Archive for April, 2006
Why Apple’s Boot Camp is a stroke of genius
In no particular order:
* They’ve just opened up Apple hardware to gazillions of potential buyers, including corporates and gamers [Gazillions is a technical term].
* Microsoft will be quite happy: they can sell XP licences to Mac owners now. It doesn’t affect Virtual PC sales (assuming VPC is coming to Intel Macs), and Microsoft doesn’t make PCs.
* It’s a big kick up the arse of the PC manufacturers.
* It’s going to generate acres of positive publicity and general warm and fuzzy feelings towards the firm.
I’ll no doubt add more when I’ve had time to think about this.
Hell froze over, again
CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.
Wow. My brain’s just overloaded.
(Thanks, Paul.)
For once, I’m lost for words - printable ones, at least.
The BPI’s blatant misrepresentation of the actual impact of file sharing
Not my words: that’s a comment by respected industry analyst Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research. He says:
They claim that file sharing has cost the UK music industry 1.1 billion pounds over the last 3 years. I’m sorry but that is piffle. The UK music industry in 2002 was worth just over 2 billion pounds. In 2005 it was worth 1.85 billion. That is a total cumulative decrease of 0.29 billion. Where’s the extra 0.81 billion?
…
The BPI should
a) know better than to infer that consumer survey data is actual national market revenue data (however much it might help their PR push)
b) accept the fact that there are many bigger reasons impact declining music sales (prices too high, physical piracy (a MUCH bigger factor according to sister organization IFPI), competing expenditure (DVDs, games consoles etc.)
I couldn’t agree more. As Mark points out, the BPI’s figures mean that each and every file sharer has suddenly stopped spending £186 on music - which is far, far more than the average spend (most people buy around six CDs per year) and doesn’t take into account other forms of spending. For example, sales of ringtones are expected to hit £142.6 million in the UK this year; in 2005, sales of computer games in the UK hit £1.35 billion, making it the best year ever.
Sure, some people are file sharing instead of buying music. But I suspect that the number of people buying games instead of CDs is much higher.
Update
You’ve got to love No Rock’N'Roll Fun, which covers the same story: BPI Responsible For The Deaths of 3,759 People In The UK. As Simon writes:
No, they’re not, actually, but since they’ve decided to announce that illegal downloading has cost the UK music industry a billion pounds, we thought we’d pluck an eyecatching figure out the air and use it as a headline, too.
Bluetooth blaggers: bollocks
Today’s technobollocks story comes via Engadget Mobile, which links to a report that criminals in Cambridge are using bluetooth to locate hidden laptops - and nick them.
According to Cambridge News.co.uk:
MOBILE phone technology is being used by thieves to seek out and steal laptops locked in cars in Cambridgeshire.Up-to-date mobiles often have Bluetooth technology, which allows other compatible devices, including laptops, to link up and exchange information, and log on to the internet.
But thieves in Cambridge have cottoned on to an alternative use for the function, using it as a scanner which will let them know if another Bluetooth device is locked in a car boot.
Det Sgt Al Funge, from Cambridge’s crime investigation unit, said: “There have been a number of instances of this new technology being used to identify cars which have valuable electronics, including laptops, inside.
“The thieves are taking advantage of a relatively new technology, and people need to be aware that this is going on.
“We would urge people not to leave laptops, or anything of value, in their cars, and always de-activate these wireless connections when you’re not using a laptop - otherwise you’re making life easy for the thieves.”
Last month a spate of thefts from cars were put down to thieves using their phones to find laptops after three laptops were stolen from cars parked in neighbouring bays at the Holiday Inn, in Cambridge Road, Impington.
Police in Royston have mirrored the warning, after picking up on new crime trends in the area.
One teeny-weeny little problem with that scenario: when your laptop’s switched off, so is your bluetooth connection. I call shenanigans.
Xbox 360: first impressions and the Ferret of Games
So, I’ve finally got an Xbox 360 (with my own money, not a loaner or a freebie). After a day mucking around with it, I’m really impressed. The dashboard is nice and simple, downloading game demos is easy enough and the backwards compatibility works, more or less (Halo 2 is ace, Black locks up from time to time). It’s a gorgeous bit of kit and I’m particularly impressed by the wireless controller, which feels “right” when you use it.
A couple of minor niggles, though:
* Setting up wireless networking could be easier.
* Some games - such as Half-Life 2 - don’t work if you’re using the VGA HD Cable. As far as I can tell, there’s no workaround unless you’re willing to use a completely different cable whenever you play it. I like Half-Life 2 but I don’t like it enough to indulge in computer cabling fun every time I fancy a quick game.
* Fifty quid for a wireless bridge is ridiculous when USB Wi-Fi adapters cost less than £15 in the real world.
* The Quake 4 demo is a bugger: get killed and you have to sit through the intro cut scenes all over again. It’s enough to put me off buying the game, because it makes me think the retail version will do the same. As I’m rubbish at games and get killed every two seconds, that’s a lot of wasted time. I’m not paying 40-odd quid to sit through cutscenes - I made that mistake when I bought Black.
* Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is far too complicated for my tiny brain.
And the Ferret of Games? That’s the biggest flaw: at the time of writing, there’s no sodding games ferret.
*comedy drum roll and cymbal crash*
Thank you very much.
Technology titles and comedy bombs
A man’s sitting in front of a PC. His wife’s looking over his shoulder at the screen, which displays the words “ME ME ME ME ME ME”. “I’m just updating my blog”, he says.
OK, it’s not very funny the way I tell it. But when I saw the cartoon in Private Eye, coffee came out of my nose.
I love cartoons - good ones, that is. Not dreary smugfests such as Fred Bassett, or the used-to-be-funny Garfield, or the everybody-in-the-world-gets-it-but-me impenetrability of Doonesbury. I mean the comedy bombs of The Perry Bible Fellowship, the bile of Steve Bell, the profanity of Get Your War On, the one-shot gutbusters in Private Eye or the inspired lunacy of Gary Larson.
I like Gary Larson so much that I nearly put myself in hospital carrying the two-volume Complete Far Side, which weighs roughly the same as a house, around a Mancunian shopping centre for two hours. With hindsight, I should have bought it on the way out of the shopping centre, rather than immediately on arrival. Still, it was worth it to see my favourite cartoon of all time lovingly reproduced on thick, glossy paper (a man visits a doctor’s surgery with tiny cow heads growing all over him. “I’m sorry,” says the doctor. “You’ve got cows.”)
Other than in newspapers, though, cartoons are thin on the ground. Private Eye runs them, of course, but that’s still largely a current affairs title; it’s a similar story with the Spectator and the other heavyweight news analysis titles. In the world of consumer magazines, though, cartoons are a rarity. Edge runs a strip on the letters page, and PC Format ran an (ill-advised, I reckon) strip featuring one of its own journalists (nooooooo!!!!!), but that’s about it.
Cartoons are particularly thin on the ground in my neck of the woods, the tech sector. I don’t think it’s because technology can’t be funny (Private Eye’s managed to get good mileage from iPod jokes, such as an orangeman with an iProd) or because tech doesn’t have characters (Jobs, Gates and Ballmer are crying out for the Steve Bell treatment). So there must be some reason. Maybe it doesn’t fit with the glossy, high-tech sheen of the tech press, or maybe it’s because publishers don’t think cartoons are worth the money (although you can say more in a one-panel cartoon than in a seven-page feature sometimes). Maybe it’s because good cartoonists aren’t interested in the tech sector. Or maybe it’s because the readers aren’t interested.
Or maybe it’s a combination of all of these factors. Can anyone shed some light?
Ha bloody ha
The Guardian devotes page 3 to a story about Coldplay writing a theme song for the Conservatives. The back page carries a full page ad explaining a new service that enables you to scan your Nectar card with your mouse. Inside, BMW announces new pixel paint that makes your car look blurry to anti-dawdling speed cameras.
God, I hate April Fools.
It’s not that I’m scared of falling for a fake news story, or of embarrassing myself by phoning BMW to enquire about their pixel paint. It’s that mostly, the spoofs aren’t funny. Vaguely amusing ideas are stretched to breaking point, mangled until every last bit of comedy has been squeezed out. It’s a collective sense of humour failure, the print equivalent of the pub bore who tells you the world’s least funny joke and then howls with laughter until you stab him in the eyes with a sharpened cocktail stirrer. It’s this bloke:
