Sony's Woes

Sony's CEO Howard Stringer offered some explanation of why the company he works for has done such a good job of sucking over the last five years or so. This prompted me to rant a bit about something I've been meaning to write about for some time.

Sony has missteped so many times in the last few years it's hard to know where to begin. Their proprietary, go through us, Sony is the hub of all electronic entertainment approach to everything has led to the rise and fall of a handful of trademarks that starts with a product that sets a thesis statement for my point…the Betamax. Since that well documented failure Sony has stubbornly used the same mentality and marketing approach, and subsequently failed with: ATRAC, the MiniDisk, UMD and the currently failing PSP, the Connect Digital Music project, the SACD format which died along side it's rival DVD Audio and the Sony Network Walkman, which when finally introduced didn’t even support MP3 files. These failures are complimented by further stupidity such as their stubbornness to even enter the digital audio market (which Stringer mentions in a more flattering way), shipping a rootkit on one of their audio CD’s and recently, exploding batteries.

The Sony Corp. CEO revealed that a lot of the negativity surrounding both recent challenges for the company is the result of internal strife in the company and a cultural disconnect between Sony CEO Howard Stringer and his Japanese executive team.

Sony is just one big dysfunctional foreign exchange family right now, they need some counseling quick. The Nintendo Wii is saturating entry level gaming devices. The Xbox is stronger than ever and was in the marketplace sooner, once again due to a Sony debacle. One they may never be able to recover from. The HD disk wars are far from over. Stringer seems to be overly optimistic about Blu-Ray, but I’m not, even though they have gained some ground lately and technically offer a superior product (like Betamax). Not to mention the success or failure of one of these two products could, and probably will impact that of the other. The PS3 uses Blu-Ray disks and if the PS3 where booming, that many more people would automatically be Blu-Ray movie users.

I don’t hate Sony. Everyone (over the age of 20) has fond memories of their Walkman. Sony's Trinitron technology is legendary. Up until recently they have had the best gaming console bar none. They make great digital cameras (despite the proprietary Memory Sticks) and video cameras. Strangely enough their VAIO computers, although overpriced, are great as well as stylish and finally their line of Bravia XBR LCD televisions are arguably the best on the market. However something needs to change at a very high level for Sony to get back on track, recover from their recent blunders and regain the love of this geek and I’m sure many others.

Optimus Keyboard Debut

The much talked about and little seen of, fabled, OLED keyed, Optimus Keyboard is finaly going to make a public appearance at CeBIT in Germany in the coming weeks. This in theory, is one of the coolest peripherals ever. Supposedly they will have a working model.

We'll see if it lives up to the hype. It will be priced slightly above far to much and a bit less than the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua.

Cover Flow

Itunes 7.1 is out. The updates are minor, including Apple TV functionality, minor sorting options, and full screen cover flow, which is really nice. Cover flow is the primary method of music navigation on the new iPhone, and rumored to be a firmware update to the 5th gen iPods as well (I don't know if this is real, but if not, it's a great job).


I sure hope Mr. Jonathan del Strother was well compensated by Apple for his Cover Flow application, they can't seem to use it enough, and rightfully so.

Vista Backgrounds

Vista (unlike it's predecessors) comes with an array of great Desktop Backgrounds. Hamad Darwish, the photographer responsible for many of them. He has posted photos from the Microsoft Photoshoot up on Flickr. Pretty cool.

All of the pictures on the site were taken in Oregon during a 10 to 12-day period. Darwish chose 15 images from over 6,000 RAW files from his Canon D20, and from those Microsoft would choose 5.

Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is now Available. Lightroom is a full featured application that allows photographers the ability to manage, adjust, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Lightroom and Apples Aperture are the premier software titles for this right now, they blow any other RAW capture handler out of the water. O'Reilly has some good reviews including some comparisons between the two apps. For now it seems a matter of oppinion, however, strangely enough Lightroom seems to be the more intuative app.

Both of these applications will retail for $300 (Lightroom is $200 until the end of April). If that's a bit rich for your blood, there are other photo management and editing programs for the casual shutterbug. Adobe Photoshop Elements for Windows and Mac, ACDSee Pro and the free Picasa from Google (which is good and couldn't be cheaper) just to name a few. Speaking of free it's getting more and more difficult for these companies to make worthwhile commercial products that can compete with the built in tools like Windows Photo Gallery and iPhoto.

Airport Extreme Reviewed

Macworld reviewed the new Airport Extreme Base Station. This product is long overdue, but understandably delayed due to the whole 802.11n standard fiasco.

This is a welcome product for Mac and Windows users alike. The printer and external hard drive sharing feature is awesome. I however do expect Apple to quietly upgrade this product before the end of the year due to the glaring lack of Gigabit Ethernet (what the heck) and the possibility of the ratified n standard.

The Power of Multitouch

One of the most promising features of the new iPhone, at least long term, is probably the multitouch navigation. Jeff Han is one of the pioneers of this technology. He blew everyone away with his demo at TED, and his new company Perceptive Pixel will market this innovative technology to a large spectrum of companies.

This is an impressive new video of him giving a demo of some new interfaces.