Fortysomething Geek

I started my morning with an average range of 101 miles. Some days it can go as high as 111 miles. The car has an EPA range of 88. However, it has surpassed my expectations.

After driving it 15 miles, I still have around 100 mile range and 89% capacity. Folks, this is the effects of regenerative braking. Stop and go commute will do wonders for the batteries.



Most importantly, this car has changed my life. Simply because of the perks. Driving in the solo diamond lane, I save a lot of time from my commute. I get to spend more time with my kids. In the morning, I am generally less grumpy. Pictured below is a daily scene. Commuters stuck at the Toll plaza; waiting as long as 30-40 minutes while solo carpoolers like myself just whizz on by. On average, I am saving more than 45 minutes each way. That time simply adds up. I save money on bridge toll. I get to pick up my kids earlier from day care; saving me those costs as well.

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

This is a topic that simply cannot die. For over 25 years, I've been known as the "watch guy" in my circles. Yeah, I'm the guy with the fetish for expensive Swiss mechanical watches. So obviously, everyone comes to me for my watch opinions. With the introduction of the Motorola 360 and the anticipation of the Apple iWatch, more and more people are coming to me for my advice and opinion.

Well, lets do this one more time.

Will I buy one?

No, I won't buy something to replace my Swiss watches. I will not buy a Smartwatch. However, I am open to a fitness band. I will buy something that can be worn on my right wrist; reserving my left arm for watches. I'm in my forties and health is a big deal to me. I have friends dying right and left. I do have medical and health issues so a compelling health sensor would make me buy a wearable.




It is an ugly watch and that is my opinion. I'm not into the flat tire design (where the bottom is cut-off). That is my biggest complaint. However, taste is entirely subjective. It also looks to much like it is trying too hard to be an ultra-thin museum piece when it isn't. It is girthy. I also looks like a cheap "Mall fashion watch" in the theme of Movado and Rado. Those are quartz watches I don't like except those are ultrathin and quartz makes sense. The 360 is so big, you can fit literally a pocket watch movement in it like the Unitas 697. In short, it looks like a girly fashion watch yet at the same time, it is monstrously big.

I prefer the LG G R watch. The thicker bezel doesn't bother me on the LG because if you look at any Swiss watch I have, they all have bezels. They also all have traditional lugs to swap straps. Here is the LG R watch. It looks like a fashion watch too but it is more pleasant in my eyes. I read that people don't like the thick bezel nor the lugs. Obviously, those people prefer the minimalist, cleaner 360.



That is just my opinion on looks.

Most importantly, I think the 46mm size of the Moto360 is way too big. Monstrously big for what it is. Arstechnica did a comparison (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/moto-360-review-beautiful-outside-ugly-inside/) and their comparison is a bit off and let me explain.


36mm is a women's size. Small Men's size are 38mm like the Datejust and Explorer. 42mm is a slight creep from the average large men's watch.

Now for some context.
40mm is large. It has been considered large for over 50 years; notably with watches like the Rolex Submariner, GMT Master. Those are manly watches. Here is Charlize Theron wearing a 40mm Rolex. It is a large watch.


Most of my watches are 40mm and I'm comfortable with that. 40mm with 20mm strap width is the perfect Men's large watch size. A good majority of the historical iconic classics fit in that dimension. Here is what most Alpha males historically worn. 40mm.

Here you have Che with a Submariner, Apollo 13 Jack Swiggert with his GMT Master, and various James Bond with their 40mm Submariners.



Here is a comparison to a Rolex 40mm. See why I call it comically big?






Obliviously, you can tell it is an outlier size. Some say you need the persona and physical stature to pull that off. The Moto 360 is not that far off the mark at 46mm. Except, a 44-47mm Panerai looks really masculine and macho. A Moto 360 still looks nerdy. In short, the entire cast of the Expendables wear 42-47mm watches. Compare an A-List Hollywood action star to your typical nerd geek who will be wearing a smart watch that are both similar in size. This pretty much eliminates a large percentage of the population; women.

Outlier size won't appeal to many. I wear a 44mm Panerai on occasion and I can feel the heft and that watch is the most banged up watch I have. I'm always accidentally banging that watch on doors,tables,etc. Other Panerai owners feel the same.

Omega and Rolex started to supersize to 42-43mm as well. With this over-size watch craze, some of the younger generation think 40mm is no longer large but regular size. There is a very tangible big difference every mm you grow on in size on a watch. The perception is much more so than the weight.
Battery life

Like I wrote earlier, I'm into Swiss mechanical watches. None of my watches need batteries. They are infinitely powered. The whole idea of 1 to 2 day battery life is alien to me. I'd go bat-crazy. I remember a few times where I was hospitalized for 2 days and all my electronic gadgets died on me - iPad, laptop, smartphones. The only thing keeping me sane was my watch. I've been on travelling expeditions (buses, trains) in 3rd world countries for days. No smartwatch would obviously work in that scenario.

They need to obviously work on the battery life.


What would I buy if I did?
It is hard to say. I may get one for novelty purposes but nothing is going to replace my Panerai, Rolex, Omega or whatever I have.

The idea of a square case doesn't bother me. It doesn't have to be circular as I'm not looking for a watch. I prefer long battery life. But I've seen decent square watch cases like JLC and the Heuer Monaco.


But as I noted, I'm not looking for a watch per se. I'm open to a fitness band tracker I can wear on my right wrist.

I would go for something like this. Yes, I know some of you guys will think of it as a girly bracelet but I don't have those hang-ups. I'm wearing some 40-44mm beefy Swiss tool watch on my left wrist so I don't care.


Now, the thing that would make me instantly buy something like this are:

1. Battery embedded in the bracelet. This would compensate for the short battery life that is causing problems for many of the OEMs. If the whole bracelet was an extended battery and if it gets 4 days of use, I'm sold. But I would only buy something like this on the premise of it being a fitness, health sensor band. If it is mainly a watch, I'd have to consider my techy gadget curiosity over my horological passions.

2. Some extended phone calling capabilities without the need to tether a phone. If Apple was able to convince Phone carriers to allow multi-shared SIM plans, that could be a big. The idea is with two SIMs, you can share the same phone number and capabilities on your phone and wearable. So if the phone is in your car while at the gym, you can make calls with just your wearable. This would be an instant buy for me. However, I doubt this would ever happen.

Will Apple kill the Swiss industry.

I see this question come up a lot. Answer. No. That is a big pipe dream. Rolex is a 8 billion dollar company with 4.5b in annual sales. They generate over 800,000 Chronometers. Their average watch sales for 8,000ドル. SWATCH group, LVMH, Richemont are equally big. Boutiques like Patek and Lange Sohne will never be effected just as Ferrari will never be effected by Toyota. The comparisons and analogies to Blackberry/Nokia are so way off the mark. We are talking about luxury goods here. A different dynamic. I know people who drop 25,000ドル on a Panerai and a 250ドル smartwatch isn't going to sway their opinion. People buy engagement and wedding gifts that are suppose to last and be used for decades.

There are a million reasons why the whole idea is nonsense. No one is going to replace their high end watches. Smart watches will be disruptive. Sure. It will effect the market under 1,000ドル. Possibly even encroach in the 1,500ドル range. Casio, Garmin, and many of the fitness trackers will be effected. Some of the mall fashion brands will be hurt - Coach, Armani, Gucci, and Movado. But that is about it.

But high end Swiss mechanical? No. I buy watches because I like mechanical miniaturization. There is simply no comparison to something made from electronics with something made from hundreds of mechanized parts. Watches also appreciate in value over time. I buy them as life-long companions. I have some watches I bought new that are over 25 years old. They don't have the 2 year replacement/update cycle. I can hand down my watches to my kids so it is a generational thing. Craft. There are a million other reasons why Swiss watch buyers won't give in. It is mostly emotional and no form technical rationalization is going to change that. I have friends and family who are heavily tech and gadget oriented. Those with Swiss watches share my similar opinion. Nothing is going to replace their Rolex and Panerais.

Some guys save up years to buy their Omega Speedmaster because they were in awe with NASA. Some get Rolex Submariners because they remember their cool uncle or dad, or perhaps, James Bond. These are longings that many have as a kid until they grow up. No one is going to long for a disposable gadget. My son, who is six, really wants my Omega Seamaster and Speedmaster Professional. He's been stuck on those two watches since he was three. He also know they're special by observing how much care I take after them. An electronic gadget doesn't have those appeal.

I've been called an old fart for this Luddite reasoning and I'm OK with that. It is the same feeling art lovers will never replace an Rothko with some Adobe Illustrater drawing.

In closing, these are my thoughts for the time being.

Update: With the Apple Watch announced, here are my thoughts on another post.
http://fortysomethinggeek.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-watch-casual-observation.html

VMware just released Fusion 7 Pro with some major changes and updates. The most obvious are support for Yosemite OSX 10.10, improve performance, GPU upgrades.

However, if you are Mac based developer who is involved with ESXi or vSphere, this is an absolute must-have upgrade. This version definitely gives weight to the "Pro" denomination. The remote server integration makes it well worth the 80ドル upgrade and 150ドル full price.

So what is new?

I'm not going to rehashed some press release or product page. You can read that directly on VMware's own product page here:http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion-pro/ . Improved performance. Check! Improved Retina support. Check!

The "what's big" is the vSphere, ESXi support. This is only in the Pro version and it definitely makes it a big differentiator between the regular Fusion 7.

For those Mac developers who tirelessly worked for years with ESXi, your normal modus operandi was to install a Windows VM and run vSphere Client in a Windows' Guest. Now, a majority of those functions are built right into Fusion Pro.

In the screenshot below, I can see my local VMs and in the preview pane and I can now see the inventory of my remote Virtual Machines. I even get general stats on usage of the remote server.


Yep. Now you can start, stop, modify remote Virtual Machines, and even deploy OVFs right inside Fusion Pro.

Impressive indeed!

You simply, connect and you have some basic control. This is simply a killer feature.





Another benefit to this is you can now run Virtual Machines remotely. I have 6 and 8-core AMD ESXi white box servers running in my basement. They have 16 and 32GB of RAM with 3 terabyte of data storage. I don't need to even run my development VMs on my Macbook. Rather, I can control and run them remotely. Sure, you can VNC or RDP in but that method is often laggy and unpleasant. Nor can you enable features of the guest via traditional remote desktop connectivity.

Here, you can run and enable device features remotely. For example, I run a proxy server and have a stand-by failover VM on another server. Both are running with the same IP. When one fails, I simply enable the networking on the standby unit to take over. The guest will utilize whatever CPU and GPU processing power your remote host hypervisor has.


So if you have VMs on a ESXi, vSphere or Windows Workstation, you can now run your VM on beefier, remote boxes. The whole start-up and control process feels and acts if you are running locally. I am very impressed. You won't get unity or shared folders on remote VMs. Thus, you'd still need to run those VMs locally for those guests that need those features. However, for most console OSes (Linux apps servers), you can simply run them remotely.

Pictured below is an example. I dragged a local LAMP stack from my Macbook onto my remote ESXi server box and voila. Instant provisioning.


You can also export and download as well.


I must say, these Pro features are impressive. It doesn't have all the features of the Windows ESXi client but it covers most of the stuff I need on a day to day basis. The OVF export takes the hassle of tweaking VMDK and thin provisioning.

Now, let me comment on some of the other features of Fusion 7.

You can select what GPU you want to use if your Mac has a hybrid graphics card set-up. Before, I had to use some hacks to disable the NVDIA card but now, you can set it in the VM guest.


This will save battery power considerably for Macbooks with dual GPUs. Console based OS and older operating systems will no longer start the GPU if you don't want them to. My macbook no longer whizzes the fan when I want to fire up an old copy of Windows XP or CentOS.


They've also improved Retina support. For non HiDPI operating systems, the rendering doesn't look so bad anymore. Pictured above is Windows XP and it now looks fairly good without the nasty dithering blockiness found in earlier versions.

User interface wise, it is an clean, streamlined new look that will fit right in with Yosemite.



Overall, I am very impressed. I am definitely giving this upgrade a big thumbs up.

Today, Logitech announces the new K480 keyboard. It is a bluetooth keyboard that allows you to pair up to 3 devices. This sounds exactly like the K810/K811 I reviewed a while back.

Tails is a TOR based amnesic based operating system. It is basically a Live-CD/USB operating system that gets you on to the TOR based Onion network for complete privacy. The normal usage is to run it off a CD or USB. Virtual Machines are not recommended but people do it anyways. I won't get into the debate or discuss the merit of running it via live boot USB versus running it in a VM. The basic argument against the VM's premise is if the host hypervisor is compromised, you are not truly anonymous. Furthermore, keyloggers, remote desktop can cause problems. Lastly, most VM's bridge or NAT networking can potentially leak info.

If you are going to run it in a VM, I have some suggestions. Hence, the topic of this blog post.

First of all, you want to have much isolation as possible. Most Hypervisors allow you to dedicate specific hardware to the guest operating system. Never share anything. This includes soundcards, bluetooth, and most importantly ethernet/wi-fi devices.

For the sake of this post, I am using Mac OSX and VMWare Fusion. However, the concepts and principles apply to Windows, Linux or VirtualBox.

When you create your guest, try not to store it on your drive.If you do store it on your drive, encrypt it. And encrypt it again. My main hard drive has file fault but I go even further and store my image in an Encrypted container. In this case a DMG.




I can then go toss my DMG image into an encrypted USB stick.
Then go another step further and use VMware's built-in encryption to protect the VM file.

(be sure to enable it to ON!)

Since the whole guest will be relatively small, I strongly suggest throwing it on a USB stick. You don't want anything on your host.

Now to the VM itself. Clean it up.

I then remove everything I do not need. Remove the Sound Card. Disable the bluetooth sharing.
Everything except USB. If you need sound, I have a solution for that later.


Most importantly, remove the hard drive as you don't need it. You will be booting from the ISO file. Your VM files should be less than 2MB.

In fact, you can disable all networking on your host computer. When you bridge or NAT, you cannot truly mask your host's computer with advance sniffing. Your host computer doesn't even need to be physically connected to the network.

Now, if you disable networking, how do you get on the Internet or have any networking?

This is the important piece of info. Get yourself some cheap NIC devices. USB ethernet dongles, wi-fi sticks. Treat them like disposable SIM cards you have on disposable phones. The MAC ethernet addresses of those devices will be unique and will not trace back to your computer.

No bridging. Not NAT traversal. Complete isolation from the host. If you no longer have a need for the NIC, simply throw it away and get a new one. That last tip is for the paranoid.

Under your USB settings, you will want the guest operating system to "own" the particular device.
In this case, my portable USB dongle. Since Tails uses Debian, I've notice most USB network and wireless dongles work out of the box including the ASIX 88179 USB 3.0 gigabit dongle.


Once you boot into TAILS, you'll see the USB network adapters as if they were native to the TAILS operating system.

I would also do a simple ifconfig to verify you are indeed using the hardware.



Another cool thing you can do is dedicate a separate USB mouse/keyboard to the Virtual Machine. This should eliminate one of the key concerns of running Tails inside a VM - potential keylogging from the Host. As for sound, since you disabled sharing from the host, you can use a USB sound DAC if you really want sound inside Tails. Again, you need to give dedicated USB ownership to the guest.

Here I use a Motorola LapDock. I dedicate a separate full screen display to my VM and use the built in keyboard/trackpad. The key entries are unknown to my host Macbook Pro. Also pictured is an Apple 10/100 USB dongle that also works very well with Tails.


Now back to my disclaimer on the top of this post. This is for informational purposes. I've been evaluating Tails/Tor to see if anyone on our network can go un-detected. We've provisioned Kali intrusion boxes; sniffed network with Wireshark/Ethereal and we are still testing. I have to say, I am very impressed and scared at the same time.