Apple TV
I bought an Apple TV in a fit of Stephen Fry-ish exuberance, not entirely sure what I would use it for or what it really was. The lure of multi-media convergence was enough of a draw though.
I have had it for a week and I am quite surprised - this seems like an early demo version of a new product category, not a well though out final release.
But what is this box for? Apparently it is for getting video, music and pictures onto the 'big screen'. And that means making the experience more social ( whereas using a computer is primarily a solo endeavour, when it's on TV it's very often a social sharing of what is presented)
NOT VERY MIXED MEDIA: But you have to choose what you would like to share. If you are listening to music and would like to show someone a slideshow the music stops playing when you leave the music section. When you get to the slideshow section you will have to enable music separately and the only choice you get is by playlist. You cannot specify that it should keep playing whatever it was playing. You cannot request a specific artist, band, album or genre. And when you are watching the slidehow you cannot freeze a picture while the music plays, the music stops too. Similarly, you cannot skip songs.
NO PHOTOCAST: Nevertheless, looking at slide shows is nice. But you are very limited in what pictures are displayed. Keywords are not transferred across. Photocasts, a great selling feature for us geeky kids to buy our parents. How nice would it be for my mother to see pictures my brother and I photocast? Very nice. But impossible. Not that it's easy from iPhoto either unless you just want a static, one off cast. Might as well just blog it.
NOT ALL VIDEO PLAYS: It is advertised on www.apple.com/appletv with the line: "If it's on iTunes, it's on your widescreen TV". This is simply not true. The video I shoot with my Panasonic LUMIX FX01 plays very well in iTunes. It does not play or even transfer/synch to the Apple TV. Very annoying. I have to transfer video to 'iPod format' to play.
NO VOL: But there is more. You cannot change the volume from the remote control. The + and - buttons actually just mean up and down in the menus, there is nothing plus and minus about them. Since the box is only controlled through the remote, that means you have no volume control at all.
NO SCREENSAVER PICTURE CHOICE: I use my Apple TV with a projector and, belive it or not, one major thing I needed to know before buying it was wether it had nice screensavers. Well yes and no. I can see pictures moving up in a really cool way. But I cannot specify what pictures! They are just a random sampling from my collection. The insanity!
On the plus side it's nice to watch short family trip videos, podcasts and vidcasts in the living room are nice. And when we get some content for sale in the UK, watching TV will be cool. In short, a very exciting new product category, but the excitement is about the future, not about what it delivers today.
Sponsor message: Only 5% of the words on the web are interactive hyperlinks. Make them all interactive with Hyperwords.
iPod
NO CROSS FADE: One of the nicest features of iTunes is the ability to automatically cross fade between songs. This really brings playlist songs together. It would be nice if the iPod could do this.
'MENU' MEANS 'UP' : A quibble, but it has to be stated. The 'Menu' button does not mean 'Menu', it means 'Up in the Menu', or just 'Up' or even 'Back'. Grumble, what is the world coming to!
Suggestions (pre 2003):
Books on tape via mp3.
The iPod can be a secure delivery medium for books on tape via mp3 as each iPod has a unique serial number. That long commute (especially for Europeans and Asians) can now become less tedious. Music? Or a great book? Your choice.
Update: Hey, they did this with iTunes 3! - Improved in iTunes 4.Radio archives via mp3.
NPR and other great radio shows, available, on subscription (free), on your iPod, conveniently transferred via iTunes automatically after broadcast.
User Settings. Since it's also a hard drive, save the users prefs on the thing. Mac OS X should check for an iPod on startup and change of users, and allow the settings on the iPod to be used. It IS a hard disk as well.
Update: Hey, they did this with iTunes 3!Address Book etc.
Same as the users settings. Just store it. And allow access from anywhere later. The Address Book service is a separate entity from the applications which uses them in X anyways.
Update: Hey, they did this.Spoken Documents.
Apple has a great speech synthesis engine hidden away. Use it! Allow users to drag and drop text documents onto a iSpeak app, set option to iPod and listen to their boring (and exciting) business documents and such later.
P900
The P900 is not a phone, it as a computer with a phone. A wonderful, impressive device, it still has a few issues. Also, of course, it is not an Apple product, but since I use it with my Mac, I put this review here.
BTW, I must point out that I was using the phone without the flip keypad when writing this. Many of the issues are solved when using the flip keypad.
Also, it's worth pointing out that most of the shortcomings are fixable through 3rd party apps. This is both a pro and a con for the machine.
I use the P900 every day and have already taken a few thousand pictures with it for the blog on http://www.liquidinformation.org. The phone is described on: sonyericsson.com/p900/
TOO SHORT QUICK MENU: As a phone it can be a bit confusing. The main phone page shows only 9 quick-access numbers. Why, just so that it can 'map' onto a traditional phone keypad?
- Why not mirror the Tracker skins convention and allow users to add as many quick-access button on the main phone page.
INCONSISTENT PHONE OPERATION (WITH REGULAR PHONE): On a regular (non-smart phone) phone, the green, or call button, will instantly display the last dialled number. The P900 defaults back the quick-dial screen not the last-dialed screen - even if that's where the user dialed from - after a call. There is no equivalent to the green call button on the P900, it's all software.
- A simple series of buttons (green dial and maybe end call) would solve this problem.
PHONE FEATURES NOT PRIORITIZED: The useful voice dialing function is only available when in the 'phone application'. This should really be hard-wired and not be subject to the front most application unless the P900 is targeted to be more a PDA replacement with secondary phone functionality and not a phone first.
- Make the voice activated calling feature available at all times.
MISTAKEN CALLS: When I am on a phone call and the call ends, I can, as with any other phone, either hang up or wait for the other party to hang up. If both happens and the screen behind the 'live calls' screen is the quick-dial screen (the one with the 9 one-click-call numbers) then what can happen is that as the other party hangs up, I reach to click, they hang up and I end up making a call by clicking the number form the quick-dial screen. Happens quite a lot.
- A simple call confirmation screen could help, as could a delay.
NO VISIBLE CLOCK: Can you believe it? There is no background clock. All other phones seem to have this. It's a $2 add on from a third party!
- Add the clock on the bottom, not just a clock icon.
INCONSISTENT DISMISS BEHAVIOR: When you get in a dialog box, such as the one showing the time, the rest of the screen dims and there is one button: 'View'. There is no 'Cancel' or 'OK'.
The dialog box disappears by itself after a few seconds. To get rid of it manually I have to click on an area of the screen outside of the dialog box. But what happens if I click right as the screen goes away? I launch whatever was on the part of the screen I clicked on.
- Some dialogs do have a cancel button though (for example, the 'Messaging Accounts' Dialog in the 'Preferences') which means that if you follow the majority of the other buttons behaviors, you are likely to click outside the dialog to dismiss the dialog, but the outside is active with these guys so you end up doing whatever you click on.
INCONSISTENT SELECT BEHAVIOR: When you try to select a person to send an SMS text message to, you cannot simply scroll to a name and have that act as a selection. You have to select the check box next to the name, even in you only want to send the SMS to one recipient.
This is inconsistent with choosing names and numbers in the Address Book - there you simply click. When you are in the 'Pictures' application you also just click once on a picture to view it, you don't have to select it and click a check box.
- Just allow the user to select recipients for SMS messages by scrolling to the names and use the check box for optional, multiple selections.
NO BACK CLICK: The scroll wheel is useful, but when using it to navigate menus I cannot click 'back' on it to dismiss the menu.
NO UNDO IN ADDRESS BOOK: Delete a digit (a single number!) in a phone number by mistake and it's gone forever. No undo. How can this be? With the hadwriting recognition it's easy to select something by mistake.
NO APP SWITCHER: If I am in one application, like Quickword for example, I cannot switch over to the To Do list for example and return to the same place in Quickword, I will have to re-launch the document I was in again.
NON-UNIFORM MENUS: The menus are not consistent. For instance, 'Select All' is in different menus. In the Pictures app it's in the pictures menu. In the File Manager it's in the File menu. In some apps, like Quickword, there is no 'Select All' option at all.
LIGHT SETTINGS: The light on the screen cannot be set to behave differently when there is a keyboard attached etc,. making it hard to write on the device without having to often touch the screen. If it is set to last longer, it still doesn't last very long, and I have to go through a complicated set of procedures to change between light on and light on auto/energy saving.
- Integrate functions into sets of preferences.
ISYNCH ISSUES: Just doesn't synch.
- An issue for Apple & Sony Ericsson to work on.
FLIP-FLOP: As noted in the introduction, using the P900 with the flip enhances the phone utility. There is one problem though, if you are in an application with the flip open, then you close the flip for a call maybe, or to go somewhere (you wouldn't want the flip open when you are walking around with the phone in your pocket) and then open the flip again, the original app you were in has now closed. Annoying when you were chatting with Agile messenger say.
- Keep the states stored.
VOICE COMMANDS: The voice dialing is amazing when used with a Bluetooth headset but it could do with some additional functionality, which shouldn't be that hard to make happen, for example: "re-dial" would re-dial the last number dialed, which is great when you didn't get through the first time and you want to re-dial a number you have not stored a voice-tag with.
NO CUSTOM ALARM TONES: The clock lets you choose custom alarm times. The calendar does not, which is not cool for the LiSA mobile phone edition - we cannot produce different announcements for events, like "your meeting is about to start".
COMPLICATED KEY LOCK EXIT: To get out key lock the user is supposed to press star then enter. In practice it becomes more clicks, often 4, to get the sequence right. Other mobile phones work on a simple, star then enter click.
INEFFICIENT EMAIL: If the user is to download email only occasionally, like any regular email application all new messages are downloaded. Why not let the user select 'download only messages from today' as an option. This way older messages don't need to be downloaded.
CHOOSING TEMPLATE MEANS SELECT AND CLICK': When choosing 'create MMS' the user gets a screen full of templates. The user cannot click on a template and go through to the next scree, the user must click on a template and then click 'select' which is needlessly cumbersome.
CANNOT SELECT MULTIPLE HEADERS FOR DOWNLOAD': The option to download email headers is a great time and bandwidth saver. However, it would be very useful to be able to select multiple messages in the inbox and have them all download the full message when opened. Today you can only do one at a time.
MARK AS READ': It would be very useful to be able to mark messages in the inbox as 'read' without opening them (especially if they are not fully downloaded, i.e. only headers). It would be equally useful to mark messages as 'unread' so that you can come back to them later.
MESSAGING: There is no quick way to address messages, no auto-complete of names or pop-up of addresses recently used. This means a long slog through the address book every time I want to send an SMS. This is not a problem on a phone with just a few people in the address book, but it's a bit of a speed bump with 757 entries.
- Multiple levels of User Interface The main quick-call page shows only 9 numbers. And I can only call those numbers, not send SMS or anything else. The 'Internet Browser' button on the right, maybe it could be useful if when I clicked it I could point to a quick-dial number and get options like 'send SMS' or 'call alternative number' (if the quick-dial numbers refers to the address book entry, not a single number, where what number is to be used has been selected, like you can on the Nokia 3650).
TINY EMAIL TEXT AREA: The header part of the email takes up about a third of the space on the screen when reading an email. And stays there, it doesn't scroll out of view.
- This should be re-designed to provide more reading space.
EMAIL APP DOESN'T SUPPORT NON .COM: I get errors every time I try to send an email to someone whose domain ends in something other than .com.
NEW MESSAGE ACCESS TIME WASTE: When I get a text message the notification in the status bar at the bottom on the screen can be clicked on. It reveals the different available messages SMS, MMS and email. The resulting dialog shows how many unread messages there are in each category and features a 'View' button. I cannot click directly on SMS for example. When I click on the right category of message and then the 'View' button the message Inbox is shown. I still have to click on the unread message.
- Why not just have one icon per message in the status bar at the bottom of the screen, click on one and have the most recent message open?
DIALING DOESN'T RETURN TO ORIGINAL LOCATION: If I make a call by clicking on a number in the address book and the call is connected, when hanging up I am no longer in the address book. This is not helpful when trying to call someone who could be on any of a series of numbers in the same entry (home, office, mobile etc.).
This is inconsistent with the behavior of when a call is not connected. In this case, I do go back to the entry in the address book.
PDA
Just one issue: It doesn't exist yet. Give it until MacWorld January 2005...
Palm
Yes, you're right, the Palm is not an Apple product, but it is integral to the Apple's Digital Hub.
NOT VERY CUSTOMIZABLE PALM DESKTOP APP: The Palm Desktop application could be a very powerful environment. But it isn't. It is not very customizable. The layouts are not very flexible and the whole package is hardly innovative.
SYNCH ISSUES: No automatic synchronization, background synchronization or real integration into the rest of the users applications and data.
Thing is, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) is a great medium for entering information as it is small and light so you can have easy access to it when even a laptop could be a big deal to boot up. Like on the bus.
However, PDA's are crap at browsing. The screen is necessarily small and you have to be pretty bored to want to go through your To Do list on your PDA.
Apple's strategic Digital Hub is an important thought in the right direction. The distinction between digital devices is artificial. As long as the things can communicate, they are, informationaly speaking, potentially one. Therefore synchronization is important. Adding To Do items and appointments conveniently to your PDA is great. They then need to, transparently, show up on your desktop to be useful. How, where, in what way and through what means is another issue, but it's important!
For more on this, have a look at www.liquid.org - PDA to desktop note synching
Audio
LACK OF COMPATIBILITY: The Pro speakers (the round ones) can only be used with G4 machines made in 2001. And that does NOT include the Titanium. Damn!
NO AUDIO IN, "I'm sure you've got millions of those wee expensive USB or Firewire audio devices to plug all your old stuff into? I thought not. Yes, Apple have shown it's middle finger to the people that want to record a voice-over into iMovie, a few notations in Powerpoint or record a quick sample into a cheap audio program. What with speech recognition doing so well, you would've thought they might have made it easier to get sound into the System. Now there's only one machine with analog audio in, the iMac. The cheapest machine has one of the only features not found on anything else! Why should you buy a Soundcard when all you want to do is add a couple of spoken lines? A Plaintalk microphone only used to cost $15, now the cheapest solution is a cheap microphone (about £5) and a Griffin iMic (about £35) Thumbs down. That's my rant, hope you enjoyed it." Submitted by: S W Dickson
Monitors
LACK OF BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY: The newer monitors cannot be used with any Mac other than current production models and they cannot be used with the anything but the newest Titaniums.
LACK OF ADJUSTABILITY: The newer monitors cannot be adjusted vertically. In other words, you cannot increase their height so that you don't have to look down too much.
A major benefits of using desktop computers over laptops is the fact that you can type with the keyboard comfortably low and you can at the same time look at the monitor which should be comfortably high, pretty much right in front of your eyes- ideally. Not very ergonomic is it?*. Have a look at the Cornell University's "12 tips for an Ergonomic Computer Workstation"
