2011 CES impressions: 3DTV needs more time in the lab

3DTV is a mess right now.

I saw 3D everywhere at CES this year. 3D with glasses tech, 3D without glasses tech, and on all sorts of different kinds of screens. Unfortunately, that’s the problem. We have a thousand different screen technologies fighting over what should be one standard, and 3D will be a terrible investment for TV buyers until this is sorted out. Here’s why…

- 3D videos do not work on all 3D screens.

You bought a 3D video and want to play it on a glasses-free 3D screen? Nope, unless you send it through a converter box. We’ll have 3D channels broadcasting 24/7, and 3D movies hitting shelves, but it’s all designed to be viewed through your glasses. The glasses-free TV manufacturers aren’t talking about how much post-production work has to be done to the videos they show off. It’s yet another format war, and we only recently got through the whole HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray debacle.

- Glasses or no glasses, 3D can cut down on the image resolution

With many of our current 3D technologies, a 1920×1080 2D image becomes 768 x 1,080 in 3D because an image for each eye has to be presented. It’s complicated and I don’t want to get technical, but those are the facts. This applies to glasses-free tech, as well as many passive/active with-glasses techniques. Until we get HDTV+ screens out there that can compensate for this with extra pixels, we’re sacrificing picture quality for that extra dimension.

But worst of all…

- Wearing glasses results in a better 3D picture now, but it’s a ridiculous requirement.

Honestly, none of the glasses-free 3DTVs I saw could be considered “good.” Some were okay, while others were terrible. Toshiba’s glasses-free 3D tech made me feel cross-eyed. Elocity had the best I saw, but it was still a few steps down from the with-glasses 3D out there.

Despite the resolution issues though, the with-glasses 3D is getting really great now. Remember Avatar? That’s nothing compared to what was being shown off.  It’s clear and immersive, but we shouldn’t have to wear glasses to watch TV. When we are in front of the screen, we’re not just watching. We may be also browsing the net on our phone, doing paperwork, cooking, and so on. Why put on your TV glasses when the TV is only part of what you’ll be looking at. Plus, let’s not forget the social aspect. If four people want to sit in front of your 3dTV, you better hope you have 4 pairs of glasses, and those pairs aren’t cheap.

We have two choices as of now: a good 3D picture with glasses, or a sub-par picture without the lenses. Using glasses is not an acceptable solution though — it should be viewed as only a stop-gap, and I really wish manufacturers would not push them on consumers.

Good technology is easy and adds value to our lives. What I saw at CES does not do this.

I don’t want to be a sourpuss here — the idea of 3D is fantastic, and hope it’s here to stay. I’d love to have an immersive window into a fantasy world, rather than a flat picture of it. For now, however, it needs more time in the engineering department. Consumers shouldn’t have to decide between glasses or no glasses, or have to be mindful of if their 3D videos will even work on their screen. This isn’t simple or a valuable contribution to our living rooms.

I’ll wait until a 3DTV in the store looks great without glasses, works with all video, and adds to our viewing experience without taking anything away. I really hope the many 3DTV manufacturers can make this happen.

How to open .pages files on a computer without iWork

Here’s a problem I’ve encountered at work a few times: You are given a .pages file, but can’t open it because you don’t have iWork’s Pages installed.

What is iWork or Pages?
Apple’s Pages application is part of the iWork software suite for Mac. It is meant to compete with Microsoft Office Word. Pages can open word “.docx or .doc” files, but Word can’t open Pages’ “.pages” files.

How to work around this problem:
Luckily, a PDF of each document is embedded within the file, and we can extract that PDF file with a little work.

From a PC:

Step 1: save the file somewhere on the computer, such as the desktop. In this example, “resume” is the filename, and “.pages” is the file extension.

Step 2: change the file extension from “.pages” to “.zip”. This will cause the icon to change appearance.

Step 3: Double click the icon, and extract the .zip file.

Step 4: Once extracted, a folder will be created with the same name as the .pages document. In my case, the folder is called “resume”. Open the folder.

This is what you will see:

Step 5: Open the QuickLook folder, and inside you will find a PDF of the original file. You can print the PDF, copy and paste the text in it, or do whatever else you want with it!

From a Mac (this way is easier)

Step 1: save the file somewhere on the computer, such as the desktop. In this example, “resume” is the filename, and “.pages” is the file extension.

Step 2: Right click the file, and select Get Info. Under name and extension, change the file extension from “.pages” to “.zip”. This will cause the icon to change appearance.

Step 3: You now have a .zip file. Double click it, and it should unzip, creating a new folder with the same name as the document.

Step 4: Open this folder, and you should see another folder inside called “QuickLook”.

Step 5: Open the QuickLook folder, and inside you will find a PDF of the original file. You can print the PDF, copy and paste the text in it.

Not the most elegant process, but its better than nothing.

My favorite freeware video converters for Mac

The problem:

The iPhone plays so few video formats, and iTunes really terrible at converting video files for your iDevice. (Hey Apple: not everyone buys everything from you and uses iTunes as a media vending machine. Okay mini-rant over.)

The solution:
Use a freeware video converter!

A google search will usually point you toward various non-free programs, or a freeware app called HandBrake (which works reliably and is free, just not the easiest to use). Here are a few other options that I think are better.

Option #1:

ReduxEncoder

It’s simple and it works. You drag one or more files into the window, then choose a pre-defined format to convert to. Options include iPhone, Apple TV, iPod Classic, as well as generics such as MP4 and AVI. There aren’t too many options visible, but this is good enough usually and you can always click “Advanced” in the toolbar if you want to get fancy.

This app is best for simple conversions of multiple files at once.

Option #2:

VideoMonkey

Honestly this app is extremely similar to ReduxEncoder, so the same description above applies here as well. It’s on the list because if there is a file ReduxEncoder can’t handle right, VideoMonkey might handle the job (and vice versa).

These are two of the best video conversion apps I’ve found. Convert away!

Quick tip: iPhone/iPod touch stuck in recovery loop

There have been a few time when a jailbreak attempt of mine hasn’t gone quite right, resulting in a “Recovery Loop”

“Recovery Loop” is where the iPod USB cable and iTunes logo appear on screen whenever you start your iDevice. Rebooting does not fix this. There are guides to use iRecovery and a few terminal commands to fix this, but they have never worked for me.

Here is the easiest way: use Blackra1n. Plug that stuck iDevice into your computer, open blackra1n and click “make it ra1n”. Problem solved.

Update: Of course, this doesn’t work with 3.1.3 firmware, so if you updated to it you’ll have to downgrade it to 3.1.2

Messages icon is incorrect with winterboard themes

Jailbroken iPhones with winterboard installed sure have a lot of nice themes out there to choose from. The problem is that some of these themes don’t update the text messages icon. So what happens is you apply a nice theme, such as Deep, but the unchanges messages icon sticks out like a sore thumb.

One of these things just doesn’t belong…

Why it happens: When 3.0 was released, apple changed the name of this icon from “Text.png” to “Messages.png”

How you fix your winterboard themes: You’ve got to just change the name! This fix works with any theme that has this issue.

SSH/bonjour into your phone. I personally like to use CyberDuck and connect with bonjour

Just click your iPhone when it appears in the list (mine is named Cadence). You’ll be prompted to login, which is username “root” and password “alpine”.

This will reveal the iPhone file system. To change the icon name, you’ll want to navigate to /Library/Themes/[theme name]/icons and then find and rename “Text.png” to “Messages.png”. These icon names are case sensitive, so make sure that you put a capital M in there.

Then reboot/respring that phone and you’re set!

Fix for when FAT-formatted devices from OS X Disk Utility do not not work on PCs.

Recently I’ve been having the issue where my PC says “You need to format this drive before you can use it” whenever I plugged in my USB stick.

And when I did click “Format Disk”, it would show up as a 200MB capacity disk! My USB stick is 16GB, so that is definitely not good enough.

The thing that confused me was that I was formatting this USB device as FAT using the Mac OS X Disk Utility, so it should have worked right?… well it turns out there are a few more steps.

Step 1: Open Disk Utility, and select your device on the left hand panel (of course).

Step 2: Under disk utility, you actually have to click the “Partition” section, and then select “1 partition” from the Volume Scheme drop down menu

Step 3: After that, click “Options” and select “Master Boot Record.” Otherwise OS X might use GUID which Windows doesn’t like.

Then you just hit apply, and you’re done with that business. That’s what got my 16GB USB stick to actually show up as a 16GB device under windows.

Note: this guide is for Disk Utility in OS X 10.5 and 10.6. If you’re running 10.4 or earlier you might have to do some exploring on your own

Is your trash emptying slow in Leopard or Snow Leopard?

Hey look it’s a new post! A few days ago I noticed that people were actually reading my previous entry, so I figured my little blog here might actually be useful, and therefore might deserve an update every now and then.

Anyway, my problem now is that I upgraded Leopard to Snow Leopard a few weeks ago, and it’s been great except my trash would take a friggin’ eternity to empty when I was deleting a lot of stuff. I searched around online for solutions in various forum postings about snow leopard to no avial, thinking I was the victim of some random bug that affected nobody else.

As it turns out, the solution is simple. For whatever reason, “Empty trash securely” had become checked in finder preferences during the snow leopard upgrade-install process, which meant that that finder was secure-erasing everything (even when I clicked “empty trash” as opposed to “empty securely”). All I had to do was uncheck it, and voila! Problem solved!

The answer to this problem was so easy that I overlooked it at first, so I hope this is helpful to those of you who are also confused by this deceptively-simple issue. No thanks is necessary dear readers (just send money.)

Edit: Updated for the retail version of Snow Leopard. Also, this setting wasn’t like this for me when I did a clean install of the retail Snow Leopard. Perhaps it’s a problem with certain upgrade-installs only?

Unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro owners: Got a screw loose? Tighten your trackpad!

A common complaint about the trackpad in the new Unibody MacBooks (Pro included) is that the click you hear when you press the button is too loud, or it requires to much pressure to click down.

Personally, I had the opposite problem. My trackpad button was too squishy on the right side, but felt normal on the left. It was no big deal and I ignored it for months, but then I stumbled upon this post at macosxhints.com

As it turns out, unibody trackpad sensitivity issues can be fixed by tightening or loosening a singe, easy to access screw underneath the trackpad. And to get to it, all you have to do is remove the battery.

I fixed my trackpad sensitivity this weekend using this method. It’s so much better now! Definitely worth it for those brave enough.

Here is a picture of the screw on my macbook:

Here are the steps:

1) remove battery and battery cover. You can see the underside of the trackpad once you remove the battery.

2) find tri-point screw on the now-exposed underside of the trackpad. It is the lone, centered screw at the top of the pad.

3) take a tri-point screwdriver or whatever else fits into the screw, and tighten/loosen it A LITTLE BIT. I suggest rotating the screw just 1/8th of a full rotation before testing it. The smallest adjustment can make a big difference!
Note: If you over-tighten it the trackpad will not click down at all. This happened to me and it was a little freaky at first. If this happens, just keep loosening the screw  (it may take a few full rotations) and putting pressure on the trackpad until it becomes unstuck. I don’t know what will happen if you loosen the screw too much, but it is obvious when the screw is overly loose so it wasn’t an issue for me.

4) Test your trackpad. Click it a bunch, and click all parts of it to make sure it feels right. You should test it with the battery back in and the battery cover back on for accurate results.

5) Repeat  step 3 and 4 until satisfied. It takes a lot of trial and error to get the screw position correct. I changed mine perhaps a dozen times before I was satisfied.

A few final points

- Just keep in mind that this type of modification isn’t covered by Apple’s warranty, so be careful

- Of course though, you do this at your own risk and I’m not responsible for any damage you may somehow cause

- If you’re happy with your trackpad, don’t do this. It’s only worth the time if you have an issue to fix.

If you go ahead with it though, good luck and I hope I helped!

Update: This was written for the older unibody macbook/pros with the battery door on the underside. From what I’ve seen though, the newer macbook pros without easily-replaceable batteries have the same adjustment screw. You’ll just have to go through a few extra steps to remove the battery first (which don’t look very difficult). Look at steps 5 and 6 here to see how that is done.

Boot Camp files cannot be moved. Oh noes!

Yesterday I decided that I would like to install Windows 7 via bootcamp onto my Unibody macbook. I have bootcamp start to partition off 40GB for Windows, but it gets stuck for a few minutes and then I see this

Boot camp partition error

What??? This is a not too uncommon problem actually. It’s caused by large files or file fragments residing at the edges of the OS X hard drive, which unfortunately is where a Windows partition needs continuous, empty space to set up.

OS X suggests you back up your data and wipe your drive (which would move all those pesky, large files to a better location), but obviously this will wipe your computer. Many online forum posters say the fix is to run an iPartition bootCD/DVD (non-free software), but this doesn’t work on newer macs, such as my unibody macbook… of course.  I also read that removing Parallels and disabling internet & screen sharing can fix this issue, but I tried that and it didn’t work for me.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be another way if you are in my situation and can’t use (or don’t want to pay for) iPartition, other than time machine.

Here is what worked for me: I busted out my external hard drive, had time  machine copy everything (which is EASY EASY EASY by the way), then booted from the OS X install DVD and selected Utilities > Restore from backup. It sounds a little scary, but I can’t emphasize enough how easy it is. Time Machine is practically idiot-proof. Once it was done restoring about two hours later, my newly restored macbook was just like it was before, only faster and without the ridiculous levels of file fragmentation. And boot camp manager could now property format a partition. Yay!

iPhone 3.0 announcement: Gaming accessories?

If you’re reading this post, you probably know about the iPhone 3.0 software update. Copy and paste, search, and MMS (+ more) is cool and all that, but I think the best part is application access to the dock connector. Why? Game controller accessories with actual buttons!

As of now (in these dark 2.2.1 software says), appstore iPhone applications can’t see or use the dock connector because Apple doesn’t permit it. This summer when 3.0 hits, you can have applications that control connected external cameras, applications that read data from connected diabetes blood scanners (I wouldn’t be surprised), and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t care about. Gaming controllers though, I do care about because it means I could finally play some good RPGs on the iPhone and not be bothered by tiresome touchscreen-based control. Touch controls make for great interfaces when you’re using your phone for a few minutes at a time, but not when you’re spending hours with it at a time. A d-pad and ABXY buttons would simply reduce the effort needed to input precise, quick, and effortless control, and its now possible with the 3.0 update.

Imagine: iPhone accessory company X makes the controller add in, and developers Y and Z program their games to be able to recognize the controller. You plug in the controller, start the game app, and it works! Awesome.

Of course for this to work it would take some communication between developers and controller manufacturers, but I can hope. After all, we’ve already seen mockups of this system before. Case in point: the JoyPod rumor. It didn’t go anywhere due to current limitations, but after this summer it could.