Apple has it wrong - MacBook Air

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. Here is the final part of my article detailing what I think went wrong.


Part Four: MacBook Air
When I first saw the new sub-notebook introduced by Apple, my first thought was that it is designed for the working woman. The MacBook Air is something a sales person or insurance would want to carry around for their jobs. Indeed the petite svelte notebook would even help enhance the sales pitch.

Things started going downhill once it was apparent that Apple has made a lot of compromises on the world's thinnest notebook. For example, the lack of an Etherenet port means that you can only connect the MacBook Air to a wireless network. Personally, that is the killer issue for me. Apple is assuming that wireless networks are now ubiquitous and that we can connect to any wireless network we wish. The reality is quite different. Yes, wireless networks are quite common these days but most companies also understand the security risks involved and either intentionally do not deploy a wireless network or only provide very restricted access to company resources via a wireless network. Even with Singapore and its Wireless@SG initiative, not every public area has a usable wireless connection. In the United States, I have stayed in hotels such as the Holiday Inn near Washington, Double Tree in New York that only offer wired network connections in every room. These are all stumbling blocks that a roaming user of the MacBook Air will face on a daily basis.

The single USB port is another issue that complicate matters because it means having to lug around an additional USB hub to expand the number of USB ports available. Apple could have used an internal built in hub and save its users the hassle. Besides the two issues I have mentioned, there are a host of other myriad issues that comes from the compromises Apple has made to come up with such a tiny laptop. Issues such as slow bootups, an extremely hot base and so on.

My guess is the market will view MacBook Air as a niche product that will be purchased for its looks and small size. Thanks to Steve Job's reality distortion field, MacBook Air might turn out to be a popular item but I am thinking it will never be as popular as its bigger brothers, the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

Apple has it wrong - iTunes Movie Rentals

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. This is part three of a four part article detailing what I think went wrong.


Part Three: iTunes Movie Rentals
During Steve Job's keynote speech, he mentioned that so far no company has been truly successful in converging the television with computers and the Internet. Apple's last attempt was the AppleTV and it failed. This year, they are having a second attempt with a revamped AppleTV and the new iTunes Movie Rentals service.

Here is my 8 ball prediction: Sorry Apple, it still won't work.

In this day and age of instant availability provided by Internet companies like YouTube, and DivX's Stage6, people want more than just movies. People also want television shows. In fact, I'll even assert that both television shows and movies will not be enough. The internet era television needs made for Internet programs that cater to mobile viewers who can watch any show any where and at any time. I have digressed quite a bit off from the original topic, which is Apple's second attempt at television convergence.

A simple movie rental service would not capture any significant market. Apple's iTunes Movie Rentals service however, is much worse than a movie rental service. It is an exorbitantly expensive premium (roughly S$4.50 per DVD movie) movie rental service that has the slowest release dates (new movies are only available 30 days after DVDs are available for sale) and has an incredibly short rental time (24 hours). Just check around. Even in Singapore, I can find a rental service that is cheaper, allows me to rent both movies as well as television shows, and allow me to watch the rented DVDs over any period of time I wish.

On the whole, iTunes Movie Rentals is simply not compelling enough.

Apple has it wrong - iPod Touch Paid Software Update

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. This is part two of a four part article detailing what I think went wrong.

Before I begin, let me first say that I will not be discussing the iPhone updates mainly because the iPhone will probably not be available in Singapore before 2009 (or late 2008 if a miracle happens).

Part Two: iPod Touch Paid Software Upgrade
Before today, I have always said that Apple's strategy with the iPod Touch was perfect. Apple had positioned the iPod Touch as a premium/future version of the iPod both in the US and abroad. More importantly, the iPod Touch is perfectly positioned for people who want the iPhone now but cannot legally purchase the lickable phone in their country (such is the case in Singapore).

I am completely baffled as to why Apple has decided to "punish" first-mover customers who have bought an iPod Touch with a US$20 software upgrade cost. This is especially bad when Steve Jobs also announced that new iPod Touch customers get the exact same software update for free. Note that iPhone customers also received a largely similar software update for free too.

This is bound to leave a sour taste for existing international customers, such as those in Singapore, who have bought the iPod Touch. Unless Apple does something fast, I believe this will quickly turn into a public relations nightmare for both Apple's iPod and iPhone product lines.

Apple has it wrong - Time Capsule

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. Lets follow the four step keynote speech that was given, shall we?

Part One: Time Capsule
The first new product introduced by Apple at MacWorld 2008 is the Time Capsule, a wireless backup solution that works exclusively with Leopard's Time Machine. I do admit that on the surface, the concept of the Time Capsule is nice. It matches especially well with Apple's strategy of predominant selling mobile laptops and sub-notebooks.

However, the Time Capsule is nothing more than Apple's AirPort Extreme Base Station with an internal 500GB hard drive plugged-in. I did a quick check at the online Singapore Apple Store today. The Time Capsule has an estimated cost of S$788, presumably for the 500GB model. On the other hand, the AirPort Extreme Base Station is selling for S$288. That is a 500 dollar difference, or exactly $1 per Gigabyte.

In contrast, you can get a 500 Gigabyte hard disk at Sim Lim Square today for no more than S$200. That is 40 cents per Gigabyte. As a backup solution, it would be much cheaper to simply buy an AirPort Extreme Base Station and a hard drive than to buy the Time Capsule. Naturally, Apple has foreseen this and surprise, surprise, the current AirPort Extreme firmware does not work with Time Machine.

Based on Apple's previous explanation, the only change required to turn the AirPort Extreme into a Time Capsule should be as simple as updating the firmware of the AirPort Extreme Base Station with some modified software. And being a Computer Scientist, I know it can be a moderately simple modification that should not involve more than modifying a hundred lines of code. It should be something that can be completely solved, debugged, tested and quality assured in a few engineering man days.

As it currently stands, even when I factor in the convenience of not having to physically connect up a server grade hard drive, I find it very difficult to accept Time Capsule's pricing. I find it even more difficult to comprehend why Apple did not upgrade AirPort Extreme Base Station as a cheaper solution.


Decoding BSG's Last Supper

I mentioned earlier that Battlestar Galactica fans have been pouring over a recently released "Last Supper" image looking for clues to what happens in the forth and final season of the critically acclaimed show.

One fan, attitudeandwine, noticed that there were many blank spots on the original image and knew that Leonardo da Vinci love the use of symmetry in his works. I think she's on to something and while her original image was suggestive, it was also slightly unclear. Since I had a little time on my hand and am fairly familiar with Paint Shop Pro, I decided to try and mirror the image myself. Here's the result of my own attempt at photoshopping (Click the image for a high resolution version).


Here is another version of the same image, done with a different image blending mode that allows us to see an overlap of both the original and mirrored image.


Some of the more obvious things that can be observed in the images:
  1. Athena and Helo are looking at either Tyrol or Caprica and seems to be waiting for them to act.
  2. Athena's hand is reaching to touch either Tigh's arm, as if seeking help.
  3. Tigh is looking at Apollo or Baltar.
  4. The positioning of Tigh under Adama is interesting, suggesting that their CO/XO relationship remains unchanged.
  5. I think Anders kissing Caprica's arm is just coincidence.. *shrugs*
  6. Tyrol, standing between Apollo and Baltar, stares very intently at the knife. I don't think he's going to kill either men.
  7. On the left hand side, a partially hidden Apollo seems to be staring at the open book on the table.
  8. Adama and Roslin are indeed holding hands behind Adama's back.
I have no frakking idea what all this means. If you do, drop me a comment!

Battlestar Galactica's Last Supper

The above stunning picture of the Battlestar Galactica cast has been circulating on the web since it was released recently. Looks familiar? It should, because bears quite a bit of similarity with Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper painting.

Many fans have been pouring over this image trying to look for symbolic clues, speculating on the roles each character will play in the upcoming final season of Battlestar Galactica, or who the final Cylon will be. It is a nice bit of viral marketing that generates some much needed hype for this show.

Just for fun, I will state for the record that I believe Ellen Tigh is the final Cylon. I don't have any particular solid reasoning behind this prediction, it is just a gut instinct that she is a good "fit" to be the final Cylon based on of how she mysteriously appeared on the show, how she lived and how she the relations she has had with both human and Cylons.

PS: Click on the image to view a high resolution version of the picture.

Star Trek 2008 Rumor Mill

As some of you might know, I am a huge fan of Star Trek. So it is no surprise that I am happy Star Trek is once again returning to the big screen on Christmas 2008, thanks to producer and director JJ Abrams, producer Damon Lindelof as well as executive producers cum writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. These four people combined, has over the decade produced some of the top hit television shows such as Hercules, Xena, Felicity and Lost, as well as movies such as The Island, The Legend of Zorro, Mission: Impossible III and Transformers.

So far, what is known about the movie is that it features a completely new cast of actors portraying young versions of the original Star Trek characters such as Captain Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy. However, the quartet has kept all other details about the movie under a very tight security. Some of the measures they've taken include using fake scripts in the audition process, only giving out real script fragments to the production crew on a need to know basis and requiring all actors and extras to walk between shooting locations under either a huge black cloak or be ferried around in shrouded golf carts. All this security has piqued the interest of the Star Trek community, and started an intense competition between the various tabloid papers and websites to get the largest Star Trek exclusive/scoop they can. As a result, all sorts of rumors are flying all across the web.


Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban are respectively cast as young Captain Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy

For example, a late 2007 news leak claimed that The Guardian of Forever (a huge fan favorite) is in the movie. The very next day, an angry Harlan Ellison who is creator and rights owner of The Guardian responded, demanding to see the quartet over the use of his creation in their movie. A few days later, someone posted very blurred, long distance spy shots of young Spock and Captain Kirk at some unknown shooting location.

Just yesterday a popular rumor mill website, Ain't It Cool News, claimed to have inside sources who have not only read the entire script, but went further to describe the writing as lackluster and that the character of Kirk were written as if young Kirk was "a dumb after school special".


Comedian Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zoe Saldana as Uhura

Of course being rumors, this information could very well turn out to be unfounded and downright false. However, I do believe that there is a slight element of truth that the script writers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, are not exactly well rounded writers. Don't get me wrong, I think they're excellent at writing action oriented movies, which is no doubt why all four movies they've written thus far (The Island, Legend of Zorro, Mission Impossible: 3 and Transformers) are all action flicks.

Kurtzman and Orci's main weakness is in writing characters that the audience would care about. All you need to do is compare the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) movie with Kurtzman and Orci's 2007 Transformers movie. Both movies essentially took popular children's comic book/toy characters from the 1980s to the big screen. TMNT was decidedly true to its roots in depicting the four turtle brothers, their camaraderie as well as internal conflict with each other. In other words, the turtles felt very human and by the end of the movie the audience were rooting for them.


John Cho as Hikuru Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov

Transformers on the other hand, does not even focus on the Transformers. Sure, the movie contained Transformer-specific words such as Autobot, Decepticon, Optimus Prime and Megatron, but you would be hard pressed to identify who's who given that (a) the transforming robots looked visually different and (b) most of them barely said a word. Any "script line" given to the transforming robots were largely comedic one-liners or classic "must have" speeches like Optimus Prime's classic declaration, "One will stand and one will fall". The audience is simply expected to assume that some of the robots were bad guys because they looked menacing or made evil sounding noises while the other robots were good guys because they took on the form of cool cars or ambulances. Even human characters suffered from bad writing as many of them were no more than clichéd, two dimensional caricatures.

While this level of characterization would be grudgingly acceptable for a summer blockbuster flick where the plot is simply an excuse to setup scenes with huge special effects, explosions and car stunts, it simply would not be sufficient for a Star Trek story. A Star Trek story, particularly one about the original Enterprise crew, is a story about humanity driven by characters that are larger than life. The kind of one-liner filled scripts written for Transformers or even Mission: Impossible 3 simply would not be sufficient for Star Trek.

Having said all this, I am ultimately still a fan of Star Trek and still hope that the new movie would be a success beyond my wildest dreams. I put my faith in Leonard Nimoy (the original Spock), the only remaining Star Trek elder whose judgment I still trust. If Mr. Nimoy believes Star Trek XI is going to be a great movie, then I believe it too.