Category: Apple

  • Amazon finally expanding and seeding Kindle ebook ecosystem

    Despite my unabashed enthusiasm for Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, I’ve had my fair share of gripes. I’ve been particularly disappointed by Amazon’s failure to do more and get creative around this new platform. Back in January, I posted a list of Kindle ecosystem shortcomings including poor file management and inflexible pricing. I wasn’t alone. Joe…

  • Too many black boxes, too many power cords

    Heading off for the holiday weekend, I grabbed a bunch of gadgets and junk to stuff in my bag. Amazon Kindle reader – check. Multiple iPods and headphones for the kids – check. Blackberry – check. New Verizon Mifi to test in the boonies – check. Macbook Pro – check. Canon camera – check. They…

  • Oh Verizon Mifi, why can you not delight like Apple?

    Ok, say you’re a big technology company and you have a hot new product. You put out a press release enumerating the many amazing features and announcing a release date several weeks hence. Even better, one of the most-read tech columnists on the planet, the New York Times‘ David Pogue, raves about your new product…

  • I’m Doomed, or the latest, greatest Fran’s Chocolates

    Remember back in December when I discovered those addictably delicious Fran’s Salted Caramels and promptly ate about a zillion dollars worth? Well, Fran is back. Among recent birthday presents, my fabulous wife found that Fran’s has extended their line to some kind of super-powered, dark chocolate-covered Snickers bar redux called the Almond Gold Bar. Let’s…

  • Reading Infinite Jest on the Kindle versus dead tree pulp

    When I was a younger man sans spouse and kids, I had more time for the more diverting pursuits, pursuits like reading post-post-modern, 1,000-page novels written by genius authors who loved footnotes. Exhibit A: Infinite Jest by the late David Foster Wallace. You can see the beast pictured here to the left. Ah, but those…

  • Insanely great Kindle on iPhone needs one big improvement

    (Updated 3/5) Wow – just wow. Pretty much ever since Amazon announced its nifty Kindle e-book reader in November 2007, people have been predicting that Apple would jump into the e-book game and blow Amazon away. Today, Amazon decided it wasn’t going to wait around and introduced an e-book reader program for the iPhone and…

  • The messy, the missing and the mistakes: Adventures in iTunes Plus upgrading

    Well, it’s been almost two months since Apple announced the huge expansion of higher-quality and DRM-free music in its iTunes Store “Plus” offerings and I think it’s fair to say that the upgrade process is an unmitigated disaster. Despite personally paying 30 cents per track to upgrade hundreds of tracks, Apple has erased my metadata,…

  • Switching Time Machine drives easy but not quick

    Back in December, 2007, when I upgraded my super-duper 24″ iMac to Mac OS X 10.5, I immediately turned on the Time Machine automatic backup program. Seeing as how I had a less-than-half-full 500 GB hard drive in the iMac, I figured I’d be fine using a 500 GB Western Digital MyBook Pro external drive…

  • Exciting e-book progress from Amazon and Google

    It’s been over two years now since I first starting writing about electronic books and e-book readers on my blog. At the 2006 introduction of Sony’s reader, I was concerned that the “long tail” of niche and out-of-print content was being ignored in favor of making the latest John Grisham best sellers available on an…

  • Amazon: Follow Apple’s lead and don’t blow Kindle opportunity

    I think it’s fair to say I’ve been of the earliest, strongest and most prolific fans of Amazon’s fabulous electronic book reader, the Kindle, since the day they unveiled it, just about 14 months ago. I’ve defended the Kindle against reviews from people who’d never actually had one, iPhone fans who like to read their…