THIS WEEK’S TECH NIGHT OWL RADIO UPDATE

It’s amazing to see how much has changed in technology during my lifetime. I remember when phonograph records ruled, and other formats, such as cassettes and eight-track, were alternatives that weren’t always acceptable in terms of sound quality. But when the CD arrived, the world changed. Despite some people who maintain that it’s “analog forever,” digital music rules. These days, even the CD is passé, with iTunes in control, boasting a digital library of millions of tracks, and reported to be the number one music retailer on the planet.

The personal computing world has changed as well, as many expect the iPad (and maybe other tablets) replacing the PC for many of you. Yes, the venerable PC may not disappear so soon, but it will occupy a smaller and smaller role in the computing world.

Now what about someone born in 2012? How will the tech world change when that child reaches the age of 10 or 15? Well, on this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, Avram Piltch, the Online Editorial Director of Laptop magazine, discusses the 15 technologies that will be history by the time his newborn son, Isaac, becomes a teenager.

Tonya Engst, of TidBITS and Take Control Books, speaks about the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple and major book publishers from the viewpoint of a small e-book publisher. She’ll also discuss her latest book, “Take Control of Your iPad.”

You’ll also learn about the most secure methods to transfer your files from Ian Shray,  Co-founder and CEO of WellRedApps, who will be talking about the release of a new file encryption app, DropKey.

On this week’s episode of our other radio show, The Paracast: Gene and Chris present crop circle investigator Nancy Talbott. During this episode, we’ll be reporting the very latest developments in her ongoing research, including key lab reports. Much of this material is already posted on her site: BLT Research – Crop Circle Science, so you can follow the evidence that she’ll be revealing on this week’s show. Nancy will also offer an update on the unusual phenomena reportedly experienced by Robbert van den Broeke, a young Dutchman and possible psychic, who lives in the southern Netherlands’ village of Hoeven.

Now Shipping! The Official Paracast T-Shirt — Now with New Design! We’re taking orders direct from our new Official Paracast Store, where you can place your order and pay with a major credit card or PayPal. The shirts come in white, 100% cotton, and feature The Paracast logo on the front. The rear emblem states: “Separating Signal From Noise.” We’ve also added a huge selection of additional special custom-imprinted merchandise for fans of our show, along with a redesigned storefront.

NO, MICROSOFT, IT WASN’T JUST THE OUTLOOK DATABASE

If you’ve read my commentaries about the Office for Mac 2011 SP2 update from Microsoft, you’d see I described it as somewhat imperfect. But based on comments from our readers, the blogosphere, and from others who downloaded the update, it was a true bag of hurt. Between Outlook identity database issues, prompts to reenter your product key (serial number) and other issues, it was clear this was a troublesome release.

Well, it didn’t take long for Microsoft to get the message. As of this weekend, the update has been pulled from AutoUpdate (it’s still available online), primarily because of problems with the Outlook database, where it keeps asking you to upgrade and won’t let the application ever run, and not because of any other programming lapses. But I’ll get into that shortly.

If you’ve already installed the update, and have encountered database problems, you are left with a fairly involved workaround to set things right, as posted in a Microsoft Support document. If you haven’t done the installation yet, there’s yet another scheme, no less involved, to prepare the database for the update. Or maybe just delete everything and start over.

Now I should point out that this database bug doesn’t happen to everyone. I didn’t encounter any problems of this sort when I ran the update. It’s also true that I haven’t used Outlook 2011 very much, so it wasn’t a matter of having to deal with a possibly corrupted database. But the larger problem is that Microsoft promised that database issues would be almost eliminated in Outlook, because your email was being stored as separate files, in the fashion of Apple Mail, thus making the database a whole lot smaller.

Indeed, in the days when Microsoft’s Entourage served the email/contact management functions on the Mac platform, everything was kept in a monolithic database that, as it grew larger, would be prone to corruption. This is why there’s a database repair tool in the first place.

Indeed, even the simplified database scheme in Outlook demonstrates full well that Microsoft took the wrong direction in building that app from the ashes of Entourage. Certainly database corruption still occurs. Certainly the tools to repair that corruption are still in place. But none of this has really helped address another core issue with Outlook, which is its pathetic performance.

Yes, maybe Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit rebuilt the thing from the ground up in Apple’s Cocoa programming environment, as they claim. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t port the basic email engine from the previous app, since it functions pretty much the same way, conveying the impression of slogging through quicksand, never quite reaching the surface.

I haven’t even considered the interface lapses. As I wrote previously, I cannot adapt to the way it switches the focus when you delete email to the previous message, rather than the next one, when your messages are displayed with the most recent emails first. That strikes me as reverse logic. Certainly it’s the opposite of how I expect people would handle messages, which would be the oldest unread first, followed by the more recent ones. But Thunderbird does the very same thing.

Since Microsoft is such a stickler for giving customers endless options, maybe they should consider some sort of checkbox to allow you to change this setting. From my point of view, Apple Mail appropriately adheres to the logic of the situation.

But Apple Mail is also quite fast, though not the fastest. But with over 50,000 messages, I seldom find the app struggling to keep up with my needs. But the larger question is whether you even need Outlook. Apple has improved native support for Microsoft Exchange Server, which remains the most popular email system used by businesses. Sure, I grant there are some features that Outlook supports that haven’t appeared in Mail, and that may be a critical issue for some users.

The real reason Outlook is used, however, may well be that many businesses demand compatibility with Office for Windows, and that’s a key promise for the Mac version of Outlook. So even though it’s really not a very good app, at least it is similar enough to the Windows version to satisfy system admins who only grudgingly approve of Macs on their networks. If they are running essentially the same software, it’s not such a serious problem.

I also know people who are accustomed to the decent level of integration of the various Office apps, and do not want to experiment with anything new. They coped with the shortcomings of Entourage, and they are prepared to cope with the possibly greater shortcomings of Outlook.

But Microsoft has at least admitted there is a problem, although the SP2 update remains available at Microsoft’s site. I expect they are working hard on fixing the database glitches, and will have a new version out shortly.

But maybe, just maybe, they’ll do something to improve Outlook’s efficiency, to make it perform better with large message stores. If that happens, though, it won’t come soon. Microsoft may be working 24/7 to fix the database bug, but it’s not as if they would be expected to fix anything else as part of the package. Maybe with SP 3, assuming there aren’t other problems to confront.

THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE FOR AN APPLE SMART TV

The other day, I started to consider when I would be ready to buy a new flat panel TV. The current set in our master bedroom, a 50-inch Panasonic TH-50PZ80U, a relatively low-end model, was purchased at a large discount in early 2008 before the worst of the recession devastated the family finances.

The Panasonic delivers a first-rate picture, with rich colors, deep blacks, and, typical for plasma flat panels, smooth rendering of sporting events and movie action scenes. But it hasn’t been a perfect experience. A little over a year after I bought the set, the power supply failed. The warranty had expired, and it took the progression through several levels of Panasonic’s support department before they agreed to cover most of the cost of the repair, which would have otherwise been over $400.

Since then, the set has worked flawlessly. The specs state that the panel will last 100,000 hours before it reaches half brightness (which merely means you have to increase the brightness level I suppose). That means 30 years of useful life if you play the set eight hours a day. Even at 15 or 16 hours, which is not uncommon for many families, a four-year-old set is just breaking in.

Since the Panasonic offers full 1080p resolution, and a fairly decent assortment of picture enhancement tricks, it’s not as if current models promise a whole lot more. A casual look at current offerings doesn’t, to my eyes, show that much of a difference in image quality — except for 3D of course, which is still a hard sell. It’s not as if lots of people are rushing to fight over the glasses to catch the 3D version of a popular movie when it becomes available. Yes, the 3D version of a Blu-ray player is relatively inexpensive. Yes, some video-on-demand services, such as DirecTV, offer a sprinkling of 3D content. But it’s also true that only a handful of movies seem to benefit from such treatment.

So it’s not as if 3D is necessarily the main reason to buy a new set.

There’s also the “smart” or “connected” TV, which offers a slate of online services or apps that expand the reach of your set. From Netflix to Hulu, you can get content that goes beyond what the cable and satellite providers traditionally offer. But that’s nothing you can’t get with a separate set top box, such as an Apple TV (although it doesn’t offer Hulu — at least not yet). So where’s the argument in favor of buying a new TV?

Certainly, the TV makers are struggling to find the magic formula, and enhance picture rendering technology and other features, to entice you to upgrade, but prices continue to fall simply because the market is saturated. People expect their TVs to last for years.

And there are those frequent rumors that Apple is working on their own answer to a question few are asking, which is whether you need to throw out your old TV and buy a new one? One key argument in favor of Apple is the promise of a new and snazzy interface. Certainly the menu-driven setup screens on most any TV are poorly executed. Even when presented with an initial setup assistant, most of you will just click through whatever you see, and get on with your business.

In saying that, most TVs offer a load of adjustment options to enhance the picture for specific uses (such as Games, or Cinema), or to compensate for the aging of the panels. But they are seldom touched. There are even test pattern discs designed to ease the picture calibration process, but the audience is mostly power users. I admit to using one, though I found the Cinema configuration to be just about as good on the Panasonic, if a bit less bright.

An Apple-born solution to guide you through the setup process, assist in picture calibration (or use some room sensing routine to optimize the picture, though some models do that already), and get you ready to enter the world of TV entertainment ,would help a lot. It’s possible Apple would bring newer panel technologies to the table to seriously improve picture quality, and perhaps offer a tricked out sound system to deliver a more movie-like audio experience.

But for day-to-day use, an Apple TV accessory may potentially be all you need. Yes, a smart TV from Apple might be easier to set up. Yes, sound and picture might be superior to current models, but that tiny Apple TV component is where the sales volume will come unless Apple can enter the TV set market with aggressive pricing and loads of unique features.

However, the audience for a new TV would largely consist of people who haven’t already upgraded to the latest and greatest high definition models in recent years. Unlike PCs or smartphones, TVs are still sufficiently appliance-like that you expect them to serve your needs for many years without the need to fiddle with settings or pay expensive repair bills. That may be the biggest obstacle Apple will need to confront should they attempt to enter yet another new business.

THE FINAL WORD

The Tech Night Owl Newsletter is a weekly information service of Making The Impossible, Inc.

Publisher/Editor: Gene Steinberg
Managing Editor: Grayson Steinberg
Marketing and Public Relations: Barbara Kaplan
Worldwide Licensing: Sharon Jarvis

This article was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2012 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Newsletter and tagged with: 3D, Apple, Apple Tv, AutoUpdate, Avram Piltch, Barbara Kaplan, Blu-Ray, Blu-ray player, book publishers, database repair tool, Department of Justice, DirecTV, ebook publisher, Entourage, Gene Steinberg, Itunes, Macintosh, Microsoft, microsoft exchange server, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, nancy talbott, Office for Mac, Office for Mac 2011, Office for Mac 2011 SP2, Office for Windows, Outlook for Mac 2011, Panasonic, Panasonic TH-50PZ80U, personal computing world, picture rendering technology, satellite providers, Sharon Jarvis, Smartphones, The Paracast, Tonya Engst, TVs, video-on-demand services, WellRedApps.