OWC Pioneer DVR-109 DVD Drive
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $75.99
www.MacSales.com
If you’ve got an older Mac or a lower-end newer Mac you may be looking at iDVD and thinking “I sure would like to use iDVD but I’ve got a combo drive!” Or perhaps you just happen to be one of those people who just have to have the maximum performance from your computer’s drive. In either case you’re not stuck buying a new machine to get that DVD burning capability. Well you’re not stuck if you’ve got around eighty bucks and a screwdriver lying about.
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The Seibold Review: Phillips AmbiLight 42″ Plasma TV
Plasma TV, LCD TV, CRT (aka direct view), HDTV, Digital TV etc. There are so many acronyms and so much chatter about TV these days it can get very confusing. The average Joe doesn’t care about all the standards, the competing technologies (Plasma -vs- LCD) all they want to know is: How does any particular model stack up? Today let us run the 42″ Phillips Ambilight through its paces.
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Altec Lansing VS-3121 Computer Speaker
Company: Altec Lansing
MSRP: $79.95
Manufacturers Product Web Page
When undertaking a speaker review the reviewer treads dangerous ground. You see there are these people that exist who call themselves audiophiles. These are the kind of people who will make argue indefinitely about the various pros and cons of audio encoding, proper acoustics for a listening area, the various merits of speakers that reproduce tones beyond the range of human hearing and the renormalization of the acoustic waveform with respect to personal brain biomass (actually I made the last one, but it sounds deliciously technical). Plus they’ll go nuts about Ogg Vorbis all day long. If you are one of these people (and they are about as rare as meat eating Gorillas) I urge you to read no further. Trust me when I say Altec Lansing’s VS-3121 are not for you (for the semi technical minded the spec sheet can be found here. I suggest you save the $79.95 suggested retail price and deposit it in a compound interest bearing account. Given enough time and a favorable interest rate you will finally be able to afford that purest of listening experiences: hiring the damn band to play in your backyard. Of course you’ll be disappointed in Foghat’s performance, but it is the price of perfection.
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When Apple introduces a new product people are going to complain and their number one complaint is going to be cost. Like heat flowing from a hotter body to a colder one the whining is inevitable. Of course this time it seems particularly bad, it feels as though my computer is parked behind a constantly revving 747. The best way to whine is with your dollars: if you think it is too expensive then don’t buy one. Well that’s not good enough, you gotta bitch right?
Of course you do and the number one gripe is why does a $1,500 computer include such a crappy graphics card? A fine argument, I’m down with you cause, you know, iLife relies heavily on the GPU.. What? It doesn’t? In that case I definitely agree because you need a 9800 or better to run Motion, andWhat? If you’re a Motion user you’re a G5 owner? Well of course you need that super awesome video card for games Now just shut your whining pie hole for half a second. If you’re really into games don’t you have a PC you built yourself. Or an Xbox? Geeze the gaming specs for video cards change so fast that unless you have a spring-loaded AGP slot you can’t keep up. So keep the game grievances to yourself. I know similarly priced all in one PC’s have way better graphics card, just look at the Sony VAIO W. The Sony features a high-end integrated graphics chip that uses your system memory. Sure the VIAO costs way more but.. What’s that? Integrated video sucks? Well never mind then.
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SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is a more contentious issue than many people realize. Sure for most folks it’s just an innocuous screensaver, for the more hardcore it’s a “buy a dedicated machine to pump the units up” deal. But some, myself included, view SETI as a terrible waste of time and resources. Most people object on grounds that we are supposedly alone in the universe. I do not share in that objection; my objections are purely pragmatic and argued below.
The logical beginning point for a discussion of SETI is the previously mentioned chances of life existing elsewhere. Here we see the beginnings of trouble, since no one knows precisely how life began it’s very difficult to place a probability on life existing elsewhere. Many argue that life arising purely by chance is so infinitesimally small as to be nearly impossible. They will tell you that all the constants of the universe must be just so, a little more gravity: the universe collapses upon its self. A small change in the fine structure constant and the universe is unsuitable for life. As compelling as these arguments may be they are not germane to the discussion, few would argue that the universe in incapable of supporting life. (For the record the argument is folly: how many chances does a habitable universe get to form? Obviously enough).
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FootTrack
Company: T-Squared Software
Price: 39.95
http://www.foottrack.com/
Remember Ricky Fitts from American Beauty? You know, the guy who walked around filming bags blowing in the wind and had thousands of DV tapes in his bedroom? Probably not, still from the description you can imagine the trouble that guy is in if he wants to find a particular scene or a particular tape. With thousands of tapes to choose from how is he going to find the bit of footage he’s looking for? Well maybe if he had FootTrack life wouldn’t be so tricky (well for Ricky it would, his Dad being a nut job and all).
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Media Edit Pro
Company: macXware
Price: $79.99
OS X and OS 9 compatible (despite the Company name)
Reviewing a program like Media Edit Pro is a tough slog. Not because of any shortcomings of the program but because it was completely different from what I expected. Perhaps a brief description of the review process is in order. What I review is stuff that interests me, and I’m interested in Movies. So when I saw a press release for Media Edit Pro I thought “Hey, Here’s a movie editor more robust than iMovie but cheaper than Final Cut Express, that’s something I’d like to try.” A couple of e-mails later and I had a copy. I installed Media Edit Pro (which is growing tiresome to type so I’ll truncate the title to MEP in future references) with no problems. then I downloaded and installed the update. Still a problem free experience. Found some footage to play with and fired up the program to give MEP it’s first test run. Big Problem.
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Recently a huge Mac rumor was unleashed: McDonalds was going to give away a billion (that’s like a million but with a B) songs via iTunes. The rumor was never exactly denied but it was also never confirmed. So McDonalds might still give away a billion songs, but then again McDonalds might not. So the rumor (reported as fact) is now just a rumor again and the net result is a zero increase in certainty. This is a fine opportunity to engage in a little free form speculation: McDonalds won’t give away a billion songs via iTunes. Why do I say that? I have my reasons: Mayor McCheese isn’t a very strong authority figure and can you really expect the Hamburgular to go legit? (Note how the preceding was presented as speculation.)
Whether or not Grimace starts passing out John Hartford singles the entire sordid affair says a little bit about the nature of Mac Rumors. The first thing the McTunes fiasco says is: If you put a rumor in print on paper it’s reported as absolute fact. If MacIndustrialEspionage.com had reported the same rumor it would be widely ignored, or if not ignored it would be cited as: “MacIndustrialEspionage.com is reporting” instead of “ApplepieTunes” (Oh, the delicious pun). To be fair many sites did run the “Daily Post is Reporting…” right under the monster headline “McDonalds to Give Away a Billion iTunes” so we should cut a little slack to the more cautious web sites. I digress, the point of this particular missive is not on the proper format when reporting a rumor but the value of a Mac rumor in general. That value, it turns out, is very low.
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NetNewsWire
Company: Ranchero Software
Price: $39.95
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire
Everyone knows what a RSS feed is, well maybe not everyone. If you don’t know what an RSS feed is send me your home address and I’ll personally come kick you to death for being so out of touch. I’m joking, my knees feel like gravel in a Ziplock bag, I couldn’t kick an ant to death. The threat does illustrate a point, most computer articles assume you have a fairly good rapport with a computer. The implication is that on some level you understand the inner workings and the supposed benefits of this or that feature. This is a mistaken notion: Many folks don’t care to know the particulars of any one process they just want the thing to do something useful. Not a big demand to my way of thinking, but products that meet this criteria are fairly rare. So let’s take a look at a Mac add on that adds premium functionality with minimal fuss: NetNewsWire by Ranchero software.
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Recently I was whining about the lack of original material on the Mac web. I opined that more and more Mac sites were just republishing press releases and not linking to or producing any original content. While I expected a lambasting, I was surprised to find not many people disagreed. A few folks did have some complaints: one e-mailer accused me of pandering for using the word “Sucks” in the title, another e-mail suggested I was emasculated for not naming names and providing links and one e-mailer defended a site. The rest of the e-mails, the overwhelming majority, agreed with my take on the “Major” Mac sites (of course, this doesn’t mean that a majority of people actually agree with me, just the ones that e-mailed). Most people kind enough to write also pointed me to their personal favorite Mac sites, which I dutifully looked over and passed judgment upon. Now, as a public service, two sites you might not visit but probably should:
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LowePro Compact AW DV Camera Bag
Company: Lowepro Camera Bags and Accessories
Price: US $149.00
http://www.lowepro.com
Watch our video review!
If you’ve plunked down upwards of two g’s for a really nice video camera you’re going to want a nice bag to store said bank account breaking piece of digital goodness. Alas not all bags are created equal; a bag was included in the package when I ordered my GL2 and I assumed the included bag would be adequate. In a classic example of “you get what you pay for” the bag was pure junk. Of course I had really paid for the camera so this was somewhat expected. Not only was the bag a bit on the junky side (think North Korean manufacturing quality level) the camera didn’t really fit into the bag. You had to move the viewfinder to the up position and kind of squish the thing in sideways. Unacceptable, so I began a hunt for the right camera bag. Forays to various discount stores proved fruitless, the GL2 was just too big for most bags. Finally I happened on the Compact AW DV from LowePro. This bag was designed with the GL series in mind, and the design carries the day.
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If you’ve ever read Internet statistics, you might wonder who’s the idiot that skews the average by spending sixty hours a week on the Internet? I plead guilty. What’s worse is that most of my time is spent jumping around various Mac web sites looking for something decent to read. Lately, it seems to me, there is precious little news or opinion pieces. All that’s left are sites full of press releases masquerading as stories of interest. This trend irks me quite a bit for two reasons: I really enjoyed some of the sites that have become little more than areas of press release regurgitation and some sites still have decent content that is pushed off the page by vendor composed copy passed off as new. I’ve brought a nice example with me:
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OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1 GHz
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $349.99
http://eshop.macsales.com
Your basic processor upgrade review works like this: Long list of stats followed by a few personal use examples. This method is particularly useful if you run Xbench all day, but the average user probably has a little trouble converting benchmarking stats into real world differences. The other problem with using benchmarking figures in evaluating an upgrade lies in the end user of said upgrades, if you’re an uber geek administering a plethora of computers then benchmarks are king (after all you know the idiots using the computers mostly slack) but if you’re an average home user trying to maximize computing joy while minimizing wallet plundering you’ve got a different set of values. In any event: the obligatory stats (for what they’re worth)
Master of Orion 3
Company: MacSoft
Price: $49.95
http://www.macsoft.com
Games… just what purpose do they serve? I am not thinking of games where you can win cash and/or fabulous prizes or contests where you get paid large green for traipsing around on manicured lawns interspersed with lime and crushed brick. I am musing specifically on video strategy games, you know the kind that started innocuously enough with Balance of Power and now leaves us with Master of Orion 3. In the past I would have answered the question simply by saying: for fun. With little cogitation or introspection I would have proclaimed my answer to be utterly inarguable, but now I think there must be something about strategy games that strikes a deeper chord than mere “fun.” There is, in the take over the universe/world/island/anthill genre, a vibe that you’re not just playing against the computer: you’re playing some crafty bastard residing in your computer whose sole reason for existence is to rob you of your ever dwindling time while inflicting as much mental frustration as possible. You secretly crave the frustration and challenge and the programmers are more than willing to oblige. Like a crack pimp the best strategy games pass out just enough of the good stuff to keep you going while cleverly letting you place the blame for any unfortunate events that befall you squarely on the shoulders of “that cheating game”.
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(Note: This is a very self referential column, I’d stop reading now)
Now that the G5′s are shipping, I’ve got new computer fever in a bad way. All the symptoms: massive envy, eight gigabytes worth of lust, bugs crawling on my skin. Skip the last one, that’s hygiene issue. I don’t need a G5 anymore than I need a Hummer. Which is: not at all. But I want a G5, you know, for the coolness factor. Add to the lust inspired by the coolness factor the fact that the G5 is a brand new chip and allow for the extra cool perforated form factor and you’ve got one salivating Mac user. So I started dropping not subtle hints, cause my birthday is coming up.
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It’s a simple matter to cruise the aisles of any grocery store and see the ever-growing shelf space devoted to organically grown foods. The increasing popularity of organically grown foods has something to do, one surmises, with the fear that we may be poisoning our environment and ourselves by using pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. Why not? It seems rational on the surface. Look at what DDT does to bird eggs (ignore, for the moment, that DDT may have saved a billion lives). One could be forgiven for thinking that because X is bad for birds there is a pretty good chance that X is bad people. This, of course, is not completely specious reasoning, but it does ignore the larger picture. The larger picture involves taking the entire food supply into account, and when one does that one reaches one nearly inescapable conclusion: Organically grown food isn’t the answer, it’s part of the problem.
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MyMac Podcast #385
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