AllThingsD » Media Player

Apple to Investors: You're Welcome

John Paczkowski — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:38:45 +0000

Apple’s first quarter was a blowout, as was the one before it. So too is the company’s latest. Reporting second-quarter earnings after the bell Tuesday, Apple rolled out the big numbers once again. The company posted a profit of $3.07 billion on revenue that rose 49 percent to $13.5 billion. Earnings per share were $3.33, far more than the $2.45 per share analysts had been expecting.

Apple (AAPL) said it sold 8.75 million iPhones for the quarter, up more than 131 percent from the year prior; 2.94 million Macs, up 33 percent; and nearly 10.9 million iPods, down one percent. Strong numbers, all. Even iPod sales beat the Street’s consensus of nine million units shipped.

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” CEO Steve Jobs said in another variation of the statement the company has sent out so many times before. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

At $261.36, Apple shares are up nearly seven percent in after-hours trading.

Apple’s earnings release below as well as notes from the earnings call.

Notes From the Call

During introductory remarks, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer pointed out that sales of Macs outpaced those of PCs. According to IDC, PC sales grew 24 percent during March quarter. Mac sales rose 33 percent.
iPod touch sales grew 63 percent year-over-year. Apple controls over 70 percent of the U.S. market for digital media players.
Apple’s iTunes Store generated $1.1 billion in sales (music, video and apps). Some four billion apps have been downloaded to date. There are currently 3,500 apps for iPad.
Retail store revenue was $1.68 billion, a 22 percent increase. The company sold 606,000 Macs through its retail outlets, an increase of 38 percent. Half of those were sold were to customers who never owned a Mac before. Apple plans to open 40 to 50 new stores in fiscal 2010.
Didn’t quite catch it, but there was some mention of a “future product transition.” Not sure what this refers to, but certainly interesting.
This was the best quarter ever for iPhone sales–131 percent year-over-year growth. That’s three times the growth IDC has estimated for the smartphone market as a whole.
Are folks who would have bought Macs now buying iPads instead? Apple COO Tim Cook said the company hasn’t seen any Mac cannibalization yet. He also said it’s far too early to tell which version of the device–Wi-Fi-only or Wi-Fi plus 3G–is selling better.
iPhone units shipped in the Asia-Pacific region were up year-over-year more than nine times, Cook said. “Through the first half of the fiscal year, our revenue from greater China was over 1.13 billion,” he added. “That’s up over 200 percent year-over-year.”
On iAds: “We’re just putting our toes in the water, so don’t expect much from us this calendar year.”
Remarking on the company’s iPhone exclusivity agreements, Cook said that in those markets where Apple has moved from exclusive to nonexclusive, it has seen its unit share and market share improve. No comment on whether or not the company will end iPhone exclusivity in the U.S.
Cook: “We think the market size for the iPad is very large.”
Asked about the delayed international launch of the iPad, Cook said there isn’t “a production problem per se…but the level of demand has shocked us, at least initially.”
Apple is still happy with AT&T (T) and its network? AT&T has made “big strides,” he noted, adding that “we look forward to continued improvement.”
Cook on Apple TV: “It’s still a hobby for us.”
Cook on iPad versus netbook: “I can’t think of a single thing the netbook does well….To me it’s a no-brainer that someone would buy an iPad over a netbook.
Are consumers buying different kinds of apps for the iPad than for the iPhone? Too early to tell, though app sales and book sales are both quite strong.
Question about the “extraordinary products” Apple mentioned in its earnings release. No comment. “We’re not going to help our competitors by answering that,” said Oppenheimer.

Apple Reports Second Quarter Results
Record March Quarter Revenue and Profit
iPhone Sales More Than Double
CUPERTINO, California—April 20, 2010—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter ended March 27, 2010. The Company posted revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple sold 2.94 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 10.89 million iPods during the quarter, representing a one percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

“Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue in the range of about $13.0 billion to $13.4 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $2.28 to $2.39,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

Windows Phone OS 7.0: Nowhere Near as Clunky as its Name Implies

John Paczkowski — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:59:56 +0000

It’s a real pity that Microsoft’s new Windows Phone OS 7.0 won’t be available until the end of the year, because it seems–at first glance, anyway–to be a robust and elegant offering. Certainly, it is a departure from what we’ve come to expect from Microsoft (MSFT) in the mobile space and would seem to bring the company into near-parity with innovative rivals like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Palm (PALM).

But Microsoft’s operating system is potentially nine months from market. In the meantime, Apple will likely introduce a new iPhone and iPhone OS, Google the next iteration of Android OS, and Palm the newest version of webOS. Any of these, if not all three, could make Windows Phone OS 7.0 look like table stakes at a game Microsoft is, once again, losing.

For now, demos show it to be an ambitious, impressive reimagining of Microsoft’s mobile OS, all gloss and sophistication, where Windows Mobile 6.5 was–let’s face it–all PocketPC. As CEO Steve Ballmer said during its launch yesterday at Mobile World Congress, “There is no question in our minds that we needed and wanted to do some things that were out of the box and clearly differentiated from our past and–hopefully you will agree–clearly differentiated from other things going on in the market.”

And, indeed Microsoft is doing so. With a Zune-influenced design and savvy integration of not just the Zune media player, but also Xbox Live, Bing, and Office, Windows Phone OS 7.0 is exactly what a Microsoft mobile OS should be. It’s the OS the company should have built three years ago.

Which, sadly, may mean it’s three years too late. With Microsoft’s share of the mobile market in decline and its new OS launching in a market that Ballmer himself described as one “filled with phones that look the same and do the same things,” the company has its work cut out for it.

That said, similar observations were made about Xbox, and Microsoft has done quite well with it in a similarly competitive market. But the company’s challenge here is far more difficult, I think. The company would have a much easier time succeeding if the launch of Windows Phone OS 7.0 weren’t so far off.

BoomTown's 1998 Rob Glaser Profile: A Web Pioneer Does a Delicate Dance With Microsoft

Kara Swisher — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:48:04 +0000

BoomTown did an interview last night with outgoing RealNetworks (RNWK) CEO Rob Glaser after the announcement yesterday of his departure from the company he founded and led for 16 years.

That will be posted later today, but here is a profile of Glaser I wrote after spending time with him in Seattle, when I was covering the Internet for The Wall Street Journal.

It’s from Feb. 12, 1998–yes, that means Rob and I are genuine Web antiques–and focuses on Glaser’s decidedly complicated relationship with his former employer, Microsoft (MSFT).

As you will see, it comes from a much different era of the Internet, when Microsoft was much scarier, RealNetworks represented innovation and the medium was still in its infancy. My favorite line is a description of Glaser as “radiating so much intensity that his face resembles a clenched fist.”

Here it is:

Rob Glaser learned the software business as one of Bill Gates’s most aggressive proteges at Microsoft Corp. So he knows all too well the anguishing strategic decision that most software entrepreneurs inevitably confront: Go head-to-head against Mr. Gates and risk annihilation. Or cooperate with him–and risk annihilation.

Now an Internet entrepreneur himself, Mr. Glaser thinks he has another strategy: A delicate dance with Microsoft that combines a little bit of competition and a little bit of cooperation.

His newly public company, RealNetworks Inc., popularized the use of realtime audio and video on the Internet’s World Wide Web. It already has more than 18 million registered users of its free “streaming” software for receiving multimedia over the Net. It also has a rapidly growing business selling server software for transmitting audio and video to Website operators.

But it stands squarely in the path of the strategy that has drawn Microsoft into trouble with antitrust regulators: Emulating innovative products, integrating them into its operating systems and then giving them away free. RealNetworks’ daunting task is to prove it can do a better job of outmaneuvering Microsoft than Netscape Communications Inc., the browser pioneer whose market share and profitability have been devastated by Microsoft’s integration strategy.

Mr. Glaser insists he and the software giant can coexist. “I learned an amazing amount from Bill,” he says, speaking in staccato bursts and radiating so much intensity that his face resembles a clenched fist. “We knew we could either compete head-on like Netscape or do something a lot more interesting.”

His strategy is known internally as “coopetition.” Out of mistrust, Netscape two years ago rejected an unsolicited offer from Microsoft to become a partner and investor. But Mr. Glaser approached his former colleagues last summer seeking just such an alliance. In July, he sold a nonvoting 10% stake to Microsoft for $30 million, and licensed RealNetworks’ technology to the software giant for another $30 million. Microsoft also agreed to bundle RealNetworks’ software with Internet Explorer.

In making the deal, Mr. Glaser helped himself to Microsoft’s cash and prestige and calculated that Microsoft wouldn’t consider streaming technology to be as strategic to its future as the browser.

“What we were trying to do in the partnership is to set it up so that our success would not disadvantage their core business,” Mr. Glaser says. “Microsoft is a very paranoid company and so we have tried to create an environment where while they might be covetous of some of our success, analytically they would not fear it.”

The deal gave Mr. Gates the opportunity, if he so desired, to clone RealNetworks’ products during the period when they were licensed to Microsoft. “There’s no question they could use our own technology to become extremely vigorous competitors and try to put us out of business,” says James Breyer, a director and member of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm that helped finance RealNetworks.

So Mr. Glaser needs to stay ahead of Microsoft by rapidly improving his software, accumulating enough customers to become the standard for sending audio and video over the Internet and diversifying into related businesses.

Last month, for example, he announced an agreement with one of Microsoft’s archrivals, Sun Microsystems Inc., to finetune his software to perform better on Sun’s popular Internet servers than on Windows-based servers.

“They are neither friend nor foe, but Microsoft is most certainly the environment we live in,” says Mr. Glaser, now 36 years old. “It’s how we work within that environment that will make all the difference.”

Mr. Glaser’s own personality seems suited to the relationship’s contradictions. He has been a committed liberal since his days at Yale University, where he wrote a column called “What’s Left” for the student newspaper. He initially named his company Progressive Networks to reflect his politics. And he donated 700,000 RealNetworks shares to causes related to freedom of speech and environmental issues after the public offering, and promises to contribute 5% of the company’s future profits as well.

But he became a notoriously hardcharging and sometimes arrogant manager after he joined Microsoft in 1983, at the age of 21. Some colleagues dubbed him a “screamer.” When deadlines approached for projects, several former colleagues at Microsoft say he became increasingly revved-up, downing one Diet Coke after another and erupting at even tiny mistakes. “My intensity sometimes manifested itself in less positive ways,” Mr. Glaser concedes.

“Like Microsoft, Rob was smart, young, perhaps a little hard to take, and convinced he was absolutely right about a lot of stuff,” recalls Mike Slade, a friend of Mr. Glaser’s at Microsoft who now runs an Internet publishing company, Starwave Corp. “But that was what was rewarded at the company and everything was going too fast there for a lot of management training.”

The pace did take its toll. Even though Mr. Glaser rose to become vice president of multimedia systems and one of Mr. Gates’s favorites, his last years at Microsoft were rocky. Some at the company point to an internal power struggle with Microsoft’s head of technology, Nathan Myhrvold. “They both wanted to be Bill’s boy genius and visionary for the company,” says a colleague. “Obviously, Nathan won.”

Mr. Glaser dismisses tales of infighting, blaming his departure on a diminishing feeling of “joy” in his work. “I began to think that Bill had the best job of all,” he says. In 1993, at the age of 31, he resigned, with about $15 million of stock in his pocket.

His retirement didn’t last long. Soon after, he saw a version of the Mosaic browser, the first graphical interface software for navigating the Web. He had an epiphany, he says, realizing that the Internet could eventually become a major purveyor of audio and video.

Mr. Glaser sank about $1 million of his own money into a start-up that would first produce software for compressing and transmitting sound. With additional funding from friends, such as Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, RealAudio 1.0 quickly made its debut in April 1995.

RealAudio was greeted with more than a little disdain from the Internet elite because it was a tinny and unsatisfying experience for most users. But it gave the Internet a voice, and Mr. Glaser kept plugging away, improving fidelity and striking deals with more content providers to use it on their Web sites. The hook: Free player software for consumers.

He is attempting to repeat the process with RealVideo. It currently provides small, jerky moving pictures but will, he believes, someday transform the Internet as data transmission speeds increase. In a recent demo of the player, Mr. Glaser selected a music video by the languid singer Jewel, he joked, “because she doesn’t move around too much.”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been developing its own Media Player and NetShow streaming software, partly with technology acquired by purchasing VXtreme, a RealNetworks competitor.

The Microsoft products are now free. But the company may decide to charge for the latest version of NetShow coming out this year, which would be good for RealNetworks. Meanwhile, Microsoft will continue to bundle RealNetworks’ player software with the Microsoft browser, also good for RealNetworks. And the day after RealNetworks’ Sun deal, Microsoft announced an agreement to make its own Media Player compatible with RealNetworks’ server software, yet another positive development for RealNetworks.

“The user only wants it to work,” says Rich Tong, a Microsoft marketing vice president. “So it is good business to work with RealNetworks to set standards for compatibility and expand the market for all of us.”

Skeptics assert that RealNetworks has forged only a temporary truce with Microsoft. Like Netscape, it must continually confront the challenge of trying to make money on technology that Microsoft gives away. RealNetworks charges $29.95 for an enhanced version of the player it gives away free, and $695 and up for its most powerful server software.

Some large companies are snapping the products up. Mercedes Benz, Eastman Kodak and Lockheed Martin are buying RealNetworks’ latest software, RealSystem 5.0, to bring their internal networks to life. Boeing Co., for example, uses RealNetworks’ software to communicate with employees world-wide and conduct training sessions. A variety of media concerns such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Public Broadcasting System, AOL, Fox News’s 24-hour newsfeed and Paramount Pictures use it as well.

Mr. Glaser recently cut a deal with Macromedia Inc., the largest provider of animation-editing software, to transmit animated material over the Internet. RealNetworks is also operating multimedia Web sites for other companies, and has a joint venture with MCI Communications Corp. to create a broadcast network on the Web.

All these initiatives are running up big bills. Earlier this month, RealNetworks reported that revenue more than doubled for 1997, to $32.7 million from $14 million the year before. But heavy research and development spending tripled losses to $11.2 million, or 40 cents a share, from $3.8 million, or 14 cents a share. The company’s high costs, plus the looming threat of Microsoft, have depressed the stock, which hovers at around $16 a share, only slightly above the $12.50 a share it opened at when it went public in November.

But Mr. Glaser exudes confidence. His intense personality seems calmer these days. Once divorced, he now has a steady girlfriend and is traveling more frequently, including a summer trip to New Zealand, Australia and French Polynesia, where he made the decision to take RealNetworks public. His 13.5 million shares are worth $218.5 million. And he thinks he has Microsoft figured out. “People in Silicon Valley see things unnecessarily in black and white: You either hate Microsoft or you are a vassal of them. I am saying there is a third way.”

A Clicker To Watch TV Online

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:43:07 +0000

Finding TV shows online can be a major hassle. If you can remember which network hosts the show, you then must hunt through a maze of listings of several other television shows on that network’s Web site to find it. The show you want to watch might not even be available since many networks rotate only a handful of recent episodes online at a time. And if you do finally find the correct episode, you may be required to download a special media player to watch it.

Some services make this process a little easier. Hulu holds episodes from 1,200 television shows, but is still missing many. Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store offers over 50,000 episodes, but unlike network sites or Hulu, it requires viewers to pay to download and watch them (though they are commercial-free). Video search engines like Truveo browse the entire Web, returning an often-overwhelming number of results. And while YouTube is the king of Web video, it can too easily return a search result that isn’t a complete and genuine episode of the show you’re seeking.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing Clicker, a free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site—like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.

I like Clicker and found it to be a quick resource for finding all sorts of shows online. In many cases, it directed me to find the episodes I wanted to watch and saved me the hassle of less efficient searching. It also suggested shows I might like and offered a playlist where I could subscribe to receive episodes as they became available or save available videos to watch later.

Clicker makes descriptive pages about each show

Though it has a search box, Clicker feels more like a directory than purely a robotic search engine that relies mainly on algorithms. In fact, Clicker created a descriptive page for almost every show, and these pages can be edited or created via user submissions, which Clicker will review before posting them to the site. And because it’s focused on TV shows or Web originals, it won’t clutter your results with kids’ birthday parties or cats on skateboards.

The site is still rather new, so it has some kinks to work out—like links to videos that didn’t actually play if, for example, they were pulled by the network. But these were rare, and for the most part, if a video wasn’t available, a clear, brief explanation was displayed at the top of the page. Also, if Clicker sends you back out to a network’s site and that network uses a special player for videos, you’ll still have to download that player.

Filtering Results

Clicker’s program pages contain a description of the show, and a way to filter results by season, airdate or popularity. And the site shows the actual airdate of each video—something that not many other sites do. A column on the right side of each page displays several related shows, like the suggestion of “Modern Family” for fans of “How I Met Your Mother”; and “Roswell” and “Dead Like Me” suggested for people who like “Heroes.” In December, these recommendations will become even more personalized.

Some of Clicker’s sources include NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS, the Food Network and Web original content (i.e. “The Onion”). It also can search movies and music videos; the movies can be watched free in some cases, or paid for via Amazon’s (AMZN) Video on Demand or Netflix (NFLX) Instant Streaming. In January, Clicker plans to incorporate shows and movies from iTunes, using Apple’s pay-and-download method.

Clicker is especially handy when you’re looking for a show that isn’t where you think it should be. “Seinfeld,” for example, is on TBS rather than NBC, where it originally aired, and only nine episodes are available at once before they rotate out and are replaced by nine more. “Friends” is found on theWB.com, rather than on NBC’s site. “Damages” isn’t available on its network site, FX; instead, it can be found at Crackle.com, another video-hosting site. It’s easy to understand why people settle for missing an episode rather than trying to find a show online.

Clicker finds over 400,000 television and Web-original episodes so you can search less and watch more.

Clicker also comes in handy when you’re querying something or someone you need to learn about. By typing in a term like “Thanksgiving travel,” I get news results from NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” the “CBS Evening News” and the Associated Press. I also get tips for traveling during this busy time of year from an AOL Travel online video, as well as a 1968 episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” called “The Thanksgiving Spirit.”

Clicker isn’t the site to use if you want to find the hot video clip that everyone is watching. When I searched for “Whitney Houston” the morning after the American Music Awards, the most recent video I found was the singer performing on “Good Morning America” in September—not the one showing her singing during the awards show the night before.

But the fact that Clicker can find Whitney Houston on “Good Morning America” is useful in itself. A search for Warren Buffett’s most recent appearance on the “Charlie Rose” show can be conducted in a similar manner—either by typing his name into the box at the top of the page or by opening the show’s page and searching within that show for anyone who has appeared as a guest. Performing a search within a show like this anywhere else is nowhere near as easy as on Clicker.

Playlist of Your Shows

Clicker can be used as a TiVo (TIVO) of sorts if you create a username on the site or simply sign in using Facebook Connect, which I did.

Users can make playlists where they can add just one episode, all episodes, or new episodes to this list—subscribing to receive all new episodes in the playlist as they become available. I added episodes of “The Amazing Race” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to my playlist. This list can be accessed anytime, and it’s helpful for people who don’t have enough time to watch a show that they found. In December, email and Facebook notifications will be added to tell users that new episodes are in their playlists.

If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer and find yourself searching all over the Web for the TV shows you’d like to watch, Clicker will be a huge help. And even if your show isn’t available, you might find something similar—or better—in Clicker’s recommendations.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Microsoft Packs The New Zune HD With Bells, Whistles And Plenty of Style

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:03 +0000

At long last, Microsoft has made a portable media player that you can be proud to carry around: the Zune HD.

This fourth-generation Zune (Zune.net) is ultra thin and has a stunningly vivid 3.3-inch touch screen that covers most of its surface, doing away with the old device’s touchpad. It comes in one small size rather than the older large and small versions, and has capacities of 16 and 32 gigabytes for $220 and $290, respectively.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Zune HD does a nice job of integrating and artistically displaying content about an artist, song or album whenever possible. It has an acceptable built-in browser that surfs the Web using a Wi-Fi connection, and a customizable Quickplay menu on the home screen that displays your content using tiny, stylish tiles. The corresponding Zune Marketplace finally offers movies—about 500 for renting or buying, half of which have HD resolution. And a $90 docking station works with the device to display its HD content on your HDTV.

Given all the improvements of this new Zune, it’s a shame that this makeover stopped short of revamping its commerce system, which is still too confusing. Rather than inviting newcomers to the Zune and its online store by allowing them to use real money to buy content, it is still tied to the points system made popular by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox gaming console. In this gamer-friendly system, the cost of one song is 79 points, roughly the equivalent of a dollar, and users must buy points in buckets ranging from 400 for $5 to 5,000 for $62.50. People who are trying to watch their budgets don’t need the hassle of calculating points per purchase. And Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle e-reader and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store have proved that using dollars and an uncomplicated one-click system is a successful strategy.

The way I prefer to get the most out of the Zune system is by using the Zune Pass for $15 monthly. This charge allows free continuous streaming of music from any computer’s browser as long as you log in, and includes 10 free MP3 downloads a month that are yours to keep even if you bail on using the Zune software. The Zune Pass lets you listen to Smart DJ playlists that can be built in one of three ways: using your own library; using a mix of Marketplace content and music from your library; or using only songs from the Marketplace. These also can be set to last for a certain amount of time—say for a 30-minute jog or a two-hour party.

I created several Smart DJ playlists including one using Dierks Bentley as the seed artist from which other suggestions were generated. This country singer was a good test for the Zune software because Mr. Bentley’s music blends new and old country sounds. I set the Smart DJ to produce a mix using only content from Marketplace and it returned a great list that included songs from newer group, Little Big Town, as well as older stuff like Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” Any Smart DJ list can be dragged onto the Zune HD.

Apple’s iPod Touch is the Zune HD’s biggest rival and its iTunes Store has much more content in all categories compared with Zune Marketplace. But let’s put music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and music videos aside and say we’re satisfied with the amount of content offered by Zune Marketplace.

One of the iPod Touch’s best features is its ability to access Apple’s App Store, a catalog of 75,000 applications. The Zune HD only dips its pinky toe into a pool where Apple is already swimming laps: Only nine apps can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace (all are free). They’re colorful and simple to use, but nine apps won’t be enough to compete head on with the iPod Touch.

The Zune HD uses Quickplay (shown on second player from left) to instantly display certain content.

It would be a real boon to Zune if it somehow inherited the gaming genes of Microsoft’s already-established Xbox, especially considering how Apple has heavily marketed the iPod Touch as a portable gaming system. Microsoft will only say that later this year Zune will offer apps for Twitter and Facebook as well as 3-D games like “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.”

The only same-capacity model in the Zune HD and iPod Touch is the 32-gigabyte, which costs $290 and $299, respectively. The Zune HD is smaller than the iPod Touch so its organic light-emitting-diode touch screen is 3.3 inches compared with the Touch’s 3.5-inch screen. The Zune fits easily in any pocket and is just 0.35-inch thick. A thin horizontal button on the face of the device takes you to the home screen, and a hidden button on the left side pulls up an on-screen menu for volume and playback controls—or just tap the screen when content is playing. It doesn’t have a speaker like the iPod Touch, so you’ll always need earbuds to hear anything that’s playing.

Quickplay is one of my favorite features on the Zune HD. It uses tiny tiles to visually represent your content in four categories: currently playing; anything pinned (or labeled with a shortcut tile) to Quickplay; a history of recently opened content; and anything that’s new to the player. This includes all of your photos, videos, music, Web pages and apps. I easily pinned AllThingsD.com, a “Saturday Night Live” video and a favorite photo to the Quickplay menu. Clever animation sends this menu to the background of the home screen or swiftly pulls it into the foreground when needed.

I rented and downloaded the movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and opted to pay 360 points for the HD version rather than paying 240 points for the standard-definition version. A helpful on-screen explanation described the advantages of each according to where it would be played. Movie rentals last for 14 days or 24 hours after you first press play.

Listening to music on the Zune HD is a lot of fun—and even educational. Whenever the screen goes idle while playing a song, large images of the artist and album cover fill the entire screen while text—album name, artist name, song name—scrolls across these images. With one touch, I saw a list of other albums and songs by that artist, an artist biography, related artists, and pictures of the artist. This is a lot more interesting than staring at one image on the screen, and I learned a lot of new information about musicians I’ve been listening to for years.

The newly added Web browser on the Zune HD gets the job done, but has downsides. Its on-screen keyboard for entering names of Web pages has very small keys and doesn’t use predictive typing to fix your mistakes. Some Web pages rendered normally on the browser, but a couple—like Georgetown.edu—looked normal only when I turned the Zune HD horizontally.

As with other Zunes, this Zune HD has a radio receiver and now uses HD radio for finding more stations with clearer signals. If you like a song, an on-screen button tags it for buying and downloading immediately or later.

The Zune HD is a great-looking little player, and users will especially appreciate its Quickplay menu, rich collection of artist information and mesmerizing screen. If its points system was scrapped and its Zune Marketplace was filled with more content, I’d like it better.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Spare Change for Apple, RIM or Palm Shares?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:30:49 +0000

Wise is the investor holding shares in Apple, Research in Motion and/or Palm, because these companies are the triumvirate of tech’s new world order.

This according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, who in a research note today says all three are positioned for leadership in the “huge, nascent and underpenetrated” smartphone market. The smartphone, says Abramsky, is a uniquely transformational innovation in that it represents the convergence of four iconic technology markets–PC and computing, Internet, consumer electronics and wireless phones.

As interest in mobile email, mobile browsing and mobile applications grows, as handsets become more powerful and the networks on which they run improve, consumers will begin to bypassing PCs and the tethered Internet for the iPhone, the BlackBerry, the Pre and the mobile computing experience they offer. And that transition will create an enormous market opportunity for smartphone vendors like Apple (AAPL), RIM (RIMM) and Palm (PALM).

“Because of their convergence capabilities,” writes Abramsky, “we believe that smartphones possess the ability to capture users, revenues, market share and profits from not only the 1 billion unit+ per year handset market–but also from the PC market (300 million units per year), TVs (200 million units per year), personal media players (230 million units per year), digital cameras (125 million units per year), personal gaming devices (37 million units per year), portable navigation devices (32 million units per year) and other formerly discrete market segments.”

Bolstering his case, Abramsky adds, “At the end of calendar 2008, only 2.5% of the ~7 billion people in the world had smartphones and 24% had Internet access (only 8% are Internet subscribers, the difference being multi-user households and Internet cafes). A huge market opportunity for smartphones exists, given that globally there are 3.7 billion mobile phone subscribers, 2.5 billion consumer electronics users, 1.6 billion Internet users, and 1.1 billion PC users.” (Click on chart below to enlarge.)

Great news for Apple, RIM and Palm, which Abramsky sees as the market’s emerging leaders. And, as I noted earlier, great news for investor holding their shares. Says Abramsky: “We are raising our price targets on RIM from $100 to $150, on Apple from $190 to $250, and on Palm from $18 to $25, justified by increased market shares which, as visibility improves to the huge smartphone opportunity, offer upside to financials and potential multiple expansion.”

iPhone Claims 32 Percent of Handset Industry Operating Profits

John Paczkowski — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:01:05 +0000

Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates that Apple (AAPL), though it is only the fifth-largest handset vendor, claimed nearly a third of handset industry profits in the first half of 2009 (see table below; click to enlarge).

“Our analysis indicates that Apple’s iPhone accounted for only 8% of handset industry revenues but 32% of industry operating profits in 1H09,” Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients today. “Even if we exclude the operating losses generated by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, Apple still accounted for 25% of industry profits. iPhone’s success is akin to Apple’s position in the PC industry–where the company enjoys an estimated 25% of industry profits, despite capturing only 6% of industry revenues.”

Quite an achievement considering that the iPhone is just two years old. How did Apple manage it? According to Sacconaghi, Apple succeeded by claiming a first-mover advantage in an expanding high-end market.

“With the iPhone and its Apps Store, Apple has established a formidable smartphone ecosystem, which history suggests is very difficult to overcome,” the analyst explains. “In fact, Apple has the potential to become a de-facto standard of sorts in the consumer smartphone market, much like it became in the portable media player market with iPods, due in large part to its first mover advantage and tight software and hardware integration.

“We believe that over time,” Sacconaghi continues, “single function standalone handheld devices (portable music players, digital cameras, navigation systems, etc.) will become increasingly converged. Apple’s estimated installed base of 75+ million individual iPod and iTunes users provides customers with a seamless migration path to a fuller featured, higher-end integrated device.”

Though Sacconaghi believes Apple should be able to grow faster than the overall handset market without materially lowering prices, he suggests a lower price point might give a signifigant bump to its iPhone business. “We believe Apple will ultimately need to lower price (and margins over time) to expand its addressable market opportunity, including offering a lower-cost, non-data plan iPhone,” he concludes.

Think of It as an AT&T-Free iPhone

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:45:31 +0000

The next iteration of Apple’s iPod touch will boast not just a camera, but a microphone as well. That’s the latest rumor, anyway–this one from a “well-connected” Wired source who claims the device is already being manufactured with an eye toward a September launch.

And that makes perfect sense really. A touch with an integrated camera and mic is more an inevitability than anything else at this point. And the rumored September launch jibes with the timing of Apple’s (AAPL) iPod announcements for the past several years.

So, if the rumor proves true, we’ll soon see the touch transform from a media-player to a media-creator and VoIP device as well. Outfitted with Skype or a similar application, the touch would make a slick home phone–and give a nice little sting to AT&T (T).

[Image Credit: TechAu]

Think of It as an AT&T-Free iPhone

John Paczkowski — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:45:31 +0000

[Image Credit: TechAu]

The Swiss Army Knife of Portable Videos

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:50:04 +0000

Every once in a while I watch an online video that’s good enough to send to a friend, share on Twitter and Facebook or save its URL so I can watch it again later. The final piece of the puzzle would be moving the video onto a mobile device to have it with me wherever I went.

Enter RealPlayer SP beta (realplayer.com), the latest in RealNetworks Inc.’s (RNWK) long line of media players that the company has churned out since 1995. RealPlayer SP—the SP stands for social and portable—is a free download that, once installed, grabs videos from the Web, converts them to the right format and transfers them to over a dozen portable devices. While other software programs perform two or just one of these tasks, the RealPlayer SP’s trio of talent makes it like a digital Swiss army knife.

[ See post to watch video ]

After using the RealPlayer for moving several videos of all kinds to an iPhone, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and Palm Pre, I felt like I had more control over my portable devices and the media they held. And the freedom of knowing that this player is compatible with almost anything—including Apple (AAPL) and Palm (PALM) devices, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerrys, T-Mobile’s G1 and Sidekick, Nokia’s (NOK) N97 and certain basic cellphones—is a major plus.

Behavior Problem

My biggest problem with using the RealPlayer SP has to do with my own behavior. Most of the videos I watch online and share with friends are less than five minutes long. This means that grabbing, converting and transferring videos to a portable device using the RealPlayer SP—albeit a relatively quick process—could easily take more time than the length of the video, itself. And many of the longer videos that I would want to move to a BlackBerry or iPhone are copyright-protected and thus can’t be downloaded by the RealPlayer SP.

Another factor is that more devices now have their own built-in app stores for downloading content to the device, without plugging into a computer for transfers like with the RealPlayer SP. The iPod touch, for example, can now download movies, music videos and TV shows over Wi-Fi thanks to a recent $10 software upgrade.

Mac Version Coming Soon

The RealPlayer SP works only on Windows PCs right now; a Mac version is due out by the end of this year. Likewise, it doesn’t work on Apple’s Safari browser but does work on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome browser; I used all three with success.

If you’re not interested in using the RealPlayer SP for transferring videos to portable devices, you can still use it for downloading videos, saving them onto your computer and sharing them with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email. Tiny icons representing each of these sharing options appear in-line beside freshly downloaded videos. I shared videos of last week’s Congressional Luau at the White House via Facebook and Twitter, but the icon to share videos via Twitter doesn’t automatically shrink URLs to fit into a tweet. I shrunk the URLs myself, but this took an extra step¹.

And though I’ve mostly focused on the RealPlayer SP’s ability to grab, convert and transfer (RealNetworks calls these tools the Downloader feature in the player), it also works as its own media player or helps you discover new content.

RealPlayer SP Beta downloads, converts and transfers videos from the Web to a variety of portable devices.

A premium version called RealPlayer Plus SP is available for $40. Premium features include DVD burning, DVD playback (if your computer can’t play DVDs) and video conversion to a special format called h.264—though the free version performs these conversions for videos being moved to Apple devices.

I jumped around the Web visiting sites and playing videos, which prompted the RealPlayer SP to display a small “Download This Video” message above videos that aren’t copyright-protected. Downloading videos worked on most sites, including AllThingsD.com, Slate, YouTube, Salon and CNET. As expected, I wasn’t so lucky with videos from the New York Times, BBC and Hulu, which hosts loads of TV shows and music videos. That’s because videos from these sites were copyright-protected and didn’t allow for downloading.

A Glitch

In one instance with a WSJ.com video, only the short ad that played before the video was downloaded, even though the download prompt indicated that the WSJ video was obtainable using RealPlayer SP. RealNetworks says this is a glitch it knows about and plans to correct.

The RealPlayer SP’s ability to download videos and transfer them to devices, rather than just copying them onto computers, forced me to be choosier about the videos that I downloaded due to the limited memory of the devices. Because of this, I wished the RealPlayer SP Downloader had a better built-in way to discover downloadable content. Currently, a link to something called the RealGuide pulls up suggestions, but I had a hard time finding clips there that I wanted to download. RealNetworks says it plans to improve the video-discovery process in the future, including adding things like YouTube keyword searches built right into the Downloader.

The Downloader Window

When I did find videos I liked, I clicked on the prompt to download the clip, found the clip in a tiny Downloader window, and chose to move the clip to a device (there’s a list of all available devices) or share it via Twitter, Facebook or email. Transfer times depend on the length of the video.

RealNetworks provides simple instructions on making sure your device is set to transfer when plugged in. For example, BlackBerrys must be set to mass-storage mode, Palm Pres should be set to USB mode and Apple devices synchronize with the iTunes library, where RealPlayer’s converted videos are sent for transferring to iPhones and iPods.

RealPlayer SP can be a real help when it comes to putting the content that you want on your portable device. Its ability to assist from start to finish—finding videos, converting and transferring them—saves time and avoids confusion. To succeed, RealPlayer SP needs to do a better job of helping people find worthwhile videos to transfer, or they’ll stop using it after just a few tries.

Corrections and Amplifications

¹ Real Networks says its RealPlayer SP Beta’s Twitter video sharing capability has an automatic URL-shortening tool built in. This week’s Mossberg Solution product said the product lacked such a feature, because it never activated itself in our tests.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

iPhone Maker Seeks Faster Boat to China

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:30:56 +0000

“We will enter Asia with the iPhone in 2008…we will one day enter China, we’re not saying when.” Apple COO Tim Cook said that back in March of 2008, and it’s a good thing he declined to offer a more specific timeline. Because here we are, well over a year later, and Apple still hasn’t managed to officially launch the iPhone to China.

But it’s getting closer.

Interfax reports that Apple (AAPL) is near to obtaining the Network Access License from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that would allow the iPhone to be sold in the country. Once the license is secured, Apple needs only to finalize a distribution deal with China Unicom to make good on Cook’s promise, though that has proven problematic.

Apple’s discussions with China Unicom have reportedly been troubled by the company’s distaste for the idea of China Unicom preinstalling non-Apple software–a media player other than iTunes, for example–on its iconic handset. That said, Apple is apparently confident enough in a positive outcome that it’s begun staffing up for a launch. Last week the company posted an ad to its recruitment Web site looking for someone to oversee “iPhone training” across Asia. The position, which will be based out of Beijing, is responsible for designing training programs for iPhone sales teams and retail channels partners.

Microsoft Announces Windows F(E)U Edition

John Paczkowski — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:20:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

IPod to Reach Out and Touch Someone

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Apple’s iPhone has changed the game since its debut almost two years ago — building a powerful platform for on-the-go Web browsing and applications, in addition to making cellphone calls. Just a few months after the iPhone appeared, Apple (AAPL) introduced the very similar iPod Touch, which didn’t get as much attention, perhaps because its name understates the scope of its features.

The Touch resembles the iPhone, only thinner, with the same multitouch screen, fast Web browser, iPod media player and ability to run almost all of the 35,000 apps in Apple’s App Store. It doesn’t have a camera, or a few other iPhone features, and it can’t connect to cellphone networks, relying instead on Wi-Fi for its Internet connection.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Touch has caught on: Apple recently indicated that it has sold 16 million of them. One reason for the popularity is that its freedom from a phone company eliminates pricey monthly bills. But the Touch can’t easily make voice calls right out of the box. So this week, I tested ways to make the Touch even more like the iPhone: apps that use the Internet to make phone calls.

Three Apps to Test

I successfully tested three apps that can be downloaded free of charge from Apple’s App store — Skype, Fring and Truphone. Skype gave me the best connection, and my friends wouldn’t have known I was using it unless I told them. (Skype’s app is popular, with 2.8 million downloads in just four weeks.) Fring and Truphone let users make calls using Skype’s service within their apps, and they also run other programs like AIM and MSN Messenger. But Fring’s phone calls didn’t sound as clear, and I had technical difficulties with Truphone.

The downside to using these apps on an iPod Touch is that you must be connected to a Wi-Fi network. For a lot of people who work and live in areas surrounded by wireless networks, this won’t be a problem most of the time. But in those moments when mobility comes into play — like driving in a car — you’ll miss having a steady line through a phone carrier. You also can’t use these apps to make 911 emergency calls.

Another negative is that third-party applications can’t run in the background on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This means you can’t use a Touch for browsing the Web or reading email while waiting for a call from a friend via Skype or Fring. Fring offers an option that emails you when friends call or message, so you can sign on and call them back. Truphone has built-in voicemail. Skype doesn’t currently offer a notification feature.

(The next version of the iPhone OS is supposed to include notifications, which could improve the usability of these apps.)

The Touch comes in three models: an eight-gigabyte version for $229; a 16-gigabyte for $299; and a 32-gigabyte for $399. Because the Touch doesn’t have a built-in microphone, you must use something like the iPhone Stereo Headset, which costs $29 and has a microphone in its cord.

Skype Plans

Free Skype accounts, which can be used for making calls with all three apps, take just a few minutes to set up. And calls from one Skype user to another are free. Skype calls to landlines or cellphones are relatively cheap. Skype Credit, a pay-as-you-go plan, charges 2.1 cents a minute in the U.S.; Skype Subscription is a flat monthly fee that costs $2.95 when used for calls made to and from the U.S. A monthly fee of $5.95 gets you unlimited calling to one country, and $12.95 a month pays for unlimited calls to 42 countries.

The Skype, Fring, and Truphone apps let you easily import contact names and numbers from your iPod Touch. They also enable instant messaging between you and your friends. Delightful sounds indicate incoming messages and calls, and these can be heard even when the headset isn’t plugged in — as long as you put the Touch down without closing the app.

I had the most success with the Skype app. My Skype-to-landline calls sounded perfect to my boss on the other end. Skype-to-cell and Skype-to-Skype calls sounded good, but weren’t always as clear; I used my Skype account to call a friend in New Orleans on her Skype account, and I heard echoing a couple times during our 30-minute chat. Skype says this could be attributed to the fact she was on a laptop.

Fring calls made using Skype — to landlines, cellphones, and other Skype contacts — weren’t as good as the Skype app. Friends’ voices sounded slightly shaky and muffled. This kind of thing isn’t the end of the world in a quick chat, but could be a real burden during an important call. Fring offers a long list of add-ons, letting you sign in to various accounts all within the same app. These include Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google (GOOG) Talk, Twitter, Yahoo (YHOO), and AIM.

Technical Difficulties

Truphone calls to landlines and cellphones sounded a bit fuzzy. Truphone is a service unto itself, like Skype, with free calls between Truphone users, pay-as-you-go plans and monthly plans. Like Fring, Truphone enables use of other programs within its app, like AIM and Yahoo Messenger. And it includes free voicemail. But the app didn’t always work for me.

A feature in all three apps lets you call an automated voice test line so you can hear how you sound before calling others.

These iPod Touch apps aren’t perfect, and the next version of the iPhone OS may let them can run more productively in the background. But making calls from the iPod Touch is a pretty cool experience when it works well, and free or low-price plans are an attractive alternative to cellphone carriers.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

Sony's Vaio P Has Sportscar Looks Without the Power

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:08:03 +0000

Of the most famous computer makers, only two, Apple and Sony, primarily aim their products at consumers, instead of the generally conservative IT departments of big companies. So, it’s no surprise that these two tech giants often turn out especially stylish and daring hardware designs.

But Sony (SNE), unlike Apple (AAPL), isn’t especially skilled at software and doesn’t make its own operating system. This situation partly explains why Sony’s latest gorgeous, daring laptop, the shockingly tiny Vaio P, turns heads everywhere, but is pretty frustrating to use.

[ See post to watch video ]

I love the look and feel and boldness of the design, but can’t recommend this sleek machine for most users because it is very slow and has poor battery life. Oh, and it sells for double or triple the price of other small laptops, commonly called netbooks.

The Vaio P is mainly undone because it comes with Vista Home Premium, the edition of Windows that is sluggish and a memory hog. Most competing small notebooks ship with the more nimble, but older, Windows XP. And the Vista problem is made worse by the processor inside the machine, which is an especially slow version of the Intel (INTC) Atom chip often used in netbooks.

While I was testing the Vaio P, which costs between $900 and $1,500, nearly everyone who saw it asked to try it. That’s because it doesn’t look like any other laptop I’ve seen. It’s long, narrow and very thin — with roughly the same footprint as one of those plastic folders waiters use to bring you the check at a restaurant. It can be tucked into the pocket of an overcoat or a pair of cargo pants, and comes in several handsome colors.

Sony’s Vaio P “lifestyle” computer

These unusual dimensions allow for only a small eight-inch screen, which is much wider than it is tall. But the Vaio P’s screen boasts very high resolution, so that it can display almost as much of a typical Web page or document as the more common 13.3-inch screens on larger laptops.

Sony also has done a great job with the keyboard on the Vaio P. Its keys are surprisingly large and well-spaced for such a tiny computer, with a wide space bar, and large “Enter” and “Backspace” keys. Instead of a touch pad, it uses a midkeyboard pointing stick.

And this little laptop is packed with nice features, including a built-in 3G cellular modem to supplement its Wi-Fi and free GPS for mapping. The P also comes standard with two gigabytes of memory. The $900 base model comes with a small 60-gigabyte hard disk; and the $1,200 midrange model has a 64-gigabyte solid state drive — which is more durable and uses less power. The top model, at $1,500, comes with a more reasonably sized 128-gigabyte solid state drive.

There are two USB ports, but the Ethernet and external video ports are relegated to a little module that snaps on to the power adapter. All models come with a quick-start system that brings up a stripped-down Web browser and media player without waiting for Windows to load. This is a boon, but it’s crudely designed.

Sony positions the Vaio P as a “lifestyle” computer, a companion to your main computer that’s almost as portable as a smart phone, but can do more. Unfortunately, once you actually start using it, that promise is dashed by its awful performance.

In my tests of the Vaio P, programs launched painfully slowly, delays were common and start-up and reboot times were glacial. I timed a reboot at nearly four minutes, and had to give up on an attempt to open 15 Web sites simultaneously in tabs in the usually speedy Firefox Web browser. Video playback was choppy.

There are some other problems that can’t be blamed on Vista. The speakers are worse than those on some cellphones. And the tiny mouse buttons are so close to the bottom edge of the keyboard that they are easy to hit accidentally. Also, I couldn’t get the GPS to work.

Using my tough battery test, in which I turn off all power-saving features, I got less than two hours, even on a solid-state model, suggesting a typical battery life of maybe 2.5 hours. Sony sells a double-sized battery, but it adds a bit of weight and bulk to the sleek box, and costs $129.

I also tested two experimental configurations of the Vaio P, which show that there’s hope for it in the future. One of these models had been tweaked by Sony to turn off many of Vista’s performance-sapping and power-hungry features. This box ran better, though still not great. Sony plans to offer a software download that will make these tweaks automatically.

Much better was a Vaio P with the forthcoming version of Windows, called Windows 7, installed. This version of Windows, likely to ship by this fall, made the Vaio P perform acceptably, despite its wimpy processor. Everything was much snappier, and reboot times were cut in half.

The Vaio P may be a beautiful device that’s just ahead of its time. Even if you can afford it, I’d advise waiting for the version with Windows 7.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

MySpace Boots Pervs

John Paczkowski — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:27:54 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple to Resellers: Stock Up on MacBooks, iPods (PS: Good Luck Selling Them After the Refresh)

John Paczkowski — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:09:23 +0000

If you’re considering buying a new MacBook/Pro or iPod, you might want to postpone that call to Apple Financial Services for a few months. Otherwise, you may end up with a very quickly outdated laptop and media player. In a bulletin to retail partners today, Apple warned of declining iPod and MacBook/Pro inventory and “strongly suggested” they stock up on the devices before the back-to-school rush. What this means, of course, is that the company is very likely nearing refreshes of both those product lines.

And it’s about time, isn’t it? The iPod would certainly benefit from a storage and feature update. The MacBook is due for a six-month refresh. And Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook Pro is due for a revision, since design-wise it’s really just a tweaked version of the machine that debuted as the PowerBook Titanium in 2001.

Anyone want to buy a used MacBook Pro? In September?

Motorola ROKR E8:Hip and User-Friendly

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Basic cellphones, unlike larger BlackBerrys or iPhones, are still favored by plenty of users who would rather carry a small device that feels more comfortable to hold to the ear. But the phones’ size involves a trade-off: cramped keypads and clumsy software that can make these phones a pain to use for anything other than calls.

As technology continues to shrink, more features are being packed into these small mobile devices, making navigation and ease-of-use more important. This week, I tested the Motorola ROKR E8, which costs $199 with a two-year T-Mobile service agreement and makes a real attempt to be more user-friendly. The device, which comes out on July 7, isn’t much bigger than a typical cellphone but its standout feature is its keyboard, which dynamically changes to accommodate whatever you’re doing at the time, revealing only buttons that would be of use to that particular function.

The secret sauce on the ROKR E8 is its keyboard, which changes when it’s used as a phone, music device and camera.

The surface of the ROKR E8 has no physical keys at all. In its off or resting state, in fact, it’s just a black surface with rows of tiny, unlabeled bumps. But this surface is actually divided into two: The top half works like a typical cellphone display while the bottom half projects virtual keys onto its surface and uses the rows of bumps to give these keys a physical presence.

When making a call or sending a text message, the ROKR’s surface displays a regular phone keypad. But as soon as a music shortcut button is pressed, the surface morphs into five buttons for music navigation: play/pause, seek forward, seek backward, shuffle and repeat. Pressing another shortcut button to start the ROKR’s camera mode shows four buttons for zooming in or out, switching to playback mode or changing to video. Motorola (MOT) calls this its ModeShift technology. Though the lower half of the ROKR can be considered a touch device, objects can’t be manipulated with gestures like pinching or dragging as with the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s multitouch screen.

Overall, I found that the ROKR E8′s dynamic keyboard gave me a real advantage in figuring out how to use the multi-functionality of the phone. Its changing keyboard eliminated a lot of guesswork and time that I may have spent hunting through menus for a command. And true to its name, the ROKR (pronounced “rocker”) is focused on its music phone functionality with an FM radio, a neatly organized music menu and a speaker that has convincingly simulated surround-sound effects.

But this ROKR didn’t always jam out in perfect pitch. A touch-sensitive semicircle in the center is meant to make scrolling through long lists easier — much like Apple Inc.’s iPod wheel. But because this tool on the ROKR isn’t a full circle, scrolling felt unsatisfying. You also can’t buy songs with the ROKR, or even mark songs for purchasing later on a PC.

And while the morphing buttons look futuristic and hip, I experienced a few instances when the phone was slow to react after I touched a button, as when I touched the seek forward button while listening to music or when I chose to open an MMS message I sent to a friend.

Twenty-two tiny bumps dot half of the ROKR’s surface, and the surface below each bump vibrates when it’s touched to provide sensory feedback. Nothing is ever physically pressed down, though the vibration response leads you to think otherwise.

A smart switch on the side can be held down to turn it on or off, or switched into the upward position to lock the device, preventing accidental calls or battery drain.

The ROKR E8 runs on T-Mobile’s (DT) GPRS/EDGE connection, which felt sluggish at times. And not even the dynamic keyboard on this device could help make email or instant messaging easier.

It has a two-megapixel still camera with an 8x digital zoom that can change into video-camera mode in one step. Two gigabytes of memory are built into the ROKR, and more memory can be added via a microSD card slot, which is hidden beneath a back panel. A one-gigabyte microSD card comes with the ROKR. Without this card, the internal memory will hold about 1,500 songs.

With help from a USB cord and Windows (MSFT) Media Player 11, I transferred over 200 MP3s onto my ROKR. Album art that transferred with my songs appeared on-screen as songs played, and the speaker gave off a powerful sound. Built-in stereo Bluetooth can send tunes to Bluetooth-enabled stereo speakers, and it took me just a few seconds to pair my ROKR with Motorola’s EQ5 speakers.

A preloaded program by Shazam lets users hold the ROKR up to any speaker playing a song, and in 30 seconds, identifies the track title, artist, and album art. I held the ROKR up to my alarm clock radio and it worked perfectly. But once these songs are recognized, the track data can’t be used to buy the song or even to transfer a request to buy that song to a PC for buying online at another time.

The ROKR’s FM radio will work only if its included stereo headset is plugged in because the headset has the radio antenna. But once the headset is plugged in, the radio will play via the ROKR’s speaker.

The ROKR E8 has an audio technology called Crystal Talk, which Motorola says allows your phone to perform better in loud environments. Even if the person on the other end of your phone is in a noisy place, the company says Crystal Talk will raise the volume to improve the call. I tested this by speaking to someone on the ROKR while turning a hairdryer on beside the phone. I then used a regular Razr cellphone. The person on the other end said that the ROKR sounded slightly, but noticeably, better.

Motorola’s ROKR E8 is a head-turning phone with many built-in advances that give it a smarter interface. One might wonder what other ModeShift functions the company will integrate into its devices in the future, such as a full QWERTY keyboard. The overall idea of a dynamic keyboard is a step ahead for small devices. It forces the phone to work more intuitively and improves navigation while looking stylishly sleek at the same time.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Zune to Be Forgotten?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:00:40 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Zune Now Eligible for Protection Under Endangered Species Act

John Paczkowski — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:01:19 +0000

Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?”

–-Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Apparently not. And, perhaps, you never will.

GameStop (GME) has stopped selling Zunes. During a quarterly earnings call yesterday, Gamestop CFO David Carlson said the retailer had pulled Microsoft’s (MSFT) media player from the shelves of all 4,400 of its stores. He offered no further details on the move, but according to a GameStop spokesperson, it was inspired by insufficient demand. “We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” the spokesperson told TheStreet.com. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”

Your product mix and everyone else’s as well. As mentioned here last week, just 2 million Zunes have been sold since the device’s launch in November 2006. To put that figure in perspective, Apple (AAPL) sold 10.6 million iPods in its last quarter alone.

And so a question: Is GameStop’s decision to dump the Zune the beginning of a wider trend? According to Microsoft, the answer to that question is ‘no.’ “We have a set of great retail partnerships that give Zune a strong presence at retail including Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Target, Wal-Mart, and others,” Adam Sohn, director of marketing for the Zune, said. “We will continue to invest in deep retail partnerships, and have seen good momentum online and at retail over the last few months including a great response to our recent spring update.”

Pull Those Engineers Off OS X 10.6 and Put Them on the Clock Radio …

John Paczkowski — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:36:01 +0000

Good thing Forrester Research (FORR) doesn’t run Apple (AAPL), because if it did the company would be well on its way to insolvency.

In an astonishingly unimaginative report called “The Future of Apple Inc.,” Forrester attempts to divine the products Apple will be peddling five years from now. “Apple will aim to become the hub of the digital home, offering eight key products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the HDTV-stereo audio-visual infrastructure in consumers’ homes,” Forrester explains. “To fulfill this strategy, we predict that Apple will launch new products, re-engineer the Apple Store, and expand into in-home installation services.”

Sadly, the speculative product and services roadmap Forrester has devised seems more a roadmap to ruin than anything else, and a laughable one at that. Among the products the company sees Apple developing by 2013:

A network-enabled “clock radio”
An AppleSound universal music controller
A digital picture frame
A “Genius Bar” that makes house calls just like the Geek Squad.

Huh. So Apple, after reinventing the desktop UI, the digital media player, and the phone, will set its sights on the lowly clock radio and picture frame. Really? If Apple’s product dev team pitched Forrester’s clock radio idea to CEO Steve Jobs, he would probably hurl them one-by-one into rush-hour traffic from the roof of 1 Infinite Loop.

Microsoft Announces Live Mess

John Paczkowski — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:29:10 +0000

Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie has finally published the sequel to “The Internet Services Disruption,” the 2005 potboiler of a memo that charted Microsoft’s (MSFT) better-late-than-never software-as-a-service strategy. It’s called, intriguingly, “Services Strategy Update April 2008” and it describes in numbing detail Live Mesh, Microsoft’s ambitiously late entry into a rapidly growing cloud-computing market.

Live Mesh, though it takes Ozzie five pages to describe it, is essentially a “software-plus-services” platform that uses the Web to synchronize and share data among devices, applications and people (you’ll find a walk-through here and a good overview here).

“Over the past ten years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the Web is at the center of our experiences–experiences delivered not just through the browser but also through many different devices including PCs, phones, media players, game consoles, set-top boxes and televisions, cars, and more,” Ozzie writes. “It is our mission in this new era to create compelling, seamless experiences that combine the power of the Internet, with the magic of software, across a world of devices. … the Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.”

“The Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh.“

Wait.

Does Bill Gates know that? Because last year he told CNN’s “American Morning,” “We’re making the PC the place where it all comes together.” Clearly, in the ensuing year, Gates and Microsoft noticed that Google (GOOG) et al. are fast shifting computational relevancy to the Web, away from the desktop and, more importantly, away from Microsoft.

Live Mesh, if it’s successful, will change that. Because, as Joe Wilcox notes over at Microsoft Watch, “Live Mesh is Microsoft’s attempt to turn operating system and proprietary services platforms into hubs that replace the Web. Microsoft is building a services-based operating system that transcends and extends Windows and also the function of Web browsers.” Adds Wilcox, “It’s bold, brilliant and downright scary.”

Deciding Which Media Applications to Keep

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

I have a new H-P (HPQ) laptop and there are several preinstalled media-playing interfaces that have been foisted on me. Do I really need all of these interfaces? Can’t I just get all of this media to run through Windows Media Player or iTunes?

Since you weren’t specific, I don’t know what media software came with your new laptop. I’m sure some of it may have been redundant “craplets” — the unwanted software PC makers load onto their machines in order to collect a fee from the programs’ publishers. And you are correct that many of the most common audio and video file types can be handled by Windows (MSFT) Media Player and iTunes.

However, the Internet is full of media file types that are best played, or can only be played, in specialized software — either separate applications on your computer or online players that are enabled via your Web browser. So, over time, most users will collect additional players, or plug-ins for their Web browsers, that will supplement their main media-playing program. One way to see if the media software on your new computer is necessary is to test what types of files it handles. If you can open and play these same files in Windows Media Player or iTunes, and you prefer to do so, then you probably don’t need the added software.

If I am running Windows Vista on my iMac desktop using Parallels, will Apple’s Time Machine backup program automatically preserve the Windows hard disk, too?

Yes. Parallels, and its competitor, VMWare Fusion, create virtual Windows hard disks inside a Macintosh. When you are running Parallels or Fusion, Windows sees these virtual hard drives as if they are distinct physical disks. However, they are in fact just very large files on your Mac’s hard disk. So Apple’s (AAPL) Time Machine backup program treats them like any other file and backs them up. Time Machine can also restore these virtual Windows hard disks, in their entirety, just as it can restore other kinds of files.

There are some caveats, however. Time Machine treats each virtual Windows hard disk as a big, unified blob of data, so it cannot peer inside them to recover individual Windows files you may have accidentally deleted while running Windows programs. Also, if your virtual Windows hard disk is large, and it changes often, then using Time Machine to back it up may suck up a lot of space on your backup drive, as numerous archived versions of the file accumulate.

I currently have a DVD player and a large stack of DVDs that I play through my analog TV set. After the 2009 digital TV conversion, will I still be able to use my existing DVD player and play my existing DVDs, even if I buy one of the government-subsidized converter boxes?

The FCC says DVD players and other add-on gear “will continue to work, even if they are only analog-capable.” But it adds that “manufacturers are producing a number of different connectors to hook equipment together and improve picture and sound quality. Check with your equipment retailer to determine the types of connectors that will work with your equipment.”

In other words, while there’s no inherent conflict, it all depends on your particular DVD player, your particular TV set, and how you have them connected. The best thing to do is consult closely with the dealer or manufacturer selling the converter box so that you understand how it can coexist with your current DVD player setup, or how you might have to alter your current setup.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

In First for Studios, Paramount Offers Movie-Clip Spam

John Paczkowski — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:09:50 +0000

Hollywood has finally begun sniffing at the long tail.

Paramount Pictures (VIA) and application developer FanRocket this week debuted a new service for Facebook users that will enable them to send each other movie clips. A combination media player and clip library, the service called VooZoo aims to exploit the Hey-Remember-That-Funny-Scene-From-”Nacho Libre” phenomenon by providing users with access to clips from such movies and an easy means of bombarding their friends with them.

The studio will plug the DVD version of the movies after each clip is played in the hopes of driving further sales. An interesting strategy, but one analysts seem to have met with a raised eyebrow. “It’s one thing to go to a friend’s profile page and they have a clip of Eddie Murphy driving the Ferrari and go, ‘Oh, yeah, that was hysterical,’ ” said John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates. “It’s quite something else to say, ‘Hey, that was such a great scene I’m going to spend the next two hours right here in front of my PC.’ It would be some kind of clip that would make someone do that.”

Apple's Time Capsule Gives You Easy Way to Back Up Wirelessly

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:01:00 +0000

With its new Leopard operating system, Apple tried to solve one of the most nagging problems faced by home-computer users: how to regularly back up their computers completely and painlessly. Leopard includes a feature called Time Machine that automatically and continuously backs up a Macintosh computer’s entire hard disk, without requiring the user to do any tedious setup or have any technical knowledge.

Time Machine is a key selling point for Leopard and the Mac. It is more complete, and yet simpler, than the built-in backup feature in Vista Home Premium, the most popular home version of Windows.

[ See post to watch video ]

But Time Machine has a major drawback: It works much better on desktop Macs than on laptop models. That’s because it’s primarily designed to operate with backup hard drives you connect directly to the computer. And it’s a pain to plug a backup drive into a laptop, which can move around the house. While Time Machine will work with a remote hard disk under certain circumstances, that option requires a second Mac running Leopard, a costly condition.

Now, Apple (AAPL) has attempted to fix the problem with an unusual new companion product called Time Capsule. This is a $299 stand-alone networked gadget that packs both a giant hard disk and a speedy Wi-Fi wireless router into one slender case. It just plugs into your existing home network, and any laptop within wireless range can connect to it. It can back up multiple computers.

Time Capsule is designed to seamlessly work with Leopard’s Time Machine. But it can also be used as a wireless Internet connection, and/or a remote hard drive, for manually storing and retrieving files by Windows PCs running either Vista or Windows XP, or by Macs running Apple’s older Tiger operating system. And you can also use it with certain other backup programs, such as the ones built into Windows XP or Tiger.

In my tests over the past week, Time Capsule worked well in all of these scenarios. However, Time Capsule isn’t meant to do as many different tasks as some other networked drives.

Apple stresses that Time Capsule is a limited, targeted device meant primarily for backup — especially with Time Machine — and as a wireless base station. Unlike some other networked storage devices, like Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart home server, Time Capsule doesn’t allow users to simultaneously stream music or videos to multiple PCs, to easily access its contents via the Web or to stream videos to TV sets.

The $299 Time Capsule model comes with a 500 gigabyte hard disk inside, and there’s also a $499 model with hard disk that can hold one terabyte of data, or roughly 1,000 gigabytes. Both models use the same “n” class of Wi-Fi, the fastest version with the longest range. Both also work with computers equipped with the older “g” and “b” versions of Wi-Fi.

You can buy networked hard disks in these sizes for less money and simply use them with your existing Wi-Fi router. However, Time Machine won’t work with them, according to Apple. The company says the only standalone networked hard disk Time Machine can use is Time Capsule.

In my tests, Time Capsule performed perfectly with Time Machine. It also was easily recognized by several of my Windows machines running Vista and Windows XP. On all of these machines, I was able to speedily access the Internet via Time Capsule. Time Capsule can be set up to either replace or supplement your existing Wi-Fi router.

All the machines, even the Windows ones, also could recognize the Time Capsule as a remote hard disk, and save files to it and retrieve files from it. For instance, I manually copied a song, a photo and a Word document from a Mac laptop running Leopard onto the Time Capsule. On a Dell running Vista, I then opened the Time Capsule and launched that same Word document in the Windows version of Word, opened the photo in Vista’s Photo Gallery program, and played the song in Windows Media Player. This same process worked in reverse.

Apple doesn’t guarantee that Time Capsule will work with all backup programs. But it says it will work with the backup software built into Tiger and will likely work with some other backup software.

In my tests, the built-in backup program in Windows XP Pro worked fine with Time Capsule. But the built-in backup program in Vista failed. Microsoft said the problem I encountered was due to a new Vista security feature for backups that foils some remote hard disks, not just Apple’s.

Setting up Time Capsule was easy, using a step-by-step utility program that Apple supplies in both Mac and Windows versions. The device has a USB port that can be used to add either an additional hard disk or a networked printer. And it can be connected to a network via a wired connection if you don’t want to use its wireless functionality.

If you use Time Machine on a Mac laptop, then Time Capsule’s $299 price is money well spent. If you don’t, there are cheaper or more versatile solutions to the backup problem.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Log On, Listen, Blog, Discuss

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:01:00 +0000

When you hear a catchy new song, it’s hard not to tell your friends about it. The opposite is also true: it’s nearly impossible to discuss a song when you haven’t heard it first. Yet there are plenty of blogs and Web sites where music is discussed under the assumption that other bloggers know how a song, album or artist sounds.

This week, I dived into the music blogging world of MOG.com, a Web site where enthusiasts can read, blog and network with one another. Starting today, this site will integrate with Rhapsody, the subscription-based music service, so that MOG users, or MOGGERS, can simultaneously blog about and listen to millions of songs that fuel their online discussions.

Rhapsody is now integrated into MOG’s site for music aficionados.

MOG Inc. prides itself on working as a destination for people who hope to discuss music tastes and opinions, like TripAdvisor.com works for travelers. MOG’s first public beta, or test version, came out about a year and a half ago.

Its use of a subscription model comes at a time when CD profits are lagging and larger social-networking sites are negotiating with record labels to incorporate music streaming. Plenty of people still prefer purchasing music a la Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store, where there aren’t restrictions due to streaming or subscriptions.

Along with built-in Rhapsody, this newly enhanced version of MOG includes other improvements, such as a better search engine and a speedy tool that generates personal profiles for each MOG user according to his or her musical tastes.

I was granted early access to MOG’s revamped site and was most impressed by its fast search tool, which works just like the Spotlight search in Apple’s operating system. Results are narrowed with each typed letter and returned in neatly divided categories. Best of all, music results came back as fast as if they were on my hard drive instead of various MOG pages and Rhapsody’s database.

MOG also does a good job of marrying its contents with Rhapsody in a way that isn’t overly obvious; tiny Play icons beside song titles can be selected to start hearing a tune through the Rhapsody player, which hums along in the background, and similar icons add songs to playlists in one step.

But for a site that prides itself on appealing to music enthusiasts, I found certain genres much more represented than others. The rock music category, for example, had plenty of related posts and coinciding Rhapsody music, but the classical music section was almost nonexistent and country tunes were poorly represented. I typed “Bach” into the search box, expecting to be flooded with results, but saw no music and only one post by a MOG user about why she thought Bach was a great composer. The company says it will fix this in the next couple of months.

Unlimited Rhapsody access costs $13 monthly and is offered free for the first 14 days. But, like all subscription models, it blocks access to music if you don’t pay this monthly fee. MOGGERS who don’t want to pay or don’t plan on using Rhapsody as much can choose from two free options: one that allows users to listen to 25 songs a month and another that only allows free 30-second clips of song.

MOGGERS can upload their own MP3s within blog posts on the site. But linking to Rhapsody songs was easier and faster.

I got started by clicking a giant “Magic Button” icon on the MOG site. This installed MOG-O-MATIC, a tool that automatically searched my computer’s hard drive for all of my music files, then indexed them and created a profile of my music taste on a personalized My MOG page. This tool was also available in the first version of MOG but is 10 times as fast now, indexing 10,000 songs an hour compared with 1,000 songs previously.

I liked that MOG-O-MATIC did some page-creation work for me, making a list of the songs I listened to most recently — regardless of what program I used to listen to the song (iTunes, Windows Media Player or Rhapsody). Another list that was automatically generated from my music showed which artist was best represented in my collection. If you don’t want the world to know about your Barry Manilow obsession, this list can be altered to fudge the truth.

Because MOG-O-MATIC scans your entire music collection, it knows what music you like. A Recommendations page shows you what other MOGGERS with similar tastes are listening to, helping you discover new tunes. I found these suggestions to be pretty accurate, and even discovered a great song on another MOGGER’s recommended playlist called “Summer Teeth” by Wilco. I checked out the page belonging to the MOGGER who created this playlist, and found other tunes that were in line with my musical taste.

Using Rhapsody, I played entire Web pages of recommended songs with one click. Likewise, entire music collections belonging to other people can be played the same way, as long as you have the right Rhapsody account to play that many songs.

I wrote a blog post on MOG about the newest album from “Fountains of Wayne,” and it automatically included a Play button icon, enabling the song I wrote about to play along with my post. This auto-linking is done with fill-in-the-blank boxes that tag each post with music.

MOG isn’t trying to be a social-networking site that enables all things. Instead, it focuses on one thing, music, and successfully improves the way people discuss, share and discover music online.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com.