I recently purchased a new Mac Mini for use as my desktop computer in the office. One of the appeals was the high-speed Thunderbolt port. This port is faster than USB 3.0 (of which the mac mini has 0 ports ) and can daisy chain etc, overall it would be quite useful for audio and video editing.

I was recently reading Anandtech’s article dicussing the possibilities of a thunderbolt docking station. Currently only the $999 Apple display has that feature. You can read more about the upcoming thunderbolt docks here, but the basic gist for users is as follows:

MacBook Air users may be able to justify spending $249/$399 on a Thunderbolt dock because their connectivity is limited to two USB 2.0 ports and Thunderbolt, and a dock would add ports such as FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet. However, it’s good to keep in mind that Ivy Bridge and UM77 chipset will bring native USB 3.0 support to MacBook Air as well, hence it may be more affordable to sell your current MacBook Air and buy a new one than to keep the old one and buy a Thunderbolt dock.

Wait, what? It would be cheaper to sell your old one, and buy a new one than to buy a Thunderbolt dock!?

So obviously these docks are carrying some sort of a premium. I can live without USB 3 (I think?) but this means I will require a thunderbolt equiped hard disk. And these aren’t cheap either.

There are a few options by LaCie around $200 (a 120gb SSD Drive) or $250 (a 1tb platter disk) and a similarly priced range of drives manufactured by WD, either way you’re looking at a $300 product.

I can either use a $30 usb 3 drive enclosure (with a disk I already own) along with a $249 dock, or I can get a $275 Thunderbolt disk (the benefit being I would get an additional hard disk to store stuff).

My grandfather was famously quoted throughout my life as saying:

What deal?! The best kind of deal is the one you don’t have to pay for!

And while this frustrated me as a child I can’t help but hear myself saying these same words with regards to Thunderbolt.

SO, basically there’s a thunderbolt conspiracy to keep the cables cost < $40 and it would be logical to assume that the same people are setting the market for the chips required in the thunderbolt / USB 3 to SATA causing every manufacturer to have a similarly high price (after taking into consideration profit margins)

I will be waiting for a bit more before purchasing any docks or drives. I think the best bet will be a thunderbolt equipped drive for high-speed near-line storage.

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If you, like me, were a subscriber to the paid MobileMe service when Apple switched to their free iCloud service you probably already know what I am about to write about.

Users of the original MobileMe service will have their extra-large iCloud space extended for another year.

Earlier last week I got an email that said the following:

When you moved your MobileMe account to iCloud, we provided you with a complimentary storage upgrade beyond the standard 5GB that comes with an iCloud account to help you with the transition. Originally, this storage upgrade was set to expire on September 30, 2012.

As a thank you to our former MobileMe members, we will continue to provide you with this complimentary storage upgrade at no charge, for an additional year, until September 30, 2013. No action is required on your part. For complete details, please read this article.

Thank you again for using iCloud,

iCloud Team

Am I happy about this? I’m not certain. I do not particularly need the space. I currently have half a gig remaining if I was only on their free service. I’m afraid that I will start using more than the free threshold and be stuck paying for additional storage in the cloud. The future will be less free.

We hedged our bets with Apple at ColdplaySucks.com, not because of some fan-boy obsession but because we were guessing that Apple would win this modern-day Goliath vs David given the technologies and patents that were being infringed.

Earlier this week the jury in the case between Apple and Samsung in the United States revealed their decision. This could result in Samsung paying around $1 billion (that’s billion, not Bitcoins in damages to Apple (unless additional litigation changes these figures) I have been a long believer that certain Samsung devices have been designed to duplicate the features in iOS, and this verdict confirms this belief.

First let me touch on why this sort of infringement is harmful to us as consumers and citizens in general. The purpose of a patent is to protect the consumer in the end, I know it seems like this only helps corporations but let me explain.

Patents are very important. By protecting a design with a patent, the inventor gets what are called “exclusive rights” for a limited time, and in exchange they reveal the inner workings of the invention to the public. This allows innovation to take place after the exclusive rights are over, and by showing other inventors how the invention works, they are able to build upon the device, improve it and re-patent their improved invention. This rewards innovation and this has made the world quite fantastic in the 20th and 21st century (see: Internet).

Generally the exclusive right is given to allow the individual or company to prevent others from using, making, distributing or selling the patented invention without permission. Apple apparently approached Samsung to offer them a license for some of these infringement cases which would have given Samsung permission to include the features.

The patents that were infringed upon could have all used an update. Samsung seems to be guilty of lazy engineering. Here is a quick rundown of the patent claims and how the jury found in each case:

’163 patent
Tap to zoom feature. The Gem, Captivate, Indulge, Intercept, Nexus 4G, Continuum and Vibrant were not infringing while the jury found that the Epic 4G, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Droid Charge, Fascinate, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, Mesmerize and Replenish did in fact copy the tap to zoom method which Apple invented and holds a patent on.

So really Samsung engineers, you weren’t creative enough to figure out how to improve a simple tap to zoom?! How about this:a “drag left for zoom out right for zoom in” or any other context sensitive improvement? This would have improved the marketplace while freeing your company from paying any dues to 1 Infinite Loop (Apple headquarters in California).

No, you do not get to use the simple intuitive gesture, thats how patents work. People that want simple gestures buy the iPhone while Samsung is able to be the innovator and give users new features . . . in that case maybe Apple would be copying the Galaxy, then again probably not.

Fair game on this one Samsung.

’381 patent
This patent covers the image bounce feature that is engaged when your finger scrolls past the edge of an object, image, webpages etc. All of Samsung’s devices were found to infringe this patent and I’m not sure if this is a good patent to even copy.

It looks cool, but is it useful? It’s useful for getting a patent infringement lawsuit, that’s for sure. Would a company not want to have a differentiated product? I would not be opposed to having a phone that has a no bounce iOS, its a bit distracting. but maybe I’m a minority. I can imagine that a “squish” or similar animation would be too taxing to have on a phone, but that only means an expert hasn’t tried to implement it on a phone yet.

More missed innovation.

’915 patent
All devices (minus the Replenish and Intercept) were found to be infringing on the one finger scroll and two finger pinch to zoom gesture.

‘D677 patent
This patent covers the design (iPhone) and the jury found that the Galaxy Ace did not infringe while the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G touch, Mesmerize, Skyrocket, Fascinate, Showcase, Infuse 4G and Vibrant are infringing.

‘D087 patent
This patent covers the design also. The jury found that the Galaxy S, Galaxy S 4G and Vibrant are infringing. The Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch, Skyrocket and Infuse 4G are not.

‘D305 patent
This patent is a patent for the iPhone’s initial homescreen appearance. The jury found that the Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G,
Fascinate, Galaxy S, Galaxy S 4G, Showcase, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Mesmerize and Vibrant copy the iPhone.

‘D889 patent
This patent relates to industrial design. The jury found that none of Samsung’s tablet devices are infringing.

Samsung patents 914, 711, 893, 460, and 516
The jury found that Apple did not infringe any of Samsung’s patents. Probably because Apple already had patents for the technology pre-existing.

Samsung must have some really bad or really over-confident patent lawyers.

Sherman antitrust law
The jury found Samsung violated the antitrust law by monopolizing regarding the UMTS protocol

If you were going to copy so many Apple patents I’m sure they would have given a sweet deal to license it all, otherwise your responsibility is to innovate the shit out of mobile phone technology. Samsung lost today, but in the long term consumers win because new Samsung technologies do not infringe. They have the capability to be better now that they aren’t identical to some technologies already existing.

Most of the devices covered by this ruling are quite old already anyhow so the financial impact of this ruling is probably a lot less than the way the stock market has reacted.

Over the course of the last two years I have used over a dozen different headphones and earbuds with my iPhone 4 and now with my iPhone 4s.

My first set was the included white earbuds by Apple. My first upgraded set was some über-cheap in-ear earbuds from CanadaComputers. The price was right and at $8 I decided to buy 2 pair. A month later I got another three, as my first 2 stopped producing sound out of one side and the connection became weakened beyond use (this results in static in the earphones when moving about). After spending $40 on cheap in-ear headphones I went back to the original Apple for a few weeks, and also used an assortment of monitoring headphones.

Next I (misguidedly) purchased a $30 pair of SkullCandy headphones from The Source. This time I also purchased a warranty that entitled me to 3 free replacements. Big mistake, this turned out to be a waste of money. This warranty just means The Source knows these $2 headphones will break 4 times, in some amount of time. They’ll give you $8 of headphones and run to the bank laughing. The Employee at The Source would not corroborate my cynical views of their warranty system. Essentially its a total rip-off. In the past a warranty used to mean “this product is good” but apparently in this millennium it means “we have a half million of these pieces of crap in a warehouse, why don’t you take 1 for way too much money?”

One consumer unimpressed right here!

I’m leaving out a half dozen others that I can’t specifically recall, but let me get to my review of the Klipsch S4i’s

Enter the Apple store. My logic for choosing Apple for headphones was that there are probably hundreds of reviews online. I also rule out compatibility issues (which I experienced with the SkullCandy remote). I’ve noticed the often the main product page on apple.com doesn’t generally ever show bad reviews. I was able to drill down and read the negative reviews to discover pretty quickly which ones worked well for folks, and which ones broke and disintegrated like Sugar Cubes in water.

After investigating a few of the different in ear products I settled for the S4i, which are basically the same as the S4 earbuds, except with an iPhone remote and microphone. My decision was essentially price based. I already had been through many cheaper quality ear buds (i.e. SkullCandy) and I was looking for a durable purchase.

But I also had a few other requirements. I wanted a relatively good looking earbud that wouldn’t quit out after a month, had deep bass handling for the music I make and listen to (You can check out my record label here.) Finally I didn’t want to spend a fortune (in case I lost them, which knock on wood, I haven’t yet). The S4i’s seemed uniquely suited to my needs.

Eventually I purchased the S4i which covered two of my criteria, great bass and appropriate price. The annoying thing is that they still broke! I had exactly the same type of damage as I experienced with the cheap $8 earbuds and the more expensive SkullCandy model. You can see the wear in the close up shot.

At the time of purchase I made sure to look into the warranty, which was one year. I contacted the company by email and they quickly offered to replace them with the S4i Reference model.

I am now into my third week of using the S4i Reference and I am infinitely more impressed than I was with the non-Reference version. Features of the Reference include a more solid strain relief around the ear buds and more durable cabling. One thing that initially bothered me was the way the Reference’s seem to coil up, but now its less of an issue.

In the decision to buy either model I can certainly recommend the Reference model which already feels like its holding up a bit better than the S4i.

Apple’s new Siri voice assistant is a really useful feature but a few improvements could be made. I have read several forums with users requesting continuous listening and I can hear the privacy critics howling already and it goes something like this:

“Coninuously listen??! But then Siri will know all about my planned defection to the Communists! Unacceptable.”

All jokes aside, one of the biggest hurdles to using the assistant is getting Siri to begin listening. In order to signal to Siri that you want to give it a command you need to hold down the hold button for almost a second before the signature purple microphone appears. The old voice commands feature was activated the same way but it took much longer to activate. To a user like myself who used to ask my iPhone “What time is it” and “Call dad” Siri was a great incremental improvement.

The key word here is incremental, everything about Apple is slow and methodical. If they released all their good ideas at once they wouldn’t be in business for very long. Every competitor would steal the ideas, improve them, patent the improvement and take market share. Apple’s strategy seems to involve keeping their technologies highly patented and interdependent (there is so much about iOS that cannot be copied due to patents it makes me prefer Android less since Google has to engineer the round about way to do everything Apple holds a patent to)

Another long-term strategy Apple uses to steal market share is their product release schedule and secrecy. The next Apple release will probably be this fall and the iPhone 5 will most likely contain improvements to its camera ,the introduction of NFC and changes to the “beta” Siri. One of these features might be continuous listening.

It would be wise for Apple to release this as a hardware upgrade, if it is even technically feasible. Previously with the release of the iPhone 4 many users were upset that Siri would be an iPhone 4-only (and now 4s) feature.

I believe this was due to a higher quality microphone required to capture your voice accurately. Siri is a hardware and software technology, and continuous listening, if it is even technically possible, would require a hardware upgrade.

The phone might get a new low-power chip that is responsible for continuous listening, or perhaps they are looking to make changes in the power management chip used in the iPhone. Either way I’m pretty excited for the new technology, and hardly afraid of continuous monitoring by my phone.