Tidbits

Apple subsidiary Claris brought FileMaker Pro 1.0 on the market twenty years ago, but even that 1.0 version was several years into the story of FileMaker, the quintessentially Mac-like database tool that gave ordinary computer users an easy interface for making and maintaining databases. FileMaker Inc.'s recent release of its FileMaker Pro 11 suite of products marks the addition of welcome capabilities while retaining the software's trademark elegance.

We'll start with the great news that FileMaker Pro 11 for Mac is finally a purely Cocoa-based application, rather than the Carbon & Cocoa hybrid of FileMaker Pro 10 and the Carbon architecture of a few versions before that. This change sounds fairly geeky, and indeed it's one of those under-the-hood things most users will never notice, but it offers the potential for better performance, stability, and compatibility with future versions of Mac OS X. (The company simultaneously released Windows versions of the cross-platform FileMaker Pro products, but we'll leave discussing those to others.)

FileMaker Pro 11 also ships with a larger variety of premade templates to get users started, and FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced, geared more toward developers, offers an improved custom menu interface and improved script debugging.

Four new capabilities in FileMaker Pro 11 I'd like to focus on are a new charting feature; a scriptable QuickFind tool that acts like the search capabilities of iTunes and Mail; a "Snapshot Link" means of handing another user a particular view of your data; and automatic recurring import, perfect for working with external data that might change.

Charts -- One feature with broad appeal is the new charting capability built into FileMaker Pro 11. Charting has long been largely limited to spreadsheet applications, which means until now, FileMaker users have had to export their data and import it into Excel in order to produce even a simple pie chart. FileMaker Pro 11's new charting and reporting features work throughout the application; a chart that's always based on the latest data can be added to any layout, and it can feature information from any data field or take full advantage of FileMaker's calculation engine.

QuickFind -- It's hard to remember a time before iTunes, Mail, and every Web browser on the planet gained that ubiquitous search field in the top right corner of its window, but previous versions of FileMaker Pro still required the user to specify an individual field to search. Now, this QuickFind search field helps users search throughout the database.

Snapshot Link -- We're intrigued by the countless potential uses for this feature, which allows FileMaker Pro 11 users to send a colleague a specific view of the database, displaying specific selected records in a particular layout, for example. While it's long been possible to send a colleague a PDF showing data in a specific format, this new Snapshot Link feature is actually a view of the database itself, and recipients with sufficient privileges can update the live data, modify the search, and so on. Unlike with a PDF, of course, the recipient won't be able to view the data if he or she isn't both online and authorized to access the database.

Automatic Recurring Import -- This new "recurring import" capability allows FileMaker Pro 11 to work with the contents of an external file, such as a separate database or a spreadsheet, and automatically recognize any changes to that data. The example the FileMaker folks gave us was an external spreadsheet of county sales tax rates; a customer invoice database could refer to that spreadsheet to look up the sales tax rate for a given customer each time an invoice is created. Since sales tax rates can change, keeping this data separate works well.

Pricing and Upgrades -- The software is available now, at $299 for FileMaker Pro 11, $499 for FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced, $999 for FileMaker Server 11, and $2,999 for FileMaker Server 11 Advanced. Upgrade pricing is available for licensed users of Filemaker 9 and 10 users, and, for those still using FileMaker 8 and 8.5, through 23 September 2010. Upgrades cost $179 for FileMaker Pro, $299 for FileMaker Pro Advanced, $599 for FileMaker Server, and $1,799 for FileMaker Server Advanced.

 

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WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
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Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>   Copyright © 2010 Mark H. Anbinder. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

The iPad hasn't even shipped yet, but the discovery by AppleInsider of a battery-replacement FAQ entry covering the iPad has led to a spate of articles about the topic. Instead of replacing the battery in an iPad which can't hold enough of a charge, Apple wants you to replace the entire iPad with a new unit - potentially a refurbished, previously owned model.

But the stories leave the implication that any lag in the battery is your trouble. You pay $105.95 for the swap ($99 for the hardware and $6.95 to cover shipping in both directions; tax is extra where required). This New York Times blog entry, for instance, doesn't mention an important factor: included and extended warranty coverage.

Adding to the confusion is language found in the basic iPad warranty, which you can download as a PDF, included with its purchase price. That warranty states:

This warranty does not apply: (a) to consumable parts, such as batteries, or protective coatings designed to diminish over time unless failure has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship...

That contrasts with the language in the AppleCare Protection Plan's contract, which is a bit difficult to find. Purchasing an AppleCare contract for $99 extends the one-year hardware coverage included with the iPad to two years. and provides that much more explicit language. (It also increases the 90 days of telephone support that's free with an iPad purchase to a full two years.)

If you visit the Apple Store, and click through to pre-order an iPad, then expand the AppleCare section's Learn More link, you see the following linked as a footnote to the Apple Hardware Coverage list:

Service coverage is available for battery depletion of 50 percent or more from the original specification.

Similar text is found in the actual AppleCare Terms and Conditions PDF:

Apple will, at its option, repair or replace the affected Covered Equipment, if (i) during the Repair Coverage Period there is a defect in the Covered Equipment's materials or workmanship or, (ii) during the Coverage Period, the capacity of the Covered Equipment’s battery to hold an electrical charge has depleted fifty (50%) percent or more from its original specification, (after being fully charged and the Covered Equipment playing audio or video with all settings reset).

Now, does that mean that within one year of purchase with a regular warranty, a battery that can't hold 50 percent of its original charge isn't defective? That's hard to imagine, and we've already seen that Apple is ready to replace poorly charging iPhone and iPod touch batteries within the regular warranty period.

The AppleCare offer seems to go beyond normal malfunction though, and provide for replacement when a battery doesn't hold up to heavy wear and tear within two years.

I have a query into Apple to see if we can get a clarification about the one-year included warranty, but it doesn't seem likely, given the statements about defects and the fact that individual states in the United States enforce warranty conditions that Apple would try to be cute about this. The firm went through enough battery lawsuits, negative publicity and settlements or extended-repair programs with iPods and MacBooks, I would think.

Friend-of-TidBITS Jeff Porten writes over at Macworld that he estimates 400 to 500 recharge cycles before an iPad battery starts to show degradation based on information provided by Apple - about three years of significant use.

That degraded level might start to be noticeable when the iPad holds just 80 to 90 percent. It could be further years before the iPad gets to the warranty-supported 50 percent level, at which point you will be well out of even AppleCare coverage.

At that point, paying $105.95 (if that's still the charge) to refresh the iPad's utility may not seem like a horrible price to pay.

As with the iPhone, I suspect that most problems with the sealed battery will occur well within the first year of use. The fears of non-user-swappable batteries appears to have far exceeded the reality of problems.

 

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WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
Create a complete social network with your company or group's
own look. Scalable, extensible and extremely customizable.
Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>   Copyright © 2010 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Daring Fireball's John Gruber had a hard drive develop mechanical issues that prevented it from booting his laptop. Between Super Duper, Dropbox, and Disk Warrior, he didn't lose a single thing. He details his strategy, and advice for achieving the same results.

 

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CrashPlan is easy, secure backup that works everywhere. Back up
to your own drives, computers, and online with unlimited storage.
With unlimited online backup, this is one resolution you can keep.
Back Up Your Life Today! <http://crashplan.com/ref/tidbits.html>   Copyright © 2010 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Several years ago, we ran a DealBITS drawing for a then-new time-tracking and invoicing program for freelancers and small businesses called Billable from indie software house Clickable Bliss (see "DealBITS Drawing: Billable," 29 January 2007). Clickable Bliss's Mike Zornek has been hard at work on the program in the intervening years, and along with adding oodles of features to the 2.0 version, he has renamed the program ProfitTrain. It now supports multiple businesses, lets you create invoices based either on completed tasks or line items that you enter manually, stores recurring services and products to add to invoices, allows bidding via an "estimate" invoice status, tracks expenses to be included in invoices, provides for full or partial payment, includes built-in reports, and much more. ProfitTrain is definitely worth a look for any Mac user who runs a client-based business.

This week we're giving away four copies of ProfitTrain 2.0, each worth $49.95, so if you need a better way to track your hours and invoice your clients, be sure to enter at the DealBITS page. All information gathered is covered by our comprehensive privacy policy. Remember too, that if someone you refer to this drawing wins, you'll receive the same prize as a reward for spreading the word.

 

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CrashPlan is easy, secure backup that works everywhere. Back up
to your own drives, computers, and online with unlimited storage.
With unlimited online backup, this is one resolution you can keep.
Back Up Your Life Today! <http://crashplan.com/ref/tidbits.html>   Copyright © 2010 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

VMware Fusion 3.1 Beta -- VMware has released a new public beta of the company's virtualization software for the Mac, VMware Fusion. Version 3.1 Beta significantly improves graphics performance via OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, along with performance improvements for both DirectX 9.0 SM3 and Windows Aero. Additionally, it makes it easier to connect USB devices to your virtual machine with the new EasyConnect feature, extends support for virtual hard disks up to 2 TB, resolves an issue that created multiple Boot Camp entries in the library of the virtual machine, and displays your migration status when migrating from a PC. The update, whose release notes are available from VMware's Web site, also fixes over 200 bugs.

Keep in mind that this is beta software and is thus prone to buggy behavior; you may want to avoid using it for any essential tasks. Also note that downloading version 3.1 will overwrite your current version; reverting to an earlier version of Fusion will require reinstallation.

Read/post comments about VMware Fusion 3.1 Beta.

Things 1.3 -- Busy people take notice: the latest version of Cultured Code's popular task manager Things is now available and comes with a big functionality boost. Version 1.3 brings a new Mixed Projects feature, enabling users to work with projects that have active, inactive, and scheduled to-dos all at once, something that wasn't previously possible. In addition to lending the program greater flexibility, the Cultured Code blog notes that Mixed Projects was added with an eye towards cloud-syncing capabilities in the future. The update also addresses an issue that could cause Things to launch with a blank interface, fixes a bug that prevented Help menus from being displayed, and makes several minor improvements to unspecified localizations. ($49.95, free upgrade, 8.7 MB)

Read/post comments about Things 1.3.

MainStage 2.1.1 -- Gigging musicians will be pleased to hear that Apple has updated MainStage, the live performance program that's part of Logic Studio. Version 2.1.1 provides over 40 minor bug fixes and performance tweaks, including enhanced support for 32-bit Audio Unit Bridge plug-ins, improved stability when changing or removing audio devices, and the resolution of a bug that caused audio output loss when the user enabled "Display audio engine overload" messages. The update also improves screen controls in several areas, increases the reliability of number keys acting as command triggers, and restores proper behavior to several aspects of the Loopback plug-in. The lengthy release notes are available in a Knowledge Base article on Apple's Web site. The hefty update is available via Software Update and Apple's Support Downloads page. (Free, 207 MB)

Read/post comments about MainStage 2.1.1.

LogMeIn Pro2 -- It has been several years since LogMeIn first brought its remote control software LogMeIn Free to the Mac (see "LogMeIn for Mac Released," 4 December 2007). While LogMeIn Free remains available, the company has recently released LogMeIn Pro2 for the Mac with significant additional features. LogMeIn Pro2 adds secure file transfer and sharing capabilities, folder synchronization, desktop sharing on demand, and remote-to-local printing. It also expands browser support to include 64-bit Safari, improves access to remote control settings, and enhances performance speeds (these secondary features are also now available in the free version). ($69.95 per year, multi-computer discounts available)

Read/post comments about LogMeIn Pro2.

Safari 4.0.5 -- Apple has released Safari 4.0.5, an update for Mac OS X and Windows that addresses several items. On the surface, the new version improves performance of the Top Sites feature; improves stability when running third-party plug-ins and Web sites with online forms and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images; and now works to configure settings of some Linksys routers that were problematic. Under the hood, Safari 4.0.5 addresses lots of security issues, mostly adjusting WebKit to deal with malicious Web sites, but also processing images under Windows. The update requires Mac OS X 10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X 10.5.8, Mac OS X 10.4.11, or Windows 7, Vista, or XP. (Free, 30.52 MB for Snow Leopard, 38.59 MB for Leopard, 26.78 MB for Tiger, 30.18 MB for Windows)

Read/post comments about Safari 4.0.5.

TextExpander 3.0 -- Want to use a text expansion utility to save typing cumbersome phrases but dislike switching programs to create snippets? The new TextExpander 3.0 from SmileOnMyMac adds a hotkey combination that opens a quick entry window for snippet creation, and another hotkey lets you edit the last-expanded snippet, making it easier to update one that's no longer quite right. Other new features in TextExpander include "fill-in" snippets that can prompt you for additional text to be entered manually, new options for finding snippets in your collection, and snippet syncing via both MobileMe and Dropbox. Minor changes include the capability to insert Tab and Return characters in snippets, correction of accidental double-capitalizations at the start of sentences, automatic updates via Sparkle, and more. Finally, TextExpander 3 is now a full-fledged application rather than a preference pane. ($34.95 new, $15 upgrade, free for those who purchased after 1 November 2009, 4.5 MB)

Read/post comments about TextExpander 3.0.

 

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WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
Create a complete social network with your company or group's
own look. Scalable, extensible and extremely customizable.
Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>   Copyright © 2010 TidBITS Staff. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

VMware has released a new public beta of the company's virtualization software for the Mac, VMware Fusion. Version 3.1 Beta significantly improves graphics performance via OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, along with performance improvements for both DirectX 9.0 SM3 and Windows Aero. Additionally, it makes it easier to connect USB devices to your virtual machine with the new EasyConnect feature, extends support for virtual hard disks up to 2 TB, resolves an issue that created multiple Boot Camp entries in the library of the virtual machine, and displays your migration status when migrating from a PC. The update, whose release notes are available from VMware's Web site, also fixes over 200 bugs.

Keep in mind that this is beta software and is thus prone to buggy behavior; you may want to avoid using it for any essential tasks. Also note that downloading version 3.1 will overwrite your current version; reverting to an earlier version of Fusion will require reinstallation.

 

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CrashPlan is easy, secure backup that works everywhere. Back up
to your own drives, computers, and online with unlimited storage.
With unlimited online backup, this is one resolution you can keep.
Back Up Your Life Today! <http://crashplan.com/ref/tidbits.html>   Copyright © 2010 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Busy people take notice: the latest version of Cultured Code's popular task manager Things is now available and comes with a big functionality boost. Version 1.3 brings a new Mixed Projects feature, enabling users to work with projects that have active, inactive, and scheduled to-dos all at once, something that wasn't previously possible. In addition to lending the program greater flexibility, the Cultured Code blog notes that Mixed Projects was added with an eye towards cloud-syncing capabilities in the future. The update also addresses an issue that could cause Things to launch with a blank interface, fixes a bug that prevented Help menus from being displayed, and makes several minor improvements to unspecified localizations. ($49.95, free upgrade, 8.7 MB)

 

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READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Charles L. Peck II, Joe Outlaw,
Jack Albright, and Nancy C. Toothman for their generous support!   Copyright © 2010 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Gigging musicians will be pleased to hear that Apple has updated MainStage, the live performance program that's part of Logic Studio. Version 2.1.1 provides over 40 minor bug fixes and performance tweaks, including enhanced support for 32-bit Audio Unit Bridge plug-ins, improved stability when changing or removing audio devices, and the resolution of a bug that caused audio output loss when the user enabled "Display audio engine overload" messages. The update also improves screen controls in several areas, increases the reliability of number keys acting as command triggers, and restores proper behavior to several aspects of the Loopback plug-in. The lengthy release notes are available in a Knowledge Base article on Apple's Web site. The hefty update is available via Software Update and Apple's Support Downloads page. (Free, 207 MB)

 

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READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Charles L. Peck II, Joe Outlaw,
Jack Albright, and Nancy C. Toothman for their generous support!   Copyright © 2010 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

It has been several years since LogMeIn first brought its remote control software LogMeIn Free to the Mac (see "LogMeIn for Mac Released," 4 December 2007). While LogMeIn Free remains available, the company has recently released LogMeIn Pro2 for the Mac with significant additional features. LogMeIn Pro2 adds secure file transfer and sharing capabilities, folder synchronization, desktop sharing on demand, and remote-to-local printing. It also expands browser support to include 64-bit Safari, improves access to remote control settings, and enhances performance speeds (these secondary features are also now available in the free version). ($69.95 per year, multi-computer discounts available)

 

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READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Charles L. Peck II, Joe Outlaw,
Jack Albright, and Nancy C. Toothman for their generous support!   Copyright © 2010 Doug McLean. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Apple has released Safari 4.0.5, an update for Mac OS X and Windows that addresses several items. On the surface, the new version improves performance of the Top Sites feature; improves stability when running third-party plug-ins and Web sites with online forms and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images; and now works to configure settings of some Linksys routers that were problematic. Under the hood, Safari 4.0.5 addresses lots of security issues, mostly adjusting WebKit to deal with malicious Web sites, but also processing images under Windows. The update requires Mac OS X 10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X 10.5.8, Mac OS X 10.4.11, or Windows 7, Vista, or XP. (Free, 30.52 MB for Snow Leopard, 38.59 MB for Leopard, 26.78 MB for Tiger, 30.18 MB for Windows)

 

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READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Charles L. Peck II, Joe Outlaw,
Jack Albright, and Nancy C. Toothman for their generous support!   Copyright © 2010 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Our extracurricular reading this week was all about Apple, with the New York Times examining the Apple/Google rift, the EFF taking a close read on Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, and usability guru Jakob Nielsen criticizing how iTunes handles app updates.

New York Times Examines the Apple/Google Rift -- The New York Times has a lengthy article laying out the history of the relationship between Apple and Google, which started close but has now developed schisms due to the huge differences in corporate approaches and increasingly competitive products. Apple prefers proprietary systems and tight control over high margin products, whereas Google's goal is to increase Web usage (and thus ad revenue) via free services and open-source software. It's the iPhone OS versus Android, Mac OS X versus Chrome OS, Safari versus Chrome, and Apple's Quattro acquisition versus Google's AdMob buy. All that, and the competition between the companies is just starting to heat up.

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EFF Examines iPhone Developer License Agreement -- Alongside Apple's undeniable success with the iPhone App Store have been the near-constant stories of app rejections for dubious or entirely bogus reasons (to be fair, most rejections are entirely legitimate). But what gives Apple the right to reject or even remove apps? The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, to which all iPhone developers must agree, that's what. The EFF has now acquired copies of the agreement and analyzed some of the more troubling clauses. Would they stand up in court? There's no way to know until someone sues Apple.

Read/post comments

Jakob Nielsen Criticizes iTunes App Update Interface -- Usability guru Jakob Nielsen devoted his Alertbox post this week to showing how interfaces can become confusing if elements like buttons and checkboxes are too far away from the objects they act on, using the iPhone app updating interface in iTunes as an example. Our take is that the overall mistake here is that Apple is relying on iTunes for too many unrelated tasks that call out for different interface approaches.

Read/post comments

 

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Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 9.3 -- A burly upgrade with new
Sleep command, LassoScript support, plus enhancements to Projects
and core features like Find and Multi-File Search windows,
editing in browsers, and text completion. <http://barebones.com/>   Copyright © 2010 TidBITS Staff. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

The New York Times has a lengthy article laying out the history of the relationship between Apple and Google, which started close but has now developed schisms due to the huge differences in corporate approaches and increasingly competitive products. Apple prefers proprietary systems and tight control over high margin products, whereas Google's goal is to increase Web usage (and thus ad revenue) via free services and open source software. It's the iPhone OS versus Android, Mac OS X versus Chrome OS, Safari versus Chrome, and Apple's Quattro acquisition versus Google's AdMob buy. All that, and the competition between the companies is just starting to heat up.

 

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THE MISSING SYNC FOR iPHONE: Sync notes, tasks, files and
documents between your iPhone or iPod touch and a Mac. The
Missing Sync for iPhone provides two-way syncing over Wi-Fi.
Learn more - <http://www.markspace.com/bits>   Copyright © 2010 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Those of us who have had regular jobs know the joy of the bonus, a reward for working hard and producing results. Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook found a little something extra in his pay envelope on 10 March 2010: $5 million plus 75,000 restricted shares of stock worth $17 million at today's prices.

Cook was rewarded for "outstanding performance in assuming the day-to-day operations of the Company for the period in fiscal 2009 during which Mr. Jobs was on medical leave of absence," according to an SEC filing by Apple. The stock grants are in two even pieces that can't be sold for one and two years as long as Cook is still employed on those dates.

Many executives at companies large and small are compensated far beyond the value to investors. I'm a great fan of Nell Minow, who has for the last 11 years documented at Corporate Library excessive and secret corporate payouts to underperforming leaders.

But Cook seems to deserve this one (I'm not a shareholder, and so the disbursement doesn't affect me directly). Cook was in charge of Apple for the first half of 2009, and the company didn't appear to suffer at all, despite handwringing by pundits who thought Jobs had the golden product-laying goose in his carry-on luggage.

The stock was around $100 per share near the end of 2008 and into 2009; it closed at $224.84 on the day Cook's shares were awarded. Company revenue and earnings were remarkable in the fiscal quarter ending in January 2010 (which included the holiday season). Apple increased revenue 32 percent over the year-ago quarter, and profit was up 50 percent. Apple has $40 billion in cash and short-term investments.

The company's market capitalization - stock price multiplied by shares outstanding - is over $200 billion, which means shareholders' stake in the firm has grown by about $115 billion in the last 14 months. Cook's bonus is two-tenths of one percent of that increase.

The restricted stock is also a tiny set of handcuffs to keep Cook at the company, and could be worth much more than the $17 million the shares would sell for today. Two years ago, Cook exercised 300,000 options and sold them for around $140 per share, reaping about $40 million. Records show he retained just 14,000 shares in the company before this new, restricted grant.

 

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Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2008.
Is your Office up-to-date? Make sure you're running the latest
versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage by choosing
Check for Updates from the Help menu of any Office application!   Copyright © 2010 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

If you're getting twitchy waiting for Apple to start accepting pre-orders for the iPad, it's time to set your alarm. According to an email from Apple, "customers can pre-order online at www.apple.com at 5:30 AM Pacific time on Friday, March 12."

Pre-orders are being taken for United States purchases of both the Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi and 3G iPad models; Apple said the Wi-Fi only version will ship 3 April 2010. The U.S. 3G and international Wi-Fi and 3G models follow in "late April" in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Apple hasn't yet disclosed non-U.S. pricing.

For more TidBITS coverage on the iPad from the unveiling, read "The iPad Arrives," 27 January 2010, and "Hands-on Impressions of the iPad," 29 January 2010.

We anticipate that at least the initial demand for iPads will be high - I and my West Coast colleagues will be getting up early to ensure we're nearly first in the virtual line.

 

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Fetch Softworks: Fetch 5.5 has new support for Mac OS X
10.5 Leopard technologies like Quick Look. And you can
upload with the oldest technology of all, Copy and Paste!
Download your free trial version! <http://fetchsoftworks.com/>   Copyright © 2010 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

I really wanted to like Google Wave. But after several months of attempting to use it in a variety of ways, I've come to the conclusion that the current incarnation of Google Wave is too fundamentally flawed to be useful. That said, Google has made it very clear that Google Wave is still in preview release, so I hold out hope that Google will radically revamp the service. I think Google is aware of these issues, since a Feedback survey link just appeared in Google Wave itself, and many of the questions seem to acknowledge that users are wildly unhappy.

Here are the things I attempted to do in Google Wave, all with some level of frustration and relatively little overall success.

Basic Communication -- Google Wave is often put forth as a rethinking of Internet communication, a mashup of email, instant messaging, and more. It's difficult to test Google Wave in this way, however, for the simple reason that it's not email, and it's not instant messaging. Everyone with whom you want to communicate must have a Google Wave account, and although those with Google Wave accounts are given invitations to hand out to friends and colleagues, the fact remains that most of the people you're likely to want to communicate with are not using Google Wave now. As a result, you'll never think of using Google Wave as a way of contacting someone.

Worse, my experience is that even tech-savvy people like those I work with seem generally dubious of Google Wave, and that's even before they've gotten into the system. Getting someone signed up with Google Wave is often an exercise in hair-pulling frustration requiring multiple back-and-forth email messages as you send an invitation, request their Google Wave account information (which is a pseudo email address @googlewave.com, not any other Google account or email address), add them to a wave, and explain some of the basics of using Google Wave. And again, these frustrations occurred when working with some extremely savvy tech writers and programmers, not everyday users.

The next problem, also related to the fact that people aren't already using Google Wave in a big way, is that essentially no one checks their Google Wave account regularly for new waves or replies. So you can't guarantee that anyone will even notice communication happening in Google Wave. For a while, I worked around that with an extension that people could use to request email-based notifications of changes; now Google has announced that it's building email notifications into Google Wave itself.

The other workaround is to use a program like Waveboard (see "Catch a Google Wave with Waveboard," 30 October 2009), which adds a variety of local notification methods, including Growl, Dock icon badges, and more. But still, convincing someone to use Waveboard and keep it running all the time for Google Wave is an exercise in futility.

One last concern - although you can mark waves as being public and thus available for anyone with a Google Wave account to see and comment on, that struck me as just weird. I can't see Google Wave as a publishing system like a blog or even Twitter; it just seemed too random for that since there isn't the context of a blog, which generally revolves around a topic or a person or an organization, or the implied personal context of Twitter, where people follow those who have interesting things to say. Neither email nor instant messaging have this concept of public posting to an entirely random audience, and without some major changes, Google Wave's approach is inherently confusing and unsatisfying.

Group Planning -- At Macworld Expo in San Francisco last month, I moderated a panel on email clients. For that, I needed to explain to all my panelists what the panel would be about, how I was planning to organize it, and what I expected of them, besides their usual scintillating conversational skills. Such discussions normally take place in email, but in my experience, they often quickly derail, such that one aspect of the discussion receives disproportionate attention, and the rest are largely ignored. Also, because the conversation happens months in advance, as the date approaches, it can be difficult to recall what was decided.

So I decided to hold the conversation in Google Wave, figuring that it would serve as a semi-permanent record of what was said, presenting all my points at all times, rather than letting my panelists focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others.

This was perhaps the most successful of my Google Wave experiments, since everyone got in there and read what I wrote, at least at first, and there was some discussion that helped me refine my approach to the session. But after the initial chatter died down, no one but me visited it again, which emphasizes Google Wave's notification problems, and perhaps points to my desire for a semi-permanent record not being as important as I thought. And, as the date came very close, I still ended up having face-to-face discussions about the session with each panelist individually to make sure we were all on the same page.

In the end, this task could have been handled in email just as well, if not better.

Document Collaboration -- This is a topic near and dear to my heart, since I do an awful lot of collaborating on TidBITS articles, both as a writer and as an editor. The basic approach was simple - I'd start a new wave, paste in the draft of an article, invite reviewers, and then respond as they made comments. At the end of the process, I'd copy the text out of Google Wave (since there's nothing useful you can do with it otherwise).

The theoretical benefit of Google Wave for document collaboration is that everyone in the wave could either make changes directly in the text or could leave comments that could turn into discussions with other reviewers. The concept was great, but it didn't work well in practice.

Although you can edit any part of any wave by double-clicking it and clicking the Edit button in the Reply/Edit lozenge that appears, it's difficult for other people to see the changes you've made. If they're watching in real time as you edit, it's possible to see changes happening, and the other approach is to use Google Wave's playback feature, which steps through the changes each person makes. But that's horribly clumsy, since you have to take a step in the playback, scroll through the document looking for highlighted changes, and then take another step. Since the playback records replies separately from edits, when one reviewer would make some edits, then insert a reply, and then some more edits, and so on, it resulted in many different steps in the playback to consider.

As a result, Google Wave worked acceptably only when the textual changes were minor. If more significant development editing was necessary, its text-handling and author-marking tools simply weren't up to the task. In one case I found myself pulling text out to EtherPad where it was obvious who was making what change.

The replies were troublesome too. If you double-click in the document and click the Reply button in the Reply/Edit lozenge, Google Wave sometimes inserts the reply in the middle of sentences, or between a bullet and its text. The only way to guarantee that a reply follows a paragraph or comes at a certain point is to select some text, double-click the selected text, and then click Reply. I found that I had to explain that technique to everyone I invited to a wave, or risk a significantly more confusing layout.

Another problem with replies is that it's difficult to control whether or not they were hierarchical to one another. In general, if you reply to some text in the initial blip (an excellent name for the units of text in Google Wave, by the way), your reply is indented under that blip, unless your reply comes at the very end of the blip. Replying to a reply generally does not indent your reply, unless you selected some text in the reply first. And it's tremendously easy to create a reply when you don't mean to, or in an incorrect location, forcing you to delete the just-created blip.

The fact that Google Wave shows you when others are typing sounds cool, but was generally irritating, since I could tell what someone was going to say before they finished typing. I ended up responding before they finished, which I'm sure was annoying, but I just couldn't resist. iChat's approach of indicating that someone is typing without actually showing it works better, since then you respond to fully formed thoughts.

Switching back and forth between editing and replying is also cumbersome. There is a keyboard shortcut (Shift-Return) that lets you avoid scrolling to the bottom of a long blip to click the Done button, but even still, switching between editing and replying modes requires conscious thought that's not necessary in most programs that allow editing and commenting, even long-standing ones like Microsoft Word.

Finally, there is no good way to mark replies as having been viewed, so you could avoid seeing them in the future, or to hide them entirely so you could look at the document without them. Once again, Microsoft Word's change tracking and commenting features put others to shame, even if it has no collaboration capabilities at all.

One unexpected positive about using Google Wave for document collaboration was that when I selected the text of an original blip and copied it out to BBEdit, I got only the text of my now-edited draft, not all the interspersed replies. That's what you'd want, of course, but you would have no idea that it's possible without trying it. And, although this worked for me, one other person was completely unable to copy text out at all for reasons we never determined.

In the end, Google Wave proved far more frustrating for document collaboration than Google Docs or EtherPad (now owned by Google too, see "EtherPad Open-Sourced after Google Acquisition," 4 December 2009), or even the venerable QuickTopic Document Review. In Google Docs, editing is much easier, but commenting and discussions are extremely clumsy, and change tracking and versioning aren't great. In EtherPad, change tracking and versioning are generally well done, and discussions can take place outside the document in a separate chat pane. And in QuickTopic Document Review, which we rely on for Take Control ebook technical reviews, commenting is easy, but there's no way to edit at all.

Project Management -- My next attempt was to use Google Wave for project management for our forthcoming account management system. Email was working poorly because if someone disappeared on a different project for a few days, they often had trouble remembering what tasks remained for them to do, or forgot discussions that had taken place much earlier in my project. Plus, as with my group planning experiment, I wanted to create a system where discussions could become detailed on one topic without losing track of others.

To this end, I created a wave shared with Glenn Fleishman, our technical guru, and Adam Khan, our freelance ExpressionEngine developer, and I outlined all the tasks. The idea was that I could create a task and spec out its associated feature in a blip. Then, if Adam or Glenn had questions or comments, they could reply inside that task blip, and I could reply back as well, keeping all the discussion together and coherent.

By this time I had the email notification add-on working, so we could all be alerted when there were changes, which helped keep us all on track. But even with that, I found myself resorting to email to ask how things were going, since there was no way to know if the others were seeing my changes.

The real problem, though, was in overload. The wave ended up with nearly 200 messages by the time we abandoned it, and as you can imagine, there could be many replies under each item. That was fine at first, but as tasks were completed, there was no good way to hide them and their associated discussion. You can delete blips in Google Wave, and you can see the deleted ones in the playback, so they're not lost forever, but since you would be deleting other people's words, it felt wrong to do so. Plus, it was unclear if it would be easy to find something again, once deleted. You can also collapse a thread of replies, but Google Wave wouldn't retain that collapsed state the next time you come in.

And more to the point, there is no real way to assign a task to a particular person (we used initials at the start of the task description), no coherent way to see what needed attention, and no real way to mark a task as completed (we used a checkmark in front of the initials). In other words, it worked, but proved only slightly better than a straight text document in Google Docs. (We've done that too; it's also awkward and painful.)

In the end, we moved the project to a project collaboration site called Manymoon, which has features roughly similar to the popular Basecamp project collaboration site, but which can be used for small stuff like this for free. Manymoon makes it easy to create tasks, assign them to particular people, leave comments on the task (the most important feature, in my experience), notify all members of the project of changes and comments via email, view tasks by user and status, and mark them as done once completed. If you're looking for a project collaboration site, Manymoon is definitely worth a look.

During this process, I tried using Google Wave to manage several other projects where I thought there might be a fair amount of discussion, but in each case, it basically became a roach motel where I stored information and everyone else took one look and ignored it afterwards. Those projects will also be moving to Manymoon at some point; I'm not worried about losing what I did in Google Wave, but I simply can't (and don't want to) force all the parties involved to use it.

Anti-Network Effect -- All things considered, the main problem with Google Wave was that it wasn't compelling enough to create a network effect, where the fact that some people were using it was enough to lure others to use it. In nearly all the cases where I invited someone to a wave, I got some level of pushback, whether or not the person already had a Google Wave account. Since TidBITS relies largely on persuasion rather than commands from on high, the consistent (and considerable) lack of enthusiasm was an insurmountable obstacle.

It seems as though Google may be aware of this problem from the way in which they introduced Google Buzz as part of Gmail, which ensured that Buzz would have vast numbers of users from the beginning. Unfortunately, Google went too far in that direction, since lots of people didn't want Buzz turned on, and vastly more had no idea what it was.

Google should listen to the developers of the recently acquired EtherPad, which did a good job of eliminating the need for accounts, making for a very lightweight system (in EtherPad, the creator of a pad simply shares a URL to the pad via email or instant messaging or any other medium). The ideal middle ground for any system like Google Wave or Google Buzz is to make it dead simple to join without doing anything special or signing up for anything else (just because I might want to use Buzz doesn't mean I want a full Google account) while at the same time making the service sufficiently compelling and viral that people want to sign up in droves. That has worked for Twitter and Facebook, and countless other systems that rely on the network effect. I realize Google Wave is a slightly special case, since it's designed as a protocol and server that could be run by any organization, but even still, it has to be lightweight for adoption to occur.

I'm almost hesitant to make concrete recommendations for Google Wave, since it has seen so few significant changes since its introduction that I wonder if Google isn't working on a major revision behind the scenes. But I think my criticisms above should lend some insight into the kind of changes that would help. Other thoughts:

• Invitations to a wave should be by URL, sent via email or instant messaging or any other means, and if Google Wave wants to make it easier, it should tie into your existing contact list.
• Google Wave shouldn't require an account for those invited to join a wave, and if someone wants to create an account, it should for now be associated with existing Google accounts, and not be entirely separate.
• For those who already use Gmail, Google should think about non-intrusive ways of integrating Google Wave into Gmail to eliminate the notification problem and create a bit more of a network effect. For those not using Gmail, email notification is a must.
• Though seeing people typing in real-time can be useful, the feature should be optional, to allow people to finish a thought before others reply or comment on it.
• The interface for switching between editing and replying needs to be both more obvious and faster, and the constant creation of inadvertent replies should be eliminated.
• Google Wave should remember if you have collapsed a blip and not show it again unless it gets new traffic, or even collapse replies after they're read, just like an email conversation in Gmail. There should also be a way of hiding all replies completely, so an edited document can be read without interruption.
• If Google Wave is to be useful for document collaboration, it has to be able to publish a wave to other formats and mediums, such as email, straight text, RTF, HTML, to a blog post, or to a content management system. Copy-and-paste is not an interface.
• Blips should be allowed to have user-defined metadata like completion status, task assignment, and due dates so Google Wave could become useful for task and project management.

These are relatively minor conceptual changes, though I freely acknowledge that they could require significant architectural and interface modifications. As such, I can't say that I'd be happy to use Google Wave even if Google were to implement all of them, but I'd certainly return with fresh enthusiasm replacing the frustration Google Wave has caused me thus far.

 

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Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2008.
Is your Office up-to-date? Make sure you're running the latest
versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage by choosing
Check for Updates from the Help menu of any Office application!   Copyright © 2010 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Do you remember car-rental firm Avis's ads: "We're number two; we try harder"? Hertz was the big dog, and Avis used this campaign to explain why its service was better, because it had to be.

T-Mobile is in the same boat, except it's number four. Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint Nextel, in that order, are bigger than T-Mobile in terms of subscribers, revenue, and 3G coverage. But the plucky number four is trying to catch up.

I've been following T-Mobile closely because the company is trying to build the fastest and most robust 3G network in the United States, all while keeping its pricing structure competitive with and more flexible than the three dominant carriers. It's in the process of dramatically increasing its already fast network, too, far ahead of its competitors.

T-Mobile may be poised to be an alternative to AT&T, because both firms use the same worldwide GSM standard and the 3G flavors that have emerged from it; Sprint and Verizon chose CDMA, although both are migrating to different technology in future networks.

But T-Mobile has a technical disadvantage that has kept it from being a true alternative from AT&T for the iPhone (jailbroken or unlocked) and that will prevent it from being a choice for the iPad with 3G. (Although it's technically legal to unlock an iPhone, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act seems to make it impossible in fact to unlock one legally.)

T-Mobile's 3G Network -- T-Mobile acquired the spectrum necessary to build a nationwide 3G network only a few years ago, and launched coverage in its first city in early 2008. The company now claims that over 200 million people spread across nearly 300 cities could use its 3G offering. Its three national competitors claim somewhat greater 3G coverage that's available to between 233 and 280 million people out of the total 307 million U.S. residents. (Several smaller carriers, such as MetroPCS, U.S. Cellular, and Cricket Wireless have only regional markets covering several million.)

But by starting from scratch so recently with 3G, T-Mobile hopes to have an advantage. Because the demands on 3G networks were already being understood as T-Mobile planned its build out, the company says it has developed more-robust backhaul - the link from cell towers to the rest of the network. Where AT&T has struggled, T-Mobile claims to have the links in most places at the scale needed to serve the fastest 3G that will be out this year.

AT&T and T-Mobile have both deployed HSPA (High Speed Packet Access), and both started with the 3.6 Mbps downstream flavor and have moved to 7.2 Mbps downstream (often called HSPA 7.2). In contrast, Sprint and Verizon's 3G service uses EVDO Rev. A, which tops out at 3.1 Mbps downstream. (These are the highest possible throughput over the air, and users on average see 20 to 50 percent of that rate with higher bursts.)

But AT&T, despite having put in the software update to make HSPA 7.2 possible, said it's not yet actually offering the higher speed because of limited backhaul. The company plans to roll HSPA 7.2 out on a city-by-city basis as it upgrades base station sites with additional backhaul capacity. In contrast, T-Mobile says it's ready now; some reports claim T-Mobile has fiber and wireless links that provide as much as 20 Mbps per site, which is enough to cover multiple separate channels of 3G in the same location.

This backhaul capacity might give T-Mobile bragging rights. Its 7.2 Mbps network was announced only a few weeks ago, and the latest PCWorld tests conducted by Novarum - a firm I rely on for accurate data about wireless rates - were completed in January 2010.

Where T-Mobile suffers is in the frequencies it uses for 3G. Cell phones come with radio chips that enable them to operate over many different frequencies, because different bands (ranges of frequencies at various points in the radio spectrum) are available to different companies and in different countries.

The iPhone 3GS, for instance, supports several bands for worldwide compatibility without Apple having to create different models: 850, 1900, and 2100 MHz are available for 3G, and 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz for 1G (plain GSM) and 2G (EDGE).

Here's the problem. T-Mobile wasn't able to acquire any of the 1900 MHz band, and uses the 1700 MHz band instead. Further, phones designed for the T-Mobile 3G network send transmissions using 1700 MHz and receive data from the network using 2100 MHz. T-Mobile is nearly unique worldwide in using the 1700 MHz band at all.

AT&T uses either 850 MHz or 1900 MHz for 3G, and sends and receives in the same band. This means that a GSM 3G phone or data device compatible with any other carrier cannot work on T-Mobile's network, and devices intended just for T-Mobile's network won't work on nearly any other network worldwide.

EDGE frequencies are compatible, however. If you buy a 3G iPad and want to use it on T-Mobile's network, and T-Mobile starts producing micro-SIM cards, you could use the network at EDGE speeds, which are typically no faster than about 200 Kbps.

That's a bummer for consumers and T-Mobile, as it means we don't have the compatibility necessary for true unlocked competition between the two GSM carriers in the United States. In most other countries with multiple 3G carriers, frequencies are harmonized, and this won't be an issue.

T-Mobile USB Modem -- That's all technical background, but I gave T-Mobile's USB webConnect modem a workout on a recent trip: my travels to California for the Apple iPad launch. I figured this would be the perfect circumstance, since Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint mobile broadband modems would clog up those networks; T-Mobile was likely to be free and clear.

The modem, made by Huawei, is an attractive stick with support for Mac OS X 10.4 and later, along with several flavors of Windows. It costs $129.99 retail, or $19.99 with a two-year contract. The modem requires a simple software installation of unobtrusive - if not particularly attractive - connection software.

I pre-tested the extent to which it would drain my 2008 MacBook's battery before the trip to the iPad launch to see whether I could get through a two-hour event on a full charge; it looked like I could just squeak through, which turned out to be the case. (I get about the same battery life with Wi-Fi turned on and active, too.)

The USB stick performed admirably during Steve Jobs's talk, while I heard grumbles all around me from users of other 3G networks that were failing under the collective load. Score one for diversity. In testing, I didn't see the faster HSPA 7.2 rates - I tested mostly in January and early February 2010 - but I frequently saw speeds well over 1 Mbps downstream.

T-Mobile's 3G Data Plans -- T-Mobile just put a twist in its service plans on 11 March 2010. It used to charge the same for its highest-level usage plan as its three competitors: $59.99 per month gets you up to 5 GB in combined upload and download usage. Additional megabytes on T-Mobile cost 20 cents each (that works out to $200 per GB), which is substantially higher than competitors.

T-Mobile also offers a lower, lighter-weight usage plan: 200 MB for $29.99 per month, with the same additional per-megabyte fee. Competitors charge $5 or $10 more per month for the same or slightly more data. As I wrote in "Can You Get By with 250 MB of Data Per Month?" (2 February 2010), it's hard to figure out how much data you wind up using. Laptop usage tends to be far higher than the smartphone usage I was tracking. You can check usage directly from within the connection software.

But T-Mobile now charges those monthly rates only if you accept the company's subsidized 3G hardware; those plans also require a two-year contract.

If you pay the $129.99 retail price for its USB modem, a $110 difference from the subsidized price, T-Mobile will let you have a month-by-month 5 GB plan for $49.99 each month, and a 200 MB plan for $19.99 each month. Over two years, that's a $240 price difference on either plan, and you retain the flexibility of not paying for the service when you don't need it.

Unmetered Wi-Fi usage at all of T-Mobile's own and roaming partner hotspots is included with all plans.

T-Mobile also recently became the first carrier to offer a lower monthly data price for the Google Nexus One phone when purchased outright; AT&T and others charge you the same monthly rate whether you own the phone or got a subsidy by signing a two-year contract, while T-Mobile drops the price $20 per month. That's $480 over two years, far more than the difference between the subsidized and unsubsidized rate.

Virgin Mobile Broadband has an interesting alternative to T-Mobile's month-to-month possibility. Despite being owned by Sprint Nextel, Virgin has a distinctly original broadband approach. Buy its $99.99 USB modem (which requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later), and purchase units of access from its Broadband2Go plan. Rates are $10 for use of up to 100 MB within 10 days, or, with a 30-day expiration, pay $20, $40, or $60, for up to 300 MB, 1 GB, or 5 GB, respectively. There are no overage fees; you just buy more units of service.

T-Mobile now beats Virgin Mobile for an unsubsidized plan at the 5 GB level, but Virgin Mobile (using Sprint's network) still has more coverage area. However, T-Mobile charges its 20-cents-per-MB overage for extra usage during any billing period: another 5 GB would be $1,000 on T-Mobile but just $60 with Virgin.

Faster Speeds Ahead -- T-Mobile says it has just begun in its move towards higher speed. In early February 2010, the company announced the commercial rollout of HSPA+, an update to HSPA 7.2 that will offer raw data rates as fast as 21 Mbps.

The company isn't promising specific downstream speeds, but it will likely be possible to get the same range as Clearwire's WiMax service, which, in the limited markets currently served, pumps 3 to 6 Mbps downstream with higher burst rates. Clearwire aims for 120 million people covered by the end of 2010.

For now, T-Mobile's HSPA+ service is available just in Philadelphia, with the upgrades to both coasts coming as we move into spring and summer, and most of T-Mobile's national footprint by the end of 2010. A new HSPA+ modem, the Rocket, was released on 14 March 2010 for $99.99 with a two-year contract (or $199.99 without the contract).

HSPA+ puts T-Mobile at the top of the speed heap, and possibly with the best backhaul among 3G operators. Only further testing will tell. Verizon's next-generation LTE (Long Term Evolution) service - fourth generation or 4G - can deliver 5 to 12 Mbps downstream, but won't be ready until later in 2010. Initial LTE devices will be limited to data adapters; smartphones may not appear until 2012.

Verizon says it will light up 25 to 30 metro areas with LTE in 2010, covering 100 million users, with the rest of its footprint covered by 2013. AT&T will also deploy LTE, but its timetable extends further into the future, with 2011 seeing its first commercial deployment.

The real question will be whether T-Mobile can deliver a service that's enough faster, better, and cheaper than its more heavily used competitors. If so, it could rise from its fourth position to challenge the top contenders.

 

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WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
Create a complete social network with your company or group's
own look. Scalable, extensible and extremely customizable.
Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>   Copyright © 2010 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Engadget posted a leaked photo of a Verizon Wireless marketing campaign that's being prepared to lure early iPad buyers into choosing Verizon over AT&T for 3G service. How so? Verizon offers the MiFi, a wireless router that connects to the Internet over Verizon's 3G network, and then allows up to five devices to piggyback over Wi-Fi.

The MiFi is a nifty device, fitting in a shirt pocket, working off a fully charged internal battery for four hours or indefinitely via an AC adapter.

The problem is the service plan. Verizon requires a two-year commitment from MiFi buyers for either a $39.99 per month plan for 250 MB of combined upstream and downstream usage (and 10 cents per MB above that), or $59.99 per month for 5 GB of combined usage (and 5 cents per MB for overages).

That's far more expensive than the 3G-enabled iPad, which requires no contract commitment, and offers two monthly plans: $14.99 for 250 MB usage per month and $29.99 for unlimited usage. There are no overage charges; instead, the iPad pops up alerts when the 250 MB limit is coming up and offers the user the option of upgrading to the unlimited plan for the rest of that month, a thoroughly rational approach.

Still, it's smart of Verizon to seize the opportunity to show alternatives. I've heard great things about the MiFi because of its flexibility and portability, and the way it gives users a single 3G data plan and hardware device that works with all Wi-Fi-capable laptops and handhelds.

 

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THE MISSING SYNC FOR iPHONE: Sync notes, tasks, files and
documents between your iPhone or iPod touch and a Mac. The
Missing Sync for iPhone provides two-way syncing over Wi-Fi.
Learn more - <http://www.markspace.com/bits>   Copyright © 2010 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

For some years now, I've been using my computer to transfer analog recordings to digital. I started with all my cassette tapes, as they were physically deteriorating as they sat on the shelf. Having completed that task - I no longer have any cassette tapes - I've been transferring a number of vinyl LPs.

It's important to be clear on the reasons for transferring vinyl assets to digital, since they are not deteriorating. It isn't that I think I can improve the sound significantly. It's true that I can remove some of the annoying clicks and pops; but at the same time I'm one of those wacky audiophiles who thinks that vinyl sounds better than any digital derivation. (Compressed music, such as MP3 or AAC, is compressed lossily, and I can hear the loss; and even an uncompressed digital format like AIFF is sampled, and reconstructed during playback, with consequent loss, artifacts, and errors.)

No, I'm transferring vinyl for the clear and sane reason that I rarely play the vinyl, since setting up and attending to the record player is an elaborate business, and each playing wears down the record slightly. Digital music, on the other hand, is readily available and playable at any time, with no adverse effects to the medium. In short, digital is a lot more convenient!

While doing all this transferring, I've often thought of writing a long technical article, perhaps even something of book length, explaining how to do it. But writing such a piece seems like an insane amount of work. Besides, it would be ephemeral, since the technology changes constantly; and it would please no one, since no two people use exactly the same procedure. So I've decided instead to sketch (rather than even describing in detail) the procedure that I'm currently using.

The goal of this procedure, as it has developed over the years, involves keeping costs low and speeds high. I used to spend many days nursing a single recording, but now my priorities are more balanced, and I get results that are good enough in just the hour it takes to record two sides of vinyl and less than a second hour of processing. And although there exists extremely fine audio restoration software costing thousands of dollars, my method is sufficiently effective and suits my budget-conscious temperament.

So I present my procedure, for what it's worth, in case anyone is interested. As I've already said, this presentation deliberately avoids too much detail, since this isn't a book, and makes no pretense to dictate to anyone else, let alone to enter the many realms of technical detail and near-religious controversy. I'm just going to tell you what I am currently doing, along with some of my thoughts about each step.

Externalities -- By "externalities" I mean everything used to play a record (or cassette tape or whatever it is) before digitization. I can't say anything very useful about this part of the process. Your externalities are, in effect, the very same equipment you would use to listen to the material in the first place. Clearly, the better it is, the better the sound will be. If you've been playing records on a super-expensive audiophile turntable with an expensive cartridge and a high-end pre-amp, so much the better; you can use it. If what you've been using is, shall we say, less high-end, you can use that too. My point is that the expense here is essentially zero in any case, since if you can listen to records now, you probably have the equipment you need to digitize them.

In case you don't have that equipment, or you're wondering whether what you already have is sufficient, I'll just quickly sketch the train of musical production. Assuming we're starting with a vinyl LP, there's a turntable, including a cartridge and needle. Then there's a pre-amplifier. This is an important component, for two reasons. First, the signal from a turntable is too weak to feed directly into a computer. Second, the direct signal from an LP is incorrectly equalized; because of the physical (analog) nature of vinyl LPs and turntables, records are made with high frequencies boosted (to help drown out the noise of physical imperfections in the medium) and low frequencies attenuated (to reduce the physical distance the needle must vibrate during playback). A dedicated pre-amp reverses this.

What I use is an old-fashioned standard amplifier that contains a "phono stage." In other words, my pre-amp is a special circuit inside my regular amplifier, that comes into play when I switch the amplifier to "phono." If and when it goes bad, I might have to purchase a dedicated pre-amp costing several hundreds of dollars, but so far that has not been necessary.

In the accelerated transfer procedure I'm describing here, I don't worry about the inexactness of the match between an individual record's built-in equalization and the reverse equalization of the phono stage. (It is likely to be inexact, because the so-called RIAA curve was never a universal standard.) I just take what I get. I can always equalize further, if I like, while listening to the digital transfer.

The question you have to solve is how to get the sound out of your analog equipment and conduct it in the general direction of your computer. The idea is to get electrical signals representing the sound coming down some cables. My stereo amplifier has two holes in the back marked OUT (on other amps they might say TAPE OUT or similar). So I have cables with RCA jacks running out of those holes. If you're not using a standard amplifier, a similar cable might be coming directly out of your pre-amp.

The question now is what to do with the other ends of those cables to get the signal into the computer.

Analog-Digital Conversion -- If you're going to spend a lot of money, this - the moment of analog-digital (A/D) conversion - is the point in the process at which to do it. You could, in theory, stick an RCA-to-1/8 adapter on the end of your cables and plug it directly into the computer's line-in / microphone port, if it has one. But in that case you're asking the computer to use its internal A/D conversion, which is the worst possible quality.

Instead, you want some sort of device that accepts analog signals and transforms them into digital and runs into your computer's USB port - or, in higher-end cases, into a FireWire port. It should be good quality and it should support, at a minimum, a 44.1 kHz sample rate and 24-bit bit rate. (You really want to record in 24-bit if possible, because it provides far better quality than 16-bit and lets you worry less about excessive headroom. More about that later.) Such a device is often termed a "sound card" even though it doesn't look like a card; you might also see the term DAC (for "digital-analog converter").

A visit to a site like Sweetwater will give you a sense of the sort of equipment that's available. Bear in mind that you're going to get what you pay for. Your goal is to refrain from cheaping out completely, while at the same time not spending more than is necessary for your purposes. If you are not also planning on starting up a home sound recording studio, mixing live vocals and instruments and that sort of thing, something like this Tascam device would probably make a good starting place. Obviously you can spend considerably more if you want to. Whatever you're thinking of getting, make very certain there are drivers for your system! Also, if your device is a USB device that draws its power from the USB port, it might be a good idea to invest in an inexpensive powered USB hub, since some computers (especially portables) might not provide enough power direct from a built-in USB port.

Recording -- Once you've run your analog sound into an A/D conversion device and you've set that device as the sound input source on your Mac, you're ready to record. There are three issues here: what format to use; what software to use; and setting your recording levels. The three problems are related and not easy to disentangle, so I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that I use Audio Hijack Pro ($32; see "Why Go Pro (Audio Hijack Pro, That Is)," 24 January 2005), for two main reasons: it is totally reliable, never giving me any latency or skipping problems; and, it permits me to use the free Inspector plug-in, which shows signal strength in real time and tracks headroom so you know if the gain is too loud. However, I'd be failing in my duty if I didn't point out that you could probably do just as well with the freeware Audacity, or even GarageBand, which may well have come with your computer (and there is a splendid Take Control book devoted to the topic of recording with GarageBand).

I record as AIFF in 24-bit with a 44.1 kHz sampling rate; these settings must be made both for the A/D conversion device and for the recording software. Your A/D conversion device should also have volume settings that allow you to set a good level. Your goal is to minimize headroom without clipping.

What I mean is this. Let's assume that your recording consists of both soft and loud sounds. Then the loudest sounds should be close to the 0.0 saturation point without actually reaching or going above it, since a wave peak that exceeds the saturation point is useless because the top is sliced off (clipping). But you don't want to be overly cautious in the other direction, either, since if you never get close to the saturation point - that is, you have too much headroom between the loudest sounds and the saturation point - you are wasting your capabilities, and not getting all the digital information you're entitled to, which can degrade the ultimate quality of the recording.

This is one reason why you really, really should record in 24-bit; those extra bits per sample mean, among other things, that having a little extra headroom is nowhere near as disastrous as it would be when you record in 16-bit, and thus you don't have to be so nervous about it. As a result, instead of recording many takes in an attempt to minimize headroom without clipping, a single recording is usually sufficient.

It's important to understand that not all clipping is bad. If the recording clicks because there is a loud crack or pop on the record, that's completely unimportant. The signal you are trying to capture here is the music. The click is not part of that signal; it's noise, and you're going to remove it later anyway. It's a pity it's there, but it's irrelevant to the business of setting levels. Moreover, if just one or two (or even, say, half a dozen) wave peaks of the music happen to exceed saturation point, that's not important either; you can mend those individual wave peaks later on, and indeed, the fact that this is happening is a good sign, because it means that the rest of your signal is minimizing headroom.

Check Peaks -- Once the recording is made, I open it with Amadeus Pro ($40). This is far and away my waveform editor of choice (see "Amadeus Pro: The Classic Continues," 12 February 2007), and has many analysis and transformation functions that can be useful in this process.

Now we look for clipping. In Amadeus, press Command-Option-P to find a clip. Then move the playhead to the right of the clip and do it again, running through the entire file. As I just said, if a clip is due to an extraneous click on the record (very obvious from its shape), it's fine, and if a clip is an isolated case of one wave peak being too tall, that's fine too, especially if there are only a few such cases in the file. What's bad is a stretch of a dozen saturated peaks in a row. This means the gain was just too high and the entire recording must be made all over again at slightly lower amplification.

Next we fix any clipping we just discovered. Start again at the beginning of the file, and this time, each time you find a clip, select the region around it and choose Effects > Interpolate. Amadeus's wonderful click repair function will remove the click or clipped wave.

At this point I often select the whole file and press Command-Option-P again, which, when there's a selection, means we locate the tallest peak in the selection. If this peak is a click, select it and remove it using Interpolate and start again, until you find the tallest actual wave peak. Now we can judge our headroom. If the tallest wave peak is insufficiently tall (too much headroom), and if this is supposed to be a loud sound, this might be a reason to make the recording again at slightly higher amplification. But if the headroom is pretty good (about -3 db, let's say), I don't get my knickers in a twist. We've recorded in 24-bit, so there's plenty of information present if we want to increase the amplitude artificially later on. On the other hand, if the headroom is significantly more than that, our softest signals may be so diluted with noise that re-recording at higher amplification might be a good idea.

Remove Clicks and Pops -- If the recording is in pretty good shape, so that it has relatively few clicks and pops, I typically use a two-stage process to remove them: I remove very gross clicks semi-manually with Amadeus, and then I use ClickRepair to finish the job automatically.

So, first, I remove the grossest imperfections with Amadeus. Open the Repair Centre window, start at the beginning of the document, set the sensitivity quite low (less than 50 percent), and press N to find the first click. If it is obviously a real click and not a miscalculation - and, at this low sensitivity, it probably will be a real click - press R to repair it. You can repeatedly press N and R to run through the whole document, or if you're fairly confident, press Shift-R ("repair and find next") repeatedly. Unfortunately, Amadeus Pro has no command for continuing through the file in this way automatically (the earlier version of Amadeus did).

After I get to the end of the document in Amadeus, I start at the beginning and do the process again. The reason is that if two clicks are close to one another, one of them will have been missed during the first pass, due to the nature of Amadeus's click-detection algorithm.

We have now removed the grossest clicks and pops, thus paving the way for ClickRepair. So now I save the file and close it, and open it with ClickRepair ($40). This effective and inexpensive program will suppress the smaller clicks and pops. I'm so confident in ClickRepair that I just set it to DeClick about 22 (no higher, or the resulting sound starts to degrade), no DeCrackle, completely Automatic, Pitch Protection on, Wavelet algorithm, and just process the entire file (sound output set to Off).

In the case of a recording that's in quite poor shape, I skip using Amadeus (because even at low sensitivity it finds just too many clicks) and use ClickRepair alone. In this case I might use a setting more like DeClick 22, DeCrackle 10, Pitch Protection off, Wavelet x2 algorithm. This might cause a little additional degradation of the sound, but the extent of the rescue from the scratchy and crackly overlay of the original is simply astounding.

Reduce Surface Noise and Hiss -- The use of ClickRepair in the previous step generated a new file, whose name ends by default with "cr" to distinguish it from the original. We are now going to process this new file with DeNoise ($40), another great program by the author of ClickRepair.

First, however, we must help DeNoise determine the level and nature of the underlying noise. The idea is to select a short stretch of pure surface noise and tell DeNoise to Sample Noise. If your LP recording starts with a blank area between the time the needle hits the record and the time the music starts, you might be able to find and use this area within DeNoise. But I find it easiest to open the file with Amadeus, select this area or some other area between tracks that's empty of any music, and save it off as a separate file. Then I open that file with DeNoise and use it to sample the noise. This causes DeNoise to set its parameters appropriately.

Now I open the complete ClickRepair-generated file with DeNoise and prepare to process it. I tend to take a fairly conservative approach to noise reduction, so I usually slide the Noise Floor slightly to the left of where DeNoise sets it, and I keep the "Limit reduction" slider somewhere around 8 db. It might be worth listening to the effect of different settings (and if you're going to do that, it might be worth investing in another piece of hardware, namely a good pair of reference headphones), but on the whole my goal here is to spend as little time as possible fussing, so I don't usually bother.

In praise of DeNoise, I want to say that it does nearly as good a job of reducing surface noise and hiss without degrading the music as high-end software costing literally thousands of dollars. The interface (and this is true for ClickRepair as well) takes some getting used to, and you will definitely have to read the manual, but once you've understood how to use the software, it processes a whole record side in just a few seconds.

It's important, however, to be technically and philosophically clear about what you're trying to accomplish during this step. Until you've practiced some noise reduction followed by listening under realistic conditions, there is a danger, especially if you're using sensitive reference headphones, that you'll be tempted to try to remove far too much of the noise. Resist that temptation! The results will be sonically unnatural; and besides, the effort is completely unnecessary. Remember that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; even more important, you don't need to make a silk purse.

The goal is not to turn an LP into something magically resembling a CD. That goal is unreachable and unrealistic. You don't have the original tapes from which the LP was made, and you probably don't have the magic production ears of a professional. Your goal is simply to make listening to the digital form of the LP easy and pleasant. Your greatest ally here is not the software but the magic of the human ear (and brain). If the background noise is not obnoxious, your perceptions will effectively filter it out while you're listening. So you want to make the noise and hiss situation a little better, while not making the listening experience worse than listening to the actual LP.

Save to Archival Form -- We are now ready to save the file into its archival form. The idea is to keep a pristine version of the file from which derivations, such as compressed formats, can be generated at any future time. That way, if I make a compressed version and want to change the amount of compression, or I want to experiment by adding a little equalization or other modifications, or I just want a pristine listening experience, I always have the original uncompressed file as a starting point. We live in an age when a 2 TB hard disk costs less than $160, so there is no good reason not to keep these archival files on hand.

My choice of archival format is FLAC. That's because FLAC saves some space, but is non-lossy. (I do not favor Apple's "Apple Lossless" format, as it is proprietary and, in my experience, unreliable.) Of course I could save as AIFF, but FLAC can represent a space savings of nearly 50 percent, which is significant.

The only downside is that FLAC makes no provision for "markers," which are strings associated with specific points in time within the sound file. The reason we might need markers is in order to designate where individual tracks begin. There are two solutions to this problem: split the file into individual FLAC files, each file representing a track; or, keep the file as one large FLAC file, but accompany it with a CUE file, which is a text file in a special format describing the tracks. Amadeus makes either approach extremely easy.

So, I open the file generated by DeNoise (which, by default, has a "dn" suffix in its name) with Amadeus. I "top and tail" the file, deleting the initial and ending silences. Now I place markers - one at the very start, and one at the start of each subsequent track. Finally, I either split the file at these markers while at the same time converting to FLAC (this is a single, easy move with Amadeus) or else I export the markers (which creates a CUE file) and then save the entire file as a single FLAC file.

Unfortunately, the CUE file generated by Amadeus is not legal, and many applications cannot read it properly. This is easily mended by hand. Open the CUE file with your favorite text editor and, after the first line, insert a second line specifying a PERFORMER parameter (the word PERFORMER followed by a space and some text in quotes). Also, in the third line, specifying the FILE parameter, change the value in quotes to match the exact name of the FLAC file.

Now place the CUE file and the FLAC file together in a single folder. That's it! The CUE file is a legal file and points correctly at the FLAC file. So, for example, you can listen to the archived tracks directly by opening the CUE file with Cog, and you can generate a compressed-format version of the tracks, suitable for use with iTunes or your iPod, by opening the CUE file with Max or XLD (all are freeware).

Conclusion -- There are as many variations of this procedure as there are users. Nothing I've said here is written on tablets of jade. Legitimate divergences of taste or purpose are possible at every step. You might be an audiophile maven who records at 24 bits and 96 kHz. You might skip the denoising step, or you might prefer a different denoising solution. You might not care to retain a lossless archive of the final product.

No matter what the variation, I've probably been there and done that. What I've described here is what I happen to be doing now. There is plenty of experimentation and sound reasoning behind my choices at every step, and the results suit me. They might also provide a starting place for someone puzzled or hesitating over how to accomplish a similar aim. If that's you, be reassured that it's possible to turn an hour of vinyl into very acceptable digital in just a couple of hours and without a capital outlay that will bust your budget.

 

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WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
Create a complete social network with your company or group's
own look. Scalable, extensible and extremely customizable.
Take a guided tour today <http://www.webcrossing.com/tour>   Copyright © 2010 Matt Neuburg. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Alongside Apple's undeniable success with the iPhone App Store have been the near-constant stories of app rejections for dubious or entirely bogus reasons (to be fair, most rejections are entirely legitimate). But what gives Apple the right to reject or even remove apps? The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, to which all iPhone developers must agree. The EFF has now acquired copies of the agreement and analyzed some of the more troubling clauses. Would they stand up in court? There's no way to know until someone sues Apple.

 

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Fetch Softworks: Fetch 5.5 has new support for Mac OS X
10.5 Leopard technologies like Quick Look. And you can
upload with the oldest technology of all, Copy and Paste!
Download your free trial version! <http://fetchsoftworks.com/>   Copyright © 2010 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Want to use a text expansion utility to save typing cumbersome phrases but dislike switching programs to create snippets? The new TextExpander 3.0 from SmileOnMyMac adds a hotkey combination that opens a quick entry window for snippet creation, and another hotkey lets you edit the last-expanded snippet, making it easier to update one that's no longer quite right. Other new features in TextExpander include "fill-in" snippets that can prompt you for additional text to be entered manually, new options for finding snippets in your collection, and snippet syncing via both MobileMe and Dropbox. Minor changes include the capability to insert Tab and Return characters in snippets, correction of accidental double-capitalizations at the start of sentences, automatic updates via Sparkle, and more. Finally, TextExpander 3 is now a full-fledged application rather than a preference pane. ($34.95 new, $15 upgrades, free for those who purchased after 1 November 2009, 4.5 MB)

 

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Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2008.
Is your Office up-to-date? Make sure you're running the latest
versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage by choosing
Check for Updates from the Help menu of any Office application!   Copyright © 2010 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.