Technology – Pogue’s Posts Blog – The New York Times

David Pogue, Times Technology Columnist, Leaves for Yahoo |

After writing about personal technology for The Times for 13 years, David Pogue will start a consumer technology Web site at Yahoo. Read more

How will people remember 2013? As the year of the government shutdown? The year the N.S.A. revealed that the enemy is us? The year Miley Cyrus absolutely, positively stopped playing an adorable child actress?

In consumer tech, we may remember this as the year Bluetooth speakers finally outnumbered insects on the earth. Every company and its brother has been cranking out compact, colorful, battery-powered wireless speakers.

And no wonder: these things really are awesome. Every time some company offers a new tablet, laptop or phone, you can bet that it has a better, sharper, brighter screen but what about the sound? Its stuck in 2004: tinny and weak. A Bluetooth speaker neatly remedies that enormous quality difference between audio and visual.

The Jawbone Jambox was one of the earliest hits. Its a sharp-edged rectangular box, $150, that comes in a choice of colors. It pumps out surprisingly loud, clear sound for its size, which is 6 by 1.6 by 2.8 inches.

Then came the Big Jambox, a shoebox-size $300 version with big enough sound for a backyard.

And now comes the Jambox Mini, at $180.

I love this thing. Its actually not all that mini; in fact, its about as long and tall as the original (6.1 by 2.3 inches) but it looks like someone sliced the original in half with a saber. Readmore

Back in March, T-Mobile burned every possible bridge it had with the other cellphone carriers. As I wrote then, it eliminated the two-year contract; you can now quit T-Mobile whenever you like.

It also became the first carrier to eliminate the infuriating 15-second recording of voicemail instructions every time you try to leave a message a waste of your time and your callers airtime.

And T-Mobile also ended the Great Cellphone Subsidy Con. Thats where you buy a $600 phone (like the iPhone) for $200, with the understanding that youll pay the cellphone company the rest over your two-year contract yet after youve repaid it, your monthly bill doesnt drop!

T-Mobile was basically prancing around, demonstrating that Emperors Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have no clothes.

I was pleasantly surprised shocked, really since those con games have been baked into the American cellphone carriers business plans for years. And we, the American sheep, just assumed that we had to accept them.

Apparently, lots of other people were pleasantly surprised, too. The company says that in the second quarter of 2013, it signed up 685,000 new customers more than Verizon, AT&T and Sprint combined.

Well, on Wednesday, T-Mobile did it again. It announced an even bigger shocker: Starting next month, it will eliminate the sky-high, nosebleed, ridiculous, usurious international roaming charges that have terrified and enraged overseas travelers for years. Readmore

If its October, that must mean the holiday buying season has begun and that means Amazon will offer a new color tablet.

Its the Kindle Fire HDX. It costs $230, and its terrific. The battery goes for about 11 hours, or 17 in a power-saving, reading-only mode. The stereo speakers sound great. The plastic case weighs less than the prior version and has narrower margins around the screen. Theres a mediocre camera on the front for video chatting (not on the back on the 7-inch model). The one big misfire was putting the power and volume keys on the back; youll spend the first week hitting the Off button by mistake while trying to turn it up the sound.

The X in HDX is a reference to the screens clarity. It packs in 323 tiny dots per inch, making it sharper than high definition, and making the iPad Minis 163 dots per inch look coarse.

The HDXs screen really is spectacular, if infuriatingly reflective. The trouble is, you can see the new sharpness only when youre looking at source material with resolution that high. The type in books and magazines looks razor-sharp, but most of the 150,000 TV shows and videos in Amazons catalog dont look any clearer. Movies are also the wrong shape for the screen; you see black bands above and below. Readmore

Well, that didnt take long. Only a couple of days after Apples iPhone 5s went on sale, somebody managed to fool its fingerprint sensor.

The headlines and blog comments were predictable and instantaneous: Oooooh, Apple blew it! The star feature of its new phone is worthless!

Ill admit it: I love that darned sensor. You unlock your phone dozens of times a day. Each time is a few seconds of tedium and looking down at it, over and over and over, to enter your password. Its a drag.

And then there are the 50 percent of iPhone users who dont even bother with a password. If youre among them, then your phone and your life are susceptible to snooping should you lose your phone, find it stolen or leave it on your desk while you get coffee.

On the iPhone 5s, you wake the phone by pressing the Home button and then just leave your finger on it for half a second, and boom: it unlocks.

But should we be concerned, then, that the hackers exploits render the fingerprint reader useless?

Not at all. For three giant reasons. Readmore

Updated to clarify how to access the Spotlight search screen.

The big Apple news this week might seem to be the new iPhones. But truth be told, the bigger news is iOS 7.

This is the free software update for iPhones (iPhone 4 and later), iPads (iPad 2 and later) and iPod Touches (fifth generation). Its a radical, huge redesign. Its master architect was Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer who has brought us astonishing hardware designs for many years; now, for the first time, hes been put in charge of a whole software universe.

The look of iOS 7 is sparse, white almost plain in spots. No more fake leather, fake woodgrain, fake green felt, fake yellow note paper. Its all blue Helvetica Neue against white.

The complete absence of graphic embellishments makes it especially utilitarian in both senses of the word. Thats good, because whatever button or function you need is easier to find; its bad, because, well, it can look a little boring.

Then again, the new look is primarily visible at the Home screen, where a jarringly different color palette greets you on the Apple app icons, and on the options screen. The rest of the time, youll be using your regular apps, many of which will look no different than before.

The look of iOS 7 may grab you or not. But once the fuss about the visuals dies down, something even more important comes into focus: the work thats been done on making iOS better. The longer you spend with the new OS, the more youre grateful for the fixing and de-annoyifying on display. Readmore

Technology and air travel have always gone hand in hand, and theyre only getting more intertwined. From security at the airport to the rules about using electronics in flight to the final resting place of the planes toilet contents, airplanes and tech are a constant source of conflict, passion and questions.

If youd like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smiths new book, Cockpit Confidential. Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the books format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the Ask the Pilot column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

But as a frequent flyer, Id much rather have the book, which is a far more comprehensive book of questions and answers about airplanes, airports, airlines and the psychology of flying. Here are some excerpts factoids that every flier should know: Readmore

Tuesday morning, Apple caught up to its own rumor mill. It took the wraps off the two new iPhones that everyone had already predicted: the iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5S, which will be available on Sept. 20.

The 5C is the budget model. Its basically last years iPhone 5 but with a plastic body (lacquered for extra shininess!), available in five colors. It will be $100 with a two-year contract.

The more exciting new phone is the iPhone 5S. It looks almost identical to the iPhone 5, except that its available in black, white or a classy-looking coppery gold. Its priced the same as last years model, too: $200, $300 and $400 for the models with 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes of storage.

Inside, though, theres a new processor, which Apple says is twice as fast as before. Its also the cellphone worlds first 64-bit processor, according to the company, which is an especially attractive feature for game makers; it can load in new scenes five times faster than the previous chip. Readmore

Everybody loves to hate e-mail. It eats up too much time, its used improperly, its filled up with junk. Entire careers have been launched around the premise of getting your in-box to zero.

I dont agree. E-mail is the hub of life. Its correspondence, collaboration, ideas, news, warnings and congratulations. Its a to-do list, Rolodex and record of past projects. Sure, I try to keep the roar of junk mail to a minimum (I use a program called SpamSieve, and I never, ever enter my primary e-mail address into a form on the Web). But otherwise, e-mail is a pretty great medium.

Maybe, instead of killing it off, the world should be working on making it more useful. A new, free app for iPad and iPhone, bizarrely called PeeqPeeq, is a good start. Readmore

By now, perhaps youve heard: Microsoft just bought Nokias cellphone division for $7.2 billion.

When I mentioned the news last night on Twitter (Im @pogue), my followers were hilariously unimpressed:

Its all snarky but true. What on earth was Steve Ballmer, the departing Microsoft chief, thinking? What is the point of this deal? Readmore

When Im filming a TV series, like the shows I host for PBS, I have to fly a lot. Over the last four years, Ive honed the art of efficient air travel to a sparkling shine.

I could publish my accumulated wisdom in a small book and sell literally dozens of copies. But no: I selflessly offer them to you here, for free.

* Check in with the airline app. If you have your airlines free app on your phone, you can check in ahead of time, even the night before, and save yourself the worry of getting to the airport an hour before the flight.

At that point, the app can also display the bar code representing your boarding pass. No paper. Just set your phone face down on the little T.S.A. scanner, and youre through. Not all airlines have the bar code scanners, but the app will let you know ahead of time. Readmore

From todays mailbag:

Dear Mr. Pogue:

Three years ago, my husband suffered an accident and is now a quadriplegic. He can never be alone without a reliable fully voice-activated phone.

As you pointed out in your column this week, with Android, you have to swipe the screen to reach the mike button, and with the first iteration of Siri, you also had to push the home button all impossible for a quad to do. We bought a Blue Ant device a few years back, which worked nicely (sometimes) with his old HTC. When the phone was last updated, that was the end of a beautiful relationship. I spent hours with both Blue Ant and HTC, and both blamed the other and neither had a solution.

So what do you suggest?

While youre at it: The command to terminate a call doesnt exist yet. When your call goes into voice mail, you cant hang up by a voice command; you must physically terminate the call. We have discussed this problem with multiple brain trusts and no one has the solution yet.

My reply:

Unfortunately, Im afraid I havent done any research on this problem in particular. But the Moto X, as I mentioned in my review, is listening for voice commands all the time you dont have to touch it to start issuing commands.

Among the many Android apps, perhaps theres one that lets you hang up with a voice command?

Ill ask my blog readers. Maybe they know of some solutions!

Moments of Steven A. Ballmer from conferences, commercials and interviews over the years that he was Microsofts chief executive.

By now, youve probably heard: Steven A. Ballmer will soon be stepping down as chief executive of Microsoft.

Its supposedly a voluntary retirement, but that holds about as much credibility as a public officials leaving a job to spend more time with family. Microsoft has been flailing, and many prominent voices have been calling for Mr. Ballmer to step aside.

Many of the factors in his departure stock price, internal politics, shareholder pressure, public relations arent my area of expertise. Im a tech critic, a reviewer of products. But even from my particular angle of examination, Mr. Ballmers time as the head of Microsoft has been baffling. Readmore

I get lots and lots of e-mail. I reply to as much as I can but certain categories, Ill tell you right now, I cant answer. What should I buy? questions, Solve my technical problems questions or Endorse my book, app or product requests. I hope its obvious that theres no way I could answer all of those.

Im increasingly convinced, however, that there should be a consumer technology complaint columnist. Many of my correspondents write to complain about problems theyre having with some product, company or service, and theyd like me to shame the perpetrators by writing about them.

Here are the sorts of things people write about:

Q.

Ive been an enthusiastic user on my iPhone of CoPilot, a GPS navigation program. Recently I noticed that one of the modules for giving text directions would pop off, leaving me with just the map. I decided to re-download the app, now updated. I quickly found out that the new version would not work with my older iOS 5.1 operating system and required iOS 6.

I do not argue that they have a need to update their version in tandem with Apple. But to not support old-time users with the ability to re-install a previous version, is rude and a poor encouragement to brand loyalty.

A.

Alas, the rapid appearance of new versions is simply the cost of playing the software game. As Im fond of saying, buying a software program is more like paying membership dues than buying a vase and owning it. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way the world works. Readmore

A few weeks back, I wrote about special lenses that were developed to give doctors a clearer view of veins and vasculature, bruising, cyanosis, pallor, rashes, erythema, and other variations in blood O2 level, and concentration, especially in bright light.

But these lenses turned out to have an unintended side effect: they may cure red-green colorblindness.

Im severely red-green colorblind, so I was eager to try these $300 lenses. Turns out they didnt help me; the company said that my colorblindness is too severe. They have helped many others, though (their Amazon reviews makes that clear).

After my column appeared, I heard from another company that makes color-enhancing glasses this time, specifically for red-green colorblind folks. The companys called EnChroma, and the EnChroma Cx sunglasses are a heartbeat-skipping $600 a pair.

Our lenses are specifically designed to address color blindness, the company wrote to me, and utilize a 100+ layer dielectric coating we engineered for this precise purpose by keeping the physiology of the eyes of colorblind people in mind.

I asked to try out a pair. (You can, too: theres a 30-day money-back guarantee.) Readmore

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Technology - Pogue's Posts Blog - The New York Times