The elements of Apple style

Apple’s computers are elegantly styled by anyone’s measure, and the careful—one might say obsessive—design extends even to the out of box experience. The packaging is ergonomically designed to smooth and guide the setup process. On the newest iMacs, each provided part is snugly wrapped in clear plastic with easy-to-peel tabs for removal. (This contrasts with the fingernail-defying protective film on a lot of other PCs; an HP all-in-one we are testing had six separate peel-off pieces on the mouse alone, and eight on the main unit.)

The manual and system DVDs are cached in two DVD-sized slipcases, one labeled “Everything Mac” and the other “Everything Else.” The silicone power cord unrolls with no kinks, and the back of the system unit is as clean-looking as the front. No brand names, feature lists, or “Designed for Windows 7” or “Intel inside” type stickers distract you from the basic functionality, save for the understated Apple logo. There’s a luxurious feel to the whole package.

That’s not to say there haven’t been notable gaffes in Apple’s designs through the years. The puck mouse on the original iMac was universally derided, and some people don’t like other Apple mice for various reasons. Some Mac laptops got much too hot in use, or had their wrist-rest surface discolor. And before Apple improved their batteries, there were lots of complaints of premature failures or even batteries puffing up like balloons. Their keyboards lack a number pad and have small cursor keys. And the iMac’s minimalistic design places all connections on the rear, making it a bit of a chore to plug in a USB flash drive or an audio headset.

But Apple’s product design is still a tough act to follow, if the industry’s clamor to create Apple-look-alikes is any measure. We have yet to see an MP3 player as coveted as the iPod line, nor have the bulk of iPhone users longed for much besides possibly better cell coverage. And, Mac computers remain the alternative to the Windows PC world that people choose most. —Dean Gallea

3 ways to follow the World Series—digitally

For $9.99, watch up to four different camera angles at MLB.com.

One great thing about baseball’s postseason is the almost daily gratification of watching a pivotal game. It can also be one of the most inconvenient aspects. It’s easy enough to reserve an evening to watch the Superbowl; a little less so to hunker down in front of a TV for up to seven World-Series-filled nights. Major League Baseball (or was it the TV networks?) didn’t make time management any easier this year by scheduling game three on a night otherwise occupied by Halloween parties and trick-or-treating.

If you’re looking for an alternative way to catch the game (in case you’ll be walking hand-in-hand tomorrow night with a pint-sized vampire), or maybe just a way to mix up your usual gamewatch experience, technology has provided some new ones:

Get an app. iPhone and iPod Touch users have a number of resources for staying updated while mobile. MLB.com offers At Bat ($9.99), a popular application that lets you watch each game streaming live over your phone. With “Quad Mode” you can watch from up to four camera angles at the same time. The app also integrates Twitter so you can stay connected to friends and followers.

What’s that? You don’t pay for apps? Two free options are At Bat Lite and ESPN ScoreCenter. Both provide scores and game updates. ScoreCenter covers a multitude of professional leagues, from baseball and football to soccer and cricket.

5 hot electronics gifts flagged by Consumer Reports Holiday Shopping Poll

Electronics are again at the top of a lot of gift lists for the coming holiday season, according to the results of a Consumer Reports Holiday Shopping Poll released this week.

Here, are the five hottest electronics gifts, listed in order of respondents’ intentions to give them. I’ve added some reasons why they’re hot at the moment and, for some, details on the kind of people who are buying them:

• Video games and accessories. Planned as gifts by 28 percent of respondents. In a year where many people plan to cut back, as other survey data underlines, these are gifts that cost a lot less than most hardware. Nearly half of households with kids under 12 are planning such purchases, but so are nearly a quarter of homes with no such youngsters—underlining that games and extra Wii nunchucks aren’t just being bought for kids anymore. It helps that some of the hottest game titles of the year appeal equally to young and old players—notably Beatles Rock Band.

• Video-game consoles. Planned as gifts by 14 percent of respondents, including 25 percent of homes with kids under 12. With no new versions of consoles out this year, and the economy softening, prices have dropped for most brands. Also, after two seasons in which getting a Nintendo Wii consoles required military-level planning, the promise of its wider availability may be prompting some Wii holdouts to plan a purchase. (See our video buying guide for game consoles.)

Photoediting software for your iPhone or iPod Touch

The Perfectly Clear iPhone app from Athentech, allows you to adjust the contrast, brightness, tint and other aspects of the digital photos and images stored on your Apple iPhone. (Click to enlarge.)
[PHOTO: Consumer Reports]

Cameras and accessories have been the major focus at this year’s PhotoPlus Expo in New York, but products for other devices with camera capability are getting attention, such as photoediting software for the iPhone.

At an industry event last night, Adobe, which makes Photoshop and Photoshop Elements image-editing software, announced that its free Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application has been downloaded over 1 million times from Apple's App Store, a milestone reached in less than one week of availability. Additionally, Adobe said, the application has held the No. 1 position for all ‘Top Free’ applications for 10 consecutive days. The app lets you edit, upload, view and share photos directly on an iPhone or iPod Touch and crop or rotate, as well as transform photos with filters and effects.

Another company, called Athentech, has been doing demos of its iPhone app called Perfectly Clear, for $2.99, on the trade-show floor. The app corrects a picture’s contrast, exposure, and tint. It can also tweak saturation and sharpen images.

Canon also recently introduced a free iPhone app called Canon Easy Photo-Print App, which they claim enables you to wirelessly print photos from your iPhone or iPod touch on compatible Canon PIXMA printers via a wireless network with a few simple taps.

All three applications are available at the iTunes App Store. —Terry Sullivan

Extra Extra: Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide is on sale

(Click to enlarge.)

It may be a tad early to start your holiday shopping, but there’s a good chance you’ve at least been thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a big-ticket gift—like a new TV or home theater—in mind for a while now, but are putting off the purchase till November or December. If it’s sales you’re waiting for, you probably know what you want and how much you’re willing to pay. On the other hand, you might just a teeny bit leery of throwing so much cash at something you know very little about. Which is better: a plasma or LCD TV? Should you upgrade to a Blu-ray player or stick with standard-def DVDs?

If you find yourself in need of expert advice, consider the newest edition of the Consumer Reports Electronics Buying Guide. Inside you’ll find a wealth of information on everything from televisions and computers to smart phones, GPS units, and much more. For each product, the Consumer Reports editors walk you through the basics, explaining what’s available, which features matter, brand profiles, and offering tried-and-true shopping tips.

In addition to product information, the guide offers advice on how to shop smarter, including:

• Netting the best deals online, and protecting yourself when you shop on the Web


• When to repair and when to replace a broken item


• How to haggle effectively


• Finding the best electronics retailer based on our comprehensive annual survey


• How to save—and what to be wary of—with refurbished or open-box products on store shelves


• Where to get free office software, free computer security programs, and more useful freeware

AT&T to allow VoIP apps for iPhone—but you may still have to pay

The brouhaha that’s been brewing since AT&T and Apple squelched the Google Voice app for iPhone back in July just took an interesting turn. In an apparent reversal, and capitulation to an FCC inquiry, AT&T now says it will permit iPhone VoIP apps—those phone services that allow you to place voice calls over the Internet at little or money—to operate over its 3G and 2G networks.

iPhone (and Touch) users already have the ability to make VoIP calls via Skype service when they're within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot—but not over AT&T's 3G network. AT&T has a history of curbing iPhone access to its network for fear of overloads. Only in late September did it begin allowing iPhone users to send text messages with pictures (MMS).

This issue of allowing people to bypass their networks to make phone calls has been far more contentious. Many consumer groups, including Consumers Union advocates, contend that blocking such innovative apps is unfair to consumers. 

The announcement, CU advocates say, is a step in the right direction. However, AT&T's new VoIP offer may yet prove to be a very limited victory for consumers. Blackberry users can already make VoiP calls via Skype and other providers on AT&T's 3G network. However, the calls go over the voice portion of the network, so consumers use up their minutes. The only time it pays to use Skype over 3G is when calling foreign countries, which will be charged as domestic minutes rather that the much pricier foreign minutes.

No details of permitted apps or app rollout have been released. —Mike Gikas

New iPod Nano: Video, radio, and features galore

Here's a First Look at Apple’s new, fifth-generation iPod Nano, the first iPod with an FM radio and the ability to take videos. It’s the same size and weight as the old Nano, though the display has been enlarged slightly, to 2.2 inches. Claimed playback time is five hours for video, 24 hours for music. The 8GB Nano costs only $149; the 16GB version costs $179.

"Smile, you're on Nanocam." Taking videos on the Nano is fun and fairly easy, as the video first look (at right) shows. The wide-angle lens gets in lots of background, convenient if you're in a tight space with lots of people. After synching with iTunes on your computer, you can easily e-mail your videos to friends, post them on Facebook and Youtube, or edit them in iPhoto.

You don't need to have iTunes running to see your videos. The Nano shows up as an additional drive on your computer, so you can just drag them off the Nano. However you manage content, you’ll need to ensure you leave sufficient capacity for shooting video after loading music and other content; as with other iPods, when you’re away from the computer, you can’t delete songs from the Nano to free up space for more video recordings.

In terms of quality, we found the Nano cam comparable to standard-definition pocket camcorders such as the Flip Ultra. That is, they’re fine for casual viewing and posting online but fall short of the quality you’ll get from a full-sized standard-def camcorder. Also like pocket camcorders, the Nano records only in mono. At normal sound levels, such as conversations, the sound quality was decent. But as our subject got louder, as in laughing and screaming, the audio became noticeably distorted.

Smart radio. The Nano is a latecomer to FM on MP3 players, but its Live Pause feature, also shown in the video, records the station you're listening to slightly ahead of the live broadcast, so when you hit the pause button, the program pauses. Hit play and it picks up from where you left off, or you can rewind up to 15 minutes, or fast-forward to catch up to the live broadcast. Another plus—you can see the name of the current song and artist on the display. On the downside, when in Live Pause mode, it’s nearly impossible to switch to another channel.

Tag, you're it. Another convenient feature is iTunes tagging, which allows you to tag a song that’s playing on the radio so you can order it later from iTunes. Great idea, but the station has to support iTunes tagging for the feature to work. And in our tests, we were only able to find one station that did—a local "lite FM” station.

Not-so-smart DJ. Music player updates include Genius Mixes, which scours your collection according to genre and makes up play lists that . Nice idea, but some mixes we ordered up weren’t that smart, as we also cover in the video. —Mike Gikas

Apple updates iTunes and the iPhone OS

The updated iTunes sync screen. (Click to enlarge)
[PHOTO: Courtesy of Apple]

In addition to unveiling a new lineup of iPods, Apple today announced upgrades to its iTunes music-management software and store, along with making available a new version of the iPhone software for its smart phones and iPod Touch. All are available immediately.

iTunes version 9 adds the following key features to all iPods with displays:

iTunes LP. This includes expanded visual features to downloaded albums, such as live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, and album credits. But it's only available for a handful of albums from such artists as Norah Jones, the Grateful Dead, and Dave Matthews.

iTunes Extra. Similar to iTunes LP, this features documentaries, deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries you can download from iTunes. But, it too, is only available for a small number of titles, which include "Twilight," "Batman Begins," "WALL-E," "Iron Man" and "The Da Vinci Code."

Home Sharing. As the name implies, this lets you transfer music, movies, and TV shows among up to five authorized computers, allowing up to five iTunes libraries to be shared on a home network. It claims to filter out the portion of the shared libraries each user already has, and allows content to be imported directly to their libraries and for new purchases made at any computer on the network to be automatically added to all users libraries.

Genius Mixes. A DJ application that plays endless mixes of songs from your library that Genius thinks "go together." Just click on one of the mixes, and start playing it—and it will go on and on and on, like a radio station.

iPhone OS 3.1, available now for free, will allows iPhone and Touch users to organize their apps on their computer desktop, using iTunes, and to automatically appear on your iPhone with the same layout. It also adds the ability to sync music by artist and genre and sync photos by Events and Faces. [[The upgrade is free for iPhones, and $4.95 for Touches]]—Mike Gikas.

Apple announces a “Nanocam,” tweaks the other iPods

[UPDATE Sept. 16, 2009: We've posted a video review of the iPod Nano evaluating its new video and radio features. See New iPod Nano: Video, radio, and features galore. —Ed.]

Apple today announced its first iPod equipped with a camera and modestly upgraded the rest of the iPod line.

The camera-equipped iPod isn’t the Touch, as we and others had predicted, but the mid-level iPod Nano. Available immediately for $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB), the new Nanos will now sport a standard-definition video camera—and seemingly only a video camera; Apple’s press materials do not mention still-photo capability.

Apple chairman Steve Jobs, in his first appearance as an Apple spokesman since a prolonged sick leave, claims the Nano provides the same video quality as bulkier, so-called pocket camcorders, like the Samsung Pure Digital's Flip. (Such camcorders yield middling video quality that’s fine for online or other casual use, according to our tests, available to subscribers.) The Nanos also have a microphone and speaker built in.

The new Nanos boast the same diminutive size and oblong shape as their predecessors, though the display has been enlarged slightly, to 2.2 inches. Claimed playback time is five hours for video, 24 hours for music.

The Nanos are also the first iPods with built-in FM radios—the absence of which has long been a drawback for some consumers to Apple’s music player—with some innovative features. FM broadcasts can be paused, much like MP3 selections, and songs heard on the radio can be tagged for the later purchase on iTunes.

The Nanos also have a built-in pedometer that supposedly tracks calories you burned and comes in silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, red, and pink.

Here are the modest changes to the other iPods:

Touch. Apple's flagship iPod, the iPhone without the phone, gets a subtle facelift, beginning with faster graphics (courtesy of support of a standard called OpenGL) and a doubling of maximum storage capacity to 64GB—for the same $399 price as the old 32GB model. There's also an 8GB Touch for $199, and 32GB model for $299.

Classic. Apple’s only hard drive player didn’t disappear, as we and others predicted, but was refreshed in a higher capacity, of 160GB. It costs $249, the same as the old 120GB model.

Shuffle. The tiniest MP3 player in our MP3-player Ratings, available to subscribers, the 4GB Shuffle remains unchanged and is available for the same price of $79. But it now has a lower-capacity (2GB) twin for $59. —Mike Gikas and Paul Reynolds.

New iPods expected from Apple's conference

[PHOTO: Courtesy of marco.ziero]

September is the time of year when Apple refreshes its iPod line, so it's fairly safe to assume the press conference Apple is holding Wednesday, starting at 10 am Pacific time, will include news on the company’s media players.

We'll report on the event later in the day. Meantime, here are my predictions on what those announcements will be:

Higher-capacity iPods. Probably double the capacity of what's available now, for about the same price. That means a 64-gigabyte (GB) Touch, 32GB Nano, and 8GB Shuffle.

A camera and GPS capability for the iPod Touch. Speculators have been disappointed before on this topic, but this time the stars are properly aligned for adding a camera to at least one iPod. The company’s iPod Touch, essentially an iPhone without the cell-phone carrier connection or camera, is the natural first candidate, especially given that the latest iPhone boasts a 3.0-megapixel camera with editing capability. Also, the multiple GPS apps now available for the iPhone, including one from TomTom, could work on the Touch, were it to add a GPS chip, which reads position via satellite without need for a cell network connection.

Goodbye hard-drive models. Except for some niche portable video players made by Archos and iRiver, hard-drive MP3 players have all but disappeared from the marketplace. (Microsoft is dropping hard-drive models from the refresh of its Zune line, scheduled for mid-September.) The demise of Apple’s 120-GB Classic iPod seems likely.

An update to iTunes. Apple often combines iPod announcements with updates to its music-management software. Back in July, the Financial Times reported that Apple was working with major record labels, whose CD sales have steadily slipped, to spice up album downloads with more compelling extras that include "interactive" album material. Look for an announcement of iTunes album downloads that will insert a digital booklet of photos, lyric sheets and liner notes.

There’s also been speculation that the Apple event, being the same day as the Beatles catalog is re-released in remastered form (more on that in another post), will include a long-awaited announcement that the Fab Four’s music is being added to the iTunes Store.

Anything’s possible tomorrow from Apple (including announcements unrelated to iPods or iTunes), but it’s worth noting that the invitations for the event include the line “It’s Only Rock and Roll But We Like It.” Borrowing from a Rolling Stones song to help in announcing a Beatles deal seems odd, to say the least. —Mike Gikas