Author Archives: Trapped Speed

Truth In Advertising

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Two ads, broadcast back-to-back on network television in the United States this past Monday night (September 2, 2013), caught my eye.

Oscar Mayer (which you may remember if born prior to 1990 as that baloney company), ran this ad. Titled “What You See Is What You Get,” this ad features a grandfatherly character who is amusing due to his overly honest answers. The idea is that Oscar Mayer’s products are honest; that the transparent packaging is representative of their all-natural goodness and nutritional value. What the ad really says is “Hey! We may be an old brand from an age gone by, but we’re comfortable enough to be honest with you.” [Unlike the denying-our-age-by-embarrassing-ourselves approach that is the Miracle Whip brand.] Oscar Mayer is too old to care about you or your delicate, organic granola sensibilities. In its day, you were just happy your baloney had a first and a last name.

Sprint, unfortunately, went with the zombie-themed spot seen here. This one featured a sales woman selling an undead customer on their new wireless plans. The idea is to capitalize on the youth trend of zombies, with a humorous play-off of their “unlimited for life” cellular service package. Unlike Oscar Mayer, though, Sprint is apparently tone deaf to their brand’s image as the distant third-place carrier. In this case, it’s actually Sprint who is the zombie, with the ironically implied message being what good is an unlimited for life guarantee if your carrier is already dead?

Ironically or not, both advertisements give a more or less truthful depiction of the brands they are promoting. Always be cognizant of what exactly you are relating to your brand’s image.

Beat Me To It

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The Verge has compiled a list of services for managing and syncing your photos, to and from your smartphone. I’d actually been working on essentially the same thing, and gladly defer to their work as it makes a great reference when considering what will work best in your situation.

The only service not on there that I was going to include was Adobe Revel:

  • Free Apps for OS X, iOS (Universal) and web (no editing)
  • Free tier: 50 photos/month paid tier: $5.99/month unlimited
  • JPEG only

The answer is that there is no simple answer to photo management, backup and syncing. Depending on which platforms you use, what kind of photos you shoot, how you use or share them, and what you’re willing to spend will all factor into what works best for you.

The bigger question is this: who will solve the photo problem? The idea of keeping things in sync and backed up has been solved for documents (Dropbox, et al). It has been solved for music (Spotify, et al). Who will solve this for photos, and what will that solution look like? There’s like this Maslow’s hierarchy of storage needs and photos are the next step in achieving digital self-actualization. The solution is not yet clear, but the topic is growing in conversation as more people are talking and writing about it. Right now, it seems like most companies are hoping they can say “someone else beat me to it.”

iTunes Store Suggestions

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One of the nice features in the iTunes Store is Complete My Album. This feature allows you to apply the credit of a previously purchased track to the price of the parent album. This is a uniquely digital feature that physical media can not easily, if at all, replicate. Expanding this program in two ways would be a great way to drive digital sales on the iTunes Store.

First, add the ability to Upgrade My Album. For instance, there are a number of albums that have been rereleased as Remastered for iTunes. It would be great to have the ability to apply the purchase credit from the original version to the remastered version. True, in the greater Mac and iOS App Stores, Apple has never allowed upgrade pricing; however, precedent has already been set with the CMA offer and the ability to upgrade from a regular track to the iTunes Plus version. Ideally, at some point in the future iTunes will also offer upgraded tracks in the form of high bit rates; maybe even lossless.

Second, and more importantly, iTunes should add* expand the ability to Complete My Season (or Series); apply credit towards the purchase of a whole season with the purchase of individual episodes. This way, if you own episodes from an particular season, you could apply that credit towards the purchase of the entire season. More aggressive pricing on prior seasons wouldn’t hurt here either (I am looking at you, studios); perhaps discount prior seasons more or offer steep discounts when upgrading from a complete season to the complete series. For example, Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series is $210 for seasons 1-5 on iTunes. That same content is $84 for the DVDs. Battlestar Galactica has individual seasons 1-4 available for $155, or the complete series in volumes one and two for $100. A great option, but unhelpful if you wanted to apply the credit for owning season two to the purchase of the series volume one. Another example: Star Trek Into Darkness was just released early on the iTunes Store, which is great … except that there were two versions: the standalone movie and a bundle with the prior Star Trek (2009) at a steep discount. Unfortunately, there is no way to upgrade or complete that bundle aside from repurchasing Into Darkness a second time.

Third, how about adding the ability to Purchase My Rental. For instance, if I rent a movie for $4.99 from iTunes and I like it, what are my buying options? I can pay another $19.99 in the iTunes Store, another digital storefront or, purchase the DVD for most likely less than that. Why not allow the rental price to be deducted from the purchase price of the movie? This ability would provide a much higher incentive to purchase from the iTunes store.

In summary, Complete My Album is a great advantage iTunes has over other forms of media and competitors’ digital storefronts. Apple could expand this advantage — and should do so — by adding the ability to Upgrade My Album, Complete My Season (or Series) and Purchase My Rental. These would be fantastic feature additions to the store and create a better customer experience.

*UPDATE*

As it turns out, iTunes has offered Complete My Season for at least a year. Still, I’d like to see the program expanded to include more, such as SD to HD and the afore mentioned season to series upgrades.

Death’s Accountant

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“With this vocation, it seems, comes a nearly bottomless capacity for self-examination. Feinberg has written books and delivered commencement speeches on the principles of victim compensation, on the value of a life. He has a singular perspective on how our society chooses—or declines—to take care of its own. And it has left him troubled.“

Talk about possessing a particular set of skills. Jim Oliphant profiles Ken Feinberg, a man with a unique career to say the least.

Returning To Form

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As Anandtech has reported on in the past, the SATA standard has failed to keep up to date in both maximum bandwidth and form factor. This led to situations like the Macbook Air and its proprietary PCIe SSD and the earlier Toshiba Blade SSD variations that made aftermarket repairs and upgrades of these systems difficult and expensive.

Enter the SATA IO and revision 3.2:

  • SATA Express (PCIe 3.0 @ 2GB/s)
  • M.2 (Sub-2.5″ HDD form factor)
  • USM Slim (Even smaller form factor standard)
  • DevSleep (Power management for improved battery life)

Hurray international standards organizations. Now to encourage all of the companies that struck out on their own to come back to an industry standard storage drive.

Parallels Debuts New iOS App

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Parallels announces Access: their vision for a better remote desktop experience on iPad.

I am curious if we could see a new trend– putting that old PC or Mac to use as a sort of home server that handles media streaming, gaming (see Nvidia Shield Play PC Beta) and remote desktop. With the new Airplay Display in Mavericks perhaps Apple could should be pursuing a new kind of Mac OS X/ iOS integration like what Parallels and Nvidia are doing.

Let’s just all agree not to encourage the use of bad marketing terms (I’m looking at you ‘applify’).

Mac Mini Speculation

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The Mac mini has seen just two form factors since its introduction in 2005. I think we could see the third this fall.

The mini serves many roles thanks to its price and size: as the gateway Mac for curious developers and switchers; as a entry-level server; as a media center; as an efficient desktop client; as the “insert your application here” device. The adaptability of the mini has led to a healthy aftermarket of accessories and amazing resale value.

The basic formula for a Mac mini has historically been to reconfigure the logic board and hard drive (and optical drive back when they where standard) of the entry-level portable system into the smallest possible package. This contrasts with basic, entry-level, cost conscious PC systems which rely on the ATX standard and are mostly empty space on the inside.

For the third revision to the Mac mini package, I think we’ve already seen the future in recent revisions of the Airport Extreme and Airport Time Capsule. The rounded square base and extruded body design started with the second generation Apple TV in 2010, followed by the Airport Express in 2012 and the rest of the Airport family in 2013.

Imagine this new mini housed in an extruded black plastic polycarbonate enclosure the size and shape of the Airport Time Capsule with these specs:

  • 1.7GHz Dual Core i5 (Optional 2.2GHz Quad Core i7)
  • 128GB PCIe storage (optional up to 512GB)
  • 4GB DDR3 (optional up to 16GB, non user upgradable)
  • Intel HD 5000 Graphics (Supports one 4K display)
  • 802.11ac / Bluetooth 4.0
  • Built in speaker
  • Built in power supply

For the port selection, I imagine something like this:

  • Headphone port
  • SDXC card slot
  • Three USB 3 ports
  • Two Thunderbolt ports
  • Gigabit Ethernet port
  • Power
  • Power Button

Wildcard factors:

  • Accelerometer to light up the ports when the system is turned, like the soon to be released Mac Pro
  • Second internal drive bay for fusion drive (2.5″ SATA) or a second PCIe drive
  • Possibility that a 47w Core i7 could be too much heat for the form factor
  • Retaining a dedicated video port such as HDMI
  • Retaining an IR receiver
  • Vertical space limiting number of ports
  • Could use SODIMMs instead of soldering on LPDDR3
  • Costs for logic board could be prohibitive
  • Availability and cost of Falcon Ridge Thunderbolt 2

This redesign could happen soon, say the fall time frame shipping in time for the Holidays. Given that it has taken three years since the second generation Apple TV was introduced to adapt the Airport family it could also take more time (say 12 months or more) to ship a redesigned mini. As with any speculation, it could also be fantastically wrong– that’s the fun.

iOS Mail Suggestion

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It would be great to manage ‘out of office’ notifications on your iOS device.

From a business customers perspective, this would be another incremental feature that enhances the functionality for those using their iPhones and iPads for corporate work.

For the average consumer, this would be a handy setting to have, even on iCloud email accounts. Maybe you are traveling internationally, or just turning your device off for the weekend- either way, it would be a convenient addition to iOS.

An Offer You Can Not Refuse

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“In general, you needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence.“

Eye opening article by Sarah Stillman for The New Yorker about the abusive convenient use of civil forfeiture by law enforcement around the country. Scary.

Could partially explain this recent story of Nebraska seizing over a million during a traffic stop, on the assumption it was drug money.