All posts by Tim Anderson

apple, Uncategorized

Fixing iPhone 4 not detected on a Mac

Today I noticed, while checking to see if iOS 4.3 was avaialble yet, that the iPhone was not detected by the Mac. No detection, no updates.

I checked in About this Mac -> More info -> USB and the iPhone was listed. So what went wrong?

I do not know the full answer, but it may well be caused by installing the iPhone SDK, which I updated recently. Fortunately the fix is simple. Download and install the iPhone Configuration Utility. You do not even have to run it; it fixes up whatever outdated or corrupt files caused the problem.

rants

When the cartridges cost more than the printer: the Inkjet market is absurd and disgraceful

14 Comments

I would love to be in one of those meetings at HP or Canon or Epson where they discuss the size of the ink cartridges in their next range of inkjet printers.

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“We got away with 10ml last time,” one might say. “Do you think we could try 8ml”?

“No, let’s do 6ml and call it lite. The 8ml can be XL for high capacity.”

The reason is this has come up for me is that my Canon MX700 all-in-one printer, which has until now performed well, has stopped working. The LCD display says Error 6A80, the lights on the print cartridges have gone out, and it will not do a thing.

While I am not sure what the problem is, it might possibly be the print head. This is a small piece of plastic which includes the actual print head with the microscopic holes through which the ink is squirted, and the cheapest I can find it is around £65.00.

On the other hand, I can get a new Epson BX305FW all-in-one printer for £72, less than that if I shop around.

When the cartridges cost more than the printer

Well, we are used to living in a throwaway society, but the situation with inkjet printers is beyond absurdity. The reason, you see, for the low prices of the hardware is that they are vehicles for selling ink cartridges, for which the prices are crazy high. Therefore there is a direct connection between the high prices of the cartridges, and their small capacity, and the likelihood of my taking a nice all-in-one printer with not very much wrong with it, and throwing it into landfill.

Since I needed to print some documents urgently, I got my old 2001 HP DeskJet 895cx down from the loft and went into town to see if I could still get cartridges for it. As I looked, I noticed that Tesco is selling the HP Deskjet 1050 all-in-one printer for £29.97. This takes HP 301 cartridges; colour is £16.97 and black is £13.97 (you need both): total £30.94. So yes, the cartridges cost more than the printer.

If the cartridges supplied with the Deskjet 1050 are the same size as the ones you buy, it would pay you just to buy a new printer whenever the cartridge runs out. This does not please me; it is a disgrace.

Now, curiously HP does not specify how much ink is in its 301 cartridges. Rather, it gives page yields. So we learn here that the HP 301 black ink cartridge  delivers 190 pages of average coverage. The high-capacity HP 301XL delivers 480 pages.

My old printer, as it happens, also has standard and high-capacity versions. The HP 45 standard (21ml) delivers 490 pages. The HP 45 high-capacity (42ml), which is the only one I have ever bought, delivers 930 pages.

In other words, mysteriously, what is now high-capacity is less than what used to be standard; what used to be high-capacity is no longer available, if you get the latest HP DeskJet.

You can pay a lot more than this for inkjet cartridges. Prices of £30 to £40 or more are common, for three-colour cartridges. Together with a black, it might cost you £60 or more to replenish.

This drives users towards the thriving alternative market in refurbished or compatible cartridges. This is unfortunate, because all inks are not equal, and a leaky or substandard cartridge can damage your printer. On the other hand, if you do the sums, the saving from just a couple of cartridge replacement cycles may be enough to buy a new printer. Buying the non-approved refills is the rational thing to do.

I am not picking on HP. Others vendors are equally bad.

Where do we go from here?

So where do we go from here? Logically, we should ignore the price sticker on the printers and look at the cost per page, which means mostly we won’t be buying these machines. We do though; in fact, I nearly bought the cheap Tesco printer this morning just to solve a problem, and so the cycle continues.

I would like to see the regulators take action on this. Instead of forcing Microsoft to produce pointless N editions of Windows, which nobody buys, maybe the EU could specify a minimum page yield for ink cartridges, to force change, or otherwise regulate this wasteful and damaging business practice.

Finally, if you are from HP or Canon or Epson or the like and want to tell me about the high quality and expensive research behind your ink technology, you are welcome, as long as you also tell me two things:

  • What is the ratio of manufacturing cost to retail price for your inkjet printers?
  • What is the ratio of manufacturing cost to retail price for your inkjet cartridges?

Thank you.

Update: I made some progress with Error 6A80. The print head is fine. Now, many people on the internet have reported this problem, though there are likely multiple reasons for it, but the only relevant article I’ve found is this one, which is in German. Note the helpful pictures. The print head should park at the right of the machine, where there are some pads and wipers that maintain the head. On my machine the wipers had got stuck in the forward position – see the first image in the thread. When I pushed them back – second image on page two – the error cleared. However it reappeared shortly after; but I now think that somehow cleaning up this part of the printer (which is hard to get at) could fix it.

Further update: I did eventually take the printer apart and pretty much fixed it.

gadgets, mobile

Solar charge your mobile: sounds good, but how practical is it?

Charge your mobile for free while out and about, and also do your bit to save energy: the new Freeloader Classic from Solar Technology International has obvious appeal. But how practical is it?

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The Freeloader has two solar panels, and measures 123 x 62 x 17mm when folded. After 8 hours in the sun, it can deliver power to an Apple iPhone for 18 hours, a Nintendo DS for 2.5 hours, and an Apple iPad for 2 hours. Take care that it does not walk while your back is turned.

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It comes with all sorts of tips, and can also be charged via USB in 3 hours in the event that the sun is not shining. For example, if you are in the UK.

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While I like the idea of solar charging a mobile device, it is another gadget to pack, and could end up as more of a burden than an asset. Instead of just charging your mobile, you have to think about charging your Freeloader and then charging your mobile. 8 hours in the sun is far from instant.

Still, if you are planning a long hike in a remote part of the world, this could be just what you need.

Update: I have now been sent a Freeloader for review. The good news: the unit looks great. The bad news: initial tests are disappointing. It arrived 75% charged … I left it on a windowsill for several days and by the end it had lost all its charge! I am not giving up though and will report in due course.

Freeloader Classic costs £39.99 including VAT.

laptops

First eye-controlled laptop announced by Lenovo and Tobii

Lenovo and Tobii have announced the first eye-controlled laptop, at the Cebit event in Hannover. Tobii is a company specialising in eye tracking and eye control.

This image may look to you like just another man using a laptop; but Tobii assures us that:

In this image, Henrik Eskilsson, the CEO of Tobii Technology, uses the eye gaze to control the computer.

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What is being shown at Cebit is a prototype; apparently 20 units have been produced “for development and demo purposes.” Says Tobii:

For users, eye control is thrilling and makes the computer interaction more effective. It is as if the computer understands you; just glance at an icon or gadget and more information will be presented; You can zoom pictures or maps and automatically center on the area you are looking at; The computer can auto-dim and brighten the screen when it recognizes your eyes to increase battery time. Eye control can also speed things up by enabling new and intuitive ways to switch between open windows, and browse your emails and documents.

It is a fascinating idea though one that I guess you have to try before assessing its value. It is in tune with developments like Microsoft’s Kinect, which which you use your body movements as input to a games console or computer.

Eye control is a perfect complement to traditional control interfaces, such as the mouse and keyboard, and it is anticipated to be the next step within natural user interfaces.

says Lenovo.

audio, mobile

What’s in HP’s Beats Audio, marketing aside?

57 Comments

If you are like me you may be wondering what is actually in Beats Audio technology, which comes from HP in partnership with Beats by Dr Dre.

The technical information is not that easy to find; but a comment to this blog directed me to this video:

http://www.precentral.net/what-beats-audio

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According to this, it comes down to four things:

1. Redesigned headphone jack with better insulation, hence less ground noise.

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2. Discrete headphone amp to reduce crosstalk. This is also said to be “more powerful”, but since we do not know what it is more powerful than, I am not going to count that as technical information.

3. Isolated audio circuitry.

4. Software audio profiles which I think means some sort of equalizer.

These seem to me sensible features, though what I would really like to see is specifications showing the benefits versus other laptops of a comparable price.

There may be a bit more to Beats audio in certain models. For example, the Envy 14 laptop described here has a “triple bass reflex subwoofer”.

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though this user was not greatly impressed:

I ran some audio tone test sites and found out the built in laptop speakers do not generate any sound below 200 Hz. In the IDT audio drivers speaker config there is only configuration for 2 speaker stereo system, no 2.1 speaker system (which includes subwoofer). I’m miffed, because on HP advertising copy claims “HP Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer amplifiers put out 12W total while supporting a full range of treble and bass frequencies.” Clearly I am not getting “full range” frequencies.

Still, what do you expect from a subwoofer built into a laptop?

audio, music industry

Straining to hear: the benefits of SACD audio

1 Comment

A discussion on a music forum led me to this SACD, on which pianist George-Emmanual Lazaridis plays the Grandes études de Paganini. It was recommended as a superb performance and a superb recording.

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I bought it and have to agree. The music is beautiful and the recording astonishingly realistic. Close your eyes and you can almost see the piano hammers striking the strings.

Since this sounds so good, I took the opportunity to explore one of my interests: the audible benefits of SACD or other high-resolution audio formats versus the 16/44 resolution of CD.

I have set up a simple comparison test. While it is imperfect and would not pass scientific scrutiny, I report it as of anecdotal interest.

First I set my Denon SACD to its best quality, without any bass management or other interference with the sound.

Then I wired the analog output from Front Left and Front Right to one input on my amplifier, and the analog Stereo output to an external analog to digital converter (ADC). The ADC is set to 16/44. When played in SACD stereo mode, these two sets of analog outputs should be the same.

The output from the ADC is then connected to a digital input on the amplifier.

Now I can use the amplifier remote to switch between pure SACD, and SACD via an additional conversion to and from 16/44 sound, which in theory could be encoded on a CD.

At first I could just about tell which was which. The SACD sounded a little more open, with more depth to the sound. It was more involving. I could not describe it as a huge difference, but perhaps one that would be hard to do without once you had heard it. A win for SACD?

Then I realised that the output on the ADC was slightly too low; the SACD was slightly louder. I increased the volume slightly.

Having matched the volume more exactly, I could no longer tell the difference. Both sounded equally good.

I enlisted some volunteers with younger and sharper hearing than mine, but without positive results.

I am not going to claim that nobody could tell the difference. I also recognise that a better SACD player, or a better audio system, might reveal differences that my system disguises.

Still, the test is evidence that on a working system of reasonable quality, the difference is subtle at most. Which is also what science would predict.

The SACD still sounds wonderful of course; and has a surround sound option which a CD cannot deliver. I also believe that SACDs tend to be engineered with more attention to the demands of high-end audio systems than CDs, tailored for the mass market.

Against that, CDs are more convenient because you can rip them to a music server. Personally I rarely play an actual CD these days.

audio, mobile, music industry, tablets

Don’t be fooled. 24-bit will not fix computer audio

25 Comments

Record producer Jimmy Iovine now chairman of Interscope and CEO of Beats by Dr Dre, says there are huge quality problems in the music industry. I listened to his talk during HP’s launch event for its TouchPad tablet and new smartphones.

“We’re trying to fix the degradation of music that the digital revolution has caused,” says Iovine. “Quality is being destroyed on a massive scale”.

So what has gone wrong? Iovine’s speech is short on technical detail, but he identifies several issues. First, he implies that 24-bit digital audio is necessary for good sound:

We record our music in 24-bit. The record industry downgrades that to 16-bit. Why? I don’t know. It’s not because they’re geniuses.

Second, he says that “the PC has become the de facto home stereo for young people” but that sound is an afterthought for most computer manufacturers. “No-one cares about sound”.

Finally, he says that HP working with, no surprise, his own company Beats by Dr Dre, has fixed the problem:

We have a million laptops with Beats audio in with HP … HP’s laptops, the Envy and the Pavilion, actually feel the way the music feels in the studio. I can tell you, that is the only PC in the world that can do that.

Beats Audio is in the Touchpad as well, hence Iovine’s appearance. “The Touchpad is a musical instrument” says Iovine.

I am a music and audio enthusiast and part of me wants to agree with Iovine. Part of me though finds the whole speech disgraceful.

Let’s start with the positive. It is true that the digital revolution has had mixed results for audio quality in the home. In general, convenience has won out over sound quality, and iPod docks are the new home stereo, compromised by little loudspeakers in plastic cabinets, usually with lossy-compressed audio files as the source.

Why then is Iovine’s speech disgraceful? Simply because it is disconnected from technical reality for no other reason than to market his product.

Iovine says he does not know why 24-bit files are downgraded to 16-bit. That is implausible. The first reason is historical. 16-bit audio was chosen for the CD format back in the eighties. The second reason is that there is an advantage in reducing the size of audio data, whether that is to fit more on a CD, or to reduce download time, bandwidth and storage on a PC or portable player.

But how much is the sound degraded when converted from 24-bit to 16-bit? PCM audio has a sampling rate as well as a bit-depth. CD or Redbook quality is 16-bit sampled at 44,100 Hz, usually abbreviated to 16/44. High resolution audio is usually 24/96 or even 24/192.

The question then: what are the limitations of 16/44 audio? We can be precise about this. Nyquist’s Theorem says that the 44,100 Hz sampling rate is enough to perfectly recapture a band-limited audio signal where the highest frequency is 22,500 Hz. Human hearing may extends to 20,000 Hz in ideal conditions, but few can hear much above 18,000 Hz and this diminishes with age.

Redbook audio also limits the dynamic range (difference between quietest and loudest passages) to 96dB.

In theory then it seems that 16/44 should be good enough for the limits of human hearing. Still, there are other factors which mean that what is achieved falls short of what is theoretically possible. Higher resolution formats might therefore sound better. But do they? See here for a previous article on the subject; I has also done a more recent test of my own. It is difficult to be definitive; but my view is that in ideal conditions the difference is subtle at best.

Now think of a PC or Tablet computer. The conditions are far from ideal. There is no room for a powerful amplifier, and any built-in speakers are tiny. Headphones partly solve this problem for personal listening, even more so when they are powered headphones such as the high-end ones marketed by Beats, but that has nothing to do with what is in the PC or tablet.

I am sure it is true that sound quality is a low priority for most laptop or PC vendors, but one of the reasons is that the technology behind digital audio converters is mature and even the cheap audio chipsets built into mass-market motherboards are unlikely to be the weak link in most computer audio setups.

The speakers built into a portable computer are most likely a bit hopeless – and it may well be that HPs are better than most – but that is easily overcome by plugging in powered speakers, or using an external digital to analog converter (DAC). Some of these use USB connections so that you can use them with any USB-equipped device.

Nevertheless, Iovine is correct that the industry has degraded audio. The reason is not 24-bit vs 16-bit, but poor sound engineering, especially the reduced dynamic range inflicted on us by the loudness wars.

The culprits: not the PC manufacturers as Iovine claims, but rather the record industry. Note that Iovine is chairman of a record company.

It breaks my heart to hear the obvious distortion in the loud passages during a magnificent performance such as Johnny Cash’s version of Trent Reznor’s Hurt. That is an engineering failure.

gadgets

Tiny data projectors using Texas Instruments DLP chips

Remember when data projectors were huge and expensive, and had bulbs so delicate that you were not meant to move them for half an hour after switch off?

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Things are different now. At Mobile World Congress You can hold an HD projector in the palm of your hand or build it into a mobile phone. The projectors I saw were based on DLP Pico chipsets from Texas Instruments, which contain up to 2 million hinge-mounted microscopic mirrors. If you add a light source and a projection lens, you get a tiny projector.

The obvious use case is that you can turn up at an ad-hoc meeting and show photos, charts or slides on the nearest wall, instead of huddling round a laptop screen or setting up an old-style data projector.

apple, gadgets

Amazon Kindle goes social with Public Notes, Twitter and Facebook integration

A free firmware update for Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader adds several new features, including an element of social networking.

The features are as follows:

  • Page numbers for easier referencing, for example in essays, reviews and discussions. Page numbers must be included in the digital book for this to work. It is not clear how many titles include them; Amazon just says “Many titles in the Kindle Store now include real page numbers”.
  • New newspaper and magazine layout with a “Sections & Articles” view. Each section has its own article list for easier browsing.

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  • Public notes with Facebook and Twitter integration. This is the feature that makes Kindle reading social. You can attach notes to a passage and make them publicly viewable by other readers who choose to follow you, either on a note-by-note basis, or by making an entire book public through the Amazon website. You can also register a Facebook and Twitter account and have specific notes and ratings posted to those who follow you on those networks.

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The advantage for Amazon is that these features should promote books through viral marketing.

It comes at an interesting time, since Apple’s new subscription rules may make it difficult for Amazon to continue supporting iPhone and iPad with free readers. Apple is insisting on a 30% cut of the revenue for all titles purchased through apps, forming a financial barrier for competitors to its own iBooks service.

If Amazon can cement loyalty to Kindle though social network integration, that could help it maintain market share.

 

apple

My question to the Gorilla Glass folk: when is Apple going to call?

2 Comments

I had a brief chat with Corning, makers of Gorilla Glass, who were showing their wares at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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Gorilla Glass is exceptionally strong and makes sense for expensive devices with glass screens – like many of the smartphones and tablets that are hot right now.

According to Corning, it is strengthened through an ion-exchange process:

Ion exchange is a chemical strengthening process where large ions are “stuffed” into the glass surface, creating a state of compression. Gorilla Glass is specially designed to maximize this behavior.

The glass is placed in a hot bath of molten salt at a temperature of approximately 400°C. Smaller sodium ions leave the glass, and larger potassium ions from the salt bath replace them. These larger ions take up more room and are pressed together when the glass cools, producing a layer of compressive stress on the surface of the glass. Gorilla Glass’s special composition enables the potassium ions to diffuse far into the surface, creating high compressive stress deep into the glass. This layer of compression creates a surface that is more resistant to damage from everyday use.

Fair enough; and I am a fan because it works. My question though: when is Apple going to call? The iPhone 4 has glass panels both front and rear, and is unfortunately rather fragile. I would be interested to know what proportion of damaged iPhones simply have shattered glass. One drop onto a hard surface is all it takes, unless you have a protective case that adds bulk and in my view spoils the design.

Apple’s Bumper case fixes the problem with the antenna design, but does little to protect the glass.

The iPad glass is also prone to shatter if dropped:

It slipped off my lap in a bar in the Portland airport during a particularly long layover. It landed screen-side down on the uneven Mexican tile floor and made a sound that caused the whole room to go quiet. I still feel a little sick just remembering it. It looked a lot like the ones people purposely ran over with trucks when I picked it up.

From what I can tell, Gorilla Glass really is better in this respect.

So how about it Apple?