Tag Archives: switchedon

Switched On: Played out

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Played out

At the launch of the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 -- the first hardware devices to run on the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system -- there seemed to be a silver lining for the renamed company's struggling PlayBook tablet. Confirming speculation, CEO Thorsten Heins promised a cheering crowd that the PlayBook would receive an update to a new OS. This would open the door to signature features, a more polished user interface and a vastly expanded app library.

But something was amiss. The company had also announced that, to simplify app development, BlackBerry 10 would support two screen resolutions: the Z10's 1,280 x 768 and the Q10's 720 x 720. In contrast, the PlayBook resolution is 1,024 x 600. Late last month, the other shoe dropped as BlackBerry confirmed that the PlayBook would not receive the promised update, leaving it with an abandoned OS and marking the effective exit of BlackBerry from the tablet market.

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Switched On: Dead! Dead! Dead! (in 2D)

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Dead! Dead! Dead! in 2D

Connor "Con" Sumer looked up at the beast that stalked him ever since flat-panel TV sales began to flatten out. "Stereoscopy," he thought, "the word even sounded like an uncomfortable medical procedure." This was far from the first time 3D tried to take over the world. Fueled by a steady diet of hype, the fight continued for years this time, but now, at last, it was coming to an end.

Con looked down at his tattered clothes. They weren't torn in the battle. Rather, he just wasn't able to afford new ones after all the money he spent on a 3D television. He was viewed as a hero, but the beast itself did so much to self-destruct -- high prices, glasses incompatibility, forcing choices between resolution and convenience and limited content.

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Switched On: Nook tablet, an epilogue

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Nook tablet, an epilogue

The recent announcement by Barnes & Noble that it would discontinue its Nook tablets marked the exit of what once promised to be a strong rival to Amazon, at least among bibliophiles. Barnes & Noble's entry into the tablet market took place amidst an annual game of leapfrog with its internet-based rival. Surviving for three iterations, the color Nook devices were products that had a particular focus on media consumption -- especially reading -- and eschewed open access to apps.

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Switched On: Hard drives face hard truths

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Hard drives face hard truths

The PlayStation 4's is upgradeable; the Xbox One's is not. For at least the second consecutive generation (the third for the Xbox), hard drives will be offered as part of the gaming experience for two of the home video game powerhouses: Microsoft and Sony. For the Xbox line, which offered a model without a hard drive in the last generation, the inclusion of an internal HDD represents, along with its x86 processor, a return to the approach Microsoft took with the original Xbox.

Indeed, the Xbox One will load disc-based games onto the hard drive automatically. Both Sony and Microsoft will also offer access via the cloud. In fact, following up on its purchase of Gaikai, Sony plans to offer a range of gaming from the cloud to multiple platforms. This may include older titles that it cannot support on the PlayStation 4 due to a lack of native backward compatibility. If such capability is expected to work, why bother to have hard drives in these consoles at all? Indeed, hardware makers of many stripes are starting to ask that question.

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Switched On: Form in the USA

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Form in the USA

The Mac Pro might have been worthy of the "One More Thing" kinds of reveals that Steve Jobs used to do at Apple events. Despite being foreshadowed by Tim Cook as a product the company was going to make in the US, it was virtually carted in from left field at an event that focused broadly on new operating systems before a crowd of developers that could appreciate its power. That said, it will likely require OS X Mavericks, a thematically fitting release for a product that represents a new wave in Apple's design.

Some have said that iOS 7 may be the company's New Coke. The Mac Pro, though, is the new can. Its cylindrical form represents a new design for Apple, albeit one that jibes with the company's affinity for simple, rounded, iconic shapes. Like the new AirPort Extreme, it has a significant vertical profile, but is a fraction of the size of its predecessor designed to accommodate multiple optical drives and hard drives.

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Switched On: Touchy subjects

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On Touchy subjects

In 2002, the first LCD-based iMac succeeded the translucent PowerPC G3-based models that the original Bondi Blue iMac begat. The new generation was much more striking than the one that had placed Apple on the comeback trail. The iMac G4 mounted the display on a balanced arm similar to a Luxo lamp while the motherboard resided in a hemispherical base. This allowed the display to be adjusted to a wide range of heights and angles and each of the two main sections to be "true to itself."

Alas, the design had its limits. It's difficult to imagine today's ample 27-inch iMac displays balancing off such a mount. Furthermore, after the switch to Intel, processor thermals improved to help enable the slim iMac of today. The idea of efforts being true to themselves (at least until nearly compromise-free convergence is possible), however, has stayed a hallmark of Apple. For example, the company would resist adding video to the iPod for years after competitors had the feature.

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Switched On: The five P’s of the PS4

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On The five Ps of the PS4

Throughout the history of home game consoles, it's been notoriously difficult for a leader in one generation to maintain its leadership in the next generation. Sony, for example, went from dominance of the sixth-generation console market, knocking Sega out of the hardware business as Microsoft was gearing up for the original Xbox, to a third-place finish in terms of installed base with its seventh-generation entry, the PlayStation 3. Last November, Switched On discussed how Nintendo turned its back on much of what made the Wii a success, at least in that console's early days. Sony, though, seems to have carefully studied the lessons of the PlayStation 3 and has made many changes in the PlayStation 4 to address that console's challenges.

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Switched On: PNDs try to find their way

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On PNDs try to find their way

From pitch pipes to voice recorders, the list of standalone devices that an unadorned smartphone can substitute for runs long. But the portable electronics products that smartphones have had the most impact on have been digital cameras / camcorders, portable media players and portable navigation devices (PNDs, although the Europeans did a better naming job with "sat navs").

The future of PNDs looked rosier in the days when cellphone navigation services required a monthly fee. Google Navigation changed all that and much of the market was relegated to sub-$100, Black Friday-bought glove compartment hermits. But even as they've released smartphone navigation apps, companies such as Garmin and Magellan keep plugging away at the PND, trying to differentiate from the smartphone apps while cooperating with them.

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Switched On: BlackBerry’s depressing keyboard trends

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On BlackBerry's depressing keyboard trends

In a March interview, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, whose company's smartphone ambitions led to his vacating a board seat at Apple, claimed that he didn't use either an Android phone or iPhone. Rather, he uses a Blackberry, citing his affinity for its keyboard despite a number of Android models released over the years integrating physical thumb keyboards.

RIM devices had keyboards even before they had email; the feature was part of the BlackBerry's predecessor, the RIM Inter@ctive Pager. Indeed, tactile feedback was so valued by the company that it tried to integrate it into the touchscreen with the BlackBerry Storm. In reviewing that phone for The New York Times, David Pogue noted, "A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel." Imagine such a thing.

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Switched On: One box to rule them all

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Switched On One box to rule them all

When Microsoft introduced the original Xbox, the company had a lot to prove. The console newcomer promised that it was laser-focused on building a great system for games. There wasn't much to distract it. In a time of DVDs and dial-up, "convergence" in the space was focused on the ability for consoles to play back movies rented at Blockbuster.

But everyone knew that the new kid on the box had an agenda beyond taking its share of industry profits away from Nintendo and Sony. Particularly versus the latter, Microsoft knew it would be engaged in a war for the living room and the future of digital entertainment distribution including, but beyond, games. Nothing came close to matching the processing power that consoles had brought to the living room, but no one had really cracked the broader application beyond disc-based games. It surely wasn't web browsing, as Nintendo and Sony had tried. Still, as streaming services from Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and others began to proliferate across lots of different add-on boxes, it made sense to add them onto Xbox Live (even if the programming wasn't) as well as the PlayStation Network.

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