MacTheBlog
A little light reading
Written by Alex Kidman Monday, 14 June 2010 09:06
Apparently — if Apple is to be believed — "Reading is a joy on iPad".
Now, I'm a big proponent of reading. I read every day, but then that's hardly shocking for a working journalist ... although I have had some suspicions about certain current affairs "journalists" and sports "journalists" for some time.
I read for work, I read for pleasure, I read to my kids — did you know that my cat likes to hide in boxes? — and I have been known, when bored, to sit in the doctor's waiting room reading the posters regarding medical procedures. Just because I'm bored. As a result, you could say that I'm something of a reader. Also that I know more about pap smears than is technically necessary, but I'm getting off track here.
Anyway, back to reading being a joy on the iPad. That's Apple's claim, and what I'd like to know, as an avid reader, is when exactly that's going to start? The tense would seem to suggest that reading euphoria is happening right now, but that clearly isn't the case.
I'm not fussed, by the way, by the fact that the iPad uses an LCD screen. Shift the brightness down a touch, as full whack is rather garish, and I find it no harder to read than any e-ink product. I don't read much of anything in ten-hour stretches if I can help it, so the battery life isn't the problem, either.
It's the selection of books.
Let's start with Apple's own store, shall we? iBooks in Australia, as it stands at the time of writing, is one big fat joke.
Nothing more, nothing less. The joke, by the way, is on us.
There's no point whatsoever in having a big shiny book-selling interface, and exactly zero books to sell on it. I'm fully aware that books are available via iBooks. It's just that they're all public domain, Project Gutenberg titles. Every single one. Admittedly, Apple scores small points here for not charging for them the way that Amazon will try to do with an international Kindle. But still, I could grab the exact same texts and import them via iTunes any time I felt like it. That's not a bookstore, and as could typically be expected, there's no public timeline on when actual sale books will become available locally. Yes, it would be feasible to pick up a US iTunes store account and then pay some dodgy online iTunes voucher merchant for US iTunes credit to buy actual books, but then I'd be flying in the face of Apple's user agreement and potentially risking all the content I'm paying for, as well as feasibly supporting criminal enterprises selling iTunes vouchers off the back of stolen credit cards. I'd rather keep it legal, thanks.
There are alternatives on the iPad for the book-obsessed that do offer up actual books for actual money. Amazon's Kindle, for example. That application opens up with a nice enough backdrop of someone reading under a tree like they do in all the best movie establishing shots, but clicking on the "Shop In Kindle Store" icon ... opens up Safari. You've then got to sign in, sort out your purchases — which cost more because you're an Australian — and then relaunch the application in order to actually download your purchases. As Yoda might say, Simple This Is Not.
What's really strange here is that my current pick of the best e-reading software on the iPad, Stanza, is owned lock stock and barrel by Amazon, and includes purchasing and store-browsing options from within the application — but not for Kindle books. Just as I'd like to see Apple actually sell some books, it'd be nice if Amazon could work out just what its hive mind actually wants to do.
Borders also offer up an ebook application with inbuilt store, focused around its Kobo e-reading device. The Kobo device itself is fundamentally a cheaper Kindle without the inbuilt wireless, and for its $199 asking price, if all you wanted was an e-reader, it would suffice. Borders isn't that interested in hardware sales, however, and for that reason the Kobo offering extends to PC/Mac and iPhone/iPod and iPad with a universal application. Browsing is a little slow, but all the prices are listed clearly in Australian dollars and Kobo supports synchronising your library to any and all devices that you'd like. I'm on to a winner, here, surely?
Nope.
The problem here is that the Borders iPad and iPhone applications don't handle all the Kobo's files properly. This didn't happen with every book I purchased, but when it did, it made them near unreadable. As an example, I picked up a copy of Danny Wallace And The Centre Of The Universe, a book which rather surprisingly reveals the centre of the universe to be in Idaho. It's an enjoyable enough humorous read on the Kobo or indeed on my iMac.
On the iPhone or iPad, it's a mess.
This screenshot displays the problem nicely. For whatever reason, the App interprets the same ePub files with a slight offset on every page. It's rather like someone has grabbed a physical copy and jammed it too tightly into a photocopier, leaving the margin of one page spilling onto another. Now that I think of it, it's kind of funny having this kind of spill in an application called Borders. Funny-sad, however, not really funny in the internet-accepted LOL sense.
So what's a book loving iPad owner to do? Aside from the obviously illicit avenues — which I won't point you to, as I make my living from copyright, same as other authors — all I can do is wait and fume.
What do you think? Are eBooks a vital part of the iPad experience anyway?
Discuss it with me at MacTheForum!
MacBook vs iPad: Let Battle Commence
Written by Alex Kidman Monday, 07 June 2010 11:40
It's been a couple of weeks now since I picked up an iPad at Apple's Bondi Junction store. It's probably the only time I'll ever set foot in that particular arboreally-assigned retail outlet, but anyone who watched my trek there might have figured that out by now. This also means I've had a couple of weeks to work out what I'm actually going to use an iPad for.
Now, admittedly, I'm in a somewhat rarefied category, in that I can use the iPad as a straight business tool simply by writing about it — including this column, which I'm typing out on that same iPad, for what that's worth.
The most frequent criticism I've hit about the iPad (beyond that whole "it's a really big iPod touch" — well, yes, but that brings with it a whole host of possibilities, folks) is that you'd almost always be better off with a netbook or notebook instead. So I thought I'd put that to the test.
This being a Mac-centric publication, I can't test it against a Mac netbook, because (legitimately speaking) there's no such thing. I'm well aware of the whole Hackintosh scene, and I'll even admit I've mucked about with hardware to make that happen. It's a bit like climbing Mount Everest, in that I did it over one Christmas period because it was right there, but the result was a sub-par netbook that clearly ran better under Windows XP. Make of that what you will.
Oh, and I didn't actually climb Mount Everest. But I suspect you knew that.
What I do have to put up against the iPad, however, is a MacBook, albeit one that's aging a little disgracefully. A 2006 Core 2 Duo Macbook with 3.1GB of RAM in it, to be precise. Up against it, I'm pitting a first-generation 64GB WiFi+3G iPad with a couple of accessories.
First, where does the MacBook beat the iPad?
Optical disc reading. I can show the iPad as many DVDs as I can lift (which is quite a few) but it'll never do much than reflect the covers back at me. No amount of wobbling the cover around will make me think I'm watching a movie.
FireWire, Ethernet and USB built in. Yes, again, I could buy the USB Camera connection kit, but that's a dongle that has to be carried separately.
Removable battery. Although for a new MacBook, that's no longer true.
Tabbed multitasking. For now. iPhone OS 4.0 will shorten this gap, although it's not absolute multitasking. More on that shortly.
Bigger screen. Which is OK for the aforementioned DVD watching, I suppose.
Sitting flat on my lap with the screen in an easy to view position. Fixable with accessories for the iPad, but the MacBook does it straight out of the box.
That would seem to be something of a slam dunk for the MacBook, were it not for the areas where the iPad outclasses the MacBook:
Instant on. That might not seem like much, but with the iPad (if I don't set a security code), it's a swipe of the finger and I'm into working, or playing, or what have you. If I've closed the MacBook while on, it will think for a few seconds, then light up the screen, then bring up some (but not always all) the icons ... then wait a bit longer ... then start thinking about WiFi ... then kick up the fan ... then make the DVD drive chunk for no adequately-explained reason ... and then let me start working. Add a good 30-90 seconds to that whole palaver if I've actually switched it off.
Battery life. No great shock here. I don't think anyone would expect a four-year-old laptop with plenty of metaphorical miles on the clock to have much battery life at all. With WiFi or 3G running, I'll maybe get a couple of hours out of it if I'm careful. Whereas my tests while out and about with the iPad have yet to exhaust it below the 60 percent battery mark, even on a heavy load.
Choice of screen orientation. This again has surprised me, but it works. On a train, there's no way I can open up the MacBook without a fair bit of elbow room around me. Pop the iPad into portrait orientation, and I could even try reading it standing up.
Software. No, really. Yes, I know there are thousands of OS X programs out there, but even after four years, I've really only got around 20-30 actual applications on the MacBook that see regular use. Whereas the iPad's got the full whack of everything I've downloaded for the iPhone, plus its own apps. That started at around the 300 App mark, and I'm cutting down the erroneous applications as I spot them. That happens when you do a roundup of Binary iPhone Clocks, none of which I actually needed.
Lack of multitasking. No, really. Again, not something I would have picked as an upside, but in hindsight I can see how it works and helps. When I can multitask, I can multi-procrastinate. Not a word, strictly speaking, but it should be. A clean white iPad Pages screen just stares at me — as this one has done — and demands to be filled. Filled pages equals happy editors, and happy editors are more likely to pay me — or at least that's the theory.
(Nag nag nag — MJCP)
Light weight. Yes, I know, the standard iPad refrain is that "it's so heavy". Compared to a feather, or a single sheet of paper, or an iPhone, yes. Compared to a MacBook? The iPad might as well not be there.
That might seem to indicate a tie. There's an obvious counterpoint to this, in that a new MacBook might beat out the iPad on battery life and, given Apple's rather competitive pricing on MacBooks, there's not much between the top-end iPad and an entry-level MacBook, especially if you add in a few peripherals such as the keyboard dock or a decent case or screen protector.
That becomes a case of suiting it to your circumstances. My office is already home to a very nice recent-model iMac that handles my heavy Mac lifting for me, and the iPad is rapidly taking over the other around the house and out and about tasks. So for round one, at least, the iPad's taking it on a close judge's decision.
What do you think? Is the iPad just a big iPod Touch, or can it be a productivity tool?
Discuss it with me at MacTheForum!
A long day's journey into Bondi (Junction)
Written by Matthew JC Powell Monday, 31 May 2010 00:08
The Apple Store Bondi opened last week, curiously enough in Bondi Junction rather than Bondi, but hardly anyone knows they're two different places so why be pedantic about it? The opening of Apple's seventh Australian retail store coincided with the long-awaited Australian debut of the iPad, which meant redoubled interest in the opening and some very keen crowds.
Our own Alex Kidman braved the cold, dark, wee small hours of the morning to get to the Store, watch the opening, and of course buy an iPad. His journey is chronicled in this video.
Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your siteThat's dedication above and beyond the call of duty.
Discuss this with us at MacTheForum!
Guess what? Facebook is not your friend.
Written by MJCP Tuesday, 25 May 2010 01:30
There has been an enormous degree of outrage and uproar in the media of late regarding Facebook's most recent changes to its privacy policy, most of it asserting that what Facebook provides is not, in fact, privacy at all. Rather, Facebook has betrayed the sacred trust placed in it by its users, who told it their secrets, gave it their photos, wrote on its walls and cultivated its farms. Facebook repaid that trust by becoming the global village gossip.
Well, duh.
It's still possible to post your private thoughts on the web, along with photos, videos, lists of your friends, your interests, your kinks and secrets, and have it all viewable only to a very select group of your friends in whom you have complete faith to keep your secrets. All you have to do is build yourself a web site and password-protect it.
OK, maybe you don't have the skills to build yourself a web site complete with blogging, instant-messaging and multimedia hosting capabilities. Not a problem. Chances are you have a geeky friend somewhere who has those skills and can build the framework for you. They might even be able to swing you a deal on web hosting because they've got a mate who's a sysadmin at the ISP.
OK, maybe you don't have such a friend. That is why you have Facebook. Facebook will provide you with all of the above infrastructure, free of charge. It will even let you know which of your friends and acquaintances and favourite celebrities and creepy ex-boyfriends it has provided similar services for, free of charge.
But here's the thing: Facebook doesn't do this because it likes you. It doesn't. Not because you aren't likeable or anything — it doesn't know you well enough to make such a judgment, and for all it knows you are extraordinarily charming. I like to presume you are.
Facebook provides the services it provides to you because it wants to make money. Just like any other corporation with hundreds of millions of customers, not to mention investors. It's all about the money.
You may notice I'm referring to Facebook as an "it" rather than a "they". This is not only good writing form (corporations are properly regarded as "collective singulars" rather than plural entities), I'm also doing so pointedly. I'm not writing here about Mark Zuckerberg (or "Zuck" as the millions of people who think he is their friend call him), nor am I writing about any individual or group of individuals who work for Facebook. I'm talking about Facebook, the faceless, heartless machine that exists for profit and only for profit.
Like every other company that has ever survived more than a few months in business.
An awful lot of what I've read about Facebook in recent times has dwelt upon "Zuck" and how he has become "evil" much in the manner of Bill Gates. Zuckerberg is not evil. The people who work for him, by and large, are not evil. But they are motivated by profit.
And that's where your stuff comes in. You see, I've been in the media game for a while and I've been around ad sales people a lot, and I can tell you this: what advertisers want more than anything else is demographics. They don't just want to know you've got 400 million customers, they want to know how many are women, how many are men, how many are over 45, how many make less than $25,000 per year, how many are single (and are they looking), how many listen to music, watch TV, rent DVDs and so on. That information is golden.
I should say that information about 4000 people is golden. That information about 400 million people is diamond-encrusted gold on a palladium platter. With cherries on top. Chocolate-dipped cherries. You get the point.
That's Facebook's business: demographics. It's a gigantic market-research experiment, nothing more and nothing less. Like other market-research organisations it offers you inducements — but rather than scratch-lottery tickets or the chance to try a new breath mint before the general public, you get a free web site with all the fixings. All in all, it's not a bad deal.
Except — and here's the quandary — the more of your information you want to keep to yourself, the less valuable you are to Facebook and the more you're a drain on its finite resources of storage space and bandwidth. Facebook wants to encourage as many people as possible to take advantage of the fantastic service it offers at better than mates' rates, but it needs you to tell it as many of your secrets as you can in order to afford to do so.
In that context it's easy to understand why Facebook wants you to leave as much of your information open as possible, and doesn't really have a strong incentive beyond altruism to make it easy for you to do otherwise. The bad news is that altruism is not a good business strategy.
The good news is that Zuckerberg seems open to the idea of being a little bit altruistic if it will help his business. It's happened before, when Facebook's Terms of Service changed and there was outcry because one way you could read a certain paragraph made it seem like Facebook would own your children if you took pictures of them. Facebook retreated from that stance and now only demands your first-born.
Unless I'm reading that wrong.
At any rate, Zuckerberg and others at Facebook have made encouraging noises of late about "listening to customers" and "understanding their needs" and things like that. Chances are before too long there will be changes to Facebook that will make it easier and clearer to determine which of your information is public and which is not.
But don't think for a minute it will make any of those changes because it likes you.
Discuss this with me at MacTheForum!
What does it take to get an App approved?
Written by Alex Kidman Thursday, 20 May 2010 23:39
The modern gold rush, it seems, is in App development. Everyone's jumping on the App Store bandwagon, and it seems I can't go a week without one company or another launching a new app store for a given device. They're all trying to get in on the rich seam of gold that Apple's mined with the iTunes App Store. And the way for us ordinary folk to glean off a few choice nuggets is to develop Apps ourselves.
For me, this does present a few key problems. First, I can't actually code. But, so I'm told, iPhone/iPod/iPad development is "easy" and "any idiot could do it". I certainly qualify on one of those scores — I'll leave it up to you to work out which it is. Right at this moment, I can't say that I've got a particularly original idea for an App, but that hasn't held anyone back.
What has held a lot of App developers back, however, is Apple.
Take, for example, Mobigame. You may not have heard of Mobigame, a company (arguably) most famous for a game called Edge. You may have been able to buy Edge from the App store over the past year, but generally only if you were fast. It's available as I type this (here's a link) but might not be by the time you read this. By my count, it's been removed from the App Store at least four times so far.
Is it violent? Does it depict acts likely to incite racial tension, destabilise governments, expose youngsters to the facts of life or show that unfortunate (alleged) incident with Steve Jobs, the toasting fork and the family of ducklings?
No, none of those things. Edge — the game itself — is best described as a Marble Madness derivative featuring cubes. Hence the name "Edge" you see. I rather like it, for what that's worth.
Now Edge — the name of the game — is a contested issue. I've got to tread a little carefully here, as it's an issue that's contested at a legal level, and I've no real passion to get sued any time soon. The short, even-I-can-understand-it-version of events is that a chap called Tim Langdell reckons (by whatever means) that he's got a trademark on the word "Edge" as it pertains to video games. And, it seems, a number of other things from videogame magazines to flash drives to baseball caps. The Edge trademark is the subject of a protracted legal battle (because you can never have a short legal battle) with (at first) Mobigame and (later) Electronic Arts, due to EA putting out a game called "Mirror's Edge". The Wikipedia article on Edge Games provides some background and, if you've got an afternoon to spare, an interesting rebuttal to just about everything Langdell's done can be found here.
Anyway, when Edge first hit the App store in May last year, Langdell contacted Apple regarding trademark infringement, and Edge (the game) was pulled. Sucks a bit if you're a developer, but I guess Apple does have to respect actual trademarks. Where it gets a bit dodgier, in my not-legal-advice-just-shooting-the-breeze opinion is that Mobigame wanted to shift the name to "Edgy", and Langdell (after discussions with Mobigame) apparently went and registered "Edgy" as well.
Statements about the relative freshness of undisclosed items in certain Scandinavian regions come to mind here, but again, I have no particular desire to go toe-to-toe with any lawyers any time soon.
(Which reminds me. Apple Lawyerbots? That whole comment about Steve Jobs and the ducklings? Not serious. I'm sure it's never happened.)
Where I do think it's interesting from a consumer and developer point of view is that it shows the level of power that any developer creating applications places directly into Apple's hands. I've seen no shortage of Apps that much more deliberately flout either copyright or trademark go through the App store without so much as a glance. The rules should have some flexibility to an extent but, at the same time, shouldn't there be a solid base that all developers can at least work from?
I mean, some of the things that do get released are equally baffling. Take, for example, Trucker's Delight. It's based off a crude and deliberately offensive YouTube video. Here's a link, but be warned — it's not safe for work, rather (to put it mildly) misogynistic and almost completely tasteless. In other words, the kind of thing the internet loves.
And now there's an iPhone game of it. This isn't a review — I'm not quite willing to plunk down $3.99 of my hard earned on it right now — but just an observation. How is it that a game featuring an entirely non-violent cube can have such trouble getting a firm place in the App Store, and a game featuring a violent, crude, lecherous and deliberately offensive trucker can make it in?
Makes you think that Mobigame, the developer of Edge, should talk to the folks who developed Trucker's Delight, right? I mean, those developers must know exactly how to present an App so that anything goes, right?
Let me check who that was. I could be doing Mobigame a service by putting it in touch with folks who can get something really controversial up on iTunes.
Checking the iTunes store, I find that Truckers Delight was developed by ...
Perhaps it's playing a deliberate game of chicken with Apple, waiting to see which game will be yanked from the App store first?
What do you think? Should App development and deployment on iTunes be open slather? Should the rules be more obvious, or just better implemented?
Discuss it with me at MacTheForum!
