Out of the Box

If you’ve given me a business card in the past few years, you probably know that I’m a user of the CardScan business card scanner and what is now called the “At Your Service” update service. After eight major releases on Windows, though, the product has finally come to the Mac. Company reps told me they wanted to “get it right” and it looks like they’ve done a nice job with the UI. The killer feature is being able to browse your cards “cover flow” style.

Unfortunately, CardScan for Mac is not yet plugged into “At Your Service” but that should be on the developers’ docket.

Real looks like it will have a big hit on its hands with RealDVD if consumer interest matches the media interest I saw in the product at Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular (PDF link) show last night. The table was so crowded that it wasn’t until the booths were being torn down that I had a chance to catch up with Real corporate communications VP Bill Hankes, who  kindly took a few minutes to talk about the software with me after we both explained that we weren’t lawyers.

As Dave Zatz has reported, Real has a license from the DVD Copy Control Association, but I’ve countered that simply having the license, as Kaleidescape did, is not a guarantee of the legality. Bill said that Real believes RealDVD is legal because it preserves CSS and layers more encryption on top of it (that said, I seem to recall Kaleidescape employs some pretty serious encryption as well and of course its solution is a closed box) and that the usage that RealDVD allows falls under fair use. Although, again, the scenarios that Real envisions for RealDVD (streaming around the house, etc.) sound very similar to what Kaleidescape allows. .

Regardless of the letter of the law, the key question is whether Real can avoid a legal challenge by the studios. Bill admits that the studios are concerned about the product, but says that Real is having productive discussions with them about some of the opportunities it affords them (such as introducing fresh trailers a la BD-Live) in an age where DVD sales are flat.

Now that I’ve used a bit of parody to point out how some of Microsoft’s challenges with Vista aren’t really its fault, I’m again addressing Microsoft’s Vista commercials. I didn’t find the second Gates-Seinfeld spot to have as pronounced a latent message as the first, although I defended both ads’ general direction in a podcast discussion with Gene Steinberg this week (iTunes link here, MP3 file here).

The new “I’m a PC” commercial, Web presence, and what Michael Gartenberg points out to be the social aspects, though, take things in a different direction and is doing unto Apple what Apple did to Vista, mischaracterize it. As I said early on in the Get a Mac campaign, one reason the commercials worked was that they avoided the bad taste that the Switcher campaign left in many PC users’ mouths. The “Get a Mac” ads don’t really stereotype PC users, they stereotype the PC (although Hodgman’s behavior has become more bizarre as the campaign has progressed.). Reassociating the person and the platform again portrays Apple as the snide PC user-mocking company of yore. However, with Apple’s surge over the past few years and Apple stores opening their doors to millions of PC users, can that label stick? And are even satisfied PC users offended by the “Get a Mac” campaign?

The ad also evokes recent Microsoft advertising history as this notion of the PC as an empowering tool sounds very similar to Microsoft’s messaging in the “Wow starts now” ads that ran at he launch of Vista, with the new twist that acknowledges Windows’ ubiquity (which Get a Mac has also done in an ad in which PC says, “I’m still the king.”) . But that’s not necessarily bad. It reinforces that — while there may be more cause to grumble than on a Mac — the vast majority of the vast array of Vista users are being productive on the platform.

A grail that may not be among the most holy will soon be attained by consumers as Real Networks will today unveil RealDVD. It’s premise is simple — provide a simple and legal way for consumers to copy or rip their commercial DVDs to their hard drive. Upon loading up a DVD with RealDVD installed, you’re given the option to play or save the DVD along with the gentle reminder that you should not save the DVD if you do not own it, digitally reminiscent of the “Don’t steal music.” sticker that came with iPods. Indeed, for personal movie pirates, RealDVD will be a Netflix subscription’s best friend.

The good news is that RealDVD faithfully replicates the DVD experience — all the menus and extras are there. And you can even pick up movies where you left off. I had feared that there might be some pretty unsavory catches such as a limit to the amount of time in which you could watch the DVD or the number of DVDs the program could store. However, DVDs are confined to an authorized PC or portable hard drive and there is no compression beyond that of the original DVD so a dual-layer disc could consume nearly 9 GB of disc space. Portable hard drives are inexpensive these days, but one benefit to RealDVD would be eliminating a second device in terms of the portable DVD player. There also doesn’t appear to be any portable media player support lined up at launch.

Still, RealDVD is a nice option for the business traveler looking for an alternative to buying (or repurchasing) movies online. It will have an introductory price of $29 (regularly $39) and consumer swill be able to authorize four other PCs at $19 per license. It will be available later this month. We’ll see  whether Microsoft, Apple, or other companies will follow suit in offering similar capabilities.

Update: A cNet story leads me to wonder whether RealNetworks obtained authorization from the DVD Copy Control Association in producing RealDVD. (The New York Times story essentially confirms that Real has not done such licensing.) The legitimacy of such a license was what was at the heart of the Kaleidescape lawsuit as far as I know. I expect this product to get challenged by the MPAA.

Here’s some footage of RealDVD:

It’s a bit out there — particularly with the ethereal music and outtakes of shoes in the shower and Spanish-speaking onlookers — but I give the first Seinfeld commercial for Microsoft a thumbs-up for a few reasons.

We often think of Microsoft today as a sprawling entity which, even in the consumer market, fighting three fronts online against Google, in videogames against Sony, and in the MP3 market versus Apple. Gates, however, is strongly identified with the PC, and reintroducing him to the public after all the media around his retirement brings back some of the lightheartedness associated with his public persona. The club card is probably the funniest part of the ad and maybe a bit of a nod to Jerry’s old Amex commercials. (That said, I think some of Gates’ CES videos were funnier than this commercial.)

It’s a good teaser, and the talk about cake at the end creates an intriguing positive association reinforced by the word “Delicious.”  But the commercial is more than a teaser. The whole “shoe that fits” scenario is a clear lead-in to finding the right PC for you, which brings a fresh and more relevant spin to the old arguments of Windows offering more choice.

Finally, it’s “getting people talking” and focusing attention away from the bad publicity around Vista that’s had fuel thrown on its fire by another pair of guys.

Just a few days after my Switched On.column on musical mashups in which  I talked about the possibilities of combining the Cerulean TX+RX with the EOS Wireless multi-room system, Gizmodo reports that Sony has introduced its own multi-room iPod dock, joining EOS Wireless and Klipsch. Unlike the EOS satellite speakers (which include a modest downward-firing subwoofer), the Sony satellite speakers offer remote control over iPod playback yet the system is priced competitively with the EOS Wireless speakers. A $400 kit will include the dock (which includes AV out but no speakers) and two external speakers, pegging the price of the main dock at about $240.

Also, like the EOS Wireless system, there does not appear to be a way to control the playback volume of satellite speakers from the main dock. Perhaps that would be possible, though, with an iPod touch application. While none of these products offer the flexibility or sophistication of Sonos, they are much simpler to set up than Wi-Fi-based systems and represent a great opportunity to make multi-room music more approachable.

The sudden momentum we’re seeing toward scrapping Wi-Fi for multi-room music has to have the folks at Logitech scratching their heads. The company entered the multi-room music market with products like the Wireless PC Music System and Wireless DJ that used a similar 2.4 GHz scheme. Both were part of its “Music Anywhere” system that Logitech promoted as “a better wireless solution with plug-and-play simplicity, digital audio clarity, and no home network required.” But that went out the window when the company acquired Slim Devices and its Wi-Fi-based Squeezebox.

Microsoft has offered a fairly weak (so far, more is coming) answer to the Vista backlash with the Mojave Experiment, which plays a small trick on users who have never used Windows Vista. After getting their initial assessments of Vista, often based simply on what they’ve heard  (unclear whether that’s in the media or word of mouth), Microsoft shows them a ten-minute demo of “Mojave,” which is really Vista. Smile, You’re on Candid Kernel.

Of course, the  participants are surprised, and we perhaps should not expect a huge amount of excitement about operating systems from folks who were so ignorant or uninterested in them enough to not recognize the ruse. Clearly some of the featured users had a change of heart, but the reactions still seemed underwhelming, mostly better acceptance. Furthermore, most of Vista’s issues stem around older PCs with legacy hardware, and any operating system is going to do a better job on a controlled system. I’ll bet you a service pack that the laptop on which Vista was shown was packing a serious processor and video memory.

While 84 percent of those who participated were XP users — those who are the hardest to sway to Vista — 14 percent of those were from people using even older versions of Windows. I’d certainly hope Vista could impress those users. In addition, 22 percent were Mac users,  but Microsoft doesn’t say what version of Mac OS they were using. It could be Mac OS 9 if they included pre-XP users. In addition, among the many — oft-repeated — sound bites presented in the clip montage, we don’t know which came from users of which operating systems.

So, small point taken, Microsoft. Don’t believe everything you hear or read (unless you read it here,of course.). The next questions, though,, are how do you find these tainted users, how do you expose them to Vista, and how do you ensure that their real world experiences better match to the ideals of “Mojave.”

Along with the news that Apple sold a million iPhone 3Gs in its opening weekend came the announcement that 10 million applications were downloaded for the iPhone 2.0 software, which runs on older iPhones and iPod touches.

I had agreed with the spirit if not the letter of this Gizmodo post. in that the app store — which will also run on the original iPhone and the iPod touch — is in many ways the biggest difference between the iPhone 3G and earlier versions. However, 3G is an important enabler for many of these applications.

I’d love to hear what the distribution of those platforms were and how many were downloaded off of Wi-Fi as opposed to 3G or EDGE. And of course, how many were free as opposed to paid downloads. Outside of games, it’s still going to be difficult to drive sales of applications simply because the monetization of software has shifted so much in the past few years. But games for the iPhone are an interesting development opportunity, not so much because the iPhone competes with, say, a PSP, but because it does offer console-like platform stability, at least for now.

In any case, the 10 million number — an order of magnitude over the hardware sold during the weekend — is a testament to the appeal of these applications, their overall quality and variety. And a lesson to the whole industry that you can drive consumer interest in native smartphone applications and move the industry past the Java/BREW level of lowest common denominator development. On the other hand, Apple is far more incentivized to drive the platform given the revenue share for paid downloads and no carrier revenue sharing.

One number we’re perhaps more likely to get from Apple is the percentage of OS X iPhone developers who are knew to the platform. It seems to be significant. Last week I met with one of the launch developers new to OS X who was raving about Apple’s developer tools and downplaying limitations, saying what the SDK buys you is worth the limitations (and this is a developer whose application would definitely benefit from background processing.) That said, he acknowledged that the Windows Mobile tools are also pretty good.

Those who say that desktop operating systems are irrelevant because the Internet is the center of the computing universe are too reductive (Using Ubuntu much, Mike?). Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is, for the foreseeable future, more of a tactical move within the fast-growing and high-stakes online advertising battle vs. Google rather than some panacea.

That said, the other day I noticed that, of the 20 applications in my Start menu, I use 14 to interact with content over a local network or the Internet. The 14 are Internet Explorer and Outlook, Firefox, TiVo Desktop, Trillian, SlingPlayer, iTunes (where I regularly browse the store), Windows Live Writer, Slacker, Twhirl, XDrive Desktop, and VPN, wireless broadband and Wi-Fi utilities, Almost all of them are either available for the Mac or have quality Mac equivalents.

Ars Technica writes about an interesting new package being released by longstanding Mac and Windows developer Symantec that is surely a sign of the times. Symantec is bundling Windows and Mac versions of its Anti-Virus protection in one package for Mac users who are running virtualization software from Parallels or VMWare, One can now Seussically say that Norton clears for two.

I haven’t considered the ability to run Windows programs as a functional driver of the success behind in the wake of Apple’s Intel transition, (although the assurance that it can has probably removed some psychological barriers), pinning it down more to price/performance improvements. However, apparently Symantec believes that double-dipping Mac users will appreciate the extra, and perhaps proactive, security blanket even though, as Ars notes:

While we haven’t heard any reports of a virus striking a Windows VM and taking advantage of this Mac OS X directory access, it certainly is theoretically possible. There are also products like MacDrive which can grant read/write access of an entire Mac-formatted volume to versions of Windows from 98 on. Both of these situations could bring a Mac’s OS X boot volume into the sights of a malicious application.

I also continue to be surprised (but only slightly) that Apple has not included virtualization itself in the OS by simply buying Parallels or developing their own solution. Apple has supported other architectures before and advertised the Mac’s ability to run Windows on national TV (in two different commercials). Apple describes Boot Camp as an option that mazimizes compatibility, but the tradeoff in convenience is not worth it for most users. Besides, including virtualization software would allow Apple to make a stronger case for beefier Mac configurations.

Finally, speaking of Windows running on Macs, I seem to remember some statements from Microsoft that it would clarify its OS support of the hardware once Boot Camp became released code, which it now is. I suppose Microsoft has its hands full supporting Vista on machines that it has already certified, even those it perhaps shouldn’t have.