related articles

• @Verizon Customer Service Is Horrendously Wretched! (timtyson.us)
• FiOS TV coming to Mac, iOS in 2011 (tuaw.com)
• Verizon bringing 150/35Mbps internet to FiOS customers, enraging customers of all other ISPs (engadget.com)
• Verizon Adding FiOS TV Support For Mac and iOS Next Year (macstories.net)
• Verizon FiOS gets 150/35 Mbps plan (slashgear.com)
• Verizon Speeds Up FiOS To 150Mbps (tech.slashdot.org)

Now, before you think I'm just in a bad mood (though @Verizon certainly has put me in one!), I think Verizon's cell service and Fios service are completely awesome.  But their customer service is the worst of the worst.  In my opinion, the senior level executive in charge of customer service and retail should be fired immediately!

Today I completely wasted about 4 hours dealing with Verizon.  I had a simple objective:  replace the two cable cards in my old Series 3 TiVo with one multi-stream card in my new TiVo Premier XL.  The new TiVo will only accept one cable card, and it must be multi-stream.  Easy.

WRONG!!!!!

I thought all I needed to do was go to the nearest Verizon store and swap the old two for the new one.  When I arrived at the store near my house, I learned that most of the wireless stores have nothing to do with the cable stuff.  I needed to call an 800 number, and they would tell me where the nearest store is that could solve my problem.  How is one supposed to know which stores are which?!

I sort of remembered the location of the Verizon store where I picked up the first cable box when I moved here.  So off I headed in that direction while calling the number.  I waited on hold, to get to an agent, for about 10 - 15 minutes (after wading through their insufferable phone menus—every time I called).  She then asked in what city the store was where I had gone before.  I told her:  Venice Beach.  She said she would "get them on the line."  The ringing began.  After another 15 minutes or so of ringing, AT&T, in its inimitable way, dropped the call.  I called Verizon back and was dropped, after waiting about 10 minutes, before I even got an agent.  At this point I passed the place where the Verizon store had been.

It was gone!  The security guard didn't know where they went.  I called Verizon again.  (Menus, Wait, Wait, Wait...) We talked forever.  The agent told me the nearest store that would have the cable card I needed was in San Fernando.  What?!  I would have to go there to exchange the wrong cards for the correct card.  Good grief!  Well, ok, off I went.

When I arrived at the San Fernando Verizon store, you have no idea where to go once inside the store.  It looks worse than security at Southwest Airlines in LAX, literally!  Ropes and barricades everywhere.  But, unlike LAX, not many people.  You have no idea at all where to go in this maze!  Finally, I just walked around the maze of barricades and up to a person that appeared to fain being busy but had no one standing near her.

When I told her what the Verizon guy on the phone had said, she was flabbergasted.  She looked up my record.  Why would they send you here?  We don't have any cards at all of any kind!

What????!!!  You're kidding me!  I drove an hour for nothing?!!!!  She gave me a different 800 number to call saying they would order the card for me.

I went home.  Called.  (Menus, Wait, Wait, Wait...) Was sent to support.  (Wait, Wait, Wait...)  Support only replaces what you have, if it is broken, with what you have.  Support sent me back to customer service.  (Wait, Wait, Wait...)  Customer service then said they didn't understand what I wanted and HUNG UP ON ME!

I called back.  To this point I had been patient, but I was now furious.  This person told me immediately that they didn't have multi-stream cards.  They don't use them.  Their service is incompatible with them.  Instead, I could get one of their DVRs.  I told her that TiVo said, before I ordered the new TiVo, that Verizon Fios did have them.  She said she had had this issue before, had researched it, and that Verizon did not have nor support multi-stream cards.  She didn't know if they ever would.  Verizon only had the old cards that I already have that will not work in the new TiVos.  I asked her why any of the other people I had talked to today at Verizon had not told me this to begin with!

I then called @TiVo support to see if there was a work-around or if I was going to have to return the TiVo.

TiVo customer support rocks my world!!!  They are awesome!

The TiVo dude said Verizon absolutely does have them.  They are required by the FCC to have them.  He said we would have a three-way phone call with Verizon and resolve this.  Suddenly this new Verizon agent couldn't begin to understand why anyone at Verizon would have told me they do not have the multi-stream card.  She set up a day/time when they would come out to the house and take care of it for me.  The TiVo dude documented the Verizon case number and agent's arrangements.

What crap!  Verizon probably wanted me to rent one of their boxes.  This reminds me of back in the day when the cell phone companies would suddenly switch your service without you knowing until you got a bill from another company.  If I knew how to contact the head of Verizon's customer service and the head of their retail stores, I would tell them what a horrible job they are doing.

Related articles

• TiVo Unveils Its Own DVR-Controlling iPad App (gigaom.com)
• TiVo outs iPad remote app for Premiere DVRs (electronista.com)

Now, I've actually written a lot more than 2,500 posts here at tt.us over the past 6 years, but a good number of them never got published for one reason or another:  they became old news before I finished the post, I was venting and then reconsidered, I waxed insane and recanted...  The list goes on.

So what is Post #2,500 to herald? (I have no idea why I feel it deserves some level of distinction!)

After careful thought and consideration (not!) it turns out this post will be about current events:  The TSA.  I bring you this cartoon from The New Yorker with a concluding thought.

The thought:  Security is an illusion.  It simply doesn't exist.  And with the tawdry junk talk, the man who dropped his trousers and stood there in his underwear, the  poor man whose medical device was yanked from his body leaking urine all over him in front of everyone while he tried to get the TSA to stop before the incident happened, the other cancer survivor made to remove her prosthetic breast for inspection, the pilots union's worries of extended and excessive exposure to harmful levels of radiation from the imaging systems, the list could go on and on...   we have the security scanning option pictured above (source: The New Yorker).

How long will it take before some man or woman boards a plane with something explosive located in a body cavity?  What then, I ask?!

The absurdity needs to stop. Risk is everywhere. Get accustomed to it.

Everyone knows that in 10.6 you can do a Quick Look on most files without opening them in the application that created them by simply selecting a file (one click) and then touching the spacebar. I love this feature and use it all of the time.  It was first introduced in 10.5.

But I didn't know that you can use the [Option] key to zoom in on the Quick Look and the [Option] + [Shift] keys to zoom out on a Quick Look and can even move around in zoomed images during Quick Look using two fingers on the Trackpad.

Nifty

On Saturday, October 23, 2010, I walked nearly 18,000 steps!!  Yes.  Yes, indeed!  I walked all over Atlanta!

Tragically, since I didn't travel with my computer, just my iPad, my Fitbit didn't report this on Twitter!

I was traumatized by the fact that this enormous record (for me anyway) went unknown, uncelebrated, without the ceremonial distinctions it truly deserved!!!

But now the world knows!

You know, official declarations are often a bit slippery.  I'm about to issue one such declaration now:  I'm declaring the computer hard drives officially recovered, restructured, and now in the process of backing up both on and off site.  I say it's a bit of a slippery declaration because I will probably find small things yet undone even weeks from now—things you rarely use or think about.  We'll see.

The desktop computer now has two new 2TB drives in it.  One of those drives is the freshly cleaned and thinned system drive.  The 4TB Drobo is now working again (It was a catastrophic mess!) as an onsite Tim Capsule backup system for the desktop computer.  The faulty iTunes library disk has been replaced with a 1T external hard drive, and all of the files have been carefully (and tediously too, might I add) copied over through iTunes itself, thus recreating the entire iTunes library from scratch--to minimize future issues.

I'm guessing about one more full week before everything is completely backed up on and off site.  The desktop computer had over 2,000,000 files on it!  (My god.  I need to simplify my life!)  In the meantime, the 20+ MB internet connection feels like molasses.

It has been a horrid week.  But the treachery is now declared officially over!

Related articles

• Oh Horrid Tragedy (timtyson.us)
• iTunes bankruptcy, step one: The Great Purge (tuaw.com)

My main computer has had its 1T startup disk fail.  After nearly 24 hours of working on it, I at least have it running again.  I've had to take another 1T internal drive and make it the new start up drive with OS 10.6.x.  So far, I've had success getting all of my document files, my upgrades and installs files, and numerous supplemental system files off of the bad drive and onto the new startup drive.

I have now successfully copied the movie files folder, the music and pictures folders over to the newly purposed drive.  These contain literally hundreds of thousands of files representing hundreds of gigabytes.  Fingers crossed:  I don't think any of the files I copied over were corrupted.

The final step is reinstalling all of my applications.  I've reinstalled all of the smaller, simpler applications.  Now I've tackled the enormous applications that take hours and hours each:  Logic, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop Extended, etc.  This entire process will take at least a week!  Then I can have Apple replace the bad hard drive.

What a mess!  But again, I am soooo thankful for Backblaze, which is my off site backup service.  I know that even if I can't get all of my files off of the bad drive, I can get them from Backblaze.  I also have to extol the virtues of my password and serial number management system, 1Password.  I would be considerably more frustrated with the reinstallation of all of my software if I had to go digging around for my over 500 serial numbers.

And, as if fate has it in for me, my iTunes 500 GB music library drive, which had given me problems earlier and lost all of its data (and had to be restored from Backblaze!), is having issues again.  I just replaced it with a 1T drive, as it was almost full, which may have contributed to its issues.  So, while I've been reinstalling software on my Mac Pro, I've been painstakingly making certain that all of my iTunes data is recovered and properly installed through iTunes so it plays correctly.

Even with excellent backup strategies and serial number management, this has been a week in technology hell!  The silver lining:  my system folder has accrued a massive amount of needless, useless clutter through about 10 years of migration from older machines and upgrading the operating system and software.  Now it will be vastly less junked up with useless files.

Related articles

• Backblaze vs. CrashPlan: Mac Backup Smackdown, Round 2 (nytimes.com)
• Backup service Backblaze almost acquired by ... someone (venturebeat.com)
• Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage (backblaze.com)

And I hate it that the front door to the house isn't private property.  Daily, people leave fliers and business cards and unsolicited junk on the door!

This week's big news story:  the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that the government can, without a warrant, sneak onto your property, your driveway, and place a GPS tracking device on your car that tracks everywhere you go.  We no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy for our driveways, which even delivery people can use.

Shockingly, this ruling is actually getting some media coverage.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Source:  Time

Some have pointed out that if you are wealthy, you probably live in a gated community or have gates around your property that would extend your zone of reasonable expectation of privacy.  So only the poor people have less privacy.  But that's OK, isn't it?  I mean, wealthy people don't commit crimes.  Wealthy people don't bilk billions, even trillions out of the unsuspecting.  Enron never happened.  No Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.  No Wall Street bail out while the captains of capitalism lived off the slaughtered fatted cow.

Besides, privacy died long ago in this country — during the George W. Bush administration, I do believe.  His cronies called it The Patriot Act.  Just the name says "Run!  Don't walk!"  During his administration and the Republican rein of terror, not only were hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras installed all over this nation, but warrantless wiretaps, "enhanced interrogations," and god knows what else were made the order of the day.

And who are we kidding?  I'd bet my last dollar that the US government routinely snags the GPS satellite data from specific cars at will.  There really is no need to place anything on the cars of serious criminals.  That's so last century.  Only puny local police departments have to actually walk onto someone's driveway to plant a GPS under their car.  The big time crooks already have GPS as part of the most fashionable bling package.

The totalitarian state is here.  Is now.  We live it.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights are just window dressing from a time gone by.

Related articles

• Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars (cnn.com)
• Warrentless GPS Tracking Of Your Car Is Legal If You're Not Wealthy Enough To Protect It (dvorak.org)
• The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves (time.com)
• The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS (time.com)
• Judge Kozinski Doesn't Track with the Ninth Circuit on GPS and the Fourth AmendmentCalls his fellow judges 'cultural elitists' when it comes to privacy. (abovethelaw.com)

The fact that this can be done, in total, from storyboard (if they had chosen to) all the way to upload to YouTube, on a $299 device, the iPhone 4, that also happens to make phone calls, is astounding. When Apple makes this all possible on an iPhone Touch and the iPad, they will rock the education market! Be sure to watch it in full screen.

I haven't posted much to my blog lately because I have been intensely busy, mostly with traveling, writing, and physical therapy.  And I have made some minuscule effort to avoid the computer as typing at the keyboard seems to train wreck my bad shoulder!

Recently, well, over the past several days, I used my Navigon application on the new iPhone as I traveled.  This application is awesome on its own.  On the iPhone 4, the app looks beyond gorgeous and functions with a level of smooth precision I had not noticed before.  I love it!

I use the app with the TomTom car kit.  I didn't give a second thought to using the car kit with my new phone, just assuming it would work fine.  Wrong!  The iPhone 4 is not as thick as the iPhone 3Gs, and this fact caused some connection issues.  Apparently the car kit needs the extra thickness to snap the phone firmly into the connector.  I even noticed a "rocking lever" that seems to need pressure to deliver electricity to the iPhone 4, which is not thick enough to press the lever.

The iPhone 4 appears to snap into the car kit fine.  But it does not get an electrical charge from the connector.  After some wiggling/pressing, each time I used it, I managed to get the phone to seat itself enough to get the charge.  Having electricity is essential as running a GPS app on the phone would otherwise very quickly deplete the battery.

I also noticed some wonderful updates to the Navigon application since last I used it.  I downloaded the panoramic 3D map information which adds more realistic display information.  And, for those who are not familiar with the Navigon app, I totally love how it implements highway signage information as you approach the signage.  It looks so realistic, just as the signs actually look when you arrive at them.  This feature takes so much guesswork out of navigating complex junctions.

The applications functions fantastically well in the background with the new multitasking iOS4.  And I also completely love the intuitive interface and GUI design.

On my recent trip to the Atlanta metropolitan area, I confess to finding the speed limit warning a bit annoying.  You can set the interval to 5, 10, 15, etc. miles per hour over the speed limit.  The application knows the speed limits and will say "Warning" while displaying an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle at the bottom corner of the speed limit sign indicating the actual speed limit.  In the top center I have the app showing my current, realtime speed.  This is invaluable information when traveling in unfamiliar areas.  But I knew the speed limits in the Atlanta area, had the interval set to 5mph, and the traffic was, as the traffic tends to do in Atlanta, speeding maniacally down the intestates.  So I heard "Warning!" every minute or so as I drove.  With my shoulder, I couldn't reach to adjust the interval while driving.

I'll have to update my TomTom car kit when they make one designed for the new iPhone 4.  But, I highly recommend the Navigon GPS application!

Related articles:

• On the road with the latest Navigon MobileNavigator (tuaw.com)
• Best iPhone Navigation Apps (brighthub.com)

I really don't like Apple's use of the word "magic" in their advertising campaigns.  To me, personally, it's a stupid choice of adjective:  the "Magic Mouse," the "Magic Trackpad," and how "Magical" the iPad is.  I wish they would ditch the "M" word.  It just sounds childish to me.

That said, the new trackpad keyboard accessory is awesome!  Aesthetically, it beautifully accompanies the Apple keyboard.

I do not like a mouse, of any kind.  The "Magic Mouse" was the best mouse I've used, but it constantly had connectivity issues!  I have always preferred to use a trackball.  I don't enjoy moving my hand all over a desktop surface.  In this regard, the "Magic Trackpad' is a dream.

Here are the things I like about it:

• I've yet to come across anything a mouse does that this trackpad will not do.  In fact it does more things than any mouse I've ever used will do.
• I love they way it feels to the touch.
• While it is larger than the trackpad on my MacBook Pro, it still has a small footprint.
• I can easily move my cursor anywhere on my large 27" monitors (2560 x 1600) , from corner to corner.
• I can rotate, pinch and zoom, zoom the screen, page back and forth, bring up the application switcher, scroll, and activate Exposé using the trackpad.  I can also point, click, double click, right click, as well as click and drag so easily with intuitive touches and finger slides.

I find the new trackpad vastly superior to the "Magic Mouse" and even my Kennsington trackball.  In fact, I like it more than any mouse-type device I've ever used.  This baby rocks!

Related articles:

• Magic Trackpad review (engadget.com)
• Apple Magic Trackpad first impressions (boygeniusreport.com)
• Apple Unveils Its Magic Trackpad (shoppingblog.com)
• Apple Magic Trackpad unboxing (unboxing.gearlive.com)
• Apple's Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era (MG Siegler/TechCrunch) (techmeme.com)

Everyone was excited about getting the new Apple iPhone 4.  But seriously, did these people test this device much at all?

First, the issue with the antenna signal decreasing surfaced right away.  My first call on the iPhone 4 fell victim to this problem when it went from a full strength signal to dropping the call with no signal at all.  Steve Jobs tells the world to stop hold the phone incorrectly —basically, don't hold it in your hand, and spend an extra $30 for Apple's new bumpers.

But I am finding other quirky issues with my new phone.

During calls, my phone appears to become confused as to whether I'm holding it to my ear and talking on the phone or whether I'm just holding it in my hand.  (Oops!  I forgot.  I'm not supposed to hold it in my hand.)  When I'm talking on a call with the phone to my ear, the handset appears on the screen, and my cheek presses the keys making the audible key tones we're all familiar with when dialing.  Then the screen blanks out when I remove the phone from my ear and the screen remains invisible and completely non-responsive no matter what I do from that point on.  I have to do several repeated hard reboots (Home button and Power simultaneously) to kill the phone and get it to work again.

During my first call about this issue to Apple technical support, the lady told me to do a complete backup and restore of the phone to correct the problem. Regrettably I got a phone call in the middle of the resyncing process and the resync didn't complete.  I called Apple back to make sure I wasn't going to lose all of my folders, etc.  This technical support lady asked me two questions about my issue:

1. "Are you using a screen protector?"  No, I'm not.
2. "Is your iPhone in a case?"  Yes, it's in a leather case I used for the iPhone 3Gs.

Oops!  Well, there we have it.  Not only must you hold the iPhone 4 "correctly" when placing a call so the signal strength doesn't drop to zero, you can not place your phone in a case or use a scratch resistant film to protect the front of the phone.  Doing the later apparently upsets the proximity sensor.  Oh, and if you want to hold the phone in your hand when placing a call and avoid having to hold it parallel to the orbit of Pluto the former planet, you have to spend an additional $30 for Apple's new bumper.

I've read in the blogosphere that despite Steve Jobs' claims that the new glass surface on the front and back of the phone is stronger than Iron Man's suit, it scratches rather easily.  I've always worn my previous iPhones (I've had them all.) on my belt in a leather case both to protect them and provide easy and continuous access.  I guess I could tie a string around my belt and around the bumper of my iPhone 4 and hope that doesn't disturb the proximity sensor.

I planned to purchase an iPhone 4 for my mother whose purse abuses every object it contains.  Without the phone being in some full-bodied protective case, it will be destroyed in her purse.  I'm sure she's not the only one that runs a roller derby inside her purse.

Another problem I have experienced was corrected by restoring the phone:  people can once again hear me when I use my Bluetooth Jawbone headset.  I could always hear them just fine.

Years ago Steve Jobs was credited with saying that customers don't know what they want until Apple shows it to them.  For the most part, that may have been true at the dawn of the digital era.  But today's tech-savvy customers do have a rather clearly defined sense of what they want and expect from their high tech devices:  continuous advancement without any regression from formerly attained benchmarks in design, function, and reliability.

I've always been a die-hard Apple fan boy, but Apple needs to start doing a better job of "getting it right" before they have to tell their customers they are "using it wrong."

[Update:  Others appear to have this issue too:  Macworld Article ]

Related articles:

• Updates on iPhone 4 Antenna Problem Articles [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
• Updates On iPhone 4 Antenna Problem Posts (gizmodo.com.au)
• Apple iPhone 4 Hit With Class Action Suit (abcnews.go.com)
• Apple Sued Over iPhone 4 Antenna & Reception Problems (macstories.net)

Apple isn't a victim of their own success.  They are badly managed at the distribution and retail levels — abusing their customers to feed their hype-driven marketing machinery.

It starts with my trying to reserve a phone on the date Apple themselves said everyone could place an order.  Their system, probably AT&T's databases, were overloaded and my first attempt to place an order didn't work.  I received a browser message to try my order again later.  I immediately did.

This time I tried to have the phone delivered to my home address.  The order went through!  I got my phone yesterday.

I then got an email saying my first order had also worked and I should pick up my phone at a specific Apple store.  What?  How weird!  But, OK.  Cool.  I could give that phone to the HU, who planned to get one anyway but hadn't placed an order.

My subsequent attempts to order a phone for my mother all failed repeatedly and said I had to go to the Apple store.  The nearest Apple store to her is about a 6 hour drive.  At her age, she won't be doing that.

Yesterday I and the HU went to the Apple store to be sure I could give my phone to the HU.  We were told that as long as we were both there I could.  Cool.

Today I drove by to check out the line.  Apple advertised that they will have two lines:  one for those customers who pre-ordered their phones and one for those who were just hoping to get one.  One line extends from the Mall entrance all the way off of the mall property and all the way down to the golf course at the Marriott.  Literally thousands of people are standing in this line that is probably a mile or more long!

I asked one of the store employees who was near the mall entrance how long the line was for people who had pre-ordered the phone.  He said, in not too pleasant a tone, that he had no idea.  It was all one line.  The store didn't divide the line up until people got to the door of the store.  What???!!!!  So the people that pre-ordered are having to wait even longer because of the people who didn't pre-order?!  That makes zero sense!

He went on to say that if I wasn't standing in the line (currently in the blazing sun) when the store closed, I would lose my reservation.  (A female employee had just told another customer the exact opposite.  Who go the correct information?!) He said that hundreds of people had spent the night in line.

This is insane.  This is inept management.  This is inexcusable.  Sure, it was fun the first time, but Apple has had 4 tries now to get this process right.

I told him Apple had lost their mind and that they could keep their precious little phone.  I wonder who will get the phone I ordered not realizing that the order had even worked?!

This is pure horse pooh!

Just wait until they all get their shiny new devices only to realize that the marvel of engineering, the new antenna system that is the outer edge of the phone, doesn't work so well when you hold the phone with your hand.  But then, who actually holds the phone in theirs hands when they place a call??????

Related articles:

• iPhone 4 has folks lining up in droves at Apple Stores worldwide (edibleapple.com)
• Apple iPhone 4 Release: Lines Grow As Frenzy Kicks Off (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Hundreds line up to buy new iPhone (washingtontimes.com)
• IPhone 4 sells briskly on first day of sales (cbc.ca)
• IPhone 4 Launch: The Scene From Austin (blogs.wsj.com)
• New iPhone selling briskly as hundreds line up (mysanantonio.com)
• iPhone Lines 2-3 Times Bigger This Year, Stores Are Selling Out (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)

of an iPhone 4!

It arrived at 9:30am at the front door via the stork (FedEx guy).

I unboxed it ceremoniously. It is beautiful, and smart — just like it's father (me, course)!

I turned it on. It asked to be connected to the mother ship. I plugged it into my Macbook Pro. iTunes then displayed my phone number and requested my billing zip code and the last 4 numbers of my social security number. It then said my activation session session had expired. Retry.

After three failed retries, I called Apple support. They told me to reboot my computer. I did. It activated after requiring 3 DNA samples —well, not really, but you are forced to agree to god knows what*. The moment it activated, my call to Apple support on my old iPhone was disconnected.

I then unplugged the new phone from iTunes and replugged it in as directed. iTunes is now installing all of my old iPhone's content onto the new phone.

I must say, and this is really actually very important to me, this is the best product delivery and activation process Apple and AT&T have ever had. I all but went on a safari camping out when I purchased my first iPhone from the Apple store at Lennox Mall. Activating it took hours (almost a whole day)! And each subsequent purchase was fraught with stupendously long lines but better activation times. This one they almost got completely right!

Amazing how long it takes to transfer about 24gb of data to the new phone via USB 2. It's now finished transferring all of my applications and is now working on sending over the video and audio content.

*Apparently iOS 4 users are now sending Apple retina scans, urine samples, blood and stool samples, along with our current location at every breath we take. The mother ship will use this information benevolently, of course. They will ply us with iAds tailored specifically to our personal DNA profile so as to extract as much money from our bank accounts as possible. The power of the tethered device is not to be underestimated!

Oooooooh!  Loooook!!  It's teething already!!

Related articles:

• Preparing for iPhone 4 Launch Day (cbsnews.com)
• Christmas Coming One Day Early? iPhone 4 on 6/23 For Some? (geardiary.com)

I have frequently posted vituperant remarks about AT&T. The company generally is loathsome. Their 3G network service here in Manhattan Beach is horrid. I can barely get a signal at the house. I frequently drop calls. Incoming calls frequently just go straight to voicemail without my phone ever ringing. LAX rarely even gets 3G service, just the horribly slower Edge network.

But I now have something good to say about AT&T, sort of...

I read a tweet about a microcell for AT&T. I googled it to find out what it was. Apparently, if you have bad 3G reception, you can purchase this microcell that, if I understand it correctly, basically offloads your cell phone calls and data to the Internet.

So now I get a full AT&T cell signal in the house, most of which didn't get a signal at all. And now my cell phone calls and my cell phone data access is offloaded to Verizon's FIOS network. Up to 10 people can place calls simultaneously through my MicroCell "tower" here in the house.

It seems to work well, but I haven't had any incoming calls yet. At least AT&T had a good idea of allowing customers in areas with poor service to set up their own mini cell tower in their homes or businesses.

I'm sure you noticed that my Fitbit tweets stopped for a while.  I'm confident of your concern about my exercise level.  Therefore, I update you:

My original Fitbit died.  It would just turn itself off at random times.  Fitbit was good enough to replace it with no questions asked!  So now, I have a new one.  The regular (daily) updates should have started in earnest today.

As busy as today has been, I still only walked 5,423 steps so far.  Sad how indolent I am.

Related articles:

• Liking My New Fitbit (timtyson.us)

Well, despite the fact that I've had a horrible sinus infection/laryngitis this week, I have been wearing my Fitbit ever since I first got it. The results, even with being sick, are interesting.  I've noticed how unbelievably my stats dive when I spend a day working at the computer.  This must change!  And being sick has an interesting impact on stats too:  not exactly what I would have expected.

My best stats have been:

• 11,671 steps on May 18th (before I got sick)
• 2,693 calories burned on May 22 (when I didn't sleep at all that night because I was sick and couldn't breath)
• 5.58 miles walked on May 18 (again, before I got sick)
• 11 minutes of strong activity on May 17th (on the elliptical--but for 45 minutes!!! hello?!)

Because of getting sick, my 7 day averages compared to everyone using a Fitbit aren't that good yet.

• I average in the 30 percentile for steps per week yet...
• at the 61 percentile for activity.
• Distance and very active minutes are still crazy low.

My sleep patterns, as I already knew, are weird:

• I woke up an average of 8 times per night before I got sick.
• My three worst nights, when I couldn't stop coughing and couldn't breath: I woke up 31, 67, and 39 times! (Between that and the pain in my arthritic shoulder, I'm just amazed I didn't die.)

So, to check out my official fitbit page, visit Tim's Fitbit! And, for those who follow me on Twitter, I will start tweeting my stats as of today.

Related articles:

• Liking My New Fitbit (timtyson.us)
• The Fitbit Portends a Scary New World [Shut Up Fitbit] (gawker.com)
• My Sleep Graph (russellbeattie.com)
• Philips Changes Policy on Fitness Monitor (pogue.blogs.nytimes.com)

I received several email responses to my blog post about The Infernal, Never-ending Beep! Most everyone suggested it was the smoke detector battery. I have had to replace several smoke detector batteries in the house, all upstairs, even though they are also wired into the house electrical system. But I actually hadn't even thought of this as being a possible cause of the beep!

I went into the kitchen and searched for the smoke detector. The house has them everywhere except in the kitchen/den area. Great! Where is the most likely place to start a fire? Maybe the gas stove which actually creates fire??

Then this sickening thought occurred to me: What if the smoke detector is up there (on the 11 foot ceiling) but was covered up by the builder when they put up the fake beams. Much to my distress, this scenario made sense because the beep sound is muted! (See picture of the ceiling.  Click to enlarge.)

In a state of horror, I stood on top of a chair near the ceiling, with the top cabinets open (in case the smoke detector was enclosed above them). It took 12 minutes for the next beep.

No. The beeping sound, where ever it was, was definitely below me —over by the iMac on the desk in the corner of the kitchen. Why does it always sound like its over by the iMac??!!

Steve suggested that the sound might be coming from the electrical panel on the back of the house, which, interestingly, is on the outside wall behind the iMac. But electrical panels don't beep.

This morning, my mother sent an email with the subject: "beeping." She says: "try smoke alarm battery or alarm system". But how could it be the alarm system, which has never been activated? None-the-less, after breakfast, I decided to explore Steve's and mom's ideas. I went to the electrical box on the back of the house.

Interesting...

Next to the electric meter is a rather large box built into the wall itself. It was labeled, "Communications." Maybe it was the phone/cable system?

Electric screwdriver in hand, I unscrewed the case. Inside the box are two large plastic systems all sealed closed with numerous flickering lights monitoring the status for the house's fiber optic cable/internet/phone systems and the alarm system. All of the lights were flickering green except for one: the light next to "Replace Battery" on the alarm system!

My über geek mother was right!

I was afraid to try to force the plastic system cover open as it appears rather committed to remaining closed. I was afraid to press any of the buttons for fear the whole of the Manhattan Beach SWAT team might descend on the house if I set off the alarm system and woke the whole neighborhood, not knowing how to turn it off.

So, for a short time anyway, the beep persists. However, once the alarm company comes out to replace the battery, I will no longer suffer the beeping of his hideous heart.

Related articles:

• The Infernal, Never-ending Beep! (timtyson.us)
• The Mystery Beep (apartmenttherapy.com)
• Smoke Alarm Maintenance How To's (eon.businesswire.com)

I really like my Canon 5DmkII DLSR.  I've grown a lot more comfortable with it and am continuously amazed at what it produces.  Nothing astounds me more than the HD video it shoots.

I'm not a person who watches TV.  I've never watched the TV series House.  But this year's season finale of House is notable because it is the first TV episode to be shot entirely using the Canon 5DmkII.  Take a peek at the teaser.  The image quality is stunning.

Related articles:

• House Season Finale Shot Entirely on a Canon 5D Mark II [Photography] (gizmodo.com)
• Watch House? Like gadgets? Tonight's episode was the one shot on a 5D mk II (crunchgear.com)
• Season finale of 'House' filmed with Canon DSLR (macworld.com)
• Canon 5D Mark II used to shoot entire House season finale, director says it's 'the future' (engadget.com)

The Fitbit accurately tracks your calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality. The Fitbit contains a 3D motion sensor like the one found in the Nintendo Wii. The Fitbit tracks your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities.

You can wear the Fitbit on your waist, in your pocket or on undergarments. At night, you can wear the Fitbit clipped to the included wristband in order to track your sleep. Anytime you walk by the included wireless base station, data from your Fitbit is silently uploaded in the background to Fitbit.com

I ordered mine a long time back, several months, and it just arrived. I think it was on backorder when I ordered it. While that was annoying, it was certainly worth the wait. Today I worked at the computer a lot but still managed to:

• walk 9,292 steps
• travel 4.45 miles by foot
• burn 2,278 calories
• sleep 94% of the night (a miracle for me!)

One of the things I really like about the fitbit is that when I used my Octane elliptical today, it accurately tracked that data! (The Nike Plus doesn't.) When I walk near the charging station connected to my computer's USB port, the data automatically syncs to the web site. The site has lots of clean, easy to read and understand data charts. The fitbit even knows when I wake up at night and tracks the quality of my sleep. So cool! It will even automatically send updates using your Twitter account. [I haven't gone there, yet...]

Related articles:

• The Fitbit Portends a Scary New World [Shut Up Fitbit] (gawker.com)
• Consumers Like Medical Toys Too (medgadget.com)

Even I have been growing increasingly wary of Apple becoming another loathsome, all-about-money, screw-the-customer corporation as it has experienced explosive growth and success in the past 10 years.  I've posted about some of these concerns before.  People seem to be increasingly sharing that concern.

It's appropriate that the Apple logo on the iPad is black. The Cupertino, California, company's image is taking on some awfully sinister tones lately.

 

For a company that made its name fighting for the little guy, it's a surprising reversal. In the past, Apple touted itself as the computer company for nonconformists who "Think Different." Now the company is making moves that make it look like the Big Brother it once mocked.

First Apple tightened its iron grip on the already-stringent iPhone developer policy, requiring apps to be made with Apple-approved languages, which disturbed some coders and even children.

A short while later, Apple rejected some high-profile apps based on their editorial content, raising journalists' questions about press freedoms in the App Store.

Then, police kicked down a Gizmodo editor's door to investigate a lost iPhone prototype that Apple had reported as stolen. Even Ellen DeGeneres and Jon Stewart have mocked Apple's heavy-handed moves.

Plenty of us love our shiny iPads, iPods, iPhones and MacBooks — state-of-the-art gadgets with undeniable allure. But it's tough to imagine customers will stay loyal to a company whose image and actions are increasingly nefarious. We want to like the corporation we give money to, don't we?

Here are five things Apple should do to redeem its fast-fading public image."

[Source: 5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less Evil - ABC News.]

Here's the video of Ellen DeGeneres after getting a call from Apple.

Related articles

• Apple demands public apology for iPhone parody (go.theregister.com)
• Ellen DeGeneres gets a call from Apple (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• Ellen DeGeneres apologizes to Apple for iPhone spoof (edibleapple.com)
• Apple Isn't Laughing at Ellen's iPhone Commercial Parody [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Ellen DeGeneres Says "Sorry" To Apple (geardiary.com)

Americans need to stand up and say, "Hell No!  We will not live out SciFi!"

Hollywood claims that, in the future, they will allow you to see movies that are currently in the theater at home on your TV set while the movie is in the theater.

Horse Manure!  Here's what Tim predicts: DVD's as we know them today will go away.  The price of movies will go up.

To see any movie, you will be forced to stream it over the Internet to your TV.  To keep you from ripping a copy of the movie by sending the audio and video feed out of your TV and into a DVR or other recording device, Hollywood will reach into your home, into your TV set, and shut off these outputs.

[Apple has already quietly pulled off shutting off your external computer monitor jack when playing HD content.  Did you know this Apple users???  Go ahead and try it on one of the newer Mac laptops.  Try plugging in a projector to your laptop (with the new MiniDisplay port) and playing an HD movie you purchased from the iTunes Store.  It doesn't work now, does it.  It will only play through the AppleTV or on a specific Apple monitor.  Isn't this just the most clever thing.  Guess what Apple is up to!]

What else will they want to do in 10 years?

Hollywood will soon have the power to remotely disable the analog outputs on your set-top box, under a decision by federal regulators on Friday intended to prevent home recording of new movie releases.

The move by the Federal Communications Commission grants cable and satellite providers the power to block consumers from viewing just-released movies in an analog format through a process known as Selectable Output Control. Hollywood requested SOC powers as a condition of allowing providers for the first time to release movies to their in-home customers while the film is in theaters.

The Motion Picture Association of America said its member studios would not authorize the early movie releases unless it won the ability to deploy Selectable Output Control. The reason: Analog video signals can easily be recorded, while dig"

[Source: FCC Lets Hollywood Turn Off Your Output Jacks | Threat Level | Wired.com.]

Boys and girls:  This is not a good thing.

Related articles

• Here Is How The FCC Gave The Keys To The Kingdom To Hollywood (lockergnome.com)
• FCC Lets Hollywood Turn Off Your Output Jacks (wired.com)
• FCC gives Hollywood control over your home theater (arstechnica.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: FCC Says Hollywood Can Turn Off Parts Of Your Home Theater While You're Watching Movies (businessinsider.com)
• FCC Gives Hollywood The Right To Break Your TV/DVR... Just 'Cause (techdirt.com)

As with any first generation product, the iPad is not without its issues. One issue that I find immensely frustrating: the lack of keyboard shortcuts. I use them. I use them a lot! (Admittedly, most users probably don't.)

To have to take my hand off of Apple's iPad hardware keyboard to reach up and touch something is distracting to the workflow. I could cut a little bit of slack for third party developers, but none at all for Apple. When I want to reply to an email, I want to use [command] + R. When I want to send the email, I want to use [command] + D.

In this WordPress app, using the [tab] key to jump from one field to another crashes the application.

Clearly, lots of work needs to be done on this platform.

This will only be remarkable to me: a proof of concept—use the Canon EOS 5dMkII DSLR to create a filmic look.

I shot this using a 70 - 200mm f2.8L in native 24fps, ISO 100, f2.8, 1/50th, using the Vari-ND to stop the exposure down, shooting at full 1920x1080 HD resolution using the superflat profile. The short little clip was then imported onto my hard drive via ShotPut Pro from my FireWire 800 card reader. I used MPEG Streamclip to transcode the H.264 file using Apple's ProRes 422LT codec and then dropped it into FCP. (I know firsthand that FCP doesn't play well with H.264 files!)

(Unfortunately I had not yet downloaded Canon's free EOS Movie E1 import plugin for FCP which was released today. I'm eager to try it. Interesting post here about that workflow.)

I then did a little color grading in FCP, added titles and a short music clip, and simply exported the file using ProRes 422LT at full size. Then, using MPEG Streamclip to prepare it for the web, I exported the 1920x1080 (137.4MB) file to 720x405 while converting it to an mp4, using the H.264 codec, at 100% quality, with multipass and better downscaling. The exported file is only 5.4MB! Maybe one day I'll compare which delivers a faster QuickTime conversion export: FCP or MPEG Streamclip. (Everyone says it's the latter.)

I'm posting the finished product here. It's very short! The only thing special: it's a first for me, and it worked straight away!

Philip Bloom showed a different cut of this short, Above Skywalker, in the Bonner Theater a couple of weeks ago. It looks magnificent on the large HD screen. I especially like the slider shot during the night time lapse about 30 seconds in (and at 4.20). The macro shots are nice too. Well... The whole thing is. Though I wish the slider shot on the floor of the porch hadn't hit the cutting room floor.

What he didn't tell us was that he shot this in 24p with the new 5dMkII Canon firmware upgrade,released today. The aspect ratio also makes this look really cinematic. I wonder if he used the same plugin he use in his post on How to export and upload 2:35 video to Vimeo.

Be sure to watch this full screen.

Yes, I've ranted about my AppleTVs world without end!  Well, apparently, one of them was just completely messed up:  the hardware was bad.  Naturally, it wasn't under warranty.  (I think Apple only has a 90 day warranty unless you spend the extra money on AppleCare.  I always do for computers but hadn't for the AppleTV.)

So, I bought a new AppleTV.  My god!  The thing actually works!  After having been plagued with sooo many issues for sooo long with the other device, I was fully expecting this one not to function properly either.  But it works well!  And I purchased AppleCare for this one.

The only thing that greatly annoys me with the AppleTV:  the largest hard drive you can get is 160GB.  That's ridiculous.  I frankly don't give a rip what Apple thinks, Tim thinks he should be able to store his entire media library on the AppleTV hard drive and not have to clutter up the home LAN with streaming audio/video!  This would also give me another backup for the media files!

I do love being able to stream nearly 10,000 photos and music on the large flat panel TV downstairs for parties—like the one held here at the house last Saturday night.  (BTW:  Bristol Farms does a great job catering!!)  My photos just look awesome on the big screen, if I say so myself!  :)

I've made myself stop wearing a watch.  My iPhone has a clock on it that auto syncs to the network.  And, as I travel so much, that comes in handy.  My iPhone is always showing the timezone in which I currently am located, unlike my watch which requires a manual change.  I've gotten comfy going without the watch.

But this watch, with tiny lasers to indicate the hour and minute hand, would be enough to make me start wearing one again!

You may have heard that I don’t do iPhone or iPad development at this time. That said, it’d be silly to not keep track of what Apple is up to with the platform they care for most." ...

• Upgrades to software for laptop and desktop machines hadn't all but died in the last several years.
  • Cases in point:  Where is iLife 2010?  (Apple made a big issue of rewriting iLife 2010 from the ground up, but only for the mobile platform!)
  • Where is iWork 2010?  (Apple made a big issue of rewriting iWork 2010 from the ground up, but only for the mobile platform!)
  • What happened to iMovie on the iPad?  Where did it go?
  • When Apple finally came out with an upgrade to Final Cut Studio, the new feature set was anything but substantive.
  • Now there are rumors all over the net that Apple has laid off over 40 people from the Final Cut Studio software team.  This can not be good as it probably indicates Apple is abandoning one of the most powerful production tools it ever developed!
  • How many years have we suffered with Aperture 2?  Finally, Aperture 3 is released, but many users are reporting huge issues with the program's basic operability and stability.
• What of any significant improvements in laptop and desktop hardware?
  • Cases in point:  The "new" iMacs have been plagued with screen problems and shipping was completely halted for a time while the issue has hopefully been corrected.
  • It blows me away that I bought my 2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon computer about 1.5 years ago, and today Apple doesn't even sell a machine as fast as this "old" computer!  The fastest machine on their site is a 2 x 2.93 Quad-Core Intel Xeon computer!  What's with that?!  Their hardware is getting slower?
  • Where's the innovation in hardware?  Apple has been the leader for years!  With many of the new HD DSLR and video cameras sporting HDMI access, why hasn't Apple added this to the hardware line up?  Instead, my computers today have fewer high speed data access ports than they did 2 years ago!
• One company control of my media access?  Increasingly my heart is saying, "Absolutely no!"

Related articles

• Apple's Desktops to Disappear Eventually? (tastyslate.com)
• Is Aperture 3 sucking up memory? (macworld.com)
• Apple Looking to Bring iPhone OS to More Devices (mashable.com)
• Conspicuous by Its Absence (timtyson.us)

How many times have I cursed the Caps Lock key. I've wished I could pluck if from my keyboard more than once.

Well... turns out, you can with a simple keyboard preference change!

Go to System Preferences and select Keyboard. In this window, click on Modifier Keys...

Now click next to "Caps Lock" and select "No Action". Easy!