MacMAD Blog

My young niece has an iPod touch that has been working fine for her, but recently the headphone jack has become unreliable, and she can’t listen through headphones. One or both channels keep cutting out.

Apple appears to have done a good job with the headphone jack on the touch, even using gold plated contacts. However this unit has done very hard service with continuous use by kids and probably cats and dogs, too, and the jack is just worn out.

Typically, any repair of a modern electronic device like the iPod costs almost as much as a new one. So what to do?

One could buy and use a wireless Bluetooth stereo headset. It’s a neat idea, and her iPod is one of the models that supports it. But they are kind of expensive, and we’re on a kid’s budget here.

How about the dock connector? Is there some way to get audio out of that? Turns out there is.

I found an inexpensive product to do just that. However with the dock-connector solution, you don’t get volume control, so you need some way to adjust the volume. So here’s the complete solution, in two budget products.

This entire deal costs $12.50 before shipping and tax. The local Radio shack had the volume control cable, but the other connector had to be ordered. The dock connector is an especially great deal for $3.51, and could be useful for connecting iPods and iPhones to various components.

The volume control is even smaller than it looks, so the whole setup won’t be too unwieldy.

Update: The dock connector has been received, and all is working great! Note: the photos above are links to the sites selling the products.

-Jamie

Even though I got an iPad the first day they were available, I’m certainly not the ultimate iPad fanatic. I didn’t have a pressing need for one, other than a gift certificate at an Apple Dealer that was burning a hole in my pocket.

My envisioned use for the iPad was to read the news at the breakfast table, and some light web browsing.

I’ve already commented in this blog on the announced lack of Adobe Flash support (that’s a good thing), and the lack of any memory expansion (that’s a bad thing).

Quick summary:

• It’s a giant iPod
• It’s fast
• The Safari browser is fast.
• The battery lasts a looong time.
• It feels heavy and clumsy as a book reader.
• If you put any video on it, it will fill up fast.

Initial Setup

If you have an iPod touch, or an iPhone, you already know exactly how to work this thing. The iPad needs to connect to a computer with iTunes to be able to do anything. When I first turned it on it had a blank screen with a plea to be connected to the mothership (iTunes). You sync it with media of your choice using iTunes. No surprises there. The only thing new is the ability to sync books with the device.

Use as a Book Reader

The iTunes store features both paid and free books. The selection of paid books isn’t too exciting yet, but expect it to grow. The iPad can display books in the EPUB format. I tested this out by going to Gutenberg.org and downloading some free books. I copied these into my iTunes library where they were synced to the iPad. I’m real please with how this worked, and this opens up a very large collection of books for use by iPad owners. These books displayed with very nice formatting, and images displayed well.

The iPad rapidly adjusts the format of books (and most other media) depending on the horizontal or vertical orientation of the device. It will even work upside down.

I found the weight of the iPad to be more than I expected. It weighs more than a paperback, but less than a large hardback. I found it difficult to grasp, hold and carry. There is nothing convenient to hold it by. It feels dense, thin and slippery. These are not extremely annoying observations for me, but I think there will be a good opportunity for aftermarket covers and carrying cases. Apple is proud of how thin the iPad is, but I feel it might actually be too thin to hold comfortably.

The screen is impeccably bright and clear. There is an automatic brightness feature in the menus, but I’m not sure how it works. There is no camera, so I don’t know if or how it senses ambient light.

Considerations for Outdoor Use

The screen is reasonably visible even outside in direct sunlight. It’s way brighter than most screens would be in such circumstances. However, the screen is very shiny, and direct reflection of the sun or other bright objects will obviously make the screen unreadable.

When the WiFi Model is available, people are going to want to use it in the car for navigation. The screen is bright enough for that, but watch out for the Polaroid effect. Like the iPhone and at least some other smartphones, the iPad screen is polarized. If you view it while wearing polarized sunglasses, the screen will become invisible in some orientations. On the iPhone and my HTC phone, the vertical orientation is viewable, but the horizontal orientation is not while wearing polarized sunglasses. On the iPad, the polarization is the other way — meaning if you hold the iPad in the horizontal orientation, you can see it fine, but if you hold it in the vertical orientation while wearing polarized sunglasses, you are likely to think it is broken, because the screen looks completely black.

Using the iPad for Video

I’ve used the iPad to watch some TV shows, some YouTube videos and some movies. The screen size is pretty near optimum for hand held viewing. Everything played from the iPad’s internal memory played speedily with no hiccups. I was having some trouble watching YouTube videos, which were stopping and seizing up part way through. The YouTube material looked great, but YouTube just can’t keep up. (I know my Internet connection is up to the task.)

The iPad hasn’t really decided how it’s going to store and organize video yet. There is a Video application, but videos can also be played from within iTunes. I couldn’t figure out why some videos that i synced went to one App, while others went to the other. In iTunes, the list of videos is available in text format. But, in the Video app, the only way to view the list of videos is apparently by an icon derived from the first frame of the first video of a given series. This works okay for video from iTunes, but is completely meaningless for home video, or for shows recorded with, say, eyeTV. There is no accompanying text to tell you anything at all about the video. YouTube is another separate app.

There is a free app in the app store from ABC that lets you watch most of their prime time offerings, with limited commercials. It looks okay, but only works in the vertical orientation, with medium quality video. I’d really rather watch video in the larger horizontal orientation. You can select any episode of any of the offered shows and start watching right away.

I also downloaded and tried the Netflix app. This worked perfectly, and allows you to stream movies from your Netflix account. Audio and video quality was very good.

About the Headphone Jack

When I tried to plug in my headphones with a standard 1/8 inch plug, the plug went in about 3/4 of the way and stopped dead. I was cursing Apple for using yet another weird non-standard connector. Later I tried my Apple iPod earbuds, and the same thing happened.
Both sets of phones were unusable. Or so I thought. I really expected the earbuds to work, so I just pushed really hard. With a mighty shove, they went in all the way. They work fine now, and so does the other set of headphones. The iPad headphone jack is just really tight, at least when it is new. It took a lot more force to plug in the headphones than I expected.

Other Features and Surprises

Heads up, if you are still considering the WiFi model. It does not have a GPS receiver. The 3G model will have one. If this matters to you, wait for, and pay for, the 3G model. It really makes sense, since the main reason to have GPS is to use Google Maps. If you’re on the move, such that you don’t know where you are, you probably won’t have WiFi, therefore, you can’t download maps from Google anyway, so having the GPS wouldn’t help much. However, I didn’t know this before getting my iPad.

Another thing I didn’t know is that the 3G model will not require a contract to use the 3G network. You have the option of paying by the month. That seems more attractive to me, as I already have one phone contract, and would not be interested in having another one.

The iPad has a physical switch to lock the screen orientation. My guess is that this is for reading or watching video in bed, and when the unit is lying on a table and the orientation is ambiguous, although it will also make the iPad more useful in microgravity. Thanks, Apple for thinking of this — I’ve been hoping for HTC to add that feature to my HTC phone in the next software release.

I got the iPad on the first day through a local Apple affiliate dealer, although it was only announced for the official Apple stores, online, and through Best Buy. I thought I would have to wait a week or so. I don’t know if that means sales were slower than expected, or more likely, they just pushed product out through some unannounced channels.

If you’re thinking about buying one, but still aren’t sure, you can take a look at the user guide here (PDF iPad User Guide).

Request for Features and Fixes
I have an AppleTV. It has WiFi. It syncs with iTunes over the network (WiFi or Ethernet). The iPad also has WiFi, and syncs with iTunes, but it doesn’t do it over WiFi. You have to plug it into a USB connection. Apple should make this work on the iPad just like it works with AppleTV. That would be awesome.

I am a Flickr user. Flickr is an online site that lets you store and share your photographs. There is a serious disconnect between the user interface of the iPad, and modern web sites like Flickr. If a Flickr user goes to the Organize tab, he sees the instruction “Drag Items Here to Edit Them as a Batch”. Oops. You can’t drag anything in Safari for the iPad. The drag action is interpreted as moving the web page around and doesn’t move anything within the web page.

This is an important use case for me, and it’s totally broken. Apple needs to add a feature to Safari to allow dragging of items within web pages. After all, this is Web 2.0, right?

Everybody has been talking about the lack of Adobe Flash in the iPhone and iPod, but what about Flash memory, the unrelated non-volatile memory technology?

Everyone has looked at the price sheet by this point and knows that there are WiFi iPad models at $499, $599 and $699 with 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB storage respectively. Well, that non-volatile storage is Flash memory, the same stuff you can buy in any store in the form of Compact Flash (CF), or SD cards, etc.

Right now, the incremental price Apple is charging for the extra Flash storage is more or less in line with the prices of Flash memory on the open market. The problem is there is no upgrade path. The iPad is completely lacking a card slot for expanding its storage. So, if you buy, say, the 32 GB model, and decide later that you need more storage, the only way to get more is to buy another whole iPad! This is even though, by the time you need it, the extra 32 GB will probably be very inexpensive. Unacceptable.

In fact, the only digital connector on the iPad is Apple’s proprietary dock connector. This lack of expandability is not only a marketing ploy, but also part of the overall lock-down of the iPad as a platform. The iPad is burdened right out of the box with the curse of DRM. Users of the iPad will be stuck accessing only the content Apple wants them to access, using the applications Apple wants them to use. This is a totally closed platform, and users should beware of giving up their open, general purpose laptop for this closed environment. Here, Apple has either submitted to, or totally joined forces with the RIAA and other copyright holders to impose their will on the users of any device which may be used to view anything which might be copyrighted.

Apple has moved away from DRM under public pressure before. They removed DRM from songs on the iTunes music library. To help pressure Apple to remove DRM from the iPad, please see the Defective by Design web page.

-Jamie

We saw and discussed a video tutorial podcast from ScreenCastsOnline about iTunes 9. We were using iTunes to learn how to use iTunes. Humm.

Tutorial podcasts can be a great way to learn about your Mac. They are usually brief, and usually packed with a lot of information. There is something for everybody. I’ve been using a Mac since 1984, and still learn some useful tips from some of the basic tutorials.

Apple’s own video podcasts are a great way for beginners to learn about the Mac. All podcasts are free. Podcasts were originally audio, but many now have video.

We also took a look at iTunesU and the Free on iTunes page, both accessible from the front page of the iTunes music store.

Someone asked about importing a VHS tape into the Mac. To do that you need a hardware converter box, such as the EyeTV 250 from Elgato.

Several members are using the EyeTV software or hardware to record TV programs off the air. There is a TV tuner for the Mac from Hauppauge which is compatible with the EyeTV software.

For watching all that video on your TV, you might want to use an AppleTV, or a similar set-top box, such as the one from Western Digital mentioned at the meeting.

AT&T U-verse (TV/phone/internet service) is now rolling out in the Melbourne area. The service got some good reviews from those that have it. It’s not available everywhere, though.

-Jamie Cox

That new iMac has a seriously big screen. Do the math:

iMac 2,560 x 1,440 = 3,686,400 pixels
19″ Monitor 1,280 x 1,024 = 1,310,720
3,686,400 / 1,310,720 = 2.8 times as big

That’s nearly as many pixels as three (3) conventional 19″ monitors. I have two 19″ monitors at work, and that’s a nice amount of screen real estate, but to have way more than that all on a single screen, whoa!

It’s also the equivalent of exactly four HDTV pictures at 720×1280. So, it has the screen area to show four different 720p HD videos at once.

I recently had my first Intel-Mac kernel panic. If you’ve never seen this, a gray curtain slowly descends over your screen, and you get a message in the center of the screen saying that you must reset your Mac using the power button. If you had any unsaved work, it is lost. This happened twice on my iMac. At first I didn’t know why. I was afraid I would have to take it in for service. I also suspected a problem with my external USB hub.

However, when I took the USB drive I was working with down, and gave it to my wife, it crashed her MacBook Pro with a kernel panic as soon as she inserted it. That’s when I realized that even though it didn’t crash my machine right away, I had been working with that flash drive both times. Also, I had never used that particular flash stick before.

It was a a 1GB drive from Staples, and it had the U3 “feature”. If you’re not familiar with U3, it is an attempt to add functionality to flash drives by using a special partition on the drive that contains software to be launched automatically when the drive is attached, with no intervention by the user. This software is supposed to extend the functionality of the drive by providing encryption/decryption and other on-the fly features. This scheme is inherently dangerous. It could have been invented by malware authors, since it is perfect for the spread of viruses.

U3 is supported in Windows, and most U3 features are Windows-only. Most Mac users regard U3 as an annoyance, since it takes up some of the space they could otherwise use on the drive, and it puts a second, useless icon on their desktop.

The most frequently-asked-question about U3 is: “how do I get rid of it?”. To their credit, SanDisk, one of the leading manufacturers of flash storage provides a removal tool. It’s called “Launchpad Removal Tool for Mac“. It’s part of the Cruzer Utilities for Mac. It worked fine and the offending drive now works without crashing the Mac.

Heads up to Apple on this: The kernel shouldn’t panic when a drive is inserted. The fact that it does probably represents a vulnerability that someone could exploit in malware.

When shopping for flash drives, I recommend avoiding U3 drives altogether. Otherwise, get the tool and remove the offending partition the first thing.

-Jamie

OK, OK, I know I’m one of those ” I got to have the latest one ” people when it comes to the iPhone, and to a lesser extent, the iPod. I admit it freely and unabashedly. That said, I like to think I can be objective when communicating my impressions of these devices to others who may be less (or equally) enamored of these Apple products, so here goes.

First off, I’ll have you know that I DID NOT wait in line at my nearest Apple store (some 60 miles away) like I did for the first two versions. No, I waited comfortably in my home for the little gem to settle at my doormat after an amazingly fast trip from China. Watching it travel via UPS web updates may be considered a slightly less painful form of torture than waterboarding, mainly due to the hold that Apple placed on it in Louisville for 2 days to guarantee a uniform delivery on June 19th. Nevertheless, it arrived safely, and a deep sigh was heard throughout the house.

My first impression upon seeing the new iPhone was: Uh Oh, did I just buy the same iPhone again, for gobs of money? Then I looked at the back of it and saw that no, this one is way different. Look, it has an “S” after the 3G! I kid, but that is the only difference between the two versions, on the outside. We were told it would look the same, but operate at a much higher level. Hmmm, where did I hear that before? Oh yes, the Snow Leopard update. Wish they used the same pricing scheme for the 3g as for Snow Leopard. I digress. I am not going to go through the iPhone 3Gs inner workings here, other sites have done that for us, and much better than I ever could. I am just going to highlight some of what I really like about it, and some I like a little less. What’s that? What about things I don’t like about it? I’ll forget you said that.

I use the iPhone 3Gs in this order of importance: Ipod, Mail, App’s, Phone, Hot Water Heater, just so you understand my frame of reference. I’ll get to that last one later. As an avid iPod user of the unit, I was always unhappy with the transport controls, specifically the lack of fine control over forward and back and everything in between. I really like their solution here, it’s simple and “touch intuitive”. After touching the in point of your media in the progress bar, drag your finger down to get varying levels of control on the speed with which you scroll through the piece. It will indicate Hi Speed, 1/2, 1/4, or Fine Scrubbing, very nice. If you want to rewind by 30 sec. increments, touch the reverse semi-circle with “30″ in the center of it, and back you go. I do not see a way to change that value, and would advise that be included in a small update in the future. I could swear that at some point I got it to go Forward instead of Reverse by 30 sec., but have been unable to reproduce that result, so I have to attribute that to eye fatigue of the observer (another small update item). There is another icon to the right that toggles through 3 playing speeds for podcast listening, which has always been something I just don’t understand. Listening to anything not in real time speed after 3 minutes makes me feel like that guy in “Scanners” must have felt just before his head blew up, no thanks. For podcasts, there is a Mail icon that will send an email with a link to it in iTunes. If playing music, the icons change to Repeat, Shuffle and Create Smart Playlist based on the song now playing, which you can save or refresh. You can still scrub the song as before, and those icons disappear and you are shown the scrubbing options as before. For video, scrubbing works the same but there are no icons or visual cues, and I appreciate that. (Ooops, the preceding paragraph describes part of the 3.0 update, not 3Gs specific).

If the “s” stands for speed, it is accurate. Everything the 3G does, the 3Gs does faster. App’s load and function faster, touches are more responsive, web pages load more quickly. I think this has gotten short shrift in any review I have seen. We have all updated our computers to get faster processors, why should this be thought of any differently? It means less time waiting for things to happen, I’m a big fan of that. I did think that the 3G was slow, and the difference is very noticeable. The speaker seems louder, but I have no empirical evidence of that, so I’ll leave it at that. The screen is beautiful, but so is the 3G’s. Though I rarely need it, Cut & Paste works well but with a minor get-used-to-it curve. Not all App’s support it, so beware. For whatever reason, my AT&T bars are almost always full with the 3Gs, a development I view with some suspicion. I have had one dropped call in the week I’ve owned it, but I was inside my condo-of-solitude cement fortress at the time, so not too surprising. Overall I would say call quality and reliability is better, but I don’t know where to attribute that. Voice Recognition for dialing or music control is in my opinion not up to par here. Google’s app is much better than what Apple has with the 3Gs. Good thing I don’t use it anyway. I guess there are those who rely on it, darned if i know how or why. Voice recognition is a long time from being anything reliable, so I guess that along the way we have to take these attempts as some  path to enlightenment, learn and move on.

The video and picture from the 3Gs is new and improved, from 2 to 3.0 megapixel for the stills. Touch a spot on the screen and the iPhone adjusts focus, exposure and white balance automatically. Stills and video can be downloaded to iPhoto when connected to your computer seamlessly, but it’s the one touch upload to .Me or Youtube that makes it shine for me. The video looks good for a phone (640 x 480), and you can edit a single clip easily by dragging either end point left or right.

GPS is also faster and more accurate. The new magnetic compass is a stand-alone app, but it’s integrated into most GPS app’s on the phone. This adds a directional component to your view, as the phone moves so does your view. This is toggled on or off by touching the Locate button. It also displays a cone of accuracy, the wider the cone, the less accurate is the directional data. Very nice.

OK, I’ve been playing with voice control a little more, and it seems that it works well but you have to give it certain commands to which it will respond. The problem is, I don’t know what those commands are unless I go here and listen to the tutorial. Voice control is for dialing and iPod control only, so the command set should be small and memorizable, but I haven’t yet.

I absolutely love that many app’s are now viewable in landscape mode. It was mine and others’ first complaint with the original iPhone. It should not have taken 2 years to get that feature, but it did. I find it especially useful when viewing mail.

Now, the heat issue. Yes, it does get warm if being used for more than a 5 minute stretch. So does the 3G, I feel no difference between them. The claims of discoloring due to abnormal heat have been answered; seems certain cases have a dye that will stick to the back of the iPhone. A simple moist cloth is the remedy.

So, there it is, all your iPhone 3Gs questions and fears allayed! No? Well, maybe it helped just a little. I like the iPhone 3Gs, and I’m glad I made the purchase. “Nuff said.

Eric Emerick

The Apple TV is probably Apple’s most under-appreciated product. What is it?

• It’s an iPod for your TV.
• It’s a High-Def set-top box
• It’s a movie-rental portal
• It’s a great way to see and show your photographs large. (And other people’s photos as well.)
• It can be part of a time-shift personal-video recorder setup.
• It’s also Apple’s foothold in your living room.

I use mine mostly to watch podcasts, TV shows and movies. You can rent or buy movies or TV episodes from  your couch with the remote control. This is pretty cool, but can be kind of expensive. I’m not at all thrilled about buying a DRM-protected movie that I need to find storage space for somewhere. I’d much rather rent, watch and forget, but Apple and the studios offer many of the most popular movies for sale, but not for rent.

Most of the content I watch, I did not buy from the Apple store. I record shows off the air with the EyeTV. The EyeTV software can export the show specifically for the AppleTV. iTunes sends selected content down to your AppleTV via your network (Ethernet or WiFi). iTunes sees the AppleTV as essentially a network-connected iPod. It can sync photos, video and music to the AppleTV just like it does to an iPod.

I’m planning to blog more about this soon, probably starting with Boxee.

Mom was having some issues with her iPod Shuffle (2nd generation). I worked on it, but it was still not making reliable connection via USB. So, she wanted to buy a new iPod. I helped her pick one out, and she chose the iPod Shuffle again, this time the 3rd generation. This new one has the much-maligned control on the cord.

Some folks that want to accessorize their iPod with different earbuds don’t like the proprietary cord, but I’m here to tell you that this product made my mom very happy. She’s figured out how to work everything, and she especially likes having playlists, which the previous Shuffle lacked. There’s a lot to be said for the minimalist user interface. Not having a screen is a positive advantage for older folks who would have trouble seeing it anyway.

The problem with the old one was in the headphone jack/USB jack. I took it apart, and there was some cracked plastic, which I managed to reinforce with some metal and some epoxy. This was nearly a miracle, since this thing is really tiny. When you get it apart, it’s about 2/3 battery, which doesn’t leave much room for anything else. It does look like the jack is the weak point, and since you have to plug and unplug every time you switch between listening and charging, it is likely to be the first thing to fail.

Anyway, she’s happy with the new one, and the old one seems to be working as well now.