If there are two things you can count on it’s Death and the propensity of Asian electronics manufacturers to capitalize on a rising trend. In short, what we buy Asia makes and Asia is very happy about the iPad. And this chain of events, in turn, destroys hardware innovation.
First we have this AP report about accessories makers. We haven’t posted very many iPad accessories since the launch but… → Read More
This guy was asking the quality question way before the PSP Go The PSP Go just launched and the blogworld is in a tizzy about the price – $249 – and the apparent chintziness of this new PSP replacement. You see, the device doesn’t support Sony’s exciting UMD optical standard and is generally reported as “feeling” cheaper than the bulky but solid PSP. The PSP Go… → Read More
Fosfor posted an incredible look at what has befallen phone manufacturers and why they’re all faltering. Mikael heeded over to Nokia and Sony Ericsson’s sites and tried to list all of the models available. Nokia had 44 and S-E had 70. He then points out that there are three iPhones at best and in reality there are only two.
It costs money to manufacture and sell things. While many of the phones… → Read More
There has been plenty of ink spilled over the 3G S upgrade (“Now faster with oleoresistant skin!”) and it’s abundantly clear what folks are trying to do here. Early adopters have always chafed at having to pay outrageous fees for upgrades inside of a contract period. Be it the latest RAZR a few years ago or the latest iPhone today, the same obsessives who are ranting about iPhone… → Read More
As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” A few years ago I thought streaming video was an impossible dream. Networks were too slow, we said, and no one cared about streaming. A few us held the torch high and shouted in a stentorian voice “We shall stream!” but it was still not to be. We had TiVo, but that was securely ensconced on a hard drive in a… → Read More
Like lipstick on a pig here comes WinMo 6.5, the next amazing interface from everyone’s favorite mobile software company. I could go the “Looks like iPhone” route, but I won’t. In fact, Microsoft should have been way ahead of the game six years ago yet they clung to a dated OS for so long that this looks like catch up – the the freaking Palm Pre. While I’m sure a lot of man hours went into… → Read More
Joel at BBG writes a stirring piece on the PSP and its promise. I remember Joel IMing me back in 2005 while he was standing in the hot sun in line at E3 to see Sony’s vaunted handheld – “Sony gave me cancer” – and how excited we all were when we first saw this bugger. Now, however, my PSP is basically a retro-gaming box with a wide range of potential piracy options… → Read More
You have a great idea for a product. You have a great designer. You have a manufacturer willing to pump something out for not much money. You’re on your way to gadget riches, right? Wrong.
Dan Costa wrote a cautionary tale for all those looking to produce a consumer electronics product. His focus is magicJack, a company that we wrote about in August 2007, a post that currently has 167 comments… → Read More
“Not I” said the Windows user
“I liked Ultimate but I’m no loser
I paid for a Vista upgrade
but when my 3D shader failed to shade
I decided XP was the right call
You can’t blame me at all.” → Read More
Like many of our readers, we’re big fans of Western Digital’s WD TV HD Media Player ’round these parts. The thing is, the WD TV is still far from perfect, even after you install the recent 1.01.01 firmware update (and subsequent 1.01.02 release). → Read More
Every year around CES time we get a slew of emails describing the thinnest this or most of that. A few years ago it was GPS devices (“The most points-of-interest in Scranton!”) and then it was TVs (witness Samsung’s recent announcement of a 7mm thick TV). Now it’s green. Take the Renew for example.
Through an alliance with CarbonFund(TM), Motorola offsets the energy required to manufacture… → Read More
Our buddies Rich and Eric got a delightful missive in their email boxes after replying to a CES meeting request about TVs. See, Rich and Eric run PhoneScoop, the best phone site on the web. They don’t write about TVs. The result of their polite email? A crazy message from HWH president Lois Whitman. CES publishes a list of press. You are one of a few thousand. Everyone has access to that… → Read More
What I’m about to say will anger a lot of CE manufacturers, but this has been the laziest year in consumer electronics to date and I’m recommending that rather than spending money on the boring stuff that has come out in 2008 we all spend our money on digital media – games, music, audiobooks, ebooks, and the like. And I don’t mean digital Blu-Ray and game disks, either. I… → Read More
We’ve been getting some spam emails from someone purporting to be Diego Norte offering us exciting notes to post on our blog. These notes include tips on how to cheat on your taxes and how to lure children into vans (I didn’t read the entire thing, so I can’t confirm that that’s in there.) I’m sure you, as an Internet Professional, have brushed up against this… → Read More
A quick rant. I’m in Geneva, the city where boredom goes to be bored, and wanted to watch a movie on Netflix Instant Play. I headed over and discovered, much to my chagrin, that the system was keyed to my current location and, as a result, I’m locked out. While I’m aware of IP masks and other tricks I could use to get to the content, I’m essentially browsing Usenet now… → Read More
Glenn Derene wrote a rant about the problem with modern technology – it is virtually irreparable when broken. The best Apple can do, apparently, is just send broken iPods back for recycling, so complex are their miniscule innards. Derene writes: The problem began almost imperceptibly several months ago. I found myself pushing my first generation iPhone’s “home” button two… → Read More
I usually agree with Senor Cringely. He writes thoughtful, longer pieces about tech and he often portends grave changes in the industry. Today, however, I’m not quite sure he’s hit the nail on the head. His piece posits that there is an 85-10-5 split in most markets, most notably the phone market. In this case you have 85% feature phones, 10% smartphones, and 5 odd ducks like Nextel… → Read More
With news of doom and gloom coming at us from every side I would like to take a moment to look at the market as it stands and assess what a slow-down/recession will mean for us, the tech obsessed. To recap, we are in this mess because of what amounts to a credit freeze. Companies that once could request “cash” to cover overnight expenses – we’re talking millions and… → Read More
I sadly missed this story last week but it bears further inspection. Charlie “The Animal” White wrote a piece “fact-checking” the claims that Vista is buggy, slow, and a big hassle. While I cannot agree that Vista is a sub par offering from Microsoft, I can unequivocally state that it’s good enough for the average user and no matter how much we whine and cry… → Read More
Uwe Boll is like a more fun, less harmful Jack Thompson, constantly spouting nonsense that we find love to pieces. Mr. Boll’s latest awesome tirade is about the movie industry in general, and how it’s impossible to make any more in it. He singles out the handsomely paid megastars, the guys who make $20 million+ per film, as one of the primary reasons why the movie biz stinks on ice. → Read More
The Seattle P-I has tracked down an old e-mail from 2003 that Bill Gates sent out to members of the Windows Usability team. The pages-long e-mail message chronicles Gates’ attempt to download Windows Movie Maker. Here are some especially tantalizing tidbits, with the full e-mail message to be found after the jump. “I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A//blip.tv/rss/flash/930327&feedurl=http%3A//crunchgear.blip.tv/rss/&autostart=false&brandname=CrunchGear&brandlink=http%3A//crunchgear.blip.tv/ I’m glad that the second generation OLPC is more of an ebook than a laptop. While the “laptop,” as a designed object, is an excellent tool… → Read More
We don’t tend to talk about advertising here unless it’s kind of funny or relentlessly horrible. One thing that we’ve consistently talke about, however, are Apple ads. They’re short, funny, and to-the-point and they ensure that you know there’s a war on and Apple is winning it. They have changed Microsoft from “a company that makes computer software” into… → Read More
According to Jonathan Zittrain, the Internet is being locked down by unhackable devices. In a Reuters interview, Zittrain, an Internet law expert, believes that devices like the iPhone and PCs are changing the way people use and “hack” the Internet, reducing our freedom while stealing from us the opportunity to create new and novel applications. He calls them “tethered… → Read More
While to some the Zune is the greatest thing in the world, Crave writer Molly Wood finds it to be an odious turd of little redeeming value and generally one of the worst devices ever, on par with the thing at State Fair that pulls your nipples off for a quarter and those little boxing nun puppets. She finds that the headphone cables tangle so horribly that it takes her 30 minutes to untangle them… → Read More
Android inside! AndroidGuys posits that Android’s lack of certification requirements will bite Google in the butt when it finally launches Android. The theory goes like this: anyone can install and run Android. You or I could make a GSM phone in our basements, pop Android on it, and go nuts. There is no “certification” program nor is there any particular requirement for… → Read More
All told, most of the CG team has to pay $10K+ out of pocket thanks to foolish freelancing planning. This post is for you to bitch about your own tax woes or to rub in your proper planning and rebates. Feel free to try to make me cry. → Read More
Welcome to the Unreasonable Stance, where our own John Biggs takes the minority opinion on a tech matter and defends it with convenient data, spun numbers, fanboyism, and insults until he proves, without a doubt, that those that disagree with him are filthy mouth-breathers. What was the first thing you bought in January 1990? If you said “Food” or “a tankful of gas,”… → Read More
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