Steve Jobs and company announced the new iPhone and related products at WWDC last Monday. So who’s on board?

As many of you already know, I am pretty much Apple’s bitch. Steve says jump, I ask how high. But frequently, by the time I find out just how high I am supposed to leap, the Reality Distortion Field wears off and I balk. I am the proud non-owner of a Macbook Air, for instance.

In any case, I poo-pooed the original iPhone at first, and then ran out and bought one the day after it’s debut. I have been largely happy with …

To those that said such things couldn’t or wouldn’t happen, here’s some back up of my point.

Not so long ago I posted a blog about DRM and its evils. To me, the biggest is that DRM’ed music isn’t purchased at all. It’s only rented. Eventually, any DRM scheme that depends on heading out to the interweb to authorize the user is doomed to eventual shutdown.

According to an Engadget article MSN is already shutting down its support for the MSN Music service. They even mention iTunes (as I did), even though it was a bit of …

I find it helpful to keep a list of the things that I need to install on a new or re-installed Windows system.  I am going to list the specific apps that I install but also talk about them in a generic sense in terms of their function.  Please feel free to comment on deficiencies of this list, or also why some of these things may not be needed.

1. Perl.  Or some other scripting language that you may wish to use.  Not all of us are programmers or have the desire to automate system functions, but I find it very …

Why does everyone insist on comparing Apple to Microsoft?  In my opinion, there is no comparison.  It’s apples and oranges… er, apples and flags.

I am neither an Apple fanboy nor a Microsoft fanboy.  In fact, I think both companies have done wonderful things for us personal users of technology.  But to say that one is better than the other connotes a competition, a head-to-head, mano-a-mano situation that simply does not exist.  Let’s look at what I’m talking about.

First of all, the competition just isn’t there.  Apple creates products for Windows.  Microsoft creates products for Mac.  In fact, Microsoft is one …

Have you seen Microsoft Surface (http://www.surface.com)?  It’s really cool, but probably not for the reasons you might think.

The basis of Microsoft’s new Surface technology seems to be multitouch.  But that’s nothing new.  Not at all.  Heck, the Apple iPhone is supposed to have multitouch and that’s due out any day now.  As well, some other peeps (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/) have been working on this technology for some time too.

So what is it?

Well, Microsoft, in a bold move outside of their usual realm (this is hardware and Microsoft is a software company), has seemingly developed a table-top interactive display.  There’s nothing …

Okay, I’ve been using Windows Vista on a few of my computers for the last few months, and I have to say, it’s growing on me.

The first thing that grabs any hardcore user of PCs is the file manager and the changes there.  Vista adds several features that should have been there in XP.  For instance, the “burn” button.  This allows you to select something and press this button to put it on a CD-R(W).  Of course, all this really does is copy it to the CD drive’s temporary folder for burning.  It’s nothing more than an easier way to …

With all technology getting smaller and smaller, it should seem obvious that everything should fit in the palm of our hands.  But that just isn’t a reality just yet.

Cellphones are getting smaller and more powerful, but yet most of the more powerful ones are still larger than ideal.  The chief factors for this are that certain elements of our tech interaction simply cannot be miniaturized without loss of true usefulness.  At least not yet.

Take my cellphone (please).  It’s a T-Mobile MDA, which is a Windows Mobile Smartphone.  Basically, it’s a PocketPC with phone functionality.  I love it because it allows …

As a road warrior, I rely heavily on email.  I use it to keep in touch with friends and family as well as to get work done.  But I still can’t find the perfect email solution.

I love Gmail.  Unabashedly.  I admit it.  I think it is one of the greatest online apps ever to come about, the one that everyone else is copying.  It is intuitive, easy to use, has great spam filtering (thank God), and can be accessed from anywhere.  Well, almost anywhere.

The 2GB of storage is what I love most about Gmail.  It’s free, too.  But as a …

I must say, I am not eager to switch all of my Windows machines over to Vista for several reasons, not the least of which is cost.  But for purely academic purposes, I purchased and installed Windows Vista Ultimate edition on my old gaming machine, just to see how it is.

All in all, Vista seems like a pretty robust offering.  I haven’t gone into every nook and cranny yet, but I have kicked the tires and poked around a bit.  The interface seems solid and the Aero Glass interface is slick.  But in the end, it’s just some eye candy …

We talked about DRM as it applies to audio.  What about video?

Video is far trickier to deal with in terms of DRM.  There is no established DRM-free format for video like the audio CD is for music.  DVDs come with an encryption scheme called CSS, which was cracked years ago.  This is good and bad.

Now, with the advent of software for your PC that can get around CSS, users can rip video off of their DVDs to do with as they please.  This should be the way things are, and indeed this was perfectly legal (and sort of still is, …