Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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Geek Alert: Listen to me on the everythingiCafe podcast

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I mentioned last month that I’m co-hosting a podcast for everythingiCafe.com, a great iOS/Mac site for which I’ve written in the past. The podcasts are available through iTunes and you can subscribe here if you’d like to make sure you’ll get the latest podcasts downloaded to your computer automatically.
The podcast is also broadcast live (you can watch and listen here: http://www.everythingicafe.com/live) and it’s looking like Tuesday evenings at 7:00 p.m. ET is when you can tune in to hear Chris Meinck, the founder of everythingiCafe.com (and several other excellent sites), and me geek out. We cover the latest Mac and iOS-related news and also do a section called “Teh Awesome” each week to talk about something cool or unique we’ve come across recently.
You can also submit questions for us to answer on the podcast by calling 646-820-3431 and leaving a message including your first name and/or your forum name. Don’t hesitate to ask us anything at all and we’ll do our best to give you an answer.

CES 2010 and Apple Tablet thoughts

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. The holidays thoroughly kicked my ass this time around, though I’m not quite sure why. In some ways, I was more organized than I had been in previous years – I didn’t need to go shopping on Christmas Eve and the majority of our Christmas cards arrived before Christmas day. Frankly, those two accomplishments are damn nearly miracles in and of themselves. Despite this, I found little time for “fun” writing from around Thanksgiving until now. It’s been a few days since I’ve been back from CES as I write this, having covered the expo for work (my job is awesome!). There wasn’t all that much Mac-related there and it was far less stressful than last year’s CES working for my previous employer. However, I was still exhausted toward the end of the week. I’m quite the introvert and meeting new people and being in large crowds regularly over several days at a time is tiring for geeky little me, not to mention the general craziness of CES and the evening activities that followed full days on the show floor.

On a personal note, I stayed at Excalibur on the strip in one of their newly-remodeled “plasma rooms.” It was my first time staying there and the room wasn’t bad, though without HD cable feeding the plasma, the experience wasn’t as good as it could have been. Also, I did get a chance to get lunch at In-n-Out – my favorite fast food burger chain – with Chris Meinck of EverythingiCafe.com, which was great (both the food and the company)! We had tried to meet for lunch at last year’s CES but I didn’t get a chance  since I was working crazily on a Palm Pre first impressions review on that day. Oh, and the Excalibur has a pretty good gym though I didn’t get there as much as I’d hoped to. A cab driver tried to convince me that having kids was the greatest thing a person could do (he did not succeed and I’m not quite sure why he tried – do I look like I need to have kids?) and I didn’t gamble once, even though I had intended to. I had a great risotto dish at at restaurant at the Wynn one night and avoided the free lunches provided for the press by the expo at all costs. And I finally met my boss in person (we had only spoken by phone, IM, and email before)!

I spent a good deal of time on the show floor on the first and second days of the expo and was focused on finding accessories and products related to the Mac, iPhone/iPod, and other Apple products. I didn’t really see that much that thrilled me and made me clap my hands together in anticipatory glee. While I read about Samsung’s transparent OLED screen, I never hunted it down on the floor to see it in person, though I think that’s one cool product that I look forward to seeing in mass production soon.  Though I’ve had my eye on the Barnes & Noble Nook for a while now, I finally got a chance to see one at the Digital Experience event at CES and it was nice enough to solidify my decision to buy one, though there is one snag in that plan: the rumored Apple tablet. No Nook – nor any other dedicated ebook reader, for that matter – for me until the Apple tablet is revealed. Of course, as I’m sure you can guess, I’m buying that Apple tablet no matter what. How can I not? What’s the tablet going to be like? The rumors are flying, as usual. Here are a few of my favorite ones:

The interface part is where I have the most trouble picturing the tablet. At CES, I saw a few of the new tablets with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset that ran Android and they just felt like large cell phones. The on-screen keyboards were pretty much impossible to use with your thumbs since the device was too wide to be able to reach the middle keys, and the lines of letters were offset, making them impossible to type on with 10 fingers as you would on a normal physical keyboard. Of course, I’m not an Apple interface designer (and for good reason since conceiving of an elegant tablet interface eludes me) and I’m sure the bright minds of the software engineers and UI specialists at Apple have figured this one out. Well, at least I hope they have. Though I’m sure that Steve Jobs would never let a product that didn’t work elegantly out the door to begin with.

John Gruber made an interesting blog post on the tablet, most pertinently addressing this question: If you already have an iPhone and a MacBook; why would you want this?

This is a question I struggle with as well. What will the tablet do that’s new and unique enough to differentiate itself from my iPhone and my ultra-portable MacBook Air? If Gruber is right, the tablet may be functional enough for me to sell my MacBook Air. However, my reaction may not be that of the typical Mac user/convert since my MacBook Air is now my secondary Mac – my Mac mini is now my primary Mac. Technically, I don’t need a second Mac, but I have it since it’s useful to me anyway and I have no burning urge or need to sell it. Still, I really hope Apple nails text entry on the tablet. While I’ll almost certainly still buy the Apple tablet if I can’t type as well on it as I can on my MacBook Air, it may indeed be a “surplus” device for me, with only my Mac fangirl status prompting me to buy and keep it.

At any rate, the rumored announcement (January 26 or 27) will be here shortly, so hopefully we’ll all know more soon.

Do you think that an Apple tablet is on the way? What do you think it will look like and what will it be able to do? Will you buy one?

Someone may need to stop me

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My first Mac laptop was a 12″ PowerBook G4 that I bought in 2003. Prior to that, I’d been on the Dark Side for a while, owning PCs for a few years after having my very first Mac, an LC40, at university. My 12″ PowerBook was absolutely perfect, if a little hot on the lap, at just the right size to make it very portable yet with specs that made it powerful enough to do everything I needed. I sold that lovely little beast when I bought a black MacBook and regretted it despite the upgrade in processing power. I’ve come across a mint last-generation 12″ PowerBook for sale in a forum I frequent and I’m .35 millimeters away from making an offer on it.

Why? I have no idea. I have a MacBook Air which does quite fine as my main computer. I don’t need another Mac. If anything, I should be saving up for the rumored tablet that may or may not make an appearance early next year. I have such fond memories of that 12″ PowerBook, though. Maybe it was more Tiger than anything, but I don’t seem to remember as many glitches with it – it went to sleep on its own reliably, didn’t get bogged down by invisible processes, and was small enough to carry around in a bag that looked like a purse. I still miss the damn thing and it makes no sense.
Gah! What is wrong with me? Am I moving into the Collector stage in my Mac obsession? If I started at the Mac N00b stage and moved through the Mac Snob stage (the Fangirl/Fanboy status is not a stage – it is a permanent state of mind once one enters the Mac Snob stage, by the way), I must indeed be into the Collector stage where I will begin to obtain older Macs and reminisce about them fondly. I still have the urge to buy new Macs, so I must not have lost my Excited Mac Nut status (combined with the standard card-holding Geek rank I have held for many years now) yet either. Well, let’s just hope that I don’t go overboard in this stage. If I start talking about getting a Mac Mini and changing it into a Cube, someone plan an intervention, please.

Review of the DecalGirl skin for the iPhone 3G

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If you’re like me and can’t bear the thought of your iPhone completely naked, but still need some level of protection from scratches, a skin is an ideal accessory. I needed a skin to use while testing a slip case for my iPhone and decided I wanted something with a design versus a clear skin and I selected a skin from DecalGirl.com. At just $6.99 + shipping, their skins are priced very reasonably and they offer over 300 designs from which to choose. While their skins don’t offer full coverage, they are nice and get the job done. You can read my full review here.

I am a geek. But I’m not upgrading to the iPhone 3.0 beta yet.

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Bear with me on this one. I am a geek, and as a geek, it is my sworn duty to own the first versions of all gadgets that entice me with their sleek shininess. This satisfies the greedy tech monster – a smaller yet more furry and orange version of the Cookie Monster, if you will – inside me and allows me to show off to all my friends who accordingly “ooh” and “aah” over my cool new toys. Before you go off and say how I end up just being a beta tester for manufacturers who put out new products without adequate QA to ensure they work the way they should for the majority of users, this term does not apply to me. I am a geek, dammit. This is what I do. And I love it.
With that said, it is incredibly hard for me to say that I don’t think I’m going to upgrade to the iPhone 3.0 firmware beta. I’ve been hemming and hawing about this one, much like Patrick over at JAIB, but I’ve been reading through some of the bug lists users have posted on forums and I just don’t think I could live for 4 more months with some of those issues, assuming the final version of 3.0 is released in July with no updates until then. Let me explain…
I love my iPhone. My iPhone is in my hand even when I walk around the house. I check my email regularly, catch up on Twitter, browse the internet, check movie listings, read ebooks and my RSS feeds, and so much more multiple times a day, which I can do anywhere and anytime thanks to my iPhone. I’m not a big YouTube fan, but I do use it to find web videos that accompany current events and tech news and reviews. My battery lasts me all day on 2.2.1, even if I don’t charge it in the middle of the day at work. And while I don’t text a ridiculous amount, I do rely on it a lot and need it to work consistently. I also regularly use Maps to get around since my GPS unit pretty much stays in my car, and it’s saved me and my friends from walking miles when we thought a restaurant was closer than it was and vice versa in planning on taking a taxi when we didn’t need to. 
From what I’ve been reading online, it sounds like many of the 3.0 bugs so far affect the features and functions that I count on and use the most.
Add to this that my previous smartphone, a Treo 680, was buggy as hell. Yes, I got it the week it came out, but Palm had been working on Palm OS smartphones for years by that time, so I didn’t consider it as a truly new device that would have a plethora of bugs as such, but it did. I was sick and tired of dealing with its utter crappiness and even my 1.0 iPhone was a blessing of stability and a solid feature set in comparison. 
So, what I’m trying to say is that I just don’t think I can handle my iPhone flaking out on me given how much I rely on it. I’m not chicken. I’m not. I’m still a geek. I am. I am, I tell you! Right?