Brian's Brain

One of the highlights of my recent visit to Taiwan actually occurred on the overseas flight back home at the trip conclusion. My seatmate was a six-year-old Asian girl named Tiffany; her mother, father and five-year-old sister were across the aisle from me. When one or both of us wasn't sleeping, we passed the time conversing on a wide variety of topics of interest to someone of her age and gender. I confess, for example, that I didn't know who the Jonas Brothers were until then ;-)

Tiffany was enthusiastic, precocious, gregarious, and (ironically, unlike her parents) quite fluent in English. She thought my MacBook Air was 'neat'. As soon the California coast came into si...Read More

A month back, when I wrote about the unveiling of the preview edition of v1.4 of the HDMI specification, I said:

Stay tuned for additional details...

I wasn't referring to v1.4 spec finalization, which occurred on June 8, thankfully well ahead of HDMI's self-imposed end-of-June deadline. What I was referring to is the release of Silicon Image's first two v1.4-supportive chips (the SiI9387 Port Processor and SiI9334 Transmitter), which happened last Monday. This wasn't, you see, the way things were originally supposed to play out, back when I was initially briefed under nondisclosure in mid-April.

My telecon at that time consist...Read More

Any of you who might be following my personal Twitter feed or Facebook page might already know, I've significantly ramped back up my mostly-trail running in recent months after several years' worth of comparative lethargy. My primary motivation, aside from the fear of an expanding waistline and the stunning summertime Sierra landscapes, are my newfound friends in the Truckee Running Club. And through their influence, I've acquired one of the most rewarding tech toys ever to come into my possession, Garmin's Forerunner 405 GPS watch:

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It's almost Friday, which must mean it's time once again for 'and now for something(s) completely different'. And so we begin...

Long-time readers know that I spent a week in Taiwan earlier this month, as well as this same time last year. The architectural pride and joy of the country's residents is Taipei 101, the world's largest completed skyscraper (at least for the next few months). Geography buffs may be surprised to hear that such a structure was built smack-dab on top of the earthquake-prone Ring of Fire. Well, in-bet...Read More

Expanding on iSuppli's recent BOM cost estimate of the iPhone 3GS, with thanks to Suzanne for the heads-up writeup, you may recall that I mentioned a week ago (speaking of the inevitability of product teardowns):

Anand had his hands on one within hours of its public unveiling, and you gotta know that folks like iFixit and phoneWreck aren't far behind.

To wit, I'll draw your attention to a few other recently published analyses of the product:

• RapidRepair was first (after Anand, that is) to get their results online, by virtue of buy

One of the many 'dirty little secrets' of the tech industry is that whereas PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) bit-packing techniques are improving HDDs' sustained sequential transfer rates, those performance metrics still don't come anywhere close to swamping first-generation 1.5 Gbps SATA's capabilities (far from those of the 3 Gbps or upcoming 6 Gbps descendants). Granted, you can burst data into or out of a drive's integrated cache faster than you can transfer it to or from the rotating magnetic media sitting behind it, but RAM buffers are only tangibly meaningful in certain access profile situations, and they're to some degree miti...Read More

In September of 2005, I (for the first time) called it. And an hour ago, Nokia actualized it. The x86 architecture has just established a hefty beachhead in its invasion of the ARM Empire. And with a portion of Nokia's future product line territory conquered, Intel partnerships with other mobile computing and communications companies will undoubtedly follow in short order.

Strictly speaking, this isn't Intel's first notable announcement in the mobile communications-and-computing product category. But with all due respect to LG, an embrace by the world's largest cellular handse...Read More

When the Reno, NV Apple Store personnel told me two Fridays ago that my MacBook Air would be repaired in 3-5 days, they apparently meant 3-5 weekdays, because the long-awaited 'it's done' phone call finally came last Friday afternoon. Then again, maybe everyone there was just distracted by the impending launch of the iPhone 3GS (now with a missing space between the G and S!). Yes, I drove to Reno right away to pick up my precious, af...Read More

I about fell out of my chair this morning when I did my initial RSS feed download of the day and found out about the Wall Street Journal's claim that Steve Jobs had liver transplant surgery two months ago. I don't own Apple stock; as I've indicated before, and for journalistic ethics reasons, I've made no direct investments in the tech sector since joining EDN in January of 1997. But if I were an Apple shareholder, I'd be royally PO'd right about now.

On January 5, Apple published an 'open letter' from Steve Jobs in which the company's CEO blamed his ...Read More

No good deed goes unpunished. I wonder if that's what AT&T is thinking right about now?

I've mentioned the 'razor and blades' business model many times in past print and online writeups. Basically, it involves an initial subsidy of one hardware platform (the razor) to 'hook' potential customers, coupled with high prices of associated products and/or services (the razor blades) to ensure that the manufacturer still eventually turns a reasonable profit on the package. Here are some common 'razor and blades' examples from the consumer technology sector:

Yesterday morning, after I passed my previous writeup on this topic over to Microsoft, a PR representative promised that the company would review my situation and get back to me 'with an update ASAP'. I'm still waiting. But after perusing some of the comments on the relevant Green Button forum last night, I decided to do some experimentation. I've made some progress, but my Windows Media Center system's Program Guide is still not up to its former robust status prior to last Friday's full-power NTSC shutdown.

Green Forum forum participants had noted that the FCC-defined names of some of their received stations had changed, from KRXI-DT (for example) to KRXIDT. Default channel guide information in Windows Vista is stored in a file called ...Read More

While I was traipsing around Taiwan last week, Apple rolled out (among other things) the long-rumored latest iteration in its iPhone family back here in the States. By virtue of its evolutionary-versus-revolutionary nature, the iPhone 3G S hardware specs aren't as eye-popping as, say, those of the Palm Pre. But considering that 'S' supposedly stands for speed, the company clearly made some enhancements beyond the device's first- and second-generation forbearers.

Apple was forthright with some of the 'spee...Read More

The U.S. analog-to-digital terrestrial television transition, a subject to which I've devoted numerous blog posts and two feature articles in recent times, finally happened last Friday. By most accounts, it went surprisingly smooth...with the exception of owners of Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition-based computers. Wait, wasn't I just writing about this issue three months ago? Why yes, I was. But ...Read More

A follow-up to last Thursday’s writeup…

Of late, the dominant recurring mantra in my life seems to be:

It doesn’t end up being nearly as hard, or taking nearly as long, as you feared it would...

Friday afternoon was a perfect example. Having perused numerous Internet-based complaints regarding Apple customer service personnel refusing to repair defective MacBook Air bezel hinges, I admittedly walked into the Reno, NV store girded for a fight.

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Sigh...I don't know what it is about computers, trips to Taiwan, and me. Last year, the Windows Boot Camp partition on my MacBook was corrupted subsequent to a Windows Update, likely not the fault of Microsoft but of a slowly failing Seagate HDD. And this year, although I've delayed installing the Monster Patch Tuesday suite of O/S and Office updates until after I return to Truckee later this evening, I was again bit by a comparatively minor but still annoying hardware bug.

Earlier today, I opened the LCD bezel on my MacBook Air and heard a loud pop. The right hinge is now unnaturally higher than its left counterpart, a...Read More