Fortysomething Geek

I notice something interesting with the new Guest login on Yosemite. If you have an encrypted file-system, the guest login is completely different from the normal guest login of a non-encrypted drive.

With an encrypted filesystem (File Vault), you have to re-boot into an ultra-secure mode. This is almost analogous to a Chromebook and I like it. The new guest mode only has one app running and that is Safari.

So Apple finally introduces the Apple Watch and everyone is going into frenzy. As I've said it many times before, I'm not the target market for any smart wearables. However, that isn't going to stop anyone else in my household from getting one.

For the first time in a long time, my wife was fixated and I can see she is very interested; especially in the gold red strap one pictured above. She is not a watch wearer despite being married to a watch collector. I've bought her many high-end Swiss watches and she simply doesn't wear them. She isn't into tech gadgets either. She is happily content with her hand-me down electronics from me.

This is were most men have lost sight of what is happening. Everyone is debating how fugly it looks. Everyone is comparing it to the Motorola 360. It isn't about your personal taste. Taste and style is subjective. I've been in watch debates since 1994 on Usenet. Rolex vs Omega, Breguet vs Patek, Zenith vs IWC. So I'm a veteran at this and I've learned from a long, long,long time ago, taste is entirely subjective. Having said that, I think the Apple watch has a strong chance of succeeding in the mall watch category from 300ドル-1200ドル. The High End Swiss watches (4,000ドル and up) I enjoy won't be affected. I strongly believe this but the low-end is ripe for the taking.

Why? Build quality, presentation and marketing.

I am very impressed with the website and overall presentation.




The build quality is impeccable. I am studying the details. The raised and bezeled sapphire glass, the edge chamfer, the grain of the matte SS on the bracelet, the meshed Milanese strap,etc. These are all top notch detailing that no one in this market (Smartwatch) has. Pebble doesn't have it. Nor does Samsung and Motorola. Also, for the first time, I never saw an Apple product that lists material properties until now. This is what the Swiss do. They boldly note the SS is 316L (high grade SS steel found on Omegas, Panerai,etc). For comparison, Samsung, LG uses 304 steel. Motorola is absent in this disclosure. They also note the use of Sapphire; the pre-requisite for a premium timepiece. Note my use of the word premium instead of luxury. These are two distinct markets.

The premium market consist of fashion brands. These are Movado, Michael Kors, Armani, Gucci, Burberry and the likes. These are brands with absolutely zero horological domain expertise. They often use cheap 5ドル-10 quartz movement with cheap B-O-M material cost and sell watches in the 300ドル-1200 market. We call these "mall watches." They're often found at department stores rather than high end watch boutiques. The Apple watch competes with these. Yes, it competes with Samsung and Motorola but on the grander scope of things, based on the projected price point, the "mall watch" is the target. I strongly believe this because their recent executive hires are people with retail channel distribution in the luxury/premium markets. I am guessing they want to sell this at airport kiosks and high end malls around the world - Frankfurt, Dubai, Tokyo. Why else would they poach a Tag Huer and enlist Burberry's top exec? They invited fashion bloggers, creative directors of most fashion rags to the Apple watch unveiling during the busiest Fashion week in New York. While the bottom of the pole reporters were in New York, you can see many of the Creative Editors of Vogue, Vogue UK, Marie Claire, InstaStyle in Cupertino.

Back to my wife. She was fixated and her eyes were all on the gold models. Some of you guys out there are still stuck on the round circle and do not think a square watch will work. Well, let me present to you the Cartier Santos. A 5,000ドル watch. Women love this watch. They have no problem with rectangular time pieces.



Now look at the Apple watch in the marketing promo. On women. I assume these are the 38mm models.


They're not Cartiers. My wife would never spend 5000ドル on a Cartier (she has no problem with me spending that on my mens' watches). Simply, she doesn't see the value. However, a 1000ドル gold case and red leather deployant strap is a different thing altogether. The Apple watch looks inoffensive. It is also highly customizable. In short, it hits the target market she is in. The Premium, fashion soccer mom market.

My point is this, this may not be attractive to you (or me), it is attractive to others. Now, I showed her the Motorola 360 to get her opinion. I showed her a picture of something she has context with - 40mm sports watch. Here is a picture I found on the internet that gives a good comparison. That is a 46mm Motorola 360 next to what appears to be a Rolex Sub (or knockoff) which is 40mm.


Just for context, 40mm Rolex on Charlize Theron. This is a "large's" man's watch. To her, the Moto 360 is comically too big. This is before she even put eyes on the flat tire screen.



It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I am starting to think Apple may be on to something. Despite my Luddite attachments to my Rolex and Omegas, I think there is a market here. It may not appeal to me but I can see it appealing to my significant others.

Update: Here is a really good post why Square/Rectangular screens are better for swatch watches. It is a very compelling argument. You basically need a larger circle to cover equal amount of content when compared to an equal size rectangular screen. With the smaller the screen (38mm for women), touch UI will be exponentially harder to work with. This validates the use of a digital crown in the design process.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=19627830&postcount=21

So Apple put out a pretty cinematic TV ad, shot entirely on the iPhone. The director was Ridley Scott's son, the editor was the legendary Angus Wall and Lee Clow (Creative Director of the original 1984 Ad) collaborated. The video is pretty impressive but what I liked the most from reading the "behind the scenes" was not about the technology being used. It was .....

It was the chairs. Damn right, I was drooling over the Aluminum Group chairs used by the editing crew. So many of them! I was sitting in my Soft Pad Aluminum Group chair all weekend at home; wondering if I'd ever get the similar chairs at work in the office. That would be such a great perk to have. I rarely sit on mine because I'm rarely in my bedroom office. Most of the time, it is draped under a throw to protect it from the sun but when I sit on mine, I love it. I've been looking to add two more Task Chairs (like the ones pictured below) to compliment my Soft Pad.

I have to say this is one of the most compelling commercials Apple has ever made and it really hit home to me.


It is called "Misunderstood" and chronicles the holiday get-together with a lonesome teenager who seems to be pre-occupied with his smartphone. What the family doesn't realize until the end is a kid making a family video as a gift. It is a real tear jerker because I've experienced the same thing.

Our entire extended family expects me to be the videographer of family events. When I don't lug around a big SLR, they seem to be dissapointed but often get a pleasant surprise usually before the end of an event. At a wedding, baptism, or soccer game, I'll have a fully edited video using iMovie complete with opening titles, nice transitions, and color graded effects before everyone heads home. This is why the Apple ecosystem is inherently so powerful. At any given functions, I'll have relatives with the latest Note 3, Nexus 5 and ultra fast new smartphones but none of them can produce the level of video professionalism as an iPhone/iMovie combo. The look on the eyes of a braggart relative, with his latest and greatest tech gadget, is priceless when his enthusiasm is drowned out by the simplicity of a nicely edited, thoughtful video.

I've had some real tear-jerker moments that could be made into compelling commercials. For example, at the birth of my daughter, my then 4 year old son was at home with his grandma as hospitals don't allow minors in the delivery room. As my wife was giving birth to our daughter, I called him on Facetime. He, a four year old toddler, answered the call and said hi to his newly brand new little sister via video chat. The nurses and delivery doctors were impressed and said hi to my son. It was one of those most touching moments that I will never forget for the rest of my life. My son was elated to see his sister and felt like he, too, was experiencing the birth of a new human. Touching indeed. Facetime, simple idea, but inherently so powerful that can only be described when you experience it. There are hundreds of little other moments like that.

Hence, this is why people should not be caught up in tech specs. Good software design makes magic happen.

I finally set-up my Airport streaming set-up and I like to share it with my readers. Overall, I am pleased how it turned out.

Apple Airport allows you to stream wirelessly from iOS or Macs to a variety of wireless speakers and sound systems. I have various speakers in different parts of the house and this now changes the way I listen to music. Using Wi-Fi, you don't have to worry about range issues and the sound quality far exceeds bluetooth.


By default, iOS devices can only stream to one devices. When you play a song, you can pick which remote speaker to listen to. This by itself is cool but the cool part comes with multiple, simultaneous streams.


Here, I have the computer, the speakers in the basement, dining room, and master bedroom all playing at different volumes. This is simply brilliant!

I was thinking about plopping down 35ドル for the Google HDMI dongle, the Chromecast. However, I happen to get a few airplay speakers in which my opinion went 360 degrees. The Chromecast only does video and not a good job at that. I listen to music mostly so audio streaming is pretty important for my use case needs. Yesterday, I got a Klipsch G-17 and a Sony SA-NS500. When I set-up them up, I discovered something I never knew before: Multiple streaming to various speakers simultaneously. Take that AD2P Bluetooth! You don't get that compress AM sound of Bluetooth with Airplay and you don't need to pair if you are on the same network. I live in a house with three floors and approximately 4,000 sq foot and Airplay works everywhere. Bluetooth works at most 15 feet.

I did not pay attention until now but the ability to stream multiple speakers all at once is a stroke of genius.

The Chromecast would have a been a fun toy at 35ドル but I have no need for extra gadgets I often throw away into the sock drawer after 15 minutes of use. The key deterrent was the fact some of the streaming is gimped and not available on the low-end Chromebooks which I have. In addition to video, the key thing I use Airplay for is for music. Airplay is really mature and I can't wait to get my free iTunes radio (iTunes Match subscribers get ad-free playback). This will be pretty cool to listen to all that free music all over the house. This means, I think I will be investing a little more in Airplay and airplay devices.

Now, I think I'm going to invest in some AudioEngine A5+ and an Airport Express set-up. I just ordered a refurb Airport Express station for 65ドル. I think it is well worth it. I may even splurge on some high-end Bowers and Wilkins A7 this Christmas.
Simply brilliant. The ability to walk from room to room, floor to floor, with all the speakers playing the same music track all synchronized is pretty cool indeed.

Who here likes carbon fiber?

Stickerboy has a nice collection of skins for the Apple Magic Mouse. I happen to pick up a carbon fiber skin set.

I need to work out the minor bubbles but it looks pretty good if you are into carbon fiber.

A few post back, I wrote about converting real physical Macintoshes into VM (Virtual Machine) guests. Today, I am going to blog about my first attempt of installing VMware ESXi 5 hypervisor Virtualization server on a 2009 Apple Xserve 3,1. This was the last Xserve before Apple discontinued the line.

The purpose of this exercise is to see if I can recycle some old Xserve to hosts and consolidate older Mac OSX servers running Quicktime and Indesign services.

Installation was a breeze. I had an ISO and hit the "c" key at boot and selected the CDROM. Installing ESXi 5 was no different than installing it on a Dell. I picked a 8GB USB stick and installed everything onto a bootable USB stick. Once prompted to reboot, I had to hit the option key to choose the USB stick which happened to be properly EFI made.



I then configured my IP and logged into the Xserve through the VMware view client. I couldn't format one of the disks from the Xserve's SAS bay. VMware recognizes and it probably has some baked Apple firmware on it. I'll try with a different disk later. However, I was able to mount iSCSI and NFS shares to test.



I was able to load up my Linux and Windows VMs with no hassle. Getting a OSX guest will take me some time to figure out. I converted a Fusion guest with the ovftool but was not able to install my guests. I will play with it more and report back.

Right now my Xserve only has 6GB of RAM so I'll need to max that out and try adding eSATA or SAS storage to the ESXi build. My Xserve has an internal 128GB boot SSD so I may try re-installing on that or create a datastore on it.

Today, I am going to blog about consumer I/O technology from an end-user perspective.

I was reading comments today from some mac purists who still extols the virtues of Firewire 800. Well, FW 800 is pretty much dead in my book. In rare circumstances, FW800 beats out USB 3.0 in specific use cases. And those use cases are rare. Generally speaking, USB 3.0 is the cheapest I/O technology that will out perform FW800 in the other 90% use case scenarios.

Thunderbolt vs USB 3.0 is a bit more interesting to debate. I'll happily concede that 80% of the population are perfectly addressed with the cheaper USB 3.0. Yes, it is cheaper. In every use case, it is cheaper than Thunderbolt. However, cheaper does not mean it is better technology. It simply means it is more convenient.

Thunderbolt is still an early adopter technology. The cables themselves are expensive. They used to cost 50ドル but have been dropping in price to as low as 25ドル for .5 meter cables. Just getting the extra cables mean this is already a hassle for most users. The only Thunderbolt device I bought that came with cables was my Drobo 5D. For everything else, I had to buy the cables.

So what do I like? Well, I prefer Thunderbolt but in most cases, USB 3.0's cheaper price differential means I play in both camps. I don't hold allegiance to anything so I can't tell you which one is better. Simply, I can share some of my experiences.

First of all, I really like the idea of daisy chaining. As seen below, I have three Thunderbolt devices chained. In the next picture, I have a DVI-D monitor chained to a Seagate STAE129 Thunderbolt desktop adapter.





This is a big selling pitch in theory and in the benefits are tangible in the real world.
My iMac 27" has two Thunderbolt ports and it is pretty clean to chain, chain, and chain devices; including extra monitors. I like this idea so much, I am thinking of splurging on either the new Matrox or Belkin Thunderbolt hubs. Yes, they're pricey. But I definitely see the advantage of having just one cable connected to my Macbook and everything else hidden from view.