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Behold: the Fisher-Price Apptivity Case, a protective baby-friendly cover for your iPhone.

I'm a digital guy, have been since I got an Atari as a second-grader. I now have two kids that can't help but see my TV set, laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod. They think it's fascinating and fun.

So I did what any responsible parent should do. I downloaded and tested some age-appropriate apps and let my older son explore. The iPad and iPhone are genius devices in their usability, with their clutter-free fascia and immersive interfaces. So now the gadget is teaching the boy animals, colors, shapes, letters, memory retention and matching, spatial relations, you name it. We also set up guidelines: no screens between breakfast and dinner, no YouTube (Thomas the Tank Engine snuff films! who knew?), you have to play out difficult boards and not quit things quickly, etc.

That boy is now 4 and is as digitally savvy as anyone his age. He's also wicked good at memory matching games, he can write his letters in capitals and lowercase, and he plays sophisticated games like Flow, Trainyard and Rush Hour better than many adults. Heck, he figured out how to unlock the home screen at 21 months. And he still loves his real-world toys, crayons and books.

Done right, gadgets are as wondrously useful for young people as they are for adults.

My baby boy is 15 months and dying to play with the iPhone. Right now he only gets glimpses when his big brother is engaged. Soon enough, Eli, soon enough.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:39 PM | Permalink

Few visualizations of the transition from old media to new media (to which I've long been contributing, as both a digital media veteran and a reader) are as stark as the sales trend of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which ceased print publishing this week (edited for clarity):

Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. ... Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought. ... Now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica's revenue.

Brittanica's been in print for 244 years. (It has the New York Times and The Economist beat by nearly a century.) But in a relatively brief 22 year span, the print encyclopedia's distribution dropped by 93% and the share of the publisher's revenue from those books dropped by 99%.

I continue to read many publications in print form, atop the multitude of web pages I consume. But I suspect it won't be long before my only practical reading option is a tablet.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Aw, what the heck. Today is a nostalgic one thanks to Steve Jobs. Everyone I read keeps posting about how they've used so many Apple devices over the years. So I took stock.

Apple ][e (loved)--I didn't have my own, I just used Mike Han's a lot. Circa 1983.

Apple //c (owned)--the ][e was off the market by the time my parents bought me my own computer.

Apple Macintosh (loved)--again, I didn't have my own, I was forced to go over to Felix Sheng's and Howard Slatkin's houses and be jealous of theirs. Howard's dad had the original Talking Moose app, which I fondly recall to this day.

Apple Personal Modem 300/1200 (owned)--this is the gadget that really changed how I view the world. I fell in love with online communication back in late 1987.

Macintosh LC (owned)--my first Mac. Kind of a piece of crap, particularly after I installed AutoDoubler to find hard drive space and my processor slowed to a crawl.

Macintosh SE/30 (loved)--I inherited this when I took over my college newspaper. It's probably my all-time favorite computer, even though it was three years old when I used it. I had on it Eudora, Microsoft Word 5.1a, and a Klondike solitaire app, and it was just about perfect.

Macintosh Performa 636CD (owned)--the Mac I got after I wiped the LC hard drive and sold the machine. It was fine.

Power Macintosh (used and owned)--I had Power Macs at two different jobs in the 1990s and early 2000s, and purchased one for myself in 1998 after I moved to New York and needed a decent machine at home for freelancing. I forget the model number, but I was very happy with my personal Power Mac, which I upgraded several times over the years. I used Power Macs in vintage (pre-PowerPC) mode as well as with G3 and G4 chips. Soldiering on through Apple's darkest years, loyally, hopefully.

PowerBook G3 (loved)--my close second on the favorites list. Gorgeous, powerful, transportable, rugged. The Economist got me one for my international travels and it went around the world with me with aplomb. To this day part of me wishes they'd bring back an evolved version of this laptop design, with its soft-touch matte black exterior.

iMac (loved)--I was still plugging away on my hotrodded Power Mac when the iMac blew onto the scene. I didn't buy one, but everyone else did, including my my mom. Bondi Blue everywhere. (Mom is on her third iMac now.)

iBook (used)--when I met my wife, she had the Bondi Blue Tangerine Orange Mac laptop. Cute and durable.

iPod (owned)--the original model, 2001. My parents thought I was nuts buying a $399 gadget that no one had ever heard of. (I still have it, and it still works, although the battery is shot.)

iPod mini, 3G, nano, Classic, Shuffle (owned)--I believe my household has had 10 iPods through the years. Five of them are currently in use in one way or another. We never did get an iPod Touch, though.

PowerBook G4 (owned)--purchased when the iBook and PowerBook G3 both fell apart. Served us well for years.

iPhone (owned)--bought the original model the first weekend. Rock star.

MacBook (owned)--our current machine is another gem. Fast, useful, attractive, everything an Apple product always is. I have a nearly identical MacBook Pro at work.

iPhone 3G (used)--Amy got this one, I didn't.

iPhone 3GS (owned)--and now we both have this guy, awaiting the 5, whenever it comes out.

iPad (owned)--we didn't buy one, then Amy got one, then we didn't use it for awhile. We have since discovered that it is our three-year-old son's favorite toy. (I still don't use it for much. Maybe the iPad 2 will change that.)

The only company in my life with a similar longevity is Nike, whose shoes I've been wearing since first grade. Quite a run for a technology company. Godspeed, Apple.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:10 AM | Permalink

I am enough of a traditionalist that I still gauge the importance of news by its placement on the front page of the printed New York Times. (I still get a copy on my doorstep every morning.) So it was not lost on me that the lead in today's paper was Steve Jobs' decision to step down as CEO of Apple.

CEO transitions are often news, but not front page news, much less the story that carries the day. (As of this writing the story has already become a secondary item on nytimes.com, making the print edition the final record of the day's priorities.) Such is the impact and presence of the genius behind one of history's most remarkable companies.

While the Times is my guide, I first learned of Jobs' decision last night--on my iPhone. I could run down a list of Apple devices I've used in the last seven days alone but to do so would be almost too obvious. Jobs' vision has transformed how we consider, use and appreciate technology, all for the better.

I've enjoyed Apple products since the days of the ][e. I look forward to many years of continued innovation and successes by the company. Today, like the rest of the world, I tip my cap to Steve, in thanks and in admiration.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:53 AM | Permalink

From my post on aiaio:

The majority of respondents, 58%, don't use the mobile Internet at all. And two-fifths of that group doesn't even have a web-enabled mobile device.

In my everyday life, for each instance I have of "aha! let me look that up on my phone," I get half as many eye rolls about the fact that my phone came out of my pocket. My ability to access information in an instant can be trumped by an inclination toward, well, not taking out the phone.

Mobile etiquette is a funny thing; I personally err on the side of polite more than progressive, apologizing if my phone comes out mid-conversation. I wonder how much of that is going to drive mobile adoption the next few years, and when or whether it will move from accepted to expected across all social and age classes, as text messaging has.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 6:36 PM | Permalink

Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth, on Fortune Tech.

I hate when hyperbole overshadows fact. (It's one of the reasons I have never gotten deeply into following politics.) This article posits to fact-check Steve Jobs' iPad 2 keynote, but Seth Weintraub's corrections are surrounded in so much arm-waving frustration that they undermine the root arguments behind them. They also overstate the corrections.

To wit: Jobs included a bullet point that said the iPad has greater than 90% market share. Weintraub wrote in response, "'>90% market share'. OMG Math," then asserted, "Apple would have needed to sell 3.2 million more to reach 90% of 2010's tablet market share." Which, in itself, isn't accurate either. If the market is essentially the 14.8 million-sold-in iPad and the 2 million-sold-in Galaxy Tab, then Apple's sales in 2010 weren't 90% of the market, they were actually (wait for it) 88.1%. OMG Math.

Then, in trying to compare apples to apples on component pricing, Weintraub starts with, "The XOOM's are simply better." He then chooses to pick at various items on the iPad's spec sheet which don't match up to the Xoom's, and says Apple doesn't measure up. But in doing so, he's playing the same game in reverse: focusing on factors where his preferred device is stronger (RAM, storage, speakers) and ignoring the ones where his is not (processor, size, cameras). It's a winless argument.

Thinly veiled disdain is good for speaking to a base of like-minded individuals. But it won't win any broader discussions.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:21 AM | Permalink

HP Slate photo gallery.

The real question to me is, how come Apple's pursuers not only rip off the interfaces and concepts but also blatantly copy the exteriors? Black bezel, chrome rim--is there no other way for a tablet device to look than exactly like an iPad, albeit with a back panel full of Citgo logos?

Every touch phone in the market rips off the iPhone's visuals, too. It's not like Apple's products are always handsome, either. I actually think the iPhone 3G and 3GS weren't all that attractive. But the competitive market seems to think the only way to keep up with Apple products is to look like them. Even Microsoft's Zune ripped off the iPod's single round button for navigation.

Here's a hint, product teams: these tactics may get you some sales, especially if you're filling a market need, like offering buckets of iPhone-looking devices on Verizon's as-yet iPhone-less network. But they won't get you industry recognition. Or long-term market growth. Or the respect of discerning, taste-making consumers, who generally know the difference.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

That's the gist of Steve Jobs's hastily arranged and moderately defensive iPhone press conference today discussing the antenna-finger-reception issue.

There's nothing press-conference-worthy about the issue, really, other than the fuss that's being made. Apple felt the need to respond to its critics, which, I suspect, has more than a little to do with Consumer Reports' product damnation earlier this week. Stodgy as it may seem, CU wields a lot of influence, as evidenced by its recent safety warning on the Lexus GX460, which forced Toyota to immediately suspend its sales. (Disclosure: I am a consumerreports.com subscriber.)

Apple's sales are a combination of its near-flawless execution and the halo of respect and admiration the company receives for its products. With the iPhone 4, Apple wound up with a) a tangibly flawed product, whether it wants to admit it or not, however minor it may be; and b) the potential loss of some of that all-important respect and admiration. Apple had to try and remind people of its general excellence and plug the hole in the proverbial dyke.

Let's analyze the specifics of the "solution," then, which has been cited as potentially costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Apple will give away free bumpers to all its iPhone 4 customers. This has an opportunity cost of $87 million, given Apple's $29 price point versus the three million phones already sold.

Seriously, though: that bumper's $29 ask is laughable. It's a molded plastic ring. A lay consumer can buy full-size iPhone cases for $1.50 for as few as 30 pieces in bulk. What do you think Apple's wholesale cost is for three million, sourced directly from the manufacturer? Thirty cents? Maybe less?

At $0.30 per case, Apple's big giveaway will cost the company $900,000 for the first three million, plus overhead. Given that Apple has brought in at least $600 million in revenue (probably a lot more) on those three million iPhone 4s, nine hundred grand seems like a pretty painless repair. (As an Apple shareholder, I should note that this pleases me.)

The iPhone 4 remains an incredible product, and Apple a remarkable company. Today's press conference didn't really change things one way or the other. Their hope is that with their case-and-refund announcement in place, the issue will quiet down, and people will feel good about buying and using the iPhone 4. We'll see if it works.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 2:01 PM | Permalink

The Awl: The Golden Age Of Hipper-Than-Thou CD Fetishization Begins Now.

See, I've still got my old stereo, and I've been hoarding all the CDs I bought or burned between the ages of 13 and 24. Sure, they take up a lot of space. Was a bitch to move them out of the old apartment, too, but it's worth it. This stuff is gold. ... We remember Tower Records, man. We were there.

My son (age two) broke my CD player last month. My gorgeous, wonderful, feature-rich, six-disc Pioneer CD changer, which lasted longer in regular use than any other piece of electronics I've ever owned, which I loved so much that I bought a matching car CD changer so I could swap the cartridges, which was such a near-perfect device that I actually had the laser realigned in 1996 rather than buy a new one. The day it broke was almost exactly the 20th anniversary of its purchase.

Twenty years is a long time for a piece of stereo equipment, so I'm not all that saddened that it broke. Its passing has thrown me into something of an existential crisis, though.

Do I buy another one?

I mean, I'm an iPod guy through and through. Had one since they first came out. I carry a 160GB iPod Classic in addition to my iPhone. I rarely pop in CDs to listen to casually, and despite my lifelong love affair with record stores, I've only physically bought music two or three times in the past couple of years, and they were point-of-sale impulse buys.

On the other hand, I have a lot of discs. More than a thousand. Most of which I've never properly digitized, because of the daunting task of burning a thousand CDs. (I perversely burn the albums I least care about, in order to get them out of my apartment, which means my iTunes collection contains a lot of mediocre music and not enough of my old favorites.) When we moved into our current apartment, I had two wall units custom-built for our living room, one of which just houses CDs.

I have been thinking for awhile about digitizing the whole thing and just moving on. But what to do with all that music? I'm something of a collector and I don't like the idea of throwing away the tangible jewel boxes and liner notes, especially considering how much money, and time, I invested in acquiring them.

But the reality of progress cannot be ignored. I saved 800 cassette tapes and 200 vinyl records in my parents' house when I moved out in the '90s, and to date, I've listened to roughly 30 of those cassettes and none of the records. The hoarder in me shouts, "But those thirty! And how much is irreplaceable? And what about the next time you need music and forget your iPod? And the bootlegs, man! And imagine if you had to reassemble your metal collection from scratch...!"

Thing is, I have reassembled a lot of my music collection. No matter how much I deny it, I don't look back much: all those classic rock albums I have on cassette? I don't even leave those artists on the radio when the local rock radio station plays their songs. We move on.

In an ideal world, I'd find myself at home with two weeks to kill and no one else in the house, and I'd spend a few days pulling all my music--cassettes and all--into a lossless audio format on a two-terabyte hard drive with dual backups. I don't know if or when that will ever happen, but in the meantime, I may as well admit to progress.

So we're not replacing the CD player in the component stereo. We will, instead, pop in an iPod cable, so until we get a music server set up we can play tunes without dealing with the laptop. And my son--who, before breaking it, learned how to turn on the stereo and play CDs in the old Pioneer--will be able to bring his iPod into the living room and play his kids' tunes on his own volition, once he learns to read, that is. And at some point I'll even purge the living room of physical CDs.

It's not that the future has arrived. Heck, the future has been here for years. It just took a toddler's accident for me to formally let go of the past.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:02 PM | Permalink

For all the fuss about AT&T's new data rates (both pragmatically good and knee-jerk bad) the main point to keep in mind is whether those rates are actually good for consumers. For the most part, they are: John Gruber notes in his post that 98% of AT&T's users fall below the new 2GB monthly plan, and that even with overages these rates beat the competition.

I'm a daily, heavy user of data on my iPhone 3GS, so I logged into my phone bill to see where I land. And lo, a surprise: not only do I not need unlimited data, I can actually drop down to the 250MB plan. Because I regularly use my home and work wifi, and I don't download much media, my 3G bandwidth usage has been 230MB or less for the past six months.

I like the idea of an open meter, and when I change plans, I'll probably switch to the 2GB/month plan, even if it costs me a few bucks extra. I will be happier paying $25/month and never hitting my limit than paying $15/month and worrying about, or getting slapped with, overages when I download some videos. Still, that's found money for me, and for 98% of AT&T's smartphone users.

One could gripe all day about AT&T's signal strength or its needlessly expensive text messaging plans. But its data plans are well considered and decently consumer-friendly, no matter how the blogosphere reacts.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:43 AM | Permalink

From my post on aiaio:

Contemplating how to service users with 1.5" BlackBerry screens was one thing; dealing with iPad users, with their 1024x768 screens and just-like-a-laptop-only-better expectations, is entirely another. And while the iPad may be just a first step in an evolution, a million unit sales in a month suggests someone found the keys to the steamroller.

It's easy to forget that the iPad is both a laptop and a mobile device--a blurry line that is only going to get blurrier. I know of a retailer that converted a few thousand dollars in sales on its circa-2007, Flash-enabled website last year ... in iPod Touch user sessions. Evolution doesn't wait.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I kid, mostly, and I still sort of want one, but I love this paragraph. From the New York Times' first-day coverage of the iPad launch:

"I have no idea what he'll do with it," said Jessica Panzica, 30, waiting in line at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco for her husband, who could not pick up his iPad because he had a ham-radio class. "I'm sure he'll use it a lot, whatever it is. He told me I'm not allowed to open it."

I've been trying to write the perfect ham radio operator-cum-iPad early adopter line based on this but I think it's already in here somewhere.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 5:26 PM | Permalink

I'm skeptical about the new Apple iPad.

I don't think it's as big a deal as the excitement portended, at least not right away.

I'm dubious that, at least at first, it'll do things in dramatically different ways that my current MacBook/iPhone combination cannot emulate.

I sure as heck don't need one.

But, um, I kinda want one anyway.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 5:16 PM | Permalink

The longer it sits there, the less I like the post below this one. I'm leaving it there for posterity (and the one on the work blog, too). But I suspect the near future will prove me all wrong—in the priority of my observations, my knee-jerk reactions, my skepticism. I sit here and wonder why I reacted like I did; after all, I was a pleased early adopter of the iPhone and the iPod, limitations and all. If I lived in the suburbs, and I had a room I called an office with an iMac on my desk, I'd probably crave an iPad, a situational divide made all the more striking by the Mac laptops I have at home and work (and, as noted, the iPhone already in my pocket).

So Sippey sounds like he's right. Gruber is probably right. Pogue is almost certainly right, and he's full of "don't listen to me yet" hedges. Which makes me, er, wrong. Or at least noticeably off the mark.

I look forward to playing with an iPad in the real world this spring, where I can make some real, and properly reasoned, conclusions.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

From my post on aiaio:

I'm no gadget prognosticator, and as an Apple shareholder, I hope I'm wrong. But this looks like it's going to be a bit of a niche product, at least at first.

I'm guessing that the iPad will have a fantastic user experience, be a wonder to behold and use, but give very little practical reason for purchase. At $629 and up for the 3G model, I'm certainly not giving up my Kindle thoughts, since I already have an iPad Nano (you know it as the iPhone) in my pocket to do the iPad's heavy lifting. And I didn't even mention the keyboard dock. What the heck?

I'm not selling my AAPL just yet, though. People had their doubts about the iPod, and look how that worked out. And who knows? Maybe there's a huge market for people that want iPhones without giving up their non-smartphones.

I suppose the problem is that I, like everyone else, was waiting to be OMG BLOWN AWAY by a new device that, in many ways, I already own. Taken on its own, the iPad is a nice device, if not a worldwide game-changer at first blush. The real news is that Apple's hype machine got the best of us all.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When it comes to the news, I am a proud anachronism. I read the New York Times in print every single day that I am home (and many when I'm not). We get seven-day home delivery, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, when my wife and I want the same things (the media business coverage, Metro Diary, the Dining section), I buy a second copy at the newsstand.

I love my Times. I literally read it cover to cover, leafing through every page, glancing at headlines and diving into a relatively large number of articles. I'm an expert in the dying art of the accordion fold. I read nyt.com online during the day, of course, but despite my career in new media, I've never so much as considered deviating from my print copy of the daily paper.

Until.

After shrugging off the Kindle for the past year or so—I'm not much of a book reader; I read a few gajillion websites, half a dozen magazines and the aforementioned paper—I stumbled across the amazon.com page advertising daily Times delivery. A few days later I found myself on the subway playing Toobz on my signal-less iPhone, staring jealously at a woman reading on her Kindle. And suddenly it didn't seem like such a bad idea. Less money. Less waste. And other stuff to read when the paper is done.

I began to seriously wonder, should I buy a Kindle and switch to electronic delivery? I did a little cost assessment and realized my newspaper is a very expensive habit. The Times, to its credit, gives daily subscribers a break: our papers cost us $11.70 a week (at the newsstand it'd be $17). Factoring in the Monday and Wednesday purchases, and assuming we remember to stop it when we go on vacation, 50 weeks of the New York Times in print costs us $785 a year.

Compare that with the Kindle, which costs $259 for the small version—the pocket-sized, and therefore commute-friendly, one—and $13.99 for a monthly subscription to the Times. After one year, I'll have spent $427, and I'd have a shiny gadget to boot. Heck, we could get a second one for Amy, and after 14 months, our spend would be tied, $910.60 for print versus $909.72 digitally.

More intriguingly, I could just download the Kindle iPhone app, save $259, and read the Times right there. Then again, I'm not sure I want to permanently downsize to a 3.5" screen; the Kindle would reduce eyestrain while still being cost-effective.

Regardless, the piece of the future that I was willfully neglecting has suddenly come into sharp relief. Getting the newspaper on a gadget, nicely designed for comfortable reading and invisible updates, has become a realistic option. Even for a daily-paper addict like me.

I do still enjoy reading things on, y'know, paper. So I'm not about to toss our subscription out the window. (I suspect that even if we went digital, we'd keep getting weekend delivery, just to have the Sunday New York Times Magazine and its crossword in hard copy. Then again, Jeff Bezos has bathroom reading covered, too.) But the news here is that I am at long last considering it. And if I'm ready to give up my beloved newspaper, the horizon just got a whole lot closer.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From my post on aiaio:

In partnering with HTC, a company that produces cell phones for every US carrier and two different operating systems, Google ceded control of the overall experience. Never mind that the handset is slim and fairly attractive. It's also generic, and apparently imperfect. When David Pogue pushes your phone's home button, you really don't want it to fail.

There's a huge difference between designing and engineering a device, as Apple did with the iPhone and Palm with the Pre, and a company having a device "built to its specifications". Google was telling HTC, "We want our phone to do this," and HTC was putting the requisite componentry in place. This tends to minimize holistic product definition and by its very nature waters down the innovation. In contrast, Palm and Apple (and Motorola and Nokia, for that matter) manage the entire process, and their software is designed to complement the hardware, maximizing user experience. Google, a company that is strictly virtual, doesn't know how to do this.

Apple completely reengineered the UI of mobile telephony with the iPhone. Visual voice mail. Screen-based keyboard. Multi-touch interface. The list goes on and on. Google, in contrast, is very "me too" at this point in its phone development cycle. It will be interesting to see if Google follows the Microsoft model and finds nirvana in its third or fourth release.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From my post on aiaio:

[The Apple] tablet's pixels per inch will be impressively high, like the 160 ppi of the iPhone. Most Mac desktop and laptop displays hover around 110 ppi. An 11" screen at 160 ppi will provide almost the same amount of pixel real estate as a 13.3" MacBook screen does now. This will help minimize people's perception that they're giving up detail for size.

Apple wants an iPhone in your pocket, an iSlate (or whatever) on your coffee table, and an iMac on your desk, with laptops positioned for students and the mobile workforce. It's ambitious. And more than a little smart.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My new iPhone is much faster. Every function performs better, from finding wifi to launching apps.

The iPhone 3GS feels noticeably lighter than the first-gen phone, despite their officially weighing the same in grams.

According to my wife, people calling my phone can now hear me clearly, as opposed to my old one, which had developed awful reception and sound quality. On my end calls are less crunchy but not entirely different.

The warmer white point makes everything look irresponsibly yellow. I feel like my phone is jaundiced.

The ringer/vibrate button is in higher relief than on the old phone, and every time I put it in my pocket, the ringer turns back on. I hope my soon-to-arrive case will mitigate this effect. (Also: the AT&T Wireless store charged me $10 more than the manufacturer's website pricing for the aforementioned case. Rude.)

I am now keeping up with the joneses... until July, when the iPhone 3GT or whatever makes me instantly out of date.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:45 AM | Permalink

My fifth headphone review went live on Boing Boing Gadgets Friday, marking the midpoint in the series I'm doing this summer. I'm penning 10 pieces covering 11 models from seven different manufacturers.

And what have I learned? More than I expected, some of it obvious, others less so:

• Greatness is variable. Undoubtedly, almost all of the headphones I'm testing are great, in one way or another; the cheapest pair is a hundred fifty bucks, after all. But what defines greatness? To Etymotic, it's pure reproduction of original sound; to Klipsch, it's top-to-bottom balance; to Audio-Technica, it's pumping abnormally strong bass through miniature devices; to JVC (coming next week), it's replicating its audio style across product lines. More than once I've found myself thinking, really, who am I to judge?
• MP3s truly are a crappy audio medium. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to the sound, and I don't deny progress. But the high quality of electronics in my possession exposes an MP3's flaws and has me casting a skeptical eye on my iTunes library. Someday I'm going to switch to a 200GB iPod and a lossless audio format.
• I'm a picky son of a gun. Etymotic has pure sound the likes of which I've never experienced. My wife swoons at the mere memory of listening to music through them. But I disliked the lack of low-end punch, which I noted, and which made my contact at Etymotic downright wistful. Maybe I should lighten up a bit.
• But hey, I know what I like, which is a balanced output that brings warmth and resonance to music at low volume levels. While I remain impressed by it, I don't need Etymotic's hyper-clear output. Give me the Klipsch, thanks, with a side of Audio-Technica's mind-blowingly good noise isolation. Heck, I'd take the Audio-Technicas, too. I like bass. (I'm bringing them both on a business trip I'm about to take.)
  

This project has been a ton of fun, and I haven't even written about the fancy models yet. My continued thanks go out to Rob Beschizza and Joel Johnson for giving me the platform.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 12:22 PM | Permalink

Review: A week with the Etymotic hf2, by yours truly, on Boing Boing Gadgets.

Last week I was on line at Duane Reade and watched the man in front of me ask for a pair of headphones. He selected a Maxell model from behind the register; it was $14.99, I think, maybe a bit more. He contemplated them for a moment.

"Those are very good," said the cashier, blithely.

"Okay," said the customer, who paid and walked out.

Suffice to say I am not that guy.

I have always had, and appreciated, top-flight portable audio, from my fancy Sony Walkmans in the 1980s to several pairs of expensive noise-canceling headphones in recent years. And with my tinnitus forcing me to listen to in-ear music at low volumes, having good noise isolation has been a must.

At the tail end of bicycle commuting last summer, I ran over my headphones--my $150, pristine-sounding, noise-isolating, wondrous Shure E3c headphones--with my front tire. Oops. I used them anyway, broken and sad, for several months.

It took me that long to figure out which headphones to buy, and the ones I finally got were good but not great. Useful reviews of noise-canceling and noise-isolating headphones are hard to come by. I don't need wonky audio spectrum surveys, or dissections of the nuances of Django Renhardt's solos: what I need is, do they sound good? and how well do they shut out the outside world?

So I decided to do what any good blogger should: do it myself. I pitched Joel Johnson, formerly of Boing Boing Gadgets, and he gave me the go-ahead. Two months of emails later, I have $2880 worth of headphones in my dining room, a ridiculous categorical spreadsheet, and a fun, interesting commute to work. Goofy expressions like "in hog heaven" come to mind.

The first review went live today, with 10 more to run through the summer. My thanks go out to Joel and to Rob Beschizza, my new editor, who inherited this project and has been most gracious and helpful. Look for more posts on BBG and some additional commentary in this space as the project continues.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some more items on the election's impact:

• RealClearPolitics - Articles - What Would Goldwater Do?
  George Will on the Republican election loss, mirroring my blog post from yesterday: "more dispiriting than numerically stunning."
  
  
• A Blowout? No, but a Clear-Cut Win, for a Change
  Experts call it, among other things, "a normal win." Which sounds about right.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 9:07 AM | Permalink

To answer the question I hear most about it: yes, I love my iPhone. It is every bit the gee-whiz, fun-to-use, eye-candy-rich, conversation-starting geek toy I expected when I bought it. It does so many things so well and has fast become an indispensible tool. It also simplified my life: I have shed my pocket day planner, streamlined my contacts list, and I no longer lug my laptop away from my desk, since I can just whip out the iPhone for the majority of what I want to do online.

What's great about it is that so many of the "wow" features in the iPhone are actually practical. Pinching and spreading to zoom in and out: wonderful. Scrolling around a screen by dragging displays with one finger: so great I keep wishing my computer supported the same function. The touch screen is an easy, intuitive way to do, well, everything, and the relatively transparent access to the Internet (even on AT&T's network) turns the iPhone into an iAnything. Web browsing is great. The iPod is great. Google Maps is phenomenal. The weather pane seemed like a throw-in when I got the phone, until I found myself checking it a few times a day, and now I can't live without it.

That pretty much sums up the whole user experience: once you have an iPhone, you immediately find it useful and pleasant, and everything else pales in comparison. In a word, terrific.

Alongside my praise, I am not afraid to admit it's not a "perfect" device, in the sense that all of its capabilities are not pinnacles of joy and ease-of-use. I will defer to the many, many reviews of the iPhone elsewhere online for a reasoned critique, but here's what I personally am crinkling my nose at:

~ The vertical keyboard layout is mediocre. I might enjoy it more in horizontal web layout, but since it's not available anywhere else, I just do all my typing upright, and three weeks in, I'm still tapping words with my index finger. Yeah, it works, but BlackBerry and Treo users (including myself) will feel slowed down by its interface. It does trump T9 on a phone, but that's not enough.

~ Neat, look at the wheelie calendar scheduling interface! I use this all the time to show off how nifty the iPhone is. But as an actual scheduler, it's pretty damn annoying. If I used my Mac to book appointments I'd be in good shape, but I generally plug them straight into my iPhone, and man, wouldn't it be nice to have a 10-key number pad for dates and times.

~ Holding the device steady enough to tap the touch-screen camera shutter is a challenge. I could probably learn to juggle on a unicycle in the time it will take me to learn how to never blur my photos.

~ I worry endlessly that the spam-filter-less mail function and the fun but error-prone slide-to-delete finger stroke in it are exposing my email address to happy spammers around the world.

~ I've noticed that the side of my thumb is not a sufficient surface for the screen to pick up on tapping. This might just be my freak thumbs, but whatever the reason, it's annoying.

So, no, it's not perfect. I'm looking forward to firmware updates that continue to improve the UI, although I'm expecting them not to address all my concerns. The iPhone simultaneously reminds me of why I continually buy Apple products... and why I don't use the applications in OS X outside of iLife.

All this said, the iPhone is still a fascinating device and a complete game-changer in the world of consumer electronics. I am gleefully obsessed with it and proud to own it.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 8:16 AM | Permalink

If you wanted an iPhone this weekend, you could have waited on line for three days, like some of the folks who made it into national newspapers, or you could have done what I did: roll into the Apple Soho store just after it opened at 9:30 Saturday morning, gotten on a very short line at the register, and walked out with one in roughly four minutes.

So far, it's pretty terrific. The learning curve is short and the pleasures of the UI are long. Free wifi is easy to find in the city, so the major shortcoming cited in early reviews (AT&T's slow EDGE data network) has not been a factor. And I can sheepishly report that the iPhone withstands a three-foot drop onto concrete without any damage to the system or the beautiful display, although my day-old gadget is nicely scruffed.

Also: the iPhone comes in a dedicated iPhone bag. Carrying this bag around Manhattan turns a person into a temporary rock star. The buzz around this device is truly astounding.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 6:34 PM | Permalink