MSFT drops the ball. Again.

Microsoft Surface has been around for, what? 5 years now?

Think of it as a large iPad on steroids, but with tremendously improved touch functionality.

Not surprisingly, MSFT’s web site on the product is simply awful. No dynamism. No excitement. A narrative as thrilling as the instruction book for repairing a washing machine. What is it with Microsoft? Even the ‘copy and paste’ link does not work!

If I was marketing this product I would make sure to give free versions to every major film studio, news channel, publishing house and famous photographer I could find, make it sell for $3,000 and watch it take off. I have seen it used twice – once on a TV news show and once in a James Bond movie, both times to jaw dropping effect. And if I was MSFT, I wouldn’t care about the profit or loss. They have already lost millions on it. What I would care about is the tremendous halo effect it would have on my other mass market products. It’s a simple variant of ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ in the car world. Porsche wins Le Mans? You buy a new 911.

Microsoft Surface – click to view the boring video.

Steve Jobs’s was so right all those years ago when he said ‘Microsoft has no taste’. Even when they make ground breaking products like Surface and Kinect, their marketing, in a word, sucks.

Watch it from the man himself.

You can even get to enjoy the world’s worst CEO in this video – though he has strong competition from Howard Stringer at Sony. Here Ballmer extols Windows ’95 which most would agree was the worst OS ever. Or was that Windows ME?

A wireless solution.

Headphones? What’s that doing here? Well, show me someone not interested in music and the movies and I’ll show you one who cannot take a photograph.

One of the cheapest – yet most vital – components of my HackPro desktop is the extremely thin layer of conducting Arctic Silver thermal paste between the case of the Core2Quad CPU and the Coolermaster radiator which keeps the CPU cool as a cucumber. The maker of that paste, beloved of all computer builders, also makes headphones.

For a long while now I have been using a pair of Sennheiser PX100 corded headphones for listening to music and watching movies on the iPhone and iPad. They are over the ear, comfortable and the sound is fine. They cost $60-70. Folding them into the provided clamshell case requires a degree in astrophysics, but once you get the hang of it there’s lots of innocent fun to be had and money to be made betting friends they can’t get them into the case! Indeed, I just had the satisfaction the other week of taking $2 off our nine year old who quit in frustration. One back for the old man!

But that bet cost me, as somehow the cord got frayed and is now literally hanging by a thread. So I searched around for a wireless alternative which might better survive our boy’s ministrations, and settled on the Arctic Sound P311 at $30, a Bluetooth headphone which requires no wired connection.

The manufacturer claims a 20 hour life per charge, and charging is through the provided USB cable from any computer, so there’s no additional charger to carry. All you need is the mini-USB cable and your laptop or desktop. The iPad’s battery life on streamed Netflix movies is a consistent 11 hours, so as long as the headphones’ battery lasts 11 hours or more things are fine. Charge the iPad, charge the ‘phones. My ‘phones shipped partially charged, needing just 90 minute to full charge, indicated by the red charging LED being extinguished. The maker says a full charge takes 2 hours. The bottom line is that a 2 hour charge to get 20 hours of use is far faster and longer than recharging an iPad will get you, so the iPad remains your limiting factor in practical use as far as recharging goes.

Charging light on. This changes to alternating red/blue when pairing – see below.

My primary use is for iPad movies, but the ‘phones work fine with my rather dated iPhone 3G, my HackPro (which uses an iOGear BT dongle), the MacBook Air and the MacMini used as a home theater computer. The latter is handy as you can listen to movies on your big screen TV using these Bluetooth headphones, and disturb no one during a spot of late night viewing. On the iDevices pairing is simply a question of holding down the button on the right headset for a few seconds until you get alternating red and blue LEDs, then going to Settings->General->Bluetooth. On desktops and laptops you go to System Preferences-> and have at it. In all cases, disconnect the existing Bluetooth connection or things get hairy and be sure you are not charging the ‘phones while you do this – I had no luck pairing while charging.

Here are some screenshots of the pairing process.

Pairing on an iDevice:

Step 1

Step 2

Select the Eq which suits your ears best – forget what it’s called, go with your ears:

Step 3

Pairing on a laptop or desktop:

Step 1 – System Preferences

Step 2 – Paired.

Step 3. System Preferences->Sound. Redirect the output to the headphones.

Use with AppleTV2:

As TUAW confirms, ATV2 includes a Bluetooth chip but it is not accessible in the device as shipped. Frustrating. You can hack your ATV2 to make BT work but it’s likely that future software updates will reverse the hack, so I’m leaving it alone for now. Hopefully Apple will add a Bluetooth switch in its ATV2 software. Meanwhile, rumors suggest that the next ATV OS update will add Bluetooth functionality to ATV2. That will be great if it happens.

These ‘phones fit over the ear (Van Gogh need not apply), like the Sennheisers, but rather than using a sprung steel band across the top of your head to provide grip, they hook over each ear instead with the connecting band serving no mechanical purpose other than connecting the two speakers and providing a route for the wire buried within, to get sound to both ears.

The P311 headphones over the ear, showing the controls.
No problem when wearing glasses, either.

The volume control buttons are visible above; the other two black buttons are for fast forward and reverse (next/previous track) and the center button is on/off/pause/answering phone calls. All controls worked perfectly with the iPod app on my iPhone and iPad.

The P311s comes with a nice, semi hard case. The earspeakers are folded in eyeglasses-style, and the astrophysics degree you just got to put away your Sennheisers is now useless:

Sound: I tested the ‘phones on classical piano and on Ken Russell’s extraordinary movie ‘Mahler‘. The sound is excellent. You won’t get earth shaking bass from speakers this small (especially given their low level of sealing to the ear) but experimenting with the EQ settings in an iDevice (see above) gets you the best sound, based on your hearing. Both the iDevice and P311 volume controls remain functional so you can mute from either. Pausing using the big, central button on the right speaker also pauses the movie or iPod on your iDevice.

Despite fitting lightly over the ears, these provide a fair amount of sound isolation. You are not sealed from the outside world but there is a significant amount of noise reduction. Best as I can tell there is no electronic noise cancellation technology in the P311s.

Comfort: If you tilt your head back the crossbar will strike the base of your neck and try to displace the ‘phones. Whether that’s an issue only you can decide. In practice it suggests these ‘phones may be sub-optimal for aggressive work out routines. The picture of the acrobat on Arctic’s web site strikes me as ludicrous.That’s not what I use them for so I cannot comment.

Microphone: There’s a built-in mic for use with the iPhone. I have not tested it.

Range: Extraordinary. There is no loss of signal until you are over 40 feet from either iPad or iPod, despite intervening walls and a staircase. This translates, in practice, into ‘walk-about’ functionality in the average home without having to take your sound source with you

A fine set of phones at a great price and a worthy replacement for my damaged Sennheisers. There’s the inconvenience of having to recharge these, but as their battery life exceeds that of the related iPad I use them with, it’s hardly an issue, as I simply recharge both simultaneously. BT pairing on the five devices I tested – iPhone 3G, iPad, HackPro, MacMini and MacBook Air was flawless. Let’s hope pairing with the AppleTV2 arrives with the next ATV OS update. Recommended, but try them first to see if they are comfortable for you.

Most importantly, cordless ‘phones transform an iPad from “I’m not going to lug that around” to a functional music source, whether from stored music, your Home Sharing or, soon the iCloud.

It’s happening.

The two biggest disabling issues making it impossible for serious photographers to use the iPad as a portable photo processing device are the paucity of good photo processing apps and the iPad’s low storage capacity.

The former issue is being rapidly resolved as new processing apps geared to touch screens seem to be appearing wekly.

The latter has finally been addressed by some clever people at Hitachi.

Click the image for the Hitachi site.

The device, priced at $200 and available in 4 weeks, will behave as a wireless hard drive for your iPad. So, if it works as advertised, that means that you should be able to download your RAW files to the device and then process the images from your iPad. Whether direct download from a USB card reader to the G-Connect is possible is unclear, but if it is and if delivers as promised, I’ll be in line.

Given that the primary (only?) reason to buy a 64gB iPad over the 16gB one, a poky 48gB storage increase, is if you want to store lots of videos or RAW files on your iPad, why not get this device instead? The price increase is the same, the weight penalty minor – it’s likely little larger than a notebook HDD – and you can use it as a wireless disk with any computer.

Adobe, where are you?

Click for the Snapseed site

This $5 iPad app shows the progress being made in touchscreen photo processing apps. (Warning – I have not used it). Check out their video by clicking the above picture. The app uses the touchscreen technology well and the app is very much more than a toy. It includes area selection and smart masking for application of processing to selected areas. Check out the Selective Adjust video. The automasking is just the sort of magic the iPad is all about. Night and day compared to any other masking scheme I have seen, and entirely intuitive, Well done, Nik Software. Every user of digital sensors knows about their propensity to burn out highlights and this is just the ticket to fix those.

In its usual manner, Apple is squeezing the margins and disappointingly refused to increase the maximum storage when they release iPad2, the largest still limited to a modest 64gB. It’s not a hardware constraint. Tear downs of iPad2 disclose there’s lots of room in there for more flash storage. And given the rotten state of competitors’ offerings, Apple has no incentive to add storage at the present time.

Still, that will eventually come, and it’s important for photographers who want to work with RAW files rather than with compromised JPGs. What use is you super-duper DSLR with its phenomenal data capture if you are going tp throw most of the goodness away by working with compressed JPGs?

More flash storage is on the way. Intel is making huge strides with flash storage technology. The SSD recently installed in my HackPro used 32nM spacing (1nM = One billionth of a meter); it’s already obsolete, the current offering using 25nM, at a lower price. Once they cut that to 12nM, storage per unit area will quadruple and per unit volume it will be eight times as much. So help is on the way. With the typical RAW file coming in at some 15mB, 1000 RAW originals will need 15gB of storage or some 235 times the current maximum. With storage densities doubling annually we are 8 years away from that number. It wouldn’t surprise me to see it reached sooner, driven in large part by a burgeoning mobile computing market.

By that time, Intel’s high speed connectivity technology (which Apple would have the world believe is their invention, naming it Thunderbolt) will be the standard on all devices, mobile or not, so downloading your processed pictures from the iPad to your work computer will take seconds. Right now low USB transmission speeds are a huge bottleneck.

Meanwhile, where is Adobe in all of this? They own the serious/professional photo processing market though two outstanding applications, whether you are a Mac or Windows user. Lightroom and Photoshop. (Aperture’s market share is a rounding error). But Adobe’s poky touchscreen offerings for the iPad are underwhelming. Let’s hope they get on it before their faster, smaller competitors take the market from them. Why do I care? Because I want the functionality of exporting to LR or PS on my desktop and I sure as heck do not want to learn any new, big, complex apps which may replace it. I would rather be taking pictures.

I would rather be taking pictures. The Bubble. G1, kit lens.

A magic moment in a child’s life, spotted in San Francisco’s west Mission District.

The upgrade question.

Apple’s problem with the iPad is comparable to Leica’s when they released their first M-mount film camera, the M3, in 1954. That design was so perfect in every way that it wasn’t until the M6 with its integrated through-the-lens light meter came along 30 years later in 1984 that there was any serious reason to upgrade. Sure, they tinkered with the design at the margins, the M2’s wider field finder improved on the M3’s, the film rewind knob became a crank with the M4 and the finder sprouted more framelines over the years. But the core of the machine and its divine functionality remained unchanged (even as quality control went downhill and internal screws gave way to rivets) from that original stroke of genius. (I am conveniently sidestepping the mistake that was the M5 in this narrative. Heck, Apple made that silly cube Mac too). In fact, not until the M9 came along 18 months ago was there a compelling digital upgrade option for Leica M owners by which time the price had become ridiculous for most.

v2 and v1 compared.

The first version of the iPad, introduced 11 months ago, is like that M3. There is very little wrong with it and little of what is wrong has been fixed in v2. Here’s what remains wrong in v2:

• The glossy screen. There is no matte option.
• The slippery back. I glued on a piece of dimpled rubber on mine and it no longer wants to shoot off my lap.
• It will not run Adobe Flash unless you hack it.
• There is no SDHC card slot. You need the $29 dongle to upload snaps from your camera. And forget SDXC.
• Maximum storage is still limited to 64gB.

Like Leica when it was at its peak in the 1950s, Apple has no need to make too many improvements as there is still no credible – or credibly priced – competition for its genius product. Here’s what they did improve – sort of reminiscent of those added frame lines in the M4 compared to the M2 and M3:

• Front and rear facing cameras.
• A dual core CPU claimed to be notably faster in processing graphics (insert Apple Hype discount factor here).
• 3 ounces lighter at 1.3lbs.
• A choice of a white bezel.
• A purportedly better speaker.
• A really dumb looking magnetic cover which is extra and waiting to be lost. After eleven months of being thrown into a canvas bag the screen on my iPad remains pristine.
• A 1080p video out adapter which makes me wonder where and why you would be storing large 1080p movies in the iPad’s limited memory.

So if you have v1, should you upgrade?

I think the answer is ‘Yes’ if:

• You need the cameras for video chats or taking snaps (hard to imagine taking pictures with an iPad)
• You play lots of graphics-intensive games which need the improved GPU. This means you are under 10 and will have to approach your parents for the money.
• You must have the latest of everything. This means you are under 10 …. etc.

If these do not make your requirements list, you can snap up a warranted, refurbished one from Apple for $150 off, or a remaindered new one for $100 off. That strikes me as a real bargain. v2 prices are the same as those for v1 when it was introduced. If you must have 3G, you are better off buying your own hot spot device as you can hang on to it when you upgrade to v3 down the road, avoiding the 3G premium, or switch to an Android tablet which runs Flash and is competitively priced.

Remaindered v1 iPads at the Apple Store – that rarest of all beasts, a bargain from greedy Mr. Jobs.

If you don’t have an iPad go ahead and get the new one but do make sure first that the slimmer design doesn’t bring with it the Achilles Heel of much of Apple’s machine design of the past decade – overheating. If it does, this won’t be the first time that form has triumphed over function at Cupertino.

You see, v1 really is that good. Just like that M3.

Classics are hard to improve.