Category: rant

  • New Mac laptops: one step forward, two steps back

    (Updated 10/21/08) Steve Jobs and Co. rolled out their new line of laptops today, making big changes to the existing Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro models. But with one exception, the new models are more of a step backwards, a lost opportunity, than an improvement. The one indisputable improvement is with the graphics chips.…

  • Sony ereader seeking wide open wireless

    Fascinating week in the land of electronic books and the devices to read them. We got a fresh rumor, complete with picture, about the next generation of the Amazon Kindle which we already know definitely isn’t arriving this year. But the much bigger, non-vaporish news was the announcement of Sony’s third-generation digital book reader, dubbed…

  • How much old software do you really need to save?

    Even after the great closet clean-out of December, 2007, my closet is still kinda full. Well, very full actually. One of the things it’s full of is old software program disks and manuals. In this corner, we have the game Master of Orion II for Macs, issued in the mid-1990s. That’s fine as there’s also…

  • Latest Canon D-SLR simplifies taking great pictures

    I don’t know if the photo experts will be appalled or enthralled, but Canon has taken some creative liberties with its latest digital single-lens reflex camera and that’s a good thing. The new EOS 50D doesn’t have the full-frame sensor that I was hoping for in my post last month “All I ask is a…

  • Apple will not slay Amazon’s Kindle, not even close

    The title of this post, the latest in a seemingly unending stream defending Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader from hordes of misguided critics, was almost the exact same title as my June 20 post: The Kindle is for readers, the Kindle is for readers. The subject of today’s push back is a John Conley posting that…

  • Amazon finally allowing you to ping publishers for Kindle editions

    One of the earliest requests from Kindle users has finally been granted by Amazon. Finally, every Amazon book that doesn’t have a Kindle version for sale has link to let Amazon tell the publisher that you want one. As you can see in the picture at left, the link to click is just below where…

  • Getting excited for upcoming iPhone/iPod apps

    There’s plenty to love already in Apple’s app store for iPhones and iPods Touch but I’m chomping at the bit for a few “coming soon” programs that can’t get here soon enough. First and foremost, as I mentioned the other day, I’m looking for a blogging app to write entries for this blog (which runs…

  • Sony’s only removing crapware for business users

    I’ve owned several Sony laptops in my day. There’s still a long-dead but gorgeous purple Vaio 505 laptop in the closet upstairs. And one thing I knew whenever I bought a new Sony was that I’d be spending my first hour or two with the new machine not having fun but removing and uninstalling all…

  • Just one blogging app at the iPhone app store isn’t enough

    It’s definitely an all-iPhone, all-day kind of day with wall-to-wall coverage everywhere. I’m keeping up with the torrent of news at John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site as well as the most useful Mac aggregation site I’ve found, MacSurfer. There’s so much out there that I almost want to avoid writing anything more but one weird…