Monthly Archives: November 2010

It was an accident, honest!

Software

The Vampire Squid of the Internet.

Rolling Stone’s resident shock journalist Matt Taibbi wrote about Goldman Sachs a few months back.

“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Well, swap ‘Goldman Sachs’ with ‘Google’ and ‘investment bank’ with ‘search engine’ and it still reads well.

I wrote of Google’s culture of theft recently, protesting its copying of copyright materials for their profit and their support of net neutrality for the ‘public good’ when the prime beneficiary is Google.

Now this:

Now, I simply despise Microsoft for the hours of my life they have wasted rebooting PCs and losing data, but as of now I’m switching to Bing for my default search engine in the naïve belief that they actually do a tad less evil than Google. There is simply no circumstance on earth which will have me change my opinion of Microsoft but, in this case, it’s the lesser evil. Even the iPad/iPhone have an option to do this – go to Settings->Safari.

Would you trust Google with anything? Garnering all this data in their drive-by shootings is no accident. A team of people wrote that code with the specific intent of theft and profit, and the code of ethics in a corporation comes from the top. You don’t suddenly spontaneously breed criminality in the lower ranks. Those workers take their clues from their managers, and so on up the tree. Just like at Goldman Sachs.

And when you find your stolen photographs on Google, well, good luck suing them.

Should you read of my untimely demise any day now, just look to the Google Hit Squad of Uzi-bearing ninja assassins.

Remote with an iTunes music server

iPad, Macintosh

A work in progress.

Download Apple’s free Remote app to your iDevice and you get a handy interface for managing your remote music server. I explained how I set up one of these in yesterday’s column.

Start the app on, say, the iPad and this is what you see:

The list of sources appears in the left hand column and the contents in the right. This is the ‘Artists’ view – chosen from the tabs at the base of the screen.

Switch to Albums and you get this – as you can see I still have some work to do to get cover art for all my albums:

And so on. Touching the four arrows at lower right switches you to a blank screen which acts as a touch pad, permitting remote control of menu selections for the AppleTV on the screen of your television. Nice, and a lot more reliable than using a mouse on the sofa cushion!

Touch the ‘AppleTV’ bar in the left hand column and you see your sources on one screen:

The ‘iMac music server’ is the old G4 iMac I set up yesterday to act as a source for all our recorded music.

What is missing, and why I captioned this piece ‘a work in progress’ is AirPlay functionality. You cannot select where to output sound, so when I want to do so, I have go to the iMac music server and do so in the iTunes application there, as I illustrated yesterday. Not a big deal and maybe a constraint placed on Apple by the modest processing power and RAM of the current iPad. Given that each of my three speaker options has its own volume control – TV, Office and Dining Room – I can change or mute any of these when needed. Still, it would be nice to be able to do this from the iPad whose control is limited to pause/fast forward/rewind and play.

The Remote app is nicely engineered, the price is right (as in ‘free’!) and you can download it from the AppStore.

AirPlay with multiple speakers

Macintosh

Full house sound, wirelessly.

This piece gets a bit technical so hold on to your hat; however, it may be helpful for those experimenting with AirPlay routed to multiple speakers simultaneously.

Following up on yesterday’s column on using AirPlay with TuneIn radio on an iDevice, I rooted around and found another set of Logitech powered speakers languishing in the place the black beetles call home in the garage. These are the estimable Logitech Z4i with a powered bass and two satellites, making for excellent sound. Back when I used an iMac G5 and later the ill fated 24″ iMac which fried its GPU thanks to Apple’s crappy design, the satellites velcro’d nicely to the sides of the iMac’s monitor with the bass out of sight under the workspace. I had put them away in favor of smaller desktop speakers when I built the HackPro and had quite forgotten about them.

Well, as the shared Brother printer in the office is attached to an Airport Express (AEX) as a Bonjour printer, naturally I could not leave well enough alone, realizing that I could connect these powered Logitech speakers to the AEX for yet another sound output from any iDevice. A few moments of plugging things in and TuneIn Radio sound on my iPad was coming from these Logitechs.

Now how about full house sound? Well, I can’t see any place where AirPlay on an iDevice permits selection of multiple speakers, though I would bet dollars to doughnuts that this is only a matter of time. Maybe the iPad needs to be upgraded to the multi-core ARM A9 CPU before this becomes possible. However, firing up iTunes on the HackPro, where my extensive music library resides, I clicked on the AirPlay logo and this is what I saw:

AirPlay on iTunes and the HackPro.

Clicking on ‘Multiple Speakers’ I got this selection panel:

The multiple output panel in iTunes.

I checked off all the speakers and adjusted the volume but …. the sound keeps cutting out. Selecting just the HackPro’s speakers (“Computer”) all is fine, but select any other destination alone or in addition and the sound cuts out.

Going to Utilities->Audio MIDI Setup I adjusted the output settings to the least demanding, thus (2ch-24bit is the default):

Audio MIDI settings.

This reduced the cutting out but did not eliminate it, so I’m guessing there’s some glitch either in my wifi system (the HackPro where iTunes runs uses 2.4gHz 802-11n wifi as I cannot use pure 802-11n at 5gHz as I need the 802-11g mode for compatibility with my iPhone, and do not own the latest dual band Airport Extreme). All my sound files are in uncompressed format, meaning they are large, for maximum quality. MP3 is a poor, over-compressed format for sound fidelity. The file size doubtless is not helping matters.

For further diagnosis I went to the MacBook Air which uses 802-11n wireless, started iTunes and tried playing a track stored locally in iTunes on the MBA. Perfect. I could enable all remote speakers and all played fine with individual volume control available for each, suggesting that the lower speed of the 2.4gHz 802-11n on the HackPro may be a limiting factor. There are a lot of variables here so it could well be something else, but I expect I’ll get there through a process of elimination.

Getting ambitious, I next loaded the remote library on the MacBook Air from the HackPro, where iTunes->Advanced->Turn On Home Sharing is set to ‘On’. Well, the stuttering, while greatly reduced, was still there so clearly there is a bandwidth or speed issue with the HackPro which looks like it needs 802-11n. Meanwhile, I’ll just move my favorite tunes from the iTunes library on the HackPro to the one on the MacBook Air for those occasions when whole house sound is called for.

An encouraging experiment.

Update: A solution to the stuttering problem:

I put on the old thinking cap and took the resident Border Terrier for a walk. Always clears the mind, I find. I had never paid any attention to the sound technology in the HackPro where my iTunes library resides. All I need it to do is drive pokey desktop speakers for the usual mail sounds, etc. I do not listen to music through its speakers. Its 802.11g should be more than adequate for routing sound files, even if uncompressed. So could it be the Digital to Analog Converter in the HackPro that was choking? Well, I fired up that ancient old iMac with the 1.25 gHz IBM G4 CPU and a scant 1 gB of RAM which we have owned some ten years now. It’s mostly used for web surfing and is by far the most reliable Mac I have ever owned.

I reckoned that I would simply update iTunes on the iMac (which runs Leopard, the last version of OS X supported on the G3/4/5 CPUs) and then point iTunes to the library of music on the HackPro. While the iMac uses 802-11n it would still be no faster than 802-11g as the slowest component in the equation is the HackPro and it’s 802-11g. But, and here’s the key, I would be using the iMac’s DAC to convert the digital stream to analog sound and my bet was that even the ancient DAC in the iMac would be pretty good, given Apple’s focus on sound reproduction.

And this proved to be the case! I told the iMac to send sound to three speaker sets (Apple TV, Office and Dining Room) and it is playing perfectly for the past hour. If it does start to stutter, I’ll simply move the library of music to its internal hard drive, taking the HackPro’s poky wifi out of the equation, but so far it’s working fine. I suppose I could also place the iTunes files on an external hard drive connected to the iMac but Apple has said that it does not support external HDDs for use with AirPlay, so I’m not pushing that angle. It may work. It may not. What is tremendous is that not only does this ancient hardware support AirPlay with the latest iTunes download (congratulations, Apple!) but sports a decent DAC which is better than the PC-grade one in the HackPro.

This analysis seems to make sense. The old iMac is receiving a digital file and locally converting it to analog. The original approach had the HackPro sending out an analog file to the speakers and, I’m guessing, that’s larger than the pre-DAC-processed digital file. The speakers attached to the HackPro worked fine with no stuttering as they are hard wired, whereas the remote ones stuttered owing to their use of wifi for reception. So it’s either a slow DAC in the HackPro or the lack of 802-11n in that machine.

Another alternative is to retrofit the HackPro with a better DAC but, frankly, I can’t be bothered and so far my total investment in this project is one AEX for $88. That’s enough!

Bottom line? If you have an old G3/4/5 Mac in the home, consider making it a music server for use with AirPlay.

Meet my new old music server.

Second update:

After two hours of music play I would still get the occasional stutter. So I moved my iTunes library to the internal drive of the G4 iMac and loaded the library from there. After two further hours of listening there was no more stuttering.

TuneIn Radio

iPad

A superb app.

This piece has nothing to do with photography but when something as well engineered and executed as the TuneIn Radio app for iPad/iPod/iPhone comes along, it’s hard to resist writing about it.

To those despairing of the culturally arid desert that is American Radio, this app is a must. And it says something about globalization when I tell you that a British Americanophile photographer friend recommended it to this Francophile California UK expatriate!

TuneIn Radio allows you to dial in seemingly any Internet Radio station on the planet (I have yet to check for Pyongyang Hits, and don’t hold your breath on that one) using point and touch maps, and your choices are easily saved as bookmarks. If you get stuttering then it’s a second’s work to switch to a lower bit rate stream using the app’s controls. The app is iOS 4 capable, meaning you can continue to listen while doing other things on your iDevice.

Typical streaming options for a radio station.

I decided to go one step further in distributing the iPad’s (and TuneIn’s) sound output around the home. With yesterday being the annual orgy of shopping which kicks off America’s season of gluttony, I did my bit for the side, got on the old push bike (a British Raleigh, of course) and toddled off to the local Apple Store, sadly far too close for fiscal comfort. They had the Airport Express for sale for $88 and moments later I was home installing it, my second. The first acts as a wifi extender in my office, sourcing its signal from the Airport Extreme router in another room. It also allows me to connect my Brother 2170W printer as a Bonjour printer for use as a wireless printer for any number of computers and iDevices, the latter using FingerPrint which does for iDevices what iOS4 has yet to provide – printing. The 2170W does have built-in native wifi but it stoutly refuses to work with OS Snow Leopard, so the AEX does the trick.

The AEX. The teal light is not that easy to get to ….

For reasons probably only known to Steve Jobs, every Airport Express (AEX) I have owned has been an absolute pig to set up. It must be made by Microsoft. Whereas the Airport Extreme is pretty much plug and play, the AEX is a horror story. You fire up the Airport Utility and hope and pray the new device shows up. Then you hope its configuration will be recognized. Then you learn there are no fewer than three reset modes on the gadget (that should tell you something) and next thing you know you are unbending a paperclip to activate the recessed reset microswitch. After four or five goes the thing comes around and eventually changes its amber trouble light to a teal ‘all is good’ one. At that point I plugged the AEX into the dining room wall socket and using a short mini-coax cable, connected the AEX to my old Logitech MM50 iPod powered speakers. If you buy this cable from the Apple Store then you have more money than sense.

The Logitech MM50 powered iPod speakers.

While the MM50 is long discontinued, and the rechargeable battery in mine died years ago, there are dozens of choices on the market. Just make sure there’s a loudspeaker input socket on the one you buy. That accepts the other end of the cable from the AEX. The MM50 is well made with an Apple-like attention to aesthetics. Unlike most Apple products it actually lasts longer than the warranty period.

The rest is child’s play. Fire up your source app on the iPod/iPhone/iPad of your choice and touch the AirPlay symbol to see a list of output devices.

AirPlay output options in the TuneIn Radio app.

‘Tigger’s Logitech’ routes the sound to my MM50 and each output device remembers its volume setting, so you don’t blow the roof off owing to output level mismatching. I complained to TuneIn’s maker that I couldn’t see the other AEX in the home and they blamed Apple. Wrong. The fault was mine. The list of AirPlay devices scrolls with the swipe of a finger and the other AEX, hidden in the above screenshot, is there when needed. The absence of a scroll bar had me fooled!

Best as I can tell you can only route AirPlay output to one device at a time, but this remains a very cost effective way of outputting sound to any one of multiple locations in the home, controlled with a portable iDevice. Cost per location is as much as you want to spend on powered speakers, but $100 buys you a decent pair and another $100 or so gets you an AEX, so call it $200 per location. Expensive? Have you priced running wires through walls recently? And if you want really good sound with a dedicated DAC, the English gentlemen at Bowers and Wilkins will be glad to relieve you of $600 for their oddly named (if appropriately shaped) Zeppelin which is as good as it gets. You would think the English would be tired of reminders of German aerial bombardment after two wars. Anyway, I’m going to resurrect those old B&W DM5 bookshelf monitors from the basement and maybe spring for a nice tube amp for my next AEX installation …. the output level from the AEX is like that from a preamp, so all you need is a power amplifier and regular unpowered speakers with this approach.

State of the art – the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin.

State of stupidity – the $26,000 Challenger01 – you will need two.

When you ripped all those old DVDs to your iPod you did use lossless not MP3, right?

Christmas gifts

iPad

Well, duh!

If you are a parent with young children, do yourself a huge favor and read my earlier piece The Unfair Advantage.

Then look at this chart from America’s taste-takers:

Sure, those kids want bragging rights and video games, but, properly policed, technology confers an unfair advantage and you owe it to your kids.

Disclosure: I have significant AAPL exposure today (but maybe not tomorrow) but if each of the several thousand daily readers of this journal rushes out and buys 5 iPads, the impact on AAPL’s bottom line and stock price will be precisely zero. Further, if you are coming here for stock advice you need to get a life, and a brain. Long AAPL stock and call options.