January 13, 2006
Post-Christmas Comes a Geek's Gizmo-Rama
By DAVID POGUE
IF you're a nerd, geek or gadget freak, what dances in your head during the holidays isn't sugar plums. It's the prospect of the two big high-tech trade shows that kick off the new year with dazzling displays of new electronic goodies.
First, a record 150,000 industry insiders and journalists descended on Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show - and then a good number of them flew on to San Francisco for the Macworld Expo, a showcase for all things Apple.
That's if they had any strength left; the Las Vegas show alone is exhausting. You have 33 hours over four days to explore 2,500 company exhibits; that works out to 1.26 booths per minute.
In some ways, a better name for this year's event would have been the Video Electronics Show; the electronics industry believes that the public's appetite for watching TV, wherever and whenever possible, is insatiable.
There was, for example, an entire building dedicated to automotive entertainment: flat-panel screens on the backs of seats, the backs of sun visors, inside the doors and the trunk and even on the dashboard. Sharp's prototype dual-view liquid-crystal-display screen can even show one image to the driver (like a global positioning system navigation screen) and another to the passenger (like a DVD movie) simultaneously.
Flat-panel TV screens for the home were the most visible single product category; and, as usual, they're bigger and less expensive than last year's models. Panasonic and LG Electronics each displayed a plasma identified as the world's largest (103 and 102 inches, respectively). Neither screen is for sale yet, but the plasma is on the wall: at this rate, it won't be long before home theater screens are bigger than real theater screens.
Canon and Toshiba displayed a new flat-panel TV technology that was the buzz of the show: something called SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display). It offers the superior picture quality and deep blacks of a conventional tube television, with the thin profile of a plasma.
The astonishing video quality of SED impressed everyone from average consumers to engineers from rival companies, and it's easy to see why the manufacturers claim that SED is the future of television. Toshiba says it will ship a few 55-inch models this year, although it acknowledges that the price, at first, will fall in "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" territory.
MANY booths bore the logos of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the two blood rivals offering incompatible formats for next-generation high-definition DVD.
The Blu-ray camp boasts a longer list of movie studio endorsements. But the HD-DVD camp argues that its first player, from Toshiba, will arrive sooner (March) and cost half as much ($500). Neither camp seems to have figured out that most consumers won't buy anything at all until the format war is over.
The show's other big theme was the rise of the software/Web services conglomerate; the big keynote speeches, and some of the biggest booths, were presented by Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. They announced a dizzying array of new services, many having to do, once again, with TV watching.
Google, for example, revealed Google Video, an "open video marketplace" that lets anyone, from TV networks to proud parents, post video clips for all the world to see - for a fee, if the creator so decides. Microsoft demonstrated yet another online music service, created with MTV, as well as a movie download service called Vongo, supplied by Starz Entertainment.
Apple doesn't attend the Consumer Electronics Show, but its influence was visible everywhere. The looks of pocket music players, for example, were infinitely closer to catching up with the iPod's sleek, stylish design (although the software still has miles to go). Dozens of hand-held video players were exhibited, too, to accommodate those iTunes-like video download services.
Then there was Microsoft's demonstration of Vista, the new version of Windows that is expected to be available by the end of the year. During Bill Gates's opening keynote presentation, most of the new features demonstrated were brazenly undisguised idea heists from Apple's Mac OS X.
They included a systemwide search (like Apple's Spotlight), search folders (self-updating folders that reveal files matching certain criteria), thumbnail images (not just names) of minimized windows, a three-dimensional window-switching keystroke, an iPhoto-like photo-sorting module, and a constellation of widgets (small single-purpose, single-window programs like calculators and news tickers).
At Apple's own keynote presentation, at the Macworld Expo, Steven P. Jobs began with a recitation of sales figures. Number of iPods sold during the recent holiday season: 14 million. (Total to date: 42 million, enough to blanket 14 percent of the American population with iPods.)
Next came announcements of a $50 iPod remote with built-in FM radio and an updated iLife creative software suite (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand and a new Web design program called iWeb).
At this point, the wide-eyed live audience of Macolytes held its breath. What would be the big surprise unveiling? According to the Web sites devoted to Apple rumors, the revelation would be a TiVo-like multimedia hub based on the Mac Mini. Or maybe an Apple cellphone. Or a new spreadsheet program. An iPod Shuffle with a screen. A new iMac. Or, most implausibly of all, a plasma TV.
Mr. Jobs took all of the guessers by surprise by presenting a new iMac and a PowerBook laptop, now renamed the MacBook Pro. In the cleverest bit, the laptop's magnetically attached power cord instantly detaches if tripped over, instead of yanking the laptop to the floor.
These machines look nearly identical to their predecessors. What's different is inside: a CoreDuo processor, Intel's recently announced successor to the Pentium chip. Apple had previously announced that it would begin replacing the PowerPC chips in its Macs with Intel chips by June 2006. The surprise was the six-month speed-up and the selection of the first models to renovate.
These machines make clear why Apple made this radical switch from the PowerPC chips (from I.B.M. and Freescale, the Motorola spinoff) that have driven Macs for years: the new Macs are much, much faster, yet cost exactly the same ($1,300 and up for the iMac, $2,000 for the MacBook Pro).
Apple says that according to technical benchmarks, the new laptop, for example, is four times as fast as the previous model. In the real world, even a few minutes of testing on these Macs proves that Web pages appear nearly instantaneously, huge photo libraries scroll briskly, and programs pop open after only a second or two. These Macs even start up faster - so fast that the big Apple logo makes only a fleeting appearance.
But there is a hitch: you get all of this speed only when you're running programs that have been rewritten especially for the Intel chip.
Apple has already rewritten Mac OS X and its constellation of programs (like its e-mail program, Web browser and the iLife suite). Other programs, including Microsoft Office and Photoshop, still work - the new Macs seamlessly translate older software so that the Intel chip can process it - but they run at the old speed, or even slower.
Apple warns that programs requiring speed, like professional video and sound editing software, may not run at all in this translation mode. That includes Apple's own Final Cut Pro, Aperture and other high-end software, but Apple says you can "crossgrade" to the Intel-based versions in March for $50 each.
If such programs are critical to your work, wait until they've been updated to speak the Intel chip's language before buying an Intel-based Mac.
Apple plans to switch all of its Mac models to Intel processors by the end of the year. Intriguingly, they'll all be technically capable of restarting in Microsoft Windows - not using an off-the-shelf copy, but perhaps with the assistance of a software kit written by some enterprising programmer.
None of these models will bear the "Intel Inside" logo, and Apple's advertising won't include the five-note Intel riff. Analysts say that Apple has thereby passed on millions of Intel marketing dollars; on the other hand, it's hard to imagine Apple reconciling that logo with its pride and its fondness for clean design.
Choice is good, of course. But too much choice can be paralyzing. And if the Consumer Electronics Show and the Macworld Expo are any guides, 2006 won't be just the year of TV anywhere and music everywhere; it may also be the year that high-tech decision-making becomes a full-time job.
Essay Question: How do frequent technology innovations impact everyday consumers? Consider how often members of your family to discover what new products they purchased in the last ten years? Do the new products represent improvements to their lifestyle or to the general well-being and enjoyment of your family?