All Apple All Day

Its about time! Comcast showed off its new user interface and iOS app , which really, really looks fantastic. As good as DirecTV, even. No idea when this goes national - apparently, Boston gets it "in the coming weeks", with other markets to follow. I'm going to have to discuss it with Comcast, but considering Comcast's statement that this UI will be made available to *new* customers at no added charge, this news actually makes me MORE likely to ditch Comcast now, so that I can be a new customer again when this eventually comes to Chicago.

As a satellite television provider, DirecTV is more or less unable to provide broadband to its customers directly. Sure, they occasionally advertise bundles with AT&T, but that would be for DSL - a workable solution, but still, an internet solution which  advertises speeds that are between 1/10 and 1/5 as fast as what we can get from the cable internet providers. (DirecTV's website has other internet-providing partners listed, but they aren't in the Chicago area.)  When I called DirecTV about the AT&T bundles I'd seen online, they had absolutely no idea what the bundle pricing would be and told me I'd have to work with AT&T directly. And, a quick look around the net indicates that this "bundle" isn't much more than 2 companies working in complete separation. I can build that kind of bundle myself! In yesterday's post, I weighed WOW's UltraTV offering against Comcast XFinity's Triple Play. Similar offerings, similar pri

I mentioned in the first post that I was going to track several Apple-related projects at the new house. For starters, we'll have the primary entertainment center. Upcoming projects will include (subject to reordering): 1. Primary Home Theater . This will require mounting the 55" TV above the fireplace, running at least 4 HDMI cables to it. We'll design and install built-in wall units on either side of the fireplace, incorporating in-wall speakers, and (after selecting a cable/internet/phone provider) run a wired network to the entire system. I also need a bunch more active shutter 3D glasses, which we never use and which are kind of ludicrously expensive, but which is still a neat effect. 2. Wired Internet . Tired of waiting for movies to start after downloading them... And tired of living in fear of buffering when watching a streaming video. We'll need to run CAT5 through the walls, and spec out switches and routers. I currently have a Time Capsule and an Airport

9 days until our move, and we'd like to hit the ground running. I can't imagine the family will be too excited about going without TV or internet or phone for a few days while I sort things out, so I suppose it's time to make one of the most important decisions a new homeowner will face. Who will be our cable provider? We've been Comcast customers for years. Here in Chicago, they've had good service offerings, and have usually managed to keep us around by sweetening their deal just enough to make switching seem like a chore. But when you're moving, everything is a chore! May as well weigh our options. We need to cover three services here: TV, Internet, and Phone. I'm currently paying Comcast about $150 for a single TV, with HBO (I bring my own TiVo so I'm not currently paying for DVR service), 20 Mbps internet (which seems to top out around 14 Mbps in the city over wifi), and unlimited nationwide home phone. In the suburbs, we'd li

I'm a big fan of technology in general, and Apple in particular. But right now, no one is doing tech better than Apple. I find that truth to be self-evident. Their gadgets are simpler, and work more consistently. (That wasn't always the case - the Mac LCIII I took with me to college was so underpowered that it wasn't able to run the MacPaint program it shipped with in full screen.) Now, if a company does something better than Apple's doing it, by all means, I'll buy their stuff and talk about it here. And if Apple *doesn't* do something, like make a DVR or a TV or speakers, for instance, I'll talk about that, too. So why a tech blog? What is the purpose? What is the angle ? Well, after 11 years in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood, and 7 years in our current condo, we're moving. To a house the suburbs. A house which will serve as a blank slate for all of the tech projects I've intended to start here, but put off for years because ou