Author: Randy Stewart

Macworld Announcements

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

MacBookPro – same form factor as current, but 4-5x faster. No word on battery life, but this seems to be part of the focus, so we’ll see. Gosh, I wonder what they’ll call the new iBook?

iMac iNtel – didn’t expect this one at all. Not totally sure it makes sense, but it smells like the Apple of old (quadra – centris – powermac) replacing a product a couple of months after they’ve introduced one. Oy, glad I didn’t buy the iMac last fall.

iLife ’06 – this one was an easy one to call. Apple is the company that benefits the most from podcasting at this point and people were shoehorning their apps to do what they wanted for awhile, now they do it out of the box. New iApp – iWeb for website, podcast, vodcast

radio tuner/remote for iPod – cool implementation of a relatively unnecessary feature. Does anyone still listen to terrestrial radio anymore?

More details later. I’m off to go hands on.

Apple Macworld

Macworld Expo Today

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

I’ll be at Macworld Expo today following Steve’s exploits post keynote (I’ll be following MacRumor’s live coverage as it’s generally not easy to get into these things). I’ll report back later this evening about the day’s new products and hopefully give a good hand’s on report.

iLife ’06 and Intel Macs seem to be the consensus and most obvious and it makes the most sense to tweak iLife at least slightly towards people creating content for the iPod. .Mac is going down this morning during the keynote, so expectations are are high that it will also receive some tweaking, my guess, again, better enabling content creation for the iPod (podcasts, vodcasts, etc).

Here are other predictions out there –
MacRumors rumor round up Gizmodo Rumor Roundup Kevin Rose (digg.com)
Mac Plasmas?

CES

The Rest of CES

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2006

Now, while I was out pounding the floor of CES doing my little blog, my friends over at Engadget left no stone unturned. My devoted fans (errr… fan) may not be interested in all the things that Engadget covered, so here, dear reader, is an abridged set of links to Engadget to the best of CES.

Keynotes/Interviews

Booth Tours

CES

Tired Goodbye to Vegas

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 8, 2006

I’ll be posting more today and tomorrow, but for now, we’re stone cold chillin’ in Frisco waiting on Stevie’s big announcements on Tuesday. Hope to see you there.

CES Home Entertainment

HDMI is pretty

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 8, 2006

and everything else is really, really messy. If you’ve ever taken a look at the back side of my receiver it looks like something that NASA would use to launch rockets. Between 5 cables for audio and 3 for video for one frickin’ source, it makes one wonder if Monster Cable has been subsidizing A/V component development for the last 10 years.

These pictures speak volumes about the simplicity the industry is aspiring to and god, I hope HDMI is powering everything in the next few years.

CES

Nerd Celeb Siting: Patrick Norton

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 8, 2006

Friday evening, we ran into nerd celeb, Patrick Norton while attempting a death defying street crossing in Las Vegas heading for the Wynn casino to catch Avenue Q. Patrick Norton, in case you don’t know, was the former co-host of the late TechTV’s show, The Screen Savers. We chatted for a bit and got an interesting insider’s take on the demise of TechTV and what makes interesting tv for G4’s key demographic.

If you were into the Screen Savers, check out his new show, dl.tv and take it with you on your iPod.

CES Portable Entertainment

Creative Zen – Don’t buy me

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 7, 2006
1 Comment on Creative Zen – Don’t buy me

I had a long chat with one of the Creative folks and tried really, really hard to like the Creative Zen Vision:M. I mean, how hard could it be to create a usable device that plays music and video. I mean, the iPod is nice and all, but this is easy, right?

WRONG. This device is not intuitive to use, it is heavy and it is thick, all things the iPod is not. When I was done with the Vision:M, they brought me the older model, the Vision to check out. The device was turned off and it took a full minute to boot into a workable state. Call me impatient, but it felt like an eternity compared to the iPod.

Please Creative, make a good media player. Competition is good for the industry.

CES Games

Dude, You’re Getting a …

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 7, 2006

…pretty smoking Dell. Dell has their new Alienware killer, the XPS 600 Renegade with 2 nVidia GeForce 7800 SLI (and up to 4 video cards) and a Pentium 4 tweaked up to 4.26Ghz. It’ll only cost you $4-7k, but aren’t you worth it?

Personally, I just want the paint job.

CES

Obligatory Booth Babe Photo

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 7, 2006

CES Portable Entertainment Sony

Sony Reader

They Sony booth is always a big pain in the ass, teeming with waaaaaay too many people. They always have something cool, new and shiny to play with. This week, they introduced the US version of the Sony Reader, their implementation of E-Ink in a book reader format. I finally got my hands on one today.

First off, believe the hype. This machine is very sleek, the text is crystal clear and they’ve removed a variety of the the BS restrictions that the Japanese model had(very strict DRM, only used Sony proprietary book formats) and they added a bunch of new features including an RSS reader and the ability to open .doc and .pdf formats. I imagine it will be a little spendy (I recall $300 or $400), but for the first of its kind, not so bad. We’ll see if this thing does better than ebook readers of the past

CES General HDTV PVRs Tivo

Hot Damn! TiVo HD Lives!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

(Man, I get more and more sweary in my post titles the later that it gets. Maybe its the crappy wifi and crappier Muzak). Gotta check this out tomorrow, but apparently, TiVo is showing off their Series 3 CableCard 1 and 2.0 HD PVR at CES. According to megazone, this unit will have 6 tuners (2 NTSC, 2 ATSC, 2 CableCard). I’m sure they won’t all work simultaneously, but 2 should work. I hope this means I can chuck my Craptastic err… Comcastic box sometime soon. Unfortunately, TiVo has a bit of a reputation of showing off the vapor at CES, so no ship date or price.

Read

(Via Zatz Not Funny.)

CES Features

Stewtopia CES Photo Gallery on Flickr

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

We’ll be updating pics and posts throughout tomorrow (wifi willing) so check ’em out while they’re hot. Special props going out to photographer extraordinaire, Suzi Blakely for putting up with me dragging her all over the show floor at this latest nerd fest.

Gallery

MUSIC UPDATE 2“Take These Broken Wings” – Please, somebody, make it stop!

CES Games HDTV Home Entertainment Microsoft Xbox

External HD-DVD for Xbox 360

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

Just to keep it nice and confusing, Microsoft has announced an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. The announcement talks specifically about movies rather than games, so this unit better be cheaper than standalone units, or MS has a nice Sega CD on their hands.

Read

CES Portable Entertainment

More Bling

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

Normally, I walk through the car tech section with ear plugs and sunglasses to avoid being blinded by the bling, but today, we had to stop to check out the rims stereo system in this car. I suppose with my unhealthy obsession with superheroes and unlimited funds, I might be tempted to make a Stewtopiamobile like this one.

More photos after the jump.

CES

Crap Wi-Fi

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

So it looks like I’ll be hanging out in the lobby to make posts this evening. The Hilton Grand Vacations at the Flamingo (say that three times really fast) claimed to have Wi-Fi in all the rooms. I suppose by “in all the rooms” they meant in the lobby, then I guess they aren’t lying liars. Oh well, I didn’t want to go to bed anytime soon and God knows I love my fellow man(who are these retiree vacationers that didn’t know the biggest trade show of the year was going on right now?).

UPDATE: They just played Phil Collins’ “Groovy Kind of Love” on the Muzak. I think I’m going to poke my eyes out with my Treo.

CES HDTV Home Entertainment

Holy Big Ass Plasma!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 6, 2006

Ok, normally I don’t get really excited about bigger, better, faster(Ok, that’s a lie, but generally I expect it.) CES is the place for the big electronics companies to show you who has the biggest screen, but I think that LG has the biggest plasma by far. Now, 50″ plasmas are nice and all, but let’s say you need a really, really, really big tv to bling out your media room, this 102″ monster is for you. No price on this sick tv, but if you have to ask…

One more picture after the jump.