Glenn Wolsey offered some interesting thoughts on the direction that Apple seems to be taking the MacBooks:

The direction we’re heading in makes it quite clear that the merging of the MacBook and the Air lines would make sense, and is certainly possible. The Air becoming the MacBook whilst the Pro line remains as is in three excellent size choices.

I find it very hard to imagine the MacBook Air becoming just ‘MacBook’. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The MacBook is a consumer notebook, and the Air isn’t. Imagine the uproar if a consumer marketed notebook lacked a superdrive and for most, the lack of USB ports is an immediate turn off.

The only folks who would buy the new MacBooks, in this scenario, are those who would have bought the Air in the first place. Apple just wouldn’t get anywhere with their product line.

Instead, I see Apple filling the void left my the MacBook with the much rumored tablet or perhaps even a netbook aimed primarily at the consumer market that the original MacBooks left. Relatively cheap and portable - but at the same time offering a great everyday computing experience. Be it browsing the web or checking email.

The Air, would be left in its current position. With no price change. I don’t think Apple would, even if they could, lower the MacBook Air prices any further. Though the Air is cheaper, it’s still a premium product, and Apple want to keep it that way.

FriendFeed Causing Inaccurate FeedBurner Subscribers?

This morning I checked out my RSS feed subscriber count to see that it had increased dramatically. So I delved a little deeper and found that I had gained fifty-one new subscribers from ‘friendfeedagg’. Very odd, considering during my entire usage of using FeedBurner, that aggregator or feed reader had never been used.

After doing a quick Twitter search I found that I was not the only case. Many other people were reporting similar increases in subscribers.

What is ‘friendfeedagg’? It turns out that yesterday, FriendFeed, enabled a new feature that adds your blog’s FriendFeed subscribers to your FeedBurner stats, as explained here:

So if you have 200 people subscribed to you on FriendFeed, and you’ve added your blog as a service on FriendFeed, now you can see those subscribers right alongside the subscriber counts from Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo, and anyone else subscribed to your blog’s feed.

Here is the issue. Are your FriendFeed subscribers really ’subscribed’ to your weblog? They might not have actually taken interest in your weblog, but instead want to read your comments or see your Flickr images. I’d, personally, be more interested in the subscribers who have gone out and directly subscribed to my weblog, for its content. Not as a side effect of wanting to see another one of my ‘content streams’.

So, the real question is, are subscriber numbers now inaccurate? Will we get to the stage when people ask for our subscriber count, that we automatically subtract the, perhaps disinterested, readers from FriendFeed.

What I’d be interested in seeing is an opt-in for the FeedBurner subscribers. Perhaps a preference that enables me to ignore the subscriber numbers. The problem remains however, for those who may decide to opt-in to glorify their subscriber numbers.

Can we trust that FeedBurner’s stats are accurate? Because, let’s face it, they haven’t been in the past.

Review: Apple In-Ear Headphones

I’m not an audiophile, far from it. I’m not sure if I could tell the difference between a £100 pair of headphones and a £200 pair. And just to put things in perspective for you: up until recently I used the headphones that shipped with the iPhone. And on top of that, I didn’t think they actually sounded all that bad.

That was the main reason for why I never upgraded to some Dr Dre Beats or fancy Sennheisers. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But eventually, I ran my original iPhone headphones into the ground. First, the remote on the chord stopped working, then only the left headphone was operational and surprisingly, I managed to put up with it for quite a while without too many issues. But the nail in the coffin was when my trip to Italy in the Easter for a week was coming up. There was no way, that I was sitting on a plane and bus for hours and only having one operational headphone.

It was time for action. I didn’t have a big budget, but I wanted an upgrade from the bog standard headphones, primarily in noise isolation (Read: sitting on a noisy plane with even noisier people is not my idea of fun) and better build quality. I treat my headphones very roughly. I fall asleep listening to them and often use them to their limits.

In the end, after reading a lot of folks’ opinions on various headphones I settled on the Apple In-Ear Headphones. Over the course of this review, I’ll discuss various elements of the headphones and where they fail and succeed. But first, a little context:

For years, Apple have been trying to create a good set of headphones for use on iPods and they haven’t done very well at it. After all, the current shipping headphones you get with an iPod or iPhone aren’t particularly stellar and Apple’s previous attempts at creating a slightly more impressive set of headphones were mediocre.

So, as far as most people were concerned, Apple had to get this right, very right or they might have turned into another dinosaur product like the iPod Hi-Fi.

Packaging

Apple is very good with packaging. They manage to make a product look great, even before you’ve opened the box. And it’s obvious that they’ve made an impact on the industry. Because everyone is following suit. Look at the Pre for instance, very iPhone-esque.

In the case of the in-ear headphones, Apple has kept up the top notch design for their packaging, at least when you get into it. Unfortunately, because the product is sold on shelves rather than locked away behind the counter, it’s been made with some super strong plastic packaging to envelope the box to stop thieves (I presume).

It took me a long, long time to get into the things, heavy duty scissors and a lot of brute force.

However once I was in, it was easy to admire the simplicity and usefulness of the package’s design. The headphone are stored in what Apple have called a ‘travel case’. Which really isn’t one; instead it’s an object to wrap the headphone around with a cover. There is also a capsule that contains the varying sizes of earbuds which is very well designed offering easy storage and access.

Design

The earbuds are made from a combination of plastic, metal and rubber based cabling which as a combination give it a real space age look and feel. The headphone cords are made of the same - rubber like - material as the iPhone’s which are designed to stop tangling. In my experience though, this has not been the case.

If I put the headphones in my jeans’ pocket for a while, I find that when it become time to pull them out, they’re already tangled and take a good couple of minutes to untangle. Yes. It does take me that long. The cause? surprisingly enough, the new material, though designed to stop tangles in the first place, they don’t make it easy when the cables inevitably do become tangled. The wires stick together and cause a lot of friction when being pulled along another wire.

Replacing the actual earbuds themselves are very easy, which does have it’s disadvantages (I’ll go into that later on). All one has to do to replace the earbuds is pull them off and slide on a new pair. I’ve never changed them, so I don’t understand why they don’t create a mechanism that requires a little more thought by the user but alleviates them popping off every time some force is applied to the cables.

Remote & Mic

The in-ear headphones ship with a remote and mic attached to the right earbud cabling. The remote as well as enabling music to be paused, played, rewinded and fast forwarded also acts as a handsfree mic. There are also volume controls, which I have a problem with.

Officially, these headphones are not, for some strange reason, supported officially by the iPhone. All of the features of the remote work perfectly, apart from the volume controls. Why? They work perfectly with the iPod Touch, don’t they?

One final nitpick I have about the remote and mic is the placement of it. It’s uncomfortably high up on the cable. This means that one has to raise their arm up to their face when they want to change song. I understand that it was put there to achieve better sound quality, but I would sacrifice that to have it placed lower down in a more convenient location. I use the device far more often as a remote than a microphone.

Apart from those two nagging issues, I’ve found the microphone to be of a very high quality and easily audible. The design and layout of the remote is perfect and easy to use without looking at. Moreover, the clicking conventions (i.e one click to play/pause) are seamless and easy to get the hang of.

Sound

I’d like to reiterate quickly, that I’m by no means an audiophile, so if necessary, take the following few paragraphs with a grain of salt. The best thing you can do is go down to a store and see if you can test them.

From my experiences, the headphones on the whole sounded great when listening to music, podcasts and the odd audiobook. There was a good range of sound and as long as the volume was kept at a reasonable level I heard no distortion created by the headphones. However, there was very little bass from the headphones. It seems that even with two audio drivers - a tweeter and a woofer - there was just not enough base on music.

Though the headphones don’t seem to employ any specific noise isolation technology, the tight seal they create around the ear managed the stop a large amount of sound from the outside world effecting you. That said, for the money, I think the sound quality on the whole is fair. Just watch out if you want to listen to some more bassy songs.

Comfort

It doesn’t matter how good headphone sound, if you can’t keep them in your ears and they feel uncomfortable, your listening experience is going to be hampered. Interestingly, Apple have designed the in-ear headphones to work for both within the ear, but also just resting on the ear - in a similar fashion to the standard iPod headphones.

My initial instinct, at first, was to use them as if they were normal iPhone headphones and that felt fine. But I soon realized that for the best comfort and listening experience, digging them into my ears was the best option. The earbuds fit snuggly into both ears fine with the medium earbuds, but as I mentioned earlier, they do ship with a smaller and larger size for varying ears.

One issue, that I alluded to earlier, is however, the problem that if I accidently tug on the cords hard enough, the actual headphones will come out, but the earbuds will stay in your ears.

Very, very frustrating and on the odd occasion - embarrassing when you don’t realize that the earbuds are still in your ears. Yeah, it happened.

I have come very close, on several occasions to loosing the earbuds - they’re tiny - and very hard to find when dropped.

Durability

I’m not going to lie. The build quality sucks. It only took a couple of weeks before the grey rubber that protected the connection between the headphone and the wire became loose - on both sides. Now, it just slides around on the wire having revealed an ugly, black piece of plastic.

Furthermore, I made the mistake of leaving the earbuds out in the open and not stored away for a while. When I returned I found that both of the earbuds had picked up an incredible amount of fluff and dust. However, it was easy to clean it off as the earbuds come off so easily (both accidently and on purpose).

I have yet to have any audio failures apart from the odd occasion when the remote suddenly stops working for a while and then starts working later on in the day.

Price

I originally purchased them after Ryan Block posted positive thoughts on the headphones saying:

I think Apple’s got something good on their hands here. These headphones sound out of their league for headphones under $100, especially considering most dual-driver headphones start at a couple hundred dollars and go up from there.

For all the small, and sometimes frustrating problems I’ve had with the Apple In-Ear Headphones, at the end of the day. They sound good, are comfortable and are available for a fair price. What more can one ask for?

Quick Requests For iPhone 3.0

When Apple first released some details of the 3.0 update I was slightly disappointed. Why? Because I felt that Apple had missed a key element of the iPhone experience out of the updates. The iPod. As slick as the iPhone’s media interface is, along with the overall user experience; I feel that there are certain elements that can be improved and features added to streamline the way people listen to their music and watch their videos.

I make a lot of playlists and I would probably make a lot more if Apple could shoe-horn some decent playlist creation and editing into the iPhone. I’m not talking about those rubbish “On The Go Playlists” here. I want to be able to make smart playlists and give them proper names. Also, who’s idea was it, when creating a smart playlist not to allow one to scroll by alphabet? Do you really expect me to navigate through five gigabytes worth of music?

One interesting concept I had the other day was ‘Wireless Podcast Progress’ or WPP to be fancy. In which every time you listened to some portion of a podcast, the progress (i.e the exact time) that you made would be sent up into the cloud, and then directly synced with your iPhone and vis-versa.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started listening to a podcast on my Mac. Then had to pop out and wasted two minutes trying to navigate to the point that I am up to while I’m away. In fact, this would work with audiobooks very well also.

Both of these ideas head towards making the iPhone as independent and capable when you simply don’t have your computer on you. After all, that is why I bought an iPhone.

The folks over at Panic software are having a crazy 50% off sale on all of their apps. Definatly worth a look if your a Mac user. I’ll personally be picking up Coda.

They’ve also released a promotional video that’s sure to entertain.

[via TightWind]

Observations On The Pre

I’m not going to lie, I’m still fairly skeptical about the Palm Pre. it’s not that I don’t want it to be a success - I just wonder how anyone can stand up and say how a device is going to be a game changer when at most, they’ve played around with a prototype for twenty minutes. I’m also cautious because we’ve been here before. Anyone remember the Blackberry Storm? Everyone thought that was going to blow the iPhone out of the water; for those not aware, it certainly didn’t.

Over the past few months since CES, when Palm announced the Pre, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the direction that Palm are taking the Pre and I can’t really understand the choices that they’ve made. In some leaked internal material, they implore salesmen not to persuade certain “IT Centric Business Users”  - whatever that means - to buy the device.

I have a few problems with this. Surely, Palm, a company that isn’t doing so well right now should be putting all their energy into a phone that really, if it lives up to the hype; should be able to do ‘everything’ a Treo can do. This suggests to me a very confused product line, and makes me doubt who exactly Palm are marketing the Pre for. After all, surely if this device is so damn easy to use, the Pre should be for everyone. By doing so, like Apple, Palm wouldn’t be alienating a large possible portion of what could be a lucrative market - everyone. Apple is not afraid to say that the iPhone is for everyone. Look at the name of their ad campaign “There’s an app for just about anything”.

There’s one aspect about the whole business focus that Palm is working on that I’m slightly miffed about which Engadget pointed out:

One critical thing to note for business users and frequent flyers: the Sprint version of the phone — the first to be released — will not be a global phone, meaning it can’t be used on GSM networks overseas.

Let me get this straight. You want me to purchase a phone for business that I can’t use in most parts of the world? In other words, you want me to have two phones. One for when I’m at home and one for when I travel abroad. Forgoing to whole logistics issues of having multiple numbers and syncing everything together there’s a very large financial aspect for business to worry about. Seriously now, wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to buy one cell phone that happens to cost the price of the Palm Pre (after rebate, I’ll get onto that later) and works in other countries?

I hate pointing out the elephant in the room but… iPhone?

John Gruber put it best: “rebates suck”. They really do. The whole idea is that it’s such a terrible procedure to go and get the money back from the manufacturer - that most people give up and the company doesn’t loose any money. A sucky way to do business if you ask me. There is a silver lining however, Best Buy, are offering an instant rebate. I would be very, very surprised if Pre’s were purchased anywhere else but Best Buy.

I was really, really surprised when I found out that Palm weren’t going to be offering any form of desktop syncing application for the Pre - and slightly worried. Anyone who knows a little about the success of the iPods and iPhone is aware that, really, it’s iTunes that’s behind it. iTunes is the piece of software that allows the experience to be so damn seamless. I am not of the opinion that we are at a point where one can rely on their cell phone completely for contact information, let alone media.

By the sound of things, Palm’s intent on having a “Data Transfer Assistant” which for me suggests a world of hurt. For instance: I want to watch a movie on my Pre. How do I go about doing this? I can’t use iTunes or any other downloadable content store because of this little thing called DRM. So movies are out to the picture. Next up, music - a lot easier now that DRM for audio is a thing of the past. But first I have to navigate through my entire music file structure, copy it over to the “Data Transfer Assistant” and pray that the Pre works out where is should be stored?

Yeah, not quite my cup of tea.

Don’t worry, it’s not all bad however, there are a couple of items on the feature set that have caught my eye. If Synergy works, it will be revolutionary. If it doesn’t, then in turn the rest of the experience with the Pre will be a nightmare. I’m also very curious about the WebOS that Palm are pushing - kind of similar to how Apple intended the iPhone to operate. Of course, it didn’t and for now at least, we won’t be running any 3D Games on the Pre.

In the end, no matter how well the Pre does, Palm will have learnt a lot about the current state of the mobile industry, and being an iPhone user, I’m glad someone is keeping Apple on their toes. Because, RIM and HTC certainly aren’t.

Your move, Apple.

In response to Michael’s insightful post on how Fusion’s going, John Rust left an interesting tidbit for all the folks using Safari Adblock out there who want to The Deck and Fusion advertisements to stick around:

For Safari AdBlock users wanting to block everything but Fusion and The Deck, add two custom filters which allow content from anything with “deck” or “fusion” in the URL.

Reinstalling Leopard on the MacBook Air - Some Lessons Learnt

Three weeks, or so, ago I sent in my MacBook Air in for repair. The signs were very obvious that my hard drive was about to pack it in. And there was that sound… the sound every computer owner dreads: Click. Click. Click. So instead of waiting for it to die on me, I decided that is was the opportune moment to hand it in for repair. I was nearing the end of my school Easter holiday and had finished most of my computer based work that was required of me. I had never been keen on the idea of having my computer repaired in the school term - I rely on it far to much for some lessons. A week of not having a computer at hand would be a disaster.

I received my Mac back a little over a week after dropping it off with a new hard drive installed. The folks at John Lewis were kind enough to copy all my data over for me, so I had everything exactly as it used to be. However, I was not satisfied with the performance. Apps were crashing left right and centre, and I wanted a fresh start.

So, I decided that a clean reinstall was in order, at the time - it was all the rage - so after reading up on what to back-up and what not to. I began to process.

The Back-up

Backing up data was relatively easy. All of my documents are stored with DropBox, an incredibly easy file syncing app; that also happens to act as a back-up. I copied over my iTunes library, iPhoto library and some databases from Address Book, Bento and Littlesnapper into an external USB hard drive I had lying around.

All my software licenses and passwords were stored in the ever useful 1Password application, so no sweat there. I simply exported an encrypted file that would be opened by 1Password after the reinstall.

After the obvious elements of my system had been backed up, it was down to the nitty gritty that I wasn’t particularly sure about, such as preferences. Once I’d cut down on all of those extra apps I wasn’t using - I copied some of the preference files to make the transition a little easier. One aspect I was concerned about was Mail, which didn’t go according to plan, and to this day I don’t exactly know what went wrong.

I followed this guide here (obviously, not recommended!) to no avail. Luckily, being the cautious person I am, I stringed together important emails and forwarded them to a random web mail account for such a case as this.

The Reinstall

Up until this point, I had never made use of Remote Disk. I was very much, pleasantly surprised when it worked without a hitch. I installed the Remote Disk software on my brother’s Mac. Inserted the Leopard Disk and ran the “Remote Install Mac OS X Utility”. I connected my MacBook Air to the MacBook Pro via ethernet, hoping to quicken up what I new was going to be a long process.

Believe me. It was.

After several cups of tea, a mowing of the lawn (my house has a very big lawn), and an episode of Tekzilla: the reinstall was complete and all I had to do was enter the necessary information and take the obligatory avatar snapshot.

The Recovery

The rest of the afternoon was spent downloading applications, reapplying operating system settings, and installing Adobe CS3 over Remote Disk, which worked perfectly. All in all, I was very satisfied with the results. My MacBook Air is now a lot faster on a day to day basis and I’m not suffering application crashes nearly so frequently.

What else did I gain from this? Confidence. I was always very worried that I would forget to back something up. Moreover, I was concerned that Remote Disk would stop in its tracts, leaving me in an impossible position. All of these worries proved to be unfounded, something I’m super happy about.

If you are finding your Mac (or PC for that matter) a little slow. Why not try a reinstall? After all, when was the last time you did?

I was poking around Shawn Blanc’s weblog, after his incredible redesign and found this on his contact page:

Moreover, if you have a response to something I’ve posted here then write about it on your own site. Putting your thoughts into words and putting those words in front of your own readers can be a gutsy move, and I highly recommend it.

Intentionally or not, this has to be one of the strongest arguments for removing comments from a weblog (which Shawn has done) I have come across. As good as an email is, if you feel strongly about a post that has been made - why not write something on your own terms about it? Interestingly, this point does not dispel the concept of comments; but instead offers a better alternative, in my opinion.

And yes, this is an aside, so you won’t be able to leave a comment. Email me or write a post telling me - and the rest of the world - your thoughts on what bloggers consider such a very sensitive matter.

I’ve got a new favourite iPhone game - FlightControl [App Store Link]. A gorgeous and very addictive app that requires you to take on the position as an air traffic controller.