Apple iPhone: A Revolution in the Making

It's here and it's much bigger than any of us expected. If you'll notice my post last week, I knew it was coming, and if you look at my post before that, I also talked about a gaping whole in the cell phone market waiting to be filled by a killer phone, and I think we may have it now. Alright, enough of my own hype, you can read to your heart's content here, which is the best recap of the Macworld keynote that you're likely to find, or watch the keynote itself here, which I recommend because you'll find yourself standing up several times and saying "Oh snap!" if you do that. This is why Steve Jobs is a visionary: he sees a problem and sees a product. For how many years have people bitched about phones and none of the phone providers have actually listened? All Apple had to do was listen, and they're now poised to dominate the market. No doubt they'll come out with a better model next year, and it'll have more memory, and all that stuff. My only concern right now is battery life, which is 5 hours (16 hours for audio playback), and that's not too bad but still could use some work. Yes, it is also pretty pricey ($500 for 4 GB, $600 for 8 GB), that's going to happen in the first generation of a product like this, but I'll be damned if it's not worth it. Not only did they do the web right, they finally got video right, it looks pretty damn easy to synch, making calls is nice and intuitive, the iPod itself is even more fun to navigate, text messages are displayed as conversations, checking your voicemail is even better, and everything is so intuitive it's almost physically sickening. Plus, they have OS X on there, so they're opening all kinds of doors for the future. A product like this doesn't come out very often, so I think we should all absorb the day we learned about it, much like I'm sure some of you absorbed the first personal computer and the first time you saw the Internet and so on. It doesn't come out until June, mind you, because of FCC regulations (and I'm sure finishing touches), but it was a good move to not risk more leaks or the FCC letting the cat out of the bag and announcing now. Plus, more time for 3rd parties to help make it even more attractive.

I know what you're thinking, all I do is fawn over Apple, right? Well I don't, they just have good publicists so I read about all their news. Whether or not this phone is buggy or has problems is irrelevant, the concepts that back this phone are much bigger. Apple has plenty of resources to get it right even if it flops the first time, and with this kind of vision, I think we should put a lot of faith in them. Oh, and they're taking pre-orders on the Apple TV (no longer iTV) to be shipped next month for $300. Other than that, not much else at the keynote, though they did announce that they're now Apple, Inc (huge change), the iPhone is for Cingular customers only (so it's GSM), and they've partnered with Yahoo and Google for search/email and maps on the iPhone. And this Macworld marks 10 years since Steve Jobs came back and brought the company back out of big problems and gave it back its focus, and it's focus that has kept it so healthy. You can see that keynote over here, which features the famous partnership with Microsoft to package Internet Explorer with OS 8 in exchange for some help with getting Apple back on its feet (by the way, people should not be booing Bill Gates; he also changed the world, morons). Oh, and one more piece of Apple news, Airport Extreme was quietly upgraded to support 802.11n, which is significant because Apple is rolling out the first products (including Apple TV) to support 802.11n (still in draft though, mind you), a significantly faster WiFi protocol than what we currently have.

Alright, I'm already running long here, so let me breeze through a few other tech items. We're in January now, everyone has PS3s, and the demand seems to have drastically abated. It's unfair to beat Sony over the head with it without real numbers because they are still being sold, but anecdotal evidence suggests that people are returning them after they're not able to resell them, and there's no shortage of them on store shelves, which is strange since I'm pretty sure Sony hasn't even shipped a million of them in the United States. Time for them to shore up on games. Intel launched Core 2 Quad chips yesterday, which led some to believe that we'd see them in Macs today, but no such luck. Still, sounds like a hot processor, I'm sure I'll have benchmarks and such soon enough. Hennessey and Patterson, who wrote the book I learned architecture from (so they literally wrote the book on this stuff), and they claim that the software isn't there yet to take advantage of 4 cores and we still have a ways to go. I agree, who needs more than 2 right now? Not to take away Apple's thunder, but Microsoft has released Windows Home Server, and it sounds like an interesting product, but I don't have a review to go off of right now. I especially like the disaster recovery features, so I think they definitely have the right idea in mind. It's time for them to market it now! A slight buzzkill though: the next-gen DVD formats will not work on Vista machines with digital output connections not protected by HDCP. To most of you, this doesn't mean anything, but the point is that this whole thing the movie studios is doing with anti-piracy measures is ridiculous. Don't blame Microsoft, blame these idiots in suits at the big studios for being jerks.

I'm going to start off my movie section with the best news: a recap of an amazing scene from Spider-man 3 shown at CES. I don't think it's much of a spoiler at all considering what we've seen in the trailer, but if you're a purist and didn't even watch the trailer, then don't read that. We have a couple of new trailers. The first is for Hot Fuzz, and it still looks like it has the potential to be a good movie but the trailer just didn't make me laugh. The other is for Pathfinder, and action adventure movie about vikings in North America. What's up with all these historical movies located in the Americas? It looked interesting, but I'm not sold on it yet. We now have official word of a 24 movie, which will contain a full day in just two hours, but Kiefer promises that it'll allow the awesome crew to put more attention to detail than they can with the series due to its strenuous shooting schedule. Lastly, we have some nice shots from The Golden Compass movie, except that none of them feature any bloody daemons! Those little guys are what made the book so fun and unique to me, so they'd better magically appear soon.

I liked the Ten on Tuesday topic for this week, so here goes nothing...

Ten TV Guilty Pleasures (ranked in order of guiltiness, not how much I like them)

10. Veronica Mars
9. Desperate Housewives
8. Southpark
7. Everyday Italian
6. Iron Chef America
5. Best Week Ever
4. Date My Mom
3. Parental Control
2. Exposed
1. My Super Sweet Sixteen

I know, it's sad. I don't love the dating shows, but they're good, cheap, tawdry entertainment. And I don't watch them regularly, just when I'm in Houston since I don't have cable in Austin.

Goodbye Forever, Fall 2006!

(I know it's a long post, but I have to make up for the past five days. Also, prepare for a paragraph of introspection, sorry)

As of about 10:30 AM this morning, my fall semester was over. I was in such a state of shock that I was almost numb. My Physics final went very well, my Automata Theory final mindraped me (as it did for the other 17 people who decided to take it early), and this morning's Probability final was almost as easy as I expected (though I still had to study for it, mind you). I don't think I could be much happier that this semester is over, to be honest. All my classes were either boring, useless, or extremely difficult (or multiple ones in some cases). This was my first semester at UT where academically I did not feel very stimulated. I think my brain got some good critical thinking skills out of Automata, no doubt, and I do enjoy a good challenge, but I'm sorry: writing proofs is not fun to me. I'm really thrilled to be taking Object Oriented Programming with the awesomeness known as Professor Downing and Programming Languages, as well, this Spring. I've been waiting for both courses for some time now. And guess what? No more science or labs again EVER! That's the best news, really. Actually, I take that back. You know what the best news is? This was also the first semester I felt Elton the person really grow. Does that make sense? I've felt out of place for the longest time, like even despite meeting people I was still just a number and still sticking to high school friends. With TLD though, I just totally brought a new dimension to my life and my personality, and I'm grateful for that (I should be thanking Jose for getting me into salsa and pushing me to dance with girls even when I sucked). I've actually been meeting interesting new girls (and cool guys), and having lots of fun with them, and not just doing some service activity or putting together an event: but dancing and laughing and the like. I recommend dancing to any of you stuck in a rut in your life! It should've been a hint when I hated frat parties but loved dancing with my cousins at New Year's. I think that now I can really bring myself to new levels as a dancer in the Spring because I have a solid background now (probably even do Texas Revue), and make more time for dating instead of doing retarded Physics labs. Yep, I'm happy, and optimistic. Now I just have to not total my car tomorrow.

There's no doubt that I missed a lot of news, but I'll just aim for the highlights of the last few days. I haven't seen any major tech media outlets report this, but Google Maps has gone through an upgrade. If you try it out now, you'll notice that the left side has changed to where locations are draggable (so you can reverse directions) and you can add multiple waypoints to your route as well as collapse the directions between each pair. It took them long enough! I'm afraid it slows down the app a bit though. Microsoft redesigned its public site to make it more Web 2.0-like, but I'm not really thrilled with it. Yeah, the old design was getting a bit dated, but I think this one is a little too heavy and tries too hard to mimic Windows Explorer. I really hate to laud Apple so much, I really do, but I like their new holiday ad. Something about it just clicks with me, and it's much much better than those Get a Mac ads. More interesting: Gizmodo claims that they're 100% positive that the iPhone will be announced "on Monday," but he doesn't specify which Monday. Presumably, he means December 18, so I guess we'll know soon enough (oh, and he doesn't even say how he knows, so he could be lying just the same, but Gizmodo generally is reputable). There was some chatter of the iTV remote looking like this, but I just wanted to state that I think it's a complete sham. Jobs is going to want it to look like the iMac and MacBook remotes, not something much bigger and black (as opposed to the iTV being white). And apparently I missed an alarming Forrester report that iTunes sales were losing momentum, but Apple has, in an out-of-character move, come out to flat-out deny those claims. I'm sure we'll see the hard numbers at MacWorld, but I can't imagine that report making any sense in the first place. I usually don't like to entertain Mark Cuban's whimsical posts, but I thought I'd give him credit for making a creative one a few days ago suggesting how Google can break iTunes. Ready? Give away the music and make money off just the ads. I think Ruckus already does something like this, albeit only for students, and I just can't see that model working. I'm no business major, but I can't imagine record labels being pleased with that idea. At the best, they'd suggest less portability for the music, which isn't good for anyone. Not even Bill Gates likes DRM and he's an avid opponent of piracy himself! Lastly, take a few minutes and read Joel Spolsky's brilliant post on elegance. It's so awesome because it's just so true.

I'm going to start off with some trailers. The recently redesigned Yahoo Movies site has the first real trailer for Live Free or Die Hard (again, I think this title is stupid), which is little more than cool special effects and action sequences. Still, it does the trick, and piqued my interest, except that Bruce Willis is really getting too old for these kinds of movies. Meanwhile, Moviefone has the new Shrek the Third trailer, which starts out meh and ends up being pretty funny. I still don't know if I'm sold on this movie being good, but at least they're trying hard with it and not just relying on the franchise to make them money. We finally have a tidbit of news on The Dark Knight: the Batman suit will be a little more fabricky and sleek while the Joker suit will be less cartooney than it is in the comics to reflect the darker tone of the movie. I'm really excited to see what he comes up with, though I'm sure it'll disappoint the hardcore Batman geeks since it's different. Jackie Chan was hurt on the set of Rush Hour 3, just part of many problems for the film including cast/crew members getting sick and the film going overbudget. They must've Ratner a lot of money for this one, so how could he possibly go over? Tobey Maguire is claiming that he's not likely to do another Spider-man movie unless the plot is really something special, and Kirsten Dunst has echoed his sentiments. A part of me is sad, but a part of me is happy that at least they won't overdo the series and cheapen it. Plus, a lot of people weren't satisfied with Maguire (I had no problem with him, personally). I could've posted the new Hostel 2 poster, but it's so gross that I decided to show some restraint. Instead, here's one of a few new pictures from Grind House:



Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
What was your very first job with a paycheck?
Being a teaching assistant at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston for these summer camps they had for kids ages 6-12. It was quite an interesting, minimum wage earning experience, but I'm glad I did that rather than some retail job (i.e. Best Buy, MacDonalds, etc) because I had some fun there and it was something really unique to be a part of my career.

Soup
Did you ever lose something really important to you?
I lost my Captain Planet action figure when I was like 8, and that was hard on me. He even had a string you would hold to make him fly! I'm still not over the loss.

Salad
What is the best Christmas present you ever received?
I really couldn't tell you. I guess the PS2 I got a few years ago, or maybe the iPod Shuffle I got last Christmas, which I've probably gotten more worth out of (despite it breaking last week).

Main Course
Tell about a favorite "hang out" place for you and your friends when you were in high school.
There was a spot in the foyer of the school where we would "hang out" and have lunch. We didn't really go out and do exciting stuff a whole lot; just go to the movies or play pool pretty much. And I wonder why it took this long for me to figure out how much I enjoy dancing! =P

Dessert
Name something that always brings a smile to your face.
The TLD Semi-Formal on Sunday night =) Aside from that I always smile when I think of my fumbles and successes when trying new moves with girls on the dance floor, there was something else I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about here. It is smile-worthy though, for sure.

TiVo + iTV = Mac Media Capsule?

I have to start off this post by expressing my sincere condolences for the loss of CNet editor James Kim. It's been quite a dramatic story to follow over the past few days, and I was shocked to learn that they didn't get to him in time, but I'm sure he'll be remembered as a hero for having died trying to save his family. Moving along to less depressing news, PVRBlog is entertaining the rather provocative rumor that Apple may be partnering with TiVo to produce the iTV with PVR capabilities and rename it the Mac Media Capsule. Personally, I think this is a complete lie since I'm sure Apple would be more interested in selling content on iTunes than having people record it from live television for free, but maybe they figure that this could drive up sales of the "Mac Media Capsule?" Or maybe they'd be getting a special cut from cable companies for the service charge that using TiVo entails? I think it would be much more beneficial for TiVo than Apple since I can't imagine current TiVo subscribers running out so quickly to get an iTV but I can imagine Apple loyalists or people who don't own a PVR to get an iTV. Anyway, it'd be an interesting partnership, to say the least, so let's just see how it develops.

I still have more Apple rumors for you. Analysts claim that the first iPhone will be an iPod first and foremost with phone capabilities as well. They also claim that there will be a second phone that's more of a smart phone and would be GSM/GPRS and WCDMA, which I think would be pretty neat, and would be slim. Oh, remember a few days ago when I mentioned that Universal is trying to collect money from each iPod sold to make up for piracy? One blogger decided to poke fun at what such a negotiation would be like, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if Steve Jobs were to say those things. Speaking of music, EMI is starting to sell some of its music in a DRM-free mp3 format so that it's guaranteed to work on all players, and major labels are starting to turn their heads. I mentioned this a while back ago also, but it came up again and I think it's noteworthy because I think that one day we won't have to worry about DRM as consumers get more and more frustrated with it. Lastly, if you're also stupefied by how you see programming portrayed on the big screen, you'll get a real kick out of this article. It picks apart the biggest big screen myths, and I think it's kind of funny.

Very little movie news today. As some of you may know, David Fincher's (of Se7en fame) next movie is Zodiac about the notorious Zodiac killer, and JoBlo acquired a lot of pictures from the movie. I'm really looking forward to this one, mostly because I think Fincher is awesome and it has Al Pacino. Even cooler though, I think, is this new poster from Ghost Rider (yes, it is lenticular):



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. How old is your microwave oven?
We just got it before I came to UT, so I'd say 2 and a 1/2 years old.

2. How many times in a day do you use your microwave oven, and what do you usually use it for?
At least twice, and it's usually to heat up my meals (mostly refrigerated food from my mom; yeah, she's cool like that).

3. What's your favorite microwavable treat?
Probably hot cocoa (I use the Nestle mini marshmellow cocoa mix).

4. Ever had a microwave disaster? Tell us about it!
Not that I can recall, nope. I've had a toaster oven disaster, but not microwave.