As part of my other life as a personal technology journalist, I have been carrying around the new Blackberry 8830 phone from Verizon, and I think I may be geting ready to give the boot to my old standby, the Treo 650.
The 8830 is the first RIM device I have used in quite a while and it is much slimmer and stylish than my current Treo, the carrier coverage easily beats Sprint (Though an equivalent voice and data plan from Verizon is more expensive) and it is easier to use than my Treo for day to day activities. For example, start typing on the main screen and the device figures out if the keystrokes map to a number or the name of one of your contacts and displays the choices. Contextual menus are never far away and there are no delays in moving from application to application. I thought I would miss the touchscreen, but the trackball proves to be a much better navigation experience than having to move your fingers up to the touchscreen.
The device runs on Verizon’s CDMA network in the US and roams to GSM networks in Europe. Now if only they offered the Pearl in a similar configuration, I think that I would be 100% sold…Check out a full video review I found on youtube:
High def video conferencing arrives
Videoconferencing has never taken off in our industry, mostly because of the quality. A creative only has to see his beautiful roughcut butchered over a stuttering video link to walk away from the technology forever. Yesterday I had the opportunity to finally take a live look at the LifeSize high definition videoconferencing system. In short, the system delivers a 16:9 widescreen 1280×720 pixel image (720p in broadcast parlance) at 30 frames per second with very little artifacts. By comparison, traditional video conferencing uses CIF resolution which is 352×240. Thanks to Videré, a specialist on video conferencing systems based in Quincy, MA, I was able to see it side by side with a traditional videoconferencing rig, and there is no comparison…
First Intel Macs unveiled
His Steveness wowed the faithful yet again, but this time even the most jaded PC loyalist may have reason to switch, if not to the OS, at least to the hardware. The new Macbook Pro is relatively unchanged from the latest gen titanium PowerBook except for the processor inside and the clever MagSafe power connector. Performance though is hugely increased by the Intel dual core processor inside: the benchmarks claim as much as a 4x advantage to the MacBook Pro. What it manages in real world terms is yet to be seen as I never trust performance specs and rather prefer a real world application test. It is also unclear as of this writing as to whether the machines will boot Windows XP though Apple has gone as far as to admit that they did not do anything to prevent booting other OSs. This is very significant as the machines will theoretically boot OSX, Windows and Linux, making them the most versatile machines on the market. It also remains to be seen whether somebody will come up with a way to seamlessly run windows apps inside OSX without a reboot, just like you OS9 classic apps.
I did a quick comparo with a similarly spec’ed Dell box (a D810); the pricing is quite competitive and the Apple box is lighter by almost two pounds. Throw in the styling of the mac and unique touches like the built in isight camera and backlit keyboard and the MacBook Pro is a clear winner in my eyes.
For my IT readers, I would strongly recommend that you order at least one of the MacBooks for evaluation. It would be wtrth the differential between a standard $1,500 wintel laptop and the new MacBook Pro to have a truly standard and universal laptop across platforms. Order today though or expect months of wait, this is sure to be a hot seller.
Intel macs due out sooner than expected
A credible and detailed report from Apple Insider claims that we will be seeing the first Intel based Mac coming out of Cupertino as early as Januarry Macworld. The first machine to be moved over to the dark side seems to be the iMac, not the Mini as most expected. They also believe that there is a new Powerbook in the works that should be available as early as February 2006 which will be much thinner than the G4 and will undoubtedly run circles aroung the G4.
Flexible electronic ink paper
E Ink and Phillips have announced a breakthrough in electronic ink technology: a 10.1 inch flexible e-ink tablet with a resolution of 100 dots per inch (comparable to standard newspaper). This is another step towards a prctical electronic newspaper. Electronic ink is an ideal display medium for books, newspapers and magazines as it needs to be powered only to change and is a purely reflective mechanism that needs no backlighting and is as sharp as ink on white paper.
The full text of the release is here…
Dual core G5s last gasp for PowerPC?
Engadget reports this morning that Apple’s invitation only event slated for today in New York City will be to unveil the much rumored PowerPC G970 dual core chipped G5 towers. The event is taking place at the Jacob Javitz on the eve of PhotoPlus Expo and the rumor mill is also expecting new G4 PowerBooks with increased resolution displays. I suspect Apple will throw in some other goodies into the bargain to convince you to not wait for the first gen Intel products slated for June 2006 but everybody expects an announcement in January’s Macworld Expo. My recommendation is to sit tight unless you have machines catching fire and wait for the Intel generation which will make these G5s look like an Atari 2600.
Quad processor Intel Macs?
Another tidbit from our enterprising French Mac addicts was posted on HardMac, the english language version of MacBidouille. They have screenshots showing monitoring of four CPU’s on the Intel development version of OSX. This would make for a screaming Photoshop box and some very competitive Xservers.
Apple to release video iPods, dual core G5s?
UPDATE:ThinkSecret is once more saying that video iPod capabilities will be announce tomorrow at the Apple event though they think it will be new iPods with larger capacities but the same screen size. Apple is of course, still completely tightlipped about this so we will just have to wait to see what His Steveness is going to announce. If it is only the Madonna Nano There will be a lot of very disappointed Mac fanatics…
Invitations to a private Apple event slated for October 112h rumor mills are abuzz with talk about video iPods as well as a new version of iTunes that would allow the store to sell video content. iTunes already manages video podcasts. The video iPod may in fact be the entree that Apple needs to become the center of a home entertainment system/set-top box, you can just see the Griffin iTuner for video right?
It also seems that they will finally release machines with the new dual core PowerPC chip as the supply of G5s seems to be drying up everywhere.
Update:BBC unintentionally outs video iPod
The link is gone by now but engadget has a mention of the BBC faux pas here…
