SteveX Compiled

"Apple TV is syncing with iTun..."

That about sums it up. This is the message that comes up on your TV while Apple TV is syncing with iTunes on your PC or Mac, and because the box for the message is just a bit too small, the product name is abbreviated to "iTun...".

Apple TV is an Apple product minus the attention to detail that makes Apple products so great.

The menu system, for example, is both ugly and awkward. The top level and second level menu items are both visible at the same time in a plain black and white box, with no indication that there's a top level and a second level. The top level menu items make sense - Music, Movies, TV Shows, etc - but the second level menu items are mostly links into the iTunes store. For example, when you pick Movies on the left, there are 7 options on the right. 5 of them are iTunes links, and the one that lets you see your own movies is at the bottom of the list.

Another problem with the menu system is that when Apple TV is busy, it's unresponsive. Unresponsive UI is a usability killer for a device that you use with an IR remote, because they're inherently unreliable. It's not like clicking a mouse button where if the click doesn't register right away you know it will eventually get registered. With IR, people just press the button again because the receiver didn't pick it up. But with Apple TV, sometimes there's a delay of a second or two when you click the remote. This mostly happens when you're syncing, but since syncing happens in the background you don't know when it's happening. Very annoying.

And the on-screen keyboard is terrible! Not only does it suffer from the responsiveness problem, but it's got all the letter, A through Z, laid out in one line across the screen horizontally. Two line actually - one for upper case, one for lower case. So entering text (like when you're searching in the iTunes store or entering your password for purchases) takes longer than it needs to. Plus, when you're entering an email address, there's isn't the context-sensitive keyboard that adds a ".com" button. You have to type it in.

So Apple TV has some rough edges. But how does the product work overall? Very well.

I don't regret buying it at all. Sitting on the couch and watching video podcasts and YouTube videos is cool, and works very well. Browsing the Apple TV library with my iPhone using Remote is slick, and when not syncing, video playback and the rest of the UI is responsive.

But for an Apple product, there's room for improvement.

(You can get a 40gig Apple TV it on the Apple store refurbished, in Canada anyway, for $209. That's a good deal).

I watched the US election Vice Presidential debate last night, and wanted to post my thoughts before reading what other people thought.

Sarah Palin did better than I expected. From the Katie Couric interviews, my expectations were pretty low, but she seemed like a solid candidate.

Joe Biden did better than I expected. I was expecting someone boring, but he turned out to be a pretty good debater and gave the impression of having a real depth of experience.

When Joe answered a question, his answer was better, more often than Sarah. Sarah dodged the question in a few cases, once even saying she wasn't going to answer the question "the way you want me to" (which was, to answer it at all). And I don't think in that case it was an unfair question (I don't remember offhand what it was, but Joe had an answer).

Joe's answers seemed to go one level deeper than Sarah's. I felt like I learned something from Joe; Sarah just said stuff I already knew.

So in my opinion, advantage: Joe Biden.

"Most Asian markets recover on hopes for US bailout" == "Most Asian Markets Recover".

"Banks lead Europe stocks higher on US bailout hopes" == "Banks lead Europe stocks higher"

See? The first part is a fact, the second part is a guess. The title of this post is some Ruby code that will fix up the headline for you.

(I think the stock markets are recovering somewhat because that's what happens naturally, and not because of the hopes for a bailout).

My wife bought a new teapot.

On the bottom, it says it's freezer and microwave safe.

It does sound convenient to take your pot of frozen tea from the freezer and heat it up in the microwave, but I wonder what those snobby tea drinkers would think of that.

I picked up some Shure SE310 in-ear headphones when I was in San Francisco back at the start of the year, and never blogged about them. Better late than never, here are some thoughts.

The good:

• They sound incredible. It's stunning how clear music sounds, and how much bass they kick out.
• They block out the outside world. Completely. I'm typing this while listening to music at a fairly low volume, in a quiet room, and I can't hear my fingers at all. I wore them on the plane on the way home from San Francisco, and they blocked out the sound of the jet engine very effectively.
• You can listen at a much lower volume, because you're not fighting the ambient sound around you. Ambient sound is blocked by the shape of the headphones, so all that's going in your ear is what the headphones themselves are putting there. This is probably better for your ears if you spend a lot of time with headphones on.
• I find myself hearing new things in songs I've listened to for years.

The bad:

• They're hard to get in right. In-ear headphones depend on creating a seal in your ear. With a good seal, the headphones can move a small amount of air to make the sound it needs to make. Without a good seal, the bass that the headphones are generating just gets lost. When I first tried these on, I thought they were broken - but after a lot of playing with the myriad options Shure supplies for trying to get them to fit well in your ears, I found both a set of tip that works for me, and a process for getting them in my ears, that gives me good sound every time.
• In-ear headphones create a tiny soundstage inside your head. The audio cues that help your brain provide stereo separation aren't there, so while music can still sound wide it doesn't feel wide. It's hard to describe, but it does take away from the music somewhat.
• Thinking of wearing these at work to block out the ambient sounds around you? Sure, they'll do that, but when someone wants to get your attention, they'll need to hit you over the head to get it. And you'll never get the phone again.
• The other drawback to wearing to wearing them at work is that when you do get interrupted, you have to go through the process of putting them back in every time.
  • Don't wear these things when biking, driving, or doing anything near cars. Seriously.
• I find myself hearing MP3 artifacts I've never noticed before.

The weird:

• Don't try eating while you're wearing these things. You can hear noises that happen inside your head, and surprisingly loudly. I guess vibrations that happen in your head while you're eating normally just go out your ear canal, but now that that's blocked, you hear them. You can't hear a jet engine outside your head, but eating potato chips will drown out any music you're listening to.

That's about it. I find myself using them on occasion - and I still find it a real treat when I do - but I do most of my listening at work, and the drawbacks make them somewhat impractical there.

It's never too early for Fruit Cake!

(There's a surprising variety and quantity of Fruit Cake at my local grocery store today).

I have a theory on the economic bailout plan that's being proposed in the states. Disclaimer: I know as much about economics as I do about fixing cars, and I'm all proud that just last week I changed the headlight bulb by myself.

Here's a quote from Dave Winer with some back story:

Now we have ... Henry Paulson, who says there's impending doom, but he can't say exactly what it is, it's not security this time, but fear of starting another level of bank runs. Senators and Representatives come out of a Thursday night meeting with the secretary ... won't say exactly what he said, but they are stunned. The next day buried in a sea of press about this event is an almost innocuous paragraph in a NYT piece that talks about a flight to safety from the US Treasury money market. OMG

So basically, there's a secret threat to the economy that increases the urgency for a bailout. What could this be?

My theory is that big foreign investors, say the Chinese or the Saudis, who have heavy investments in US banking and mortgages, have given the US an ultimatum: Bail this mess out, or we're pulling out.

That truly would collapse the US banking system.

And you should be a PC too, because lots of other people are.

I think that's what they're saying...

But if everyone else jumped off a bridge, I thought I wasn't supposed to jump off a bridge too. I think my Mom told me that.

With all the various battery recalls both for Apple and non-Apple laptops, it sucks to have a defective battery that's not being recalled. Check this out:

coconutBattery is a great little utility that pulls together some battery numbers in a nice UI. In this case it's telling me that my battery's maximum charge is 21% of what it originally was. This computer can run on battery power for about 20 minutes.

It's had 258 charge cycles, which is a fair amount, but MacBook Pro batteries are expected to be at >80% charge after 300 cycles. This battery is nowhere near that.

I've got the 1.3 Battery Update, I've tried calibrating the battery, nothing helps. This battery is just plain defective.

So even though the warranty is only 3 months and this battery is 15 months old, I called Apple anyway. Their answer was that there was a time when they were replacing batteries that had this problem, but they stopped doing that. The product specialist's guess was that they were having to replace batteries too often and it became too costly to replace them.

If my Mac was one of the older Mac's with a Core Duo, it would be covered under a special 2 year warranty for defective batteries. My battery fits the profile of that recall, but isn't covered by it (my Mac has a Core 2 Duo). I wonder how many people need to have the problem before they'll consider a recall.

The disappointing part of this story is that a new battery is $159, and there's no guarantee that this won't happen again.

Finally, an agreement I can get behind.

I wonder if this is a binding contract.