el Studio Communications

Forgive us for thinking we live in the promised land

07 Jan 2010

Back at the office Tuesday after a long holiday break. So lots of questions for me, and a busy day. Good to be back.

It was also the day that Google announced a new mobile phone, the Nexus. Early reviews all say it’s fabulous, as good as the iPhone in many ways. It’s got a much better screen, they say, but correspondingly worse battery life.

Not to be outdone, Apple has been leaking details of their next big thing – a tablet of some sort, to be announced late this month. There’s been lots of speculation about that on the blogs, of course. We can’t figure out what earth-shattering feature might differentiate an Apple tablet from previous, ho-hum tablets. Consensus is that it’s got to be different or Steve Jobs wouldn’t do it. Different and useful. More than “surfing the internet on the can” – which the iPhone and MacBook handle quite well, thank you.

If anybody can, I am sure that Steve Jobs and company will figure out what a tablet is good for – or at least how to wow us enough that we’ll want one, too.

But, wow, that it has come to this. Three years ago, the iPhone turned the cell phone handset business upside down. Now that the competition has caught up, Apple is moving on to something completely different – presumably an entirely new product line. They’ll still be printing money with iPhones.

And we have come to expect that the Steve Jobs won’t do something that’s not revolutionary.

Back to that Google phone. The hardware looks fine, an iPhone knock-off almost as minimalist as Apple’s wares. On the Nexus, the iPhone’s one-button-to-rule-them-all gives way to four buttons and a roller-ball nose.

(See Amit’s post on the back button vs home button design philosophies for the benefits of multiple buttons.)

Based on a brief hands-on with a Droid, I have no doubt that it will handle Gmail and Google apps much better than any phone on earth.

Oh but that home screen – it’s ugly as the Nexus’s name. Google’s marketing shows a wallpaper gray boxes that the reviews say ripple to follow your fingertip on the screen. The reviewers say it’s cool, but in still images make the gray cubes look ckunky.

And yet, in three short years the competition has gone from pushbutton phones (remember Motorola’s Razr) to two iPhone-quality choices – one an Android clone that’s better than the iPhone in significant ways.

And it sounds like Apple plans to respond with something completely different.

Tech products are becoming differentiated as much by aesthetics as features. It’s not about making products that secure a market position (though Apple’s app store policies use some of those old-fashioned tricks, too). It’s about fast teams. Teams that can get things done and drive products to market.

The Google and Apple competition is so interesting because of the firms’ different approaches to innovation. Google’s approach is driven by data, drawn from testing of thousands of users, in hundreds of iterations. Apple’s designs seem to come full-born from the head of Steve Jobs.

Exciting times we live in – and a great time to be shopping for a phone.

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Will Apple ever support Micro Four-Thirds camera raw?

17 Dec 2009

Yesterday Apple updated the digital camera raw support for both Leopard and Snow Leopard.

That's good news for folks with new Canons or Nikons, as the update adds support for recent cameras.

But Micro Four-Thirds users are still left crying in the wilderness.

No support for the Olympus EP-1's ORF raw format
Still no support for Panasonic RW2 raw in the Lumix LX3, G1, GH1, GF1, etc. -- that's any Panasonic camera released since the fall of 2008
No support for DNG 1.3 lens corrections, which means there's no good work-around. Adobe DNG Converter can turn these raw formats into proper DNGs. But OSX can't read them.

I'm beginning to get worried.

The trick with these micro four-thirds cameras is that the camera corrects for lens distortion in the raw files. That helps Olympus and Panasonic save money on lenses, while still producing stellar images. But decoding these raw formats adds a layer of math, which complicates image processing.

I used to think this was a problem that Apple would fix in Snow Leopard. I hoped the new operating system would add lens corrections to its image processing. But this is the first raw update for Snow Leopard.

Does Apple ever intend to support these raw formats?

Maybe they won't -- unless we ask them for it. The Aperture feedback form is the place to let Apple know we want raw support for micro four-thirds cameras:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/aperture.html

In the meantime, there is one alternative. Adobe Lightroom does supports micro four-thirds raw.

Please, Apple, don't push us away from Aperture and iPhoto. Please add support for micro four-thirds cameras. I like my G1 and I like it raw.

Meanwhile, here's what the update does provide --

Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.7

This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture 2, iPhoto ’08 and iPhoto ’09 for the following cameras:

Canon EOS-1D Mark IV

Canon EOS 7D

Canon PowerShot G11

Nikon D3S

Nikon D300S

Nikon D3000

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The hardest working mustache in nonprofits

13 Nov 2009

So I’m growing a mustache—for cancer.

Participatory fundraising has become popular for very good reason. We run races, we walkathon. And—around here anyway—we grow mustaches.

Movember = Mo(ustache) + (No)vember

Movember is just like a walkathon, but with facial hair. Enterprising mustache growers sign up, then fundraise for the cause. In the US, that’s cancer research: both the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong benefit from donations.

via casefoundation.org

Yes, my mustache fights cancer. With your help --