Recent Product Mini-Reviews

I’ll refrain from publishing my long in-depth reviews of some of my technology acquisitions this time, but I’ll say just a little bit about a few toys I have picked up in the last couple of months.

iPod Touch (4th Generation)

I ordered the 4th Generation iPod Touch the day it was announced and it arrived about a week later, so I have had it for about 6 weeks now.  I still very much prefer my Zune HD for music (better, faster UI, an excellent music subscription option, and a lot more features like artist bios, photos, and automatic linking to similar artists and albums for music playback), but the iPod Touch is really the only game in town when it comes to apps so I try to keep up to date.

The new Retina Display is nice and sharp, but still suffers from color shifting off-axis as previous generation models did.  (The screen goes yellow or blue if you don’t view it straight on.)  The overall speed of the device is pretty good too.  I still believe that the “multitasking” added by iOS 4 is a gimmick, as it doesn’t really allow apps (other than a very select few categories) run in the background.  So much for true background Twitter updates, or instant messaging without annoying push notification alerts.  Steve Jobs' insistence that these things can’t be done without draining the battery is just flat wrong… plenty of other devices out there are doing it now.

As with the previous devices, the hardware is excellent.  Thin, and light.  But it still irks me that Apple insists on using a shiny back to the case, as it is incredibly easy to scratch.  Even being very careful with it mine has already gotten badly marred.  And the back cover doesn’t seem as durable as previous generations.  Mine is already dented, which never happened with either of my two previous Touches.

Having the front and rear cameras is nice, especially for FaceTime calls (which work well), but the low resolution of the rear camera makes it essentially useless for shooting photos.  If your intent is to video conference with other FaceTime users, this will work just fine.  If you want to shoot photos, you still need an actual camera.

In my opinion iOS is getting a little long in the tooth without a major update.  Sure the newer features are nice, but Apple is still making too little progress on making their operating system truly useful for productivity applications.  Annual upgrades are just incremental… they now need something bigger. 

I have had one pretty annoying issue with my Touch.  When I go into the App Store to download apps or update software I get an error message that it can’t connect to the App Store multiple times before it will finally let me in.  And then I get the same error again when I actually tell it to install updates or a new app, and it requires me to re-enter my password each time.  I have to go through the same process several times before it will actually work.  My iPad, running on the same network, doesn’t do that, and the Touch does it whether I’m at home, work, or connecting through my Verizon MiFi.  Definitely feels like a bug.

I still despise iTunes.  I believe it to be one of the worst pieces of software ever inflicted on the public.  It is so slow and bloated that it badly needs to be rewritten.  It’s unfortunate that the iPod Touch is so reliant on it for syncing content with a computer.

Sony PlayStation 3 Move Controller

I also recently picked up a Sony PlayStation 3 Move controller.  This is Sony’s attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the Nintendo Wii with its own motion controller.  Unfortunately, I don’t feel like Sony did a very good job.  It feels even more like a gimmick than the Wii’s.

For $100, the controller came with the required EyeToy camera and Sports Champions game.  It’s a pretty obvious attempt to copy Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, not necessarily with the same games, but with the same basic idea.  Some of the games can be fun, others can be incredibly frustrating.  I won’t blame the controller for that, though.  Extra controllers are $50, or the optional Move Navigation Controller (like the Wii’s Nunchuck) are $30.  If you were to buy the starter bundle plus enough controllers for four people you’d be dropping a pretty good chunk of change ($370, not including the cost of the PS3 itself).

What I did have a problem with is the way that the controller works in practice.  At the start of each game (or in the case of Sports Champions, each mini game) you have to go through a 3-step calibration procedure.  It doesn’t take very long, but after playing a handful of games, having to repeat the procedure over and over does get pretty old.  In addition to that, part of the calibration procedure involves making you stand in a designated (and pretty small) area of the view of the camera.  And you have to stay there.  This also means that you aren’t free to move around as you play a game… Once you put yourself inside of the on-screen box during calibration, you have to plan to stay put throughout the game or it doesn’t work quite right.

Response on the controller was pretty good (as long as you resist the temptation to step away from the spot where you were standing during calibration), but not any better than the Wii Remote with the Plus add-on.  Definitely better than the Wiimote by itself, but no better than what you get with Wii Plus.  Motion sensing was accurate.

The cost of the controller is a little on the high side, but not terrible. With the limitations in Sony’s implementation of motion gaming I can’t really recommend the Move at all, though.  Especially if you already have a Wii.  The controller does give Wii-like capabilities to the PS3, but, at least to me, the advantage of high definition gaming doesn’t outweigh the frustrations that come with Sony’s implementation of motion gaming.  If you can play a game without moving around, and don’t mind going through a calibration procedure before each game, you’ll probably enjoy the Move.  But if you already have a Wii, this won’t add anything.

Apple TV (version 2)

Several days ago I picked up the new Apple TV as a way to attempt to stream some my TV shows and videos from my computer to my living room television.  I say “attempt” because I still haven’t gotten it to work.  I suffered through adding all of my video content to iTunes, but as of right now my Apple TV either won’t see my computer at all, or when it does, it will only stay connected for a couple minutes before dropping the connection.  So watching videos from iTunes is pretty much out of the question at the moment unless the video is less than 60 seconds long.  I also can’t get the iTunes Remote Speaker feature to connect to my Apple TV either, even though it will connect to my brother’s previous generation Apple TV.

The device does play Internet sourced content just fine.  With my recent Internet connection upgrade, I can actually stream high definition, a major upgrade from being stuck with SD previously.  The Apple TV only supports 720p resolution content, though, so 1080p video is played with half its original detail.  Streaming rented TV shows, YouTube videos, and NetFlix all seem to work fine, within the limitations of a user interface designed for a simple remote and television.  But since I can’t get it to connect to my iTunes reliably and I already have NetFlix and YouTube video capability elsewhere, the box is mostly useless to me.  Even if I could get it to stream from my computer properly I’m not sure I’d recommend this to someone unless they already had a huge investment in iTunes video.  I’ll say more on that in a second.

There is speculation we’ll see upgraded capabilities with new software on the Apple TV in the future.  The hardware seems to be capable of a lot more than what it is doing.  I hope we do see some upgrades, because for less than the Apple TV’s $99 price there are other boxes with greater flexibility out there, like the...

Roku HD Player

A couple months ago I found an amazing Internet deal for the Roku HD video player.  I have had the ability to stream NetFlix through my Xbox 360s, PS3, Wii, and Samsung Blu-ray players for some time, but the Roku adds a bunch more other video sources.  Installation was very easy… plug in power and HDMI, and it’s off and going.

It works just like it supposed to.  I have streamed not only NetFlix videos, but also podcasts from TWiT, Revision3, shows from NASA, PlayOn, HGTV, Amazon-on-Demand (works like the Apple TV to rent/buy TV shows and movies), and many other sources.  And they are adding new channels quite often.  While most "premium” content is only available for pay through Amazon, the amount of free content is becoming extensive, especially when you add optional private channels through the Roku web site.

The best part is the price.  The box starts at $60.  Since it does a lot more than the Apple TV, I’m going to have to recommend the Roku boxes over the ATV unless you absolutely must stream content from iTunes, in which case the Apple option is the only one you have. 

Amazon Kindle (3rd Generation)

Not being a huge reader myself, the Kindle doesn’t necessarily appeal to me in the way that it would a lot of people.  It has appealed to me as a gadget from the day it came out, but I couldn’t justify the $329, $299, $249, or even $189 for a gadget I wasn’t sure I’d use much.  But when Amazon announced the Wi-Fi only version for $139 two months ago, I decided at that price I could get one to play with it.

I’ve read a lot of varying reviews of the device over the 2.5 years of its existence.  Most people absolutely love it.  Then there are some Apple fans who love the iPad so much they have to put down the Kindle.  Owning both, I find myself leaning a lot more toward the first group.  Yes, you can read books on the iPad, but it’s too heavy to hold for reading for very long, and its reflective screen can be a problem.  In other words, the iPad is not a replacement for the Kindle.

I actually really, really like the Kindle.  It isn’t perfect, but it is very good.  It is very light, thin, and the electronic ink screen (not backlit; looks and reads just like paper) is very easy to read.  If you haven’t seen an e-ink screen, there just isn’t any way to accurately describe it.  It really does look like you’re looking at a sheet of paper.  Text is crisp, and there aren’t screen reflections to worry about.  The words appear right at the surface of the screen instead of behind the thickness of a pane of glass.  At first the flash-to-black-then-white of the screen when turning pages was a bit distracting, but after I got into my first book the screen flash totally disappeared from my mind and I didn’t notice it any longer.  e-ink screens aren’t great for everything, but they are perfect for reading.  The fact that the Kindle runs for about a month on a battery charge because of the type of screen it uses is pretty cool too.

Purchasing content is super easy, and very fast.  The Kindle store on the device isn’t quite as fast to use as purchasing directly on the Amazon web site from a computer, but it does work very well anyway.  There is a decent amount of free content as well.  But my favorite feature is the ability to preview the first chapter of a book before purchasing.  So it’s kind of like browsing the shelves at the book store before committing to a purchase.  Books download in a matter of seconds, and if they are purchased online from a computer they appear on the device without doing anything… they just show up.

The Kindle is very cool.  It just might turn me into more of a reader than I have been in the past.  But probably the biggest compliment I could give it is to share the opinion of a friend.  When I told her I was buying it she swore to me that it is something she would never be interested in because she likes the feel of the paper in a real book, and likes to collect books and show them off in her bookshelf.  She said she could never envision herself reading books on an electronic device.  Then after I got my Kindle I showed it to her, and she fell in love with it and has decided to get one of her own.  At $139 it’s a great deal, and now that Target carries them in their stores, it’s even easier to pick one up.

That’s All For Now!

Well, that’s about it for now.  I know I have picked up other toys recently, but these are the ones that stand out in my mind.

Eye-Fi Wireless Storage Card

Note: This post has been edited since it was originally posted to correct what turned out to be erroneous information.   Additions are noted in [brackets] and are italicized, with incorrect information lightened in gray text and shown with a strike-through tag.

This week I purchased an Eye-Fi memory card for my digital camera.  I'm pretty sure nobody reading this blog knows what that is, but many may be interested, so allow me to explain...  It's an SD memory card for digital cameras that also has an integrated WiFi radio which automatically uploads your pictures to your computer wirelessly.  So you don't have to connect the camera to your computer or remove the card to transfer using a card reader.  It all happens on its own, in the background, automagically whenever the card is in range of your wireless network.  Or at least that's the theory.  In practice things are a little different.

I actually received two cards this week.  The first one arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and it worked for about 2 minutes before it just died.  Fortunately Amazon has a great replacement program, so they shipped one out Next Day Air for free.  Because I didn't report the first one as dead until after their Wednesday shipping cutoff it didn't go out until Thursday, so the replacement arrived Friday afternoon.

Since it's SD and my Canon 40D uses Compact Flash, I decided to try the Eye-Fi card out on my old Nikon Coolpix 5200 camera, which does have an SD memory slot.  So after configuring the card, I popped it in, took a few shots... and nothing... they didn't upload to my computer like they were supposed to.  I transferred the card into a SD-to-CF adapter and then into my Canon 40D [the officially recommended adapter has been ordered and is on its way], and it gave an error message indicating the card wasn't usable.  This is looking all too familiar from my experience on Wednesday.  But before trying to do anything else I called their tech support line and the nice woman on the other end was very helpful.  Together we were able to ascertain that my CoolPix camera doesn't supply power to the card when it isn't actively saving a photo, so no photos can be transferred wirelessly at all with that camera.  No big deal; I almost never use it anyway.

She offered me a few tips on how to get the card to work with my 40D, and we ended the call.  I put the card back into my 40D, no error this time.  So I take some pictures.  And they don't show up on my computer.  So I wait.  And wait some more.  Nope, still not showing up. 

I played with the settings on the card for what seemed like forever, and finally I see the popup on my computer screen showing the picture coming in.  But it only transfers 11% of the first picture before it just quits.  Odd.  So I play with it a while longer, and can't get it to transfer anything.  Format the card, take more pictures, wait for a transfer, nothing happens.  Do the same thing again.  And again.  Still nothing.  Re-configure the card one more time, take some pictures, and the first one starts to transfer.  Hurray!  It's working again.  Until this one gets stuck at 8%.  I give up.  So the card goes back into the computer to be reconfigured yet again, and... boom! all of the pictures transfer.  I guess it's sort of working now?

Anyway, long story short, it's got some significant quirks, and some limitations.  Its two most annoying limitations are (1) that it only transfers JPG picture files, yet I usually shoot my pictures in RAW format, and (2) the wireless network it connects to has to be connected to the Internet, even though the pictures aren't sent over the Internet.  While that may not seem like a huge limitation, my plan was to take my camera, a laptop, and the Eye-Fi card with me when I take pictures for photo directories to have those pictures transfer to the computer automatically while I'm still in the midst of taking them.  But 95% of the time when I'm doing that no Internet connection is going to be available.   Not going to work, not even with my wireless travel router.  So that's out.  [UPDATE: As mentioned in the reply to my post below (which looks like it was made by a company official, BTW), the card does indeed transfer pictures without an Internet connection.  I used it today (Sunday 7/27) to transfer pictures for a photo directory project I'm working on.  The only official restriction is that there must be an Internet connection available to configure the card for each wireless network it is to be used on.  With that said, it would be nice to have support for Ad-hoc wireless networks, and for a way to configure the card if no Internet connection is available.  (2) I still found it somewhat unpredictable as to when it would transfer pictures, waiting for between 1-5 minutes before it would start, and found myself having to remove the card for a few seconds periodically to kick start its transfer function.]

The overall idea has merit; being able to transfer pictures wirelessly from a camera to a computer would be very cool.  But the way that the Eye-Fi card is designed makes it nearly impossible to pull off anywhere but home.  And I don't know about you, but 99.7% of the pictures I take aren't taken at home.  They could have made the card work with any laptop with any wireless connection, irregardless of whether the Internet is accessible on that connection, but they didn't.  And they seemed to have botched the implementation at least to some degree even when the Internet connection requirement is met; getting it to transfer was unpredictable at best.  So I'm pretty [somewhat] disappointed in the product; they had a good idea, but screwed it up in its implementation the implementation could have been a little better.  I guess I'll keep transferring [I will still have to transfer] photos the old fashioned way [because it doesn't support RAW files] and wait for something else similar that actually does it right.  This card might be right for some, but it certainly wasn't designed for someone like me [due to the lack of support for RAW formats].

iPod Touch 2.0

After a long wait yesterday I was finally able to download the version 2.0 software update for my iPod Touch about 1:00 this morning. I've been at least a little anxious for a few of its new features, mainly Microsoft Exchange support, but the upgrade wasn't available on the morning of July 11th as promised. So I had a long day of repeatedly clicking the 'update' button in iTunes. Finally, 1:00am on the 12th, it showed up.

It took forever to download -- two hours or so. I guess Apple's servers are a bit slammed at the moment. (Side note: what's with the TV shows that came with the download? I didn't ask for those.) But it eventually finished. The frustrating part was actually installing it. iTunes starts by making a backup of everything on the Touch before completely wiping it clean of everything on it, including its firmware and software. The backup went fine, but things went downhill from there pretty fast.

Twenty minutes after it started the process of "Preparing iPod software for installation" it came up with an error indicating that the upgrade had failed. Not good. So I unplug it, hold down the power button for like 4 and a half hours to get it to power down, then turn it back on to find a screen showing just the iTunes icon and a picture of the USB connector. Yep, it's bricked. It's got no software on it, so it can't boot. It's a black & silver $400 paperweight.

I plug it back into the computer and after a couple minutes iTunes sees it and tells me I have to do a full restore. Fine. So I click through to get that started. 30 minutes later the process obviously isn't going anywhere; no indication of any activity on the iPod and iTunes has locked up. Repeat the process from the previous paragraph with the same result.

So I think, maybe it doesn't like something about the USB port I'm plugging into, so I try another. Another twenty minutes, another failure, though the error is different this time. This really isn't looking good. Try again using the same connection, same error. Fail x 5.

Finally I figure the only way it is going to work is to do the upgrade from my Mac. We already know that Apple doesn't write very good Windows software (I think this is why Apple fanboys hate Windows so much; they try to run Apple software on it.), so I copy the upgrade files over to my Mac, launch iTunes, plug in the iPod. iTunes detects it and installs the software (though it takes about an hour). Done! It worked! Whew!

I take it back to my main computer again, plug it in, and iTunes copies all of the content it backed up at the beginning of the process. It's projected to take a couple hours, but it appears to be working. Head to bed to resume the process in the morning.

So now it's finally time to take it for a spin. Since Exchange synchronization is the first thing I'm interested in, it's the first thing I set up. It's a pretty painless process; I just tell it my email address, username, password, and the name of the Exchange server, and boom!!! it's setup. I can read my email, my contacts and calendar are synchronized with Exchange / Outlook / my cell phone, supposedly in real-time. They omitted support for Notes and Tasks, but I don't use those much so not a big deal to me. Also missing is server search so I could pull up any message based on its contents. That I will miss.

So I test it out to see if it really is real-time. I launch Mail, send myself a message, and wait. About two seconds later my cell phone tells me I've got new mail and reads it aloud. At the same time the email pops up in Outlook just like it's supposed to. But it isn't to be found on the iPod. So I wait longer; maybe it just takes a while. Nope. Never shows up on its own. I have to manually refresh for it to show up.

I tried a few other things... delete an email from the iPod, mark it as read/unread, move it, etc., to see if those changes are synchronized back to my Exchange server automatically. Nope. Not a single one of them. Exchange is obviously working right because my cell phone is synchronizing in real-time. It's just the iPod that isn't.

I check a few things, and the iPod is definitely configured the way it is supposed to be for push (real-time) synchronization to work. But it isn't working. Not only that, but I have to manually click on each of my email folders (of which there are many) to see if there are any new messages. It doesn't synchronize anything besides my Inbox automatically. That's way too time consuming and tedious. Honestly, the email feature was working better using IMAP before the software upgrade. This so-called Exchange synchronization isn't working at all the way that it is supposed to. Big disappointment.

UPDATE: I did my initial Exchange testing at about 11:00 am this morning. At 3:45pm I received the first real-time synchronization alert, and mail showed up in my iPod's Inbox as it should for the first time. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it continues to work.

EDIT: I also just noticed that HTML messages aren't supported with Exchange. I thought we had moved on from 1995?

So then I open my Contacts to see if they are synchronized with Exchange. Yep. They sure are. A minimum of two copies of each one. For some of them there are as many as 6-8 copies of each. But I don't dare delete them, because that will probably delete the original off of my Exchange server. So not cool. In addition, some are showing up first name first, others are showing up last name first. It makes them difficult to find, because there is seemingly no pattern to which way they are listed. Calendar synchronization actually seems to be working right.

EDIT: Calendar synchronization was working properly. Now I have multiple copies of all of my appointments too.

So I move on to the App Store and try out a few things there. The facebook application works pretty well, but it isn't any where nearly as functional as their dedicated iPhone web interface (which also seems a tad faster too). It has also crashed on me three times, one of which rebooted and locked up the iPod completely. Hopefully they'll remedy that with an upgrade. The eBay app is actually pretty cool and snappy. I also paid for and downloaded MooCow's Band and Super Monkey Ball. Band is fun to play with, but it gets tiring because it only has a few instrument sounds; every song you create with it is going to sound the same. It also lags quite a bit from the time you press a note until the time you hear it play.

Super Monkey Ball has pretty fast animation, but the graphics really aren't very good (computer games in the mid 1990s had better graphics, and virtually everything on my cell phone looks better) and it is nearly impossible to control with the accelerometer-based tilt interface. The first few levels were passable, but I got to a level where there are no guardrails on the side of the platforms, so if you tilt even a little bit too far you roll right off. It's also difficult to know where "center" for the control is, because it certainly isn't when the iPod is parallel with the ground, so it's hard to find. And there is noticable lag between the time you move the device and when the monkey starts moving in the corresponding direction. With time I bet someone could get it, but it's really difficult to master. The part that makes it hardest is that the game keeps rotating the display, and you have to instantly react by changing the angle of tilt control to match, or you're instantly rolling the poor monkey in the wrong direction. With the delay that's hard, and since "flat" isn't the center position for the control it's quite difficult to coordinate the movement properly.

I tried a couple other apps and quickly determined that they were pretty much garbage; obviously things written either in a very short time or by inexperienced developers. So for right now, there aren't a whole lot of compelling titles in the App Store, though I'm sure that is soon to change.

The other app I tried is the iTunes remote control, which works as advertised. Since I actually don't use iTunes to listen to my music (since it won't play 85% of it) it's of limited use to me.

Music and video playback are pretty much the same as before. The complaints I had with playing music still apply. Video playback is still quite good. There's still no copy-and-paste, the interface between different apps is still inconsistent (different colors, backgrounds, different button coloring conventions, many apps don't support landscape, some are configured within the app, others through Settings), and the former smooth scrolling through long lists is now choppy. And I really really miss the "back" button found on browsers and many cell phone interfaces, especially when you get into the App Store. For example, after you download an app you have to click on several buttons to get back to where you were. On a positive note, the scientific mode of the calculator works, and in scientific mode its accuracy is much higher than available before!

Overall I'm kind of disappointed. The Exchange synchronization isn't working at all like it is supposed to, to the point of being next to worthless to me, and most of the offerings in the App Store are lucky to be classified as "mediocre at best." And since I'm using an iPod Touch instead of an iPhone I had to pay for the upgrade. Yes, I'd do it again, but I was hoping for more for my money.

At least I'll have a device to fully test any iPhone applications I choose to write, if I ever do. Though I'm kind of doubting that will ever happen because Xcode (Apple's tool for developing applications) is so primitive in comparison to the development tools I'm using on Windows it would be like taking a step back in time 15 years. And as great as my life was 15 years ago, I'd rather not have to repeat it.

I still think Apple hates me.