Hasta La Gadget!

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

TiVo’s announcement of TiVo Premiere represents the most significant user interface overhaul for the device in years. Based on Adobe Flash and optimized for the high-definition screens that are likely to be paired with CableCARD programming, the new user interface blends together live, recorded, and broadband content. That presentation is more akin to what we’ve seen from Windows Media Center, and less like TiVo’s Series3 that segmented programming sources by type. TiVo has also beefed up its search capability, bringing it up to par with that of its only significant retail DVR competitor, Digeo’s Moxi.

The new interaction widens the user experience gap between TiVo and your average cable or satellite DVR, and TiVo has two other features that set it apart. First, no doubt reacting to the Moxi competition, TiVo long ago reinstated its lifetime service option that was so popular in the product’s early years. However, those who have opted for this plan through TiVo’s major platform upgrades over the years have endured more lifetime sentences than many a felon.

Continue reading Switched On: Thumbs up, thumbs down at TiVo Premiere

Switched On: Thumbs up, thumbs down at TiVo Premiere originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My friend and colleague Harry McCracken recently bought a brand new Droid from Motorola. He says it’s a “loaf of day old bread.” He’s right. The Droid and Android 2.0 were introduced with much fanfare in December, but have already been eclipsed by Android 2.1 running on Google’s Nexus One, and there are some serious ramifications for being behind. For example, Google recently touted the latest mobile version of Google Earth, which is a cool app that you won’t be able to use unless you’re running 2.1. Sure, Google says “Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions,” but that’s most, not every. And what does Google mean when it says “as devices like the Droid get updated…” to 2.1? When will they get updated? Is it any wonder that some Android users are starting to get pangs of buyers remorse?

When Android was announced, I wrote that if “Google can deliver, the impact could be huge,” but I caveated a major issue: Google would need to prevent the market from fragmenting and allow it to succeed where other mobile and desktop Linux implementations had failed. Linux fragmentation remains one of the many reasons the open-source OS has failed to capture a meaningful share of the PC desktop market, and Android is rapidly following a similar path by fragmenting into different versions with different core feature sets, different users experiences and run different applications.

Continue reading Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform?

Entelligence: Will Android fragmentation destroy the platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a rough year for Microsoft in mobile. Despite the launch of impressive products such as the HTC HD2, the company has faced some harsh criticism: “except for gaming, it’s ‘game over’ for Microsoft in the consumer market” was just one of the choicer comments from the past year. Personally, I’d disagree, and I’d actually argue that Windows Mobile 6.5 is underrated in the mobile arena — almost as much as Android is overrated. But no matter. Whether last year’s mobile platforms are good enough or not is irrelevant; no platform from 2009 is good enough for 2010 and beyond, and every mobile platform will need to evolve this year. Last week in Barcelona, we saw the first part of Microsoft’s revamped mobile strategy, and while there are many questions that will need to be answered, there’s a lot to like about what we saw.

First, it’s important to look at the velocity of the mobile space. The tech industry is largely governed by Moore’s Law, which predicts a doubling of semi-conductor density roughly every eighteen months, but the mobile space is moving at a rate of change that’s closer to every eighteen minutes. What happened yesterday simply doesn’t matter nearly as much as it once might have. Just look at two of the hottest companies in mobile, Apple and Google. Just a few years ago, neither would have been part of the conversation, much less at the center of it.

Continue reading Entelligence: Windows Phone 7 Series

Entelligence: Windows Phone 7 Series originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

I love DVRs. I have been using them for over a decade, and my original model is still in use. Whether it’s a PC-based solution, something that comes from your cable provider or the granddaddy of all DVRs, TiVo, a DVR totally changes the way you watch TV, especially if you don’t like watching a lot of TV but care a lot about the TV that you do watch.

Last week TiVo sent out word of an event coming in March with a mysterious tagline. Even as good as my current TiVo Series 3 is, it could even be better, and while we speculate about what TiVo will announce, there’s two features I’d like to see.

Continue reading Entelligence: Two DVR features I’m waiting for

Entelligence: Two DVR features I’m waiting for originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

At the introduction of the iPad, Steve Jobs showed a simple slide illustrating one of the burning questions in the industry for many years. On the left was a smartphone. On the right was a laptop. And in the middle was a gap. Apple, like many companies in the PC industry, was seeking to create a product that filled this gap. Indeed, the iPad itself reflects elements of the Apple devices that flank it. Its enclosure resembles the silver metallic enclosure of a MacBook Pro, but inside, it has the ARM processor architecture and operating system of the iPhone.

But the iPad is but the latest in a long line of products and would-be general-purpose devices that seeks to fill this gap, most of them short-lived. Some of the more recent ones include the aborted Palm Foleo, the Sony Mylo, Nokia Internet Tablets, UMPCs, and MIDs. Why are so many companies convinced there is opportunity in these products?

Let’s turn back the clock to 2002, the year Handspring launched its first smartphone, the monochrome 160 x 160-pixel Treo 180. It was the year that Verizon Wireless launched the first 3G network in the U.S. and the year MobileStar declared bankruptcy after deploying public Wi-Fi throughout many Starbucks locations in 2001. In 2002, PC World awarded its World Class Award for ultralight notebooks to the Fujitsu LifeBook P-2000. It was less than three pounds and had a 10.6-inch screen, but was 1.6-inches thick and had a starting price of $1,499. And it couldn’t access Facebook, Hulu, YouTube or Engadget — because they didn’t exist.

Continue reading Switched On: Mined the gap

Switched On: Mined the gap originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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