August 23rd, 2007

Best mobile VoIP headset ever

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:53 am

Categories: Gadgetry, Hardware, Mac, Mobility, Windows

Tags: VoIP, Mobile, Plantronics, Headset, Marc Orchant

I’ve been using the new Virtual Phone Booth from Plantronics for the past few weeks and it has utterly transformed my Skype (and Gizmo and Google Talk) experience. Formerly, I have either relied on the built-in microphone and speakers on my laptops (with the attendant howling and echoing that too often seems to plague VoIP calls) or used the excellent but too-bulky-for-travel Plantronics DSP 500 headset. That big unit has been a great solution for voice recognition and podcasting but is not exactly comfortable or convenient for all-day work.

The Virtual Phone Booth is a pair of noise-isolating earbuds with an integrated microphone boom on that connects either directly through the microphone and headphone jacks on your PC or using an included USB adapter. The sound quality is excellent and the comfort is all-day, forget-you-have it-on. Folks I’ve been talking to via Skype and other services have repeatedly remarked on the excellent sound quality and in local tests with Audacity, the recording quality is more than sufficient for podcasing and screencasting duty. Volume and muting controls are built into a slim tub on the cord which also features a small clip to attach to your shirt.

The Virtual Phone Booth packs into an included hard case that’s about the size of a candy bar so it slips into the gadget bag with no problem and gives me a completely portable solution with no compromises when I’m out and about or on the road. This unit is a definite keeper! The Virtual Phone Booth retails for about $110.00 and is compatible with both the Mac OS and Windows.

I’ve also been using the latest Bluetooth headset from Plantronics, the Voyager 520. I’ve used the Voyager 510, an over-the-ear boom style headset, for years as it’s one of the most comfortable headsets I’ve used with excellent battery life and the relatively uncommon ability to multi-pair which allows me to use it with both a laptop and a mobile phone or with two mobile phones (yes, I am a gadget freak).

The 520 is a more conventional pod-shaped design that offers the same benefits and even better battery life. Plantronics has designed a new molded rubber earpiece that does a great job of isolating outside noise so that even in noisy environs on on a windy day the saound quality is excellent. The ear hook, unlike many headsets I’ve evaluated, is made from a very soft and flexible material that does not chafe or scratch. It’s a single button design which makes adjusting the volume or using other functions very easy. Plantronics has also designed a nice desktop stand (pictured here) that makes it very convenient to pop the unit in for a quick charge.

The Voyager 520 retails for $99.00 and worked perfectly with my MacBook, Lenovo Tablet PC, Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone.

August 17th, 2007

iWork '08 - no Office killer 'cause it's not supposed to be

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:12 am

Categories: Apple iWorks, Mac, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Productivity, Software

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Apple Inc., Apple iWork, Marc Orchant

I picked up a copy of iWork ‘08, the new update to Apple’s productivity suite, the other day and have been noodling around in it since I installed it on my MacBook and my wife’s iMac. It’s a worthy upgrade for two principal reasons in my opinion: the significant improvements made to Pages (document processor) and the addition of Numbers, a new layout-oriented spreadsheet application. I’m not going to do a full, feature-by-feature review here – there’s plenty of those already on the tubes. I just want to address the notion that this signals some throwing down of a gauntlet by Apple in front of Microsoft. It doesn’t.

I thought we’d gotten past this but apparently not. Even venerable tech journalist and unabashed Apple fan Walt Mossberg fell into the trap of trying to compare iWorks ‘08 to Microsoft Office calling iWork “elegant but wimpy”. It’s a bad idea because they’re simply not the same thing. Walt goes so far off track as to slam Apple for not including an Outlook-like PIM in one sentence and them almost immediately points out that, well, Apple really doesn’t need to make an Outlook clone because, well, they already have a very nice set of applications for e-mail, calendar, and contacts built right into every Mac they ship. So why, oh why make bones over this. Why not just say so?

This, my friends, is a classic case of fomenting controversy where none needs to exist.

iWorks is not an Office “killer”. In fact, if you take Apple at their word, that’s never been their intent in producing the suite. According to a very lucid quote in an analysis piece at MacWorld from Apple’s Rob Shoeben, the raison d’etre behind iWorks is pretty simple:

“One of the things that you’ll see in some of our materials is, ‘Productivity the Mac way,’” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing. “That means, ‘I bought a Mac on purpose. I bought into the idea that things should look right and be well-designed and really easy to use.’ They want to enjoy the way they work, they want their work product to look great, and [they want to be] fundamentally integrated into iLife. If you buy into all that, that’s going to be appealing.”

And if you don’t, because you need (or want) the compatibility and feature full Microsoft Office experience then you go buy Office. Office:Mac is a decent product, if a bit long in the tooth. Even though the new Universal Binary Office 2008 for Mac has been delayed until sometime next year, the current version works pretty well. And it’s very compatible with it’s cousin on Windows. If you want compatibility with Office and don’t want to go the Microsoft route, you still have options. NeoOffice, a Mac-friendly version of OpenOffice is available at the nice price (free). You can also use ThinkFree Office which comes in both web-based (free) and desktop (commercial) flavors and will soon offer real-time sync between documents in the cloud and on your desktop with their Premium offering (disclaimer: I’m an adviser to ThinkFree).

It is what it is – a decidedly different approach to constructing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets nicely integrated into the Mac OS experience. Gee. Thinking different. From Apple. Go figure.

Update: Thanks to the MacWorld review of Pages I just learned that the Track Changes feature in the new version is compatible with the MS Word feature of the same name. Because Apple does not make this clear in their marketing messages or the small manual that comes with iWork ‘08, I assumed it was a proprietary approach to change management. This is huge for me as that’s one of the gating factors for me preventing me from seriously considering using Pages in more of my work. Sweet!

August 2nd, 2007

Microsoft delays Office 2008 for Mac until... 2008

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:46 am

Categories: Mac, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Jim Dalrymple, reporting at MacWorld announced the following news from Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit:

Microsoft will delay the release of Office 2008 for Mac until mid-January 2008, representatives of the company’s Macintosh Business Unit announced Thursday.

The long-awaited Intel-native Office, featuring programs such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage, was originally scheduled to be released later this year. Instead, Microsoft said it hoped to release Mac Office 2008 to manufacturing in December, which would allow it to release the product at the January 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

This is bad news for those of us who need some of the advanced functionality in Mac Office to collaborate with folks in the Windows world. Track Changes, in particular, is a compatibility issue that keep from from switching off Microsoft entirely on the Mac. It’s so commonly used in the work I do that I simply can’t afford to rely on another suite or set of products. I was pretty excited about the changes I’ve been hearing about in this next release but I guess I’ll just have to continue muddling along with Office 2004 on my MacBook a while longer.

That, or I need to just bite the bullet and use only Office 2007 in Parallels (serious overhead) and just remove Office 2004 from the Mac. Once Leopard arrives, I plan to reevaluate my Bootcamp thinking and may ultimately end up partitioning and dual-booting. Or I may just throw my hands up in abject defeat and do this kind of work on my Tablet PC and forget about everything-on-one-PC scenarios entirely.
I’ve already found a solution for cross-platform, work from any device, online/offline productivity for less complex documents and where the use of Track Changes is not mandated. I’ll be posting about that sometime soon, once the software/service I’m using is officially announced.

I know that Office is a big complex product and I’m sure there are legitimate reasons why MBUmade this decision but I’m increasingly feeling like Microsoft has some deep-rooted issues they need to address. More and more, it feels like everything they produce has a very good likelihood of slipping from its announced ship date. That does not bode well for them in the long run. The impact on SOHO and SMB customers is significant. The implications for Microsoft’s relationship with the enterprise is potentially catastrophic if they cannot hit their dates and provide a reasonable level of predictability.

UPDATE: On the virtualization front, VMWare has announced that Fusion, their Mac OS product will be released on August 6th for $79.99 (same price as Parallels). Between now and August 5th, you can pre-order Fusion for $39.99. You’ll get a license key instantly which can be used with the Release Candidate currently available or you can wait until the official release is available next week. Either way, it’s a sweet deal from a longtime leader in the space.

July 16th, 2007

MacUpdate promo bundle nears finish line

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:18 am

Categories: Mac, Mac OS X, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins

Tags: Utility, Marc Orchant

Update: So much for my powers of prognostication. The requisite 5,999 bundles have been sold and all 10 applications are now included bringing the retail value of this bundle up to $433.82. The promotion has been extended for 3 more days so you still have time to nab a great deal for you Mac if you’re so inclined.

I’m a sucker for these bundle promotions. I admit it. Last year’s MacHeist bundle got me and so did the current (and about to end) MacUpdate promotion. This one’s quite a nice deal if you’re looking for an ecelectic but very useful collection of Mac applications and utilities at a significant discount. The bundle includes:

• Little Snitch: a firewall enhancement to monitor and restrict outbound connections.
• GraphicConverter: A legendary utility that converts between downs of graphic file formats and provides tools for lightweight image correction and editing.
• Fetch: Another legendary utility – this one for FTP and SFTP file transfers.
• iWOW: an iTunes add-in that significantly improves the quality of audio output on your Mac.
• GarageSale: an eBay auction builder and manager.
• Cocktail: a maintenance utility that provides a graphic front-end to a number of *NIX command-line utilities.
• ProfCast: a presentation recorder that allows you to integrate PowerPoint and Keynote slides into your podcasts.
• Amadeus Pro: a powerful audio editor.

and, if sales targets are hit, Intaglio (a vector drawing program) and TechTool Pro (a maintenance and repair suite for the Mac). The targets were revised downwards yesterday to make it possible for these last two apps to get unlocked. If I had to bet, I’d say Intaglio is a shoo-in but TechTool Pro looks like a bit of a stretch.

The bundle costs $49.99. Retail value (as of now with the core apps and Little Snitch having been unlocked) is $244.83. As of the time I’m posting this, there’s about 15 hours left on the promo.

July 1st, 2007

I am such a weak person - I bought an iPhone

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:15 am

Categories: Gadgetry, Hardware, Mac, Mac OS X, Mobility, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Marc Orchant

I know… I know… I said I wasn’t going to do this. I had all the completely valid reasons to stay of the RDF and avoid being swept up in the iPhone madness. But yesterday morning I succumbed to the iPhone’s siren song and drove over to the ABQ Uptown Apple Store where iPhones were in plentiful supply. Three minutes later (yes, I timed it) I walked out with an 8GB iPhone.

I got home, plugged the iPhone into my already updated MacBook (the latest system update to 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 are required to activate and sync the iPhone) and, with trembling fingers (based on some of the activation horror stories I’d been following on Twitter, Jaiku, and via RSS), began the activation process. Guess what? No problema. Picked my plan (the 450 minute bucket with unlimited data), added more SMS (1500/month) for an additional $10 and clicked the Submit button. And then, less than two minutes later (yes, I timed this too), I had a new AT&T mobile number and a fully functional iPhone. While I understand that many, many people have a had a less-than-stellar activation experience, mine was as painless as can be.

It’s an amazing device. Typical Apple OMG experience. The display is gorgeous. The performance over WiFi is every bit as good as what I get with my Nokia N95. The EDGE performance is a little slower than the 2.5G I get from T-Mobile with the N95 and a lot slower than the EVDO I had been getting with my Treo 700p (which I’m returning to my now-former employer). That’s OK. I’ve been tethering both the MacBook and Lenovo X61t to the N95 and find the performance adequate for checking mail and light surfing. With the iPhone’s widescreen display, I have less reason to need to do that for a quick info fix.

Syncing up my contacts, calendar, photos, and a bit of my iTunes library (it’s only got 8GB and I have a 30GB iPod) went smoothly. Not sure if I’ll keep the iPod. One of my kids may be getting a great hand-me-down shortly. I can probably live with shuffling video and podcasts on and off the iPhone.

Text input is easier than my T9 fumbling on the N95 (I suck at T9 even though I’ve tried hard to get used to it). The predictive text is already learning my favorite words and I’m getting the hang of sliding my relatively big fingers when I initially touch the wrong letter to hit the one I was aiming for. The rotational function for iPod and Safari usage is fantastic – I wish it was available for all apps as it’s a lot easier to enter text on the wide onscreen keyboard.

I’m weak. I have no impulse control. My wife and my son are looking at me like I’ve taken complete leave of my senses. And I have yet to face the scorn of my daughter who will most likely roll her eyes and scathingly dismiss me as a complete geek. That’s OK. Their scorn will pass. I’m grinning like an idiot and having a blast with my new shiny bauble.

I’m off to San Jose for a quick overnight trip. I’ll post about the on-the-go experience with the iPhone in the next couple of days.

June 30th, 2007

iPhone day one - what does it all mean?

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:09 am

Categories: Gadgetry, Hardware, Mac, Mobility, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Marc Orchant

My buddy Matt Miller wrote a nice post about alternatives to the iPhone on his Mobile Gadgeteer blog and as I perused (and joined in on) the comment thread, it occurred to me that a little long-view history lesson might be in order. I’ve been pretty disinclined to write about the iPhone because a) I don’t have one yet, b) I don’t think I’ll have one in my grubby little hands anytime soon, (update: so much for that theory) and c) there is so much noise about this device that adding to it seems like a fruitless pursuit (pun intended).

So I’m not going to weigh in on why the iPhone is better or worse than what’s already available, whether it represents the next stage of mobile evolution, or whether it will make your whites whiter, your teeth brighter, and you personally irresistible to… you get the idea.

What I did want to to toss into the mix, especially after reading the comments on Matt’s post, were the following observations:

• Apple is simply better than any other company in the tech world at reframing consumer expectations and the ensuing conversation. They have a more highly evolved sense of design than most companies – Bang and Olufsen and maybe Sony come to mind as others who have made design a clear differentiator in a similar fashion. The capture people’s imagination about the “how”, not the “what”. That is “how will using this device change the way I work and play” as opposed to “what features, functions, or technical details make this device different or better”. Don’t think design is important? Read Tom Peters’ Reimagine and get back to me.
• Apple markets better. Their ads are engaging. Their positioning is clear. Their CEO is a master presenter. Apple literally shut down the press room at CES this January when the Steve took the stage to announce the iPhone. Every journalist, blogger, and analyst in the room was watching the keynote. What they were not doing was paying any attention to the thousands of square feet of vendors surrounding them and the hundreds of thousands of products on display in Las Vegas. The fact that Apple has been able to sustain the insane level of interest in this device as they have for six months and built it to a perfect crescendo of media coverage yesterday is something no one else in the industry has demonstrated they’re able to come close to (with the possible exception of the gaming console trio of Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Microsoft XBox).
• Apple forces competitors to ante up when they raise the bet. If the tech business is a poker game, players at the table know that Apple doesn’t bluff very often. When they raise the bet, you have two choices – call or fold. Since folding isn’t a very good business strategy, competitors have to meet the challenge Apple has thrown down. Whether it’s trivial (colored computer cases) or innovative (scroll-and-click wheels on music players), the rest of the industry scrambles to follow suit best they can. Those are pretty specific examples where the act of copying Apple’s lead made no difference. Consider the iTunes-iPod ecosystem Apple created to carve out a huge share of the commercial media download market. Who else has been able to (or is even in a position to) match that raise?

You can vent all day about why you think Apple is a nice player, over-priced, evil, or whatever your particular epithet of choice might be. You’re wrong. Apple is a vital contributor to the evolution of the connected experience and they deserve credit for continually challenging the status quo. It’s what they do. They’re better at it than anyone else. And that’s why the iPhone is such a big deal.

June 27th, 2007

OMG... not another iPhone post!

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:53 pm

Categories: Mac, Mobility

Tags: Apple iPhone, Object Management Group, Marc Orchant

I know… I know… you’ve had it with iPhone posts on blogs everywhere. Well I have something a little different for you. I’m not going to waste your time explaining why I am or am not getting an iPhone on Friday. I’m not going to get into an exhaustive feature checklist comparison between the iPhone and some other device. Nope… not going to do it. Instead, I’m going to point you to what is quite possibly the most fun you can have at the iPhone’s expense. It’s clever, it’s amusing, and it’s free.

Go here and experience what is sure to be the “feature” everyone will be talking about Friday night.

June 26th, 2007

Codeweavers 10-step program

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 4:16 pm

Categories: Linux, Mac, Microsoft, Software, Uncategorized, Windows

Tags: CodeWeavers Inc., Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Codeweavers, the company behind CrossOver, an engine that provides Mac and Linux users the ability to install and run some Windows applications without a Windows  install or license, have just released a 10-Step Program for Computing Nirvana. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek poke at Microsoft and the dominance they enjoy over the computing world. I’m warning you up front that if you’re a Microsoft zealot, you’re probably going to hate this. If you’re a Microsoft basher, you’re probably going to get at least a few laughs out of it. And if you’re hewing to the middle ground and refuse to succumb to either of these magnetic poles, you’ll probably see both the truthiness and folly in this sort of thing.

It made me laugh and got me to click around their site a bit so I guess that qualifies as a success. Heck, it amused enough to write this.

June 8th, 2007

Parallels 3.0 a worthy upgrade

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:26 am

Categories: Mac, Utilities and Add-Ins, Vista, Windows

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Operating System, Marc Orchant

I’ve been using Parallels Desktop on my MacBook for some time to give me access to certain applications for which there is no counterpart on the Mac and have been generally quite pleased with the performance and usability of the virtualization software. I run a Vista Ultimate virtual machine and have found virtually nothing I do on a regular basis on a standard PC beyond its capabilities. Note I said “conventional”. I still cant get the Tablet PC experience on a Mac and suspect that, ModBook notwithstanding, it will be a while before that will be possible.

One of my favorite uses for Parallels is to run the New York Times Reader application which is currently only available for Windows (a Mac version is promised but has been for a long time with nothing more said – perhaps they’re waiting for Leopard’s answer to WPF?). Using the Coherence mode introduced in the last version, I can run this app in its own window where it sits in the dock and Command-tab application rotation just like any standard Mac app.

New to version 3.0 is SmartSelect which allows my to open a file from either OS with any application available on either that is suited to do so. So, I can work on mind maps in MindManager 7 Pro on the MacBook, use Office 2007 Microsoft Word rather than the hoary old Mac version, and open web pages and send e-mail using Firefox and Mail.app on the Mac even when those actions are invoked from within the Vista environment. It’s all very seamless and takes longer to describe in words than to show in a couple of pictures.

So… below are two screen captures, one from Vista running inside Parallels 3.0 and one in Mac OS X Finder. In both cases, I’ve selected a Microsoft Word file file and can select from all of the applications in both operating system environments that are registered to work with that file format. Note that in the Mac OS screen, Word 2007 is running in Coherence mode. Here’s the context menu in Vista:

And here’s the context menu in the Mac OS Finder:

Like I said, it’s all pretty seamless.

There are other improvements including the ability to create a snapshot of your VM and roll back when things get broken. This is particularly great if, like me, you tend to install a lot of SW to evaluate and you hate dealing with the inevtiable cruft that builds up in Windows. I have a pristine snapshot of my VM backed up for a rainy day and boy, do I feel more secure knowing I can roll back to squeakly clean Windows any time I like!

Graphics performance is supposed to be improved as well but since the MacBook lacks a dedicated GPU and I’m not much of a gamer, I’ll leave that to others better equipped to comment on.  What I can tell you is that if you make regular use of Parallels, the upgrade is a worthy one. If you’re still on the fence, you might want to keep an eye on what VMWare is doing with their forthcoming Fusion product. It looks very interesting as well. And then, of course, we are all waiting to see what details emerge about Boot Camp from WWDC next week in San Francisco.

It’s good to have choices.

June 5th, 2007

Big day for browser releases

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:03 am

Categories: Mac, Software, Web Apps, Windows

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Netscape Navigator, Web Browser, Marc Orchant

While the browser market is still essentially a two-horse race, that is not stopping other contenders from trying to break into the game. Netscape has just released version 9.0 (beta 1) of their Navigator browser (based on core Mozilla code) which has a number of very interesting ideas in play, And Camino has just been revved to version 1.5 and uses the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox and the same Mac keychain as Safari. To top off the buffet, version 2.0 of the Shiira browser for the Mac (from Japan) was recently released, offering up a WebKit-based alternative with a fresh UI and a unique shelf that displays thumbnails of open pages as opposed to the more typical tabs in other browsers. It’s a veritable smörgåsbord of browsing options I tell you!

Netscape Navigator 9.0 features include:

• Social Integration: Navigator provides a feature that lets you share and vote for webpages that you find interesting. You can build your own network of friends and get their favorite stories in your sidebar. Sounds a lot like del.ici.ous if you ask me.
• Netscape News in the Browser (sidebar): Allows you to catch up on the latest news directly int he sidebar. You can customize the News menu to show only your interests.
• URL Correction: Navigator fixes common typing mistakes in URLs. And there’s no need to type prefix or suffix data like .cmo, .ogr, or htp:// .
• Link Pad: Save interesting links for later without committing them to your bookmarks list.
• Firefox 2 Extension Compatibility: Add-ins for Firefox 2 work in Navigator 9.
• Versions for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

Camino 1.5 newness includes:

• Spell checking using OS X’s built-in dictionary
• Session restore - stores all open pages in a session and offers to restore on launch following a crash… er, unexpected termination of your browsing.
• Keychain compatibilty - Camino can use the same Keychain entries as Safari.
• Full screen mode - no browser chrome to distract you.
• The latest Gecko rendering engine (1.8.1).
• Mac OS only.

Shiira hasn’t actually documented what’s new in a succinct list (they’re working on it) and is worth a look only for the adventurous. It’s a work in progress and definitely not ready to be your everyday browser.