With the recent release of Diablo 3, there’s plenty of “first-impressions” posts out there. We haven’t gotten around to writing ours sooner because our play-time has been somewhat limited, in part because of poor system performance. Before going iPad-only, we purchased the 2009 Mac Mini Server model in order to have something to setup and sync our iOS devices to, and to serve as a headless Mac Mini connected to our LCD television. This was before buying an Apple TV, so the Mac Min was a dual-purpose machine handling the brunt of our multimedia needs.

We sold our last PC back in 2007 or 2008, so when Diablo 3 hit the scene, our inner-gamer, lingering from years of neglect, suddenly felt reinvigorated and yearned for a way to play the game. We were apparently not alone here, as we’ve seen many a post online about running Diablo 3 on a Mac Mini. So here’s the deal.

Integrated vs discrete GPUs.

The Mac Mini is built around the idea of a compact footprint and low-energy consumption. It’s basically a laptop scrunched together in a small box, which you hook up to whatever accessories you want. As with most other laptops, this means the machine isn’t built for gaming, and incorporates an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU). Without going into too much detail, this means the GPU shares system RAM, and since the GPU is also designed to consume little energy, it’s not a very fast beast, and while it works great for typical computing tasks, it doesn’t have the power for much 3D computation, which is vital in modern games.

Yet, there are low-power GPUs that some manufacturers put into laptops, and accordingly, Apple put one into the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini.¹ Our 2009 model sports an Nvidia GeForce 9400M with 256MB RAM, which is to say back in 2009 it wasn’t horrible, but three years later, it’s not so good at keeping up with modern graphics.² In comparison, the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini sports an AMD Radeon 6630M, also with 256MB RAM.

The 9400M is actually listed as a supported GPU on Blizzard’s Diablo 3 requirements site, under “low performance”. Curiously, the 6630M isn’t listed, though it does work, and performance is substantially better.

Playing Diablo 3 on the 2009 Mac Mini Server

The misleading proposition with the 9400M is that Diablo 3 just runs a tad sluggish. When you start the game, characters move noticeably less smooth than they ought to, but you assume the game’s playable nonetheless. Here or there, for the next couple hours, you’ll find some lag spikes, but generally Act I of the game is playable.

We should also note that this testing was done on the lowest possible resolution (800×600) with all effects off turned down to their minimum, or off entirely if the option was available.

Some folks have mused that certain classes play better on older video cards. The argument goes that classes with lots of special spell effects like wizards play worse, but we didn’t find this to be true. Rather, the problem seems to be large open areas, particularly those with “tiered” levels. For example, areas that are “up high” in the environment, where you can observe a drop (e.g. a cliff) tend to make the game lag considerably worse. The same is true when there are lots of environmental effects (e.g. burning villages). Here, the game is so laggy that if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself suddenly dead due to a lag spike. We mused on Twitter that the experience, complete with poor graphics and network lag, was not unlike playing Diablo 2 after it’s respective release.

In short, the game is technically playable, but the experience gets worse over time, to the point where you can barely keep up with players online. In fact, the character ghosting in Act II is so bad that by the time you see monsters upon you, you might already be dead.

We’ve read mixed reports about the game beyond Act II. Some say Act II is the worst, with Act II and Act IV offering a better experience due to less environmental effects. Though, the beginning of Act III also seems bad.

The experience can be somewhat improved by not playing online. We found that joining public games offered the worst experience, as did playing during peak hours; it seems in-game lag is made worse by network load, and the combined effect of the game’s popularity and a poor graphics card make for a very poor combination.

Upgrade your Mac Mini?

If you’re currently using a Mac Mini, chances are the advice to buy a gaming PC is going to fall on deaf ears. After all, if you were a huge gamer, you wouldn’t be trying to play Diablo 3 on your Mini in the first place. So, if you don’t want to struggle through the lag on an older Mini, you can consider buying a new one.

As we said earlier, only the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini offers discrete graphics, which starts at just under $800. Upgrading to the i7 processor isn’t worthwhile for gaming purposes, and the HD and RAM upgrades are unecessarily expensive through Apple, so if you have any DIY skills, you’re better off doing these upgrades yourself if you need them. Just to play Diablo 3, the standard 4GB RAM option is adequate.

Depending on how old your current Mini is, you may be able to make back up to half the cost of the new Mini, so you’re basically looking at a $400 upgrade. That’s not cheap, but you also get a standard HDMI output port, as well as an integrated power brick, so the Mini is a lot more portable than the old version.

Some people may argue for ditching the Mini altogether and upgrading to a higher-end Mac, but it’s hard to justify the price increases if you already have a monitor and aren’t going to do a lot more gaming on the machine. The $1200 iMac is $400 more than the Mini, with basically the same specs. The only real difference (other than the integrated display) is an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6750M, which sports 512MB RAM.³ Unfortunately, Apple’s lower-end notebooks only sport integrated GPUs, so if price is a huge concern and you want to stick with Apple, a new Mac Mini is your best bet.

Or wait?

Most Apple rumours hold little water, but it’s worth considering the fact that Apple may refresh the Mac Mini this summer. New low-power Intel CPUs are now available, and it’s likely that Apple will start using these new “Ivy Bridge” processors in their lineup. The big question for would-be gamers, however, is whether a Mac Mini refresh will include integrated graphics or go the discrete route. After all, it’s quite possible that all new Mac Minis will include the newer Intel HD 4000 GPU, which albeit faster than the Intel HD 3000 used in the 2011 Mac Minis, won’t really be an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6630M.

If Apple does decide to use discrete graphics, at least in one of it’s new 2012 Mac Mini models, then they’ll likely use another Radeon model, whose performance would be around 10-20% better than the 6630M. That’s about the speed boost we’d see from Ivy Bridge over the older Sandy Bridge CPUs in the 2011 Mac Minis, so performance-wise, the upgrade won’t be too substantial.

Ultimately, an upgrade comes down to how badly you want a smooth Diablo 3 experience today. The 6630M plays the game great at medium settings, with some lag if you pump everything to high-res.⁴ If you decide to hold out, consider that no Mac Mini refresh has yet been announced by Apple, and the rumours indicate a possible lineup refresh announcement during WWDC in the second week of June. While Apple has used this event to announce Mac hardware changes in the past, it doesn’t happen every year. The 2011 Mac Mini was released last July, so we’re coming up on a year, and since computer sales tend to be greater in the month preceding a new school year, any hardware refresh will likely happen in July or August at the latest.

This means that deciding to upgrade is a gamble. At the earliest, we’ll see new Mac Minis in about three weeks, but it could be around 12. And that’s only if Apple can get production in gear to meet the start of the new school year sales rush. Can you afford to wait that long to kill Diablo?

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When we last reported on our experience with the Jawbone UP, we had just received our third band, hoping it would last longer than the one we originally purchased. It turns out it didn’t, as the vibration motor died shortly after our post went up. This meant the alarm function was useless, so we sent another e-mail to Jawbone support, and were told they would send us a fourth band.

It took about three weeks to get the new band in our hands, with Jawbone being a bit less responsive about getting an RMA and tracking number to us, compared to how they handled our earlier replacements. We asked Jawbone support whether the fourth band they were to send us was part of the original production run, or if it was manufactured afterwards and with updates addressing earlier problems. What we got was a bland reply not really addressing the question:

We are committed to send a brand new fully working band, if you have any issue with this new band you can just contact us and we will be glad to replace it for you again.

We received our fourth band, and after a full charge and a day’s use, the band reported 58% battery life left. The next evening, about 38%. The third evening, 20%. The band died that night, so our alarm never went off.

After trying to charge the UP, the band quickly showed the white light indicating the band was full, and no matter how long we kept the UP band plugged in, it refused to sychronize with our iPhone. So this morning, we sent yet another e-mail to Jawbone, explaining that this fourth band didn’t even last a full week.

Our experience with the UP has gone downhill since the original band we purchased; our replacement bands have actually failed in less time than the original band, so we assume they’re all part of the original production run and Jawbone is simply getting rid of the stock they have left. Presumably, a lot of other UP buyers have taken their refunds and not bothered to obtain replacement bands, and since Jawbone isn’t currently selling them, they undoubtedly have stock that needs to either be thrown away, else given away. Unfortunately, we’d prefer the former, because continuing to send out bands that are prone to fail isn’t going to help smooth over relations with already upset customers.

Per one of Jawbone’s earlier responses, they will keep sending out replacement bands for as long as the original band’s warranty is for. That doesn’t make us feel much better.

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Retina-optimized graphics are awesome, we all pretty much agree. But there comes a trade-off with such: file-size. TUAW’s Mike Schramm summarizes the issue:

The most obvious drawback is app size. Those bigger graphics take up more space, and for many graphics-heavy applications, that could put them over the cellular data download limit (now at 50 MB). Universal apps specifically are taking this hit, even if they’re not running with the new iPad-sized graphics on the iPhone hardware.

A good universal app today supports four resolutions:

1. Legacy graphics for the 2G iPhone, iPhone 3/3GS, and iPod Touch.
2. Legacy graphics for the original iPad and iPad 2.
3. Retina graphics for the iPhone 4/4S.
4. Retina graphics for the new iPad.

There are ways to mitigate the file size increase, such as recycling retina iPhone graphics for use on older iPads. In search of real-life examples for how an app is distributed, however, Lex Friedman at MacWorld compared the pre-retina and post-retina file sizes of Apple’s own universal iOS apps. In doing so, we see file sizes roughly 2.75 times greater post-retina.

Between this, camera improvements, and more computing power to push more detailed textures in 3D games, there’s a reason the 16GB new iPad isn’t recommended by a lot of bloggers.¹

While we can assume that support for older devices will drop in the future, we still have at least a generation or two to go before non-retina devices are no longer supported by new versions of iOS. And even when that time comes, dropping non-retina graphics files won’t drastically improve the footprint of app file sizes, since it’s the retina versions that are making file sizes much bigger. At the very least, we should expect next year’s iPad to offer a 128GB storage option.

In the meantime, we still maintain that better cloud tools would help immensely, especially with large iPhoto libraries that can take up considerable storage space. Another potential solution on Apple’s side is to somehow strip graphics from AppStore downloads that aren’t needed on a target device. For example, retina graphics would be removed from an app downloaded from a non-retina device, and iPad graphics would be stripped from a universal app if installed on an iPhone.

Then again, perhaps we’re making too large an issue out of one that’s easily rectified in one or two generations, as flash storage becomes cheaper. Still, it’s enough of a problem that some are pushing not to release universal apps in order to save on storage space, a proposal that we find to be a rather bittersweet solution.

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Two weeks ago, rumours were running wild that Valve would jump into the console fray. The rumours were quickly squashed by Gabe Newell, but it didn’t stop some from dreaming. Maxator summed up the hopes of many gamers on his blog.

I think the stage is set for a new console player. If The Valve rumors are true, they choose their hardware well, throw in a slick interface, and court software partners, even those with competing online distribution systems, they will have a winner on their hands. So if Gabe Newell and company announce hardware at E3, I’ll be first in line to preorder a SteamBox. Who’s with me?

We weren’t with Maxator, because the notion of a Steambox doesn’t make sense. Maxator compared the state of today’s console gaming industry with the industry 12 years ago when Microsoft entered the fray, and similarities aside, it’s still comparing apples and oranges.

First and foremost, Steam is a Windows-based product, and a distribution method for Windows-based games. Microsoft was able to leverage their operating system (OS) expertise and enable developers to quickly port PC titles to a watered-down version of Windows still utilizing Direct-X. Valve doesn’t control an OS however, so they make for a poor parallel to Microsoft. More succintly put, Valve’s experience is with writing software for another company’s OS. For Valve to ship a Steambox, they’d need to license Windows, a cost Microsoft never had to endure.

If Valve didn’t license Windows, they’d need to delve into an area foreign to them: OS design. And if they did that, the ease of porting titles thanks to relying on Windows APIs and Direct-X is no longer possible, and that’s the biggest draw to a proposed Steambox.¹

Another important consideration is that PC gaming is very different from console gaming, and not just in genres and gameplay, but in the types of gamers themselves. Microsoft realized that their plan to rely on PC-based hardware wasn’t sustainable long-term, and that customized hardware needed to be developed for the XBox 360. That’s because PC games are designed to run on current-generation hardware, and PC games tend to push the envelope in regards to what that hardware can do. What we see is PC gamers who are constantly in an upgrade frenzy, swapping out video cards or more major components on a fairly routine basis, with developers generally supporting the latest hardware, rather than sticking to what’s been around. These types of upgrades aren’t possible with consoles, which is why custom hardware ensures that a console is relevent for a longer period of time.

The point here is that even if Valve found a way to license a Windows-based OS for use in a console and still pull a profit, and support PC control schemes that the target audience would want, it’s unlikely that PC gamers would care; since Steam is already available on PCs, and gamers want the flexibility to upgrade hardware as it comes out, why would they ever choose to buy a Steambox?

It comes down to a misunderstanding of what PC gamers and console gamers want. Just as you can’t lure a PC gamer over to a console full-time, you can’t get console gamers to buy into PC gaming, even if you ported select PC games to a console. It’s not about casual vs hardcore, either.

Ten years ago, Microsoft took advantage of Nintendo moving to casual gamers and Sony focusing more on Japanese gamers than profitable Western audiences. De Ja Vu? Now it is Microsoft shifting to casual gaming and social computing and Sony is still focused on the Pacific rim. Core gamers are hungry, advantage Valve.

What Maxator identifies as “core gamers” are a minority. Those who crave PC gaming titles game on the PC. The movement towards casual titles on consoles is driven by the market, because your average console gamer is now from the broader population, whereas PC gamers are still primarily younger, tech-savvy males. In every market that this demographic broadens, we see a move to more casual gameplay, which we can easily see in the evolution of games like World of Warcraft.

The bottom line is that if you want to play PC games and love Steam, get a PC and use Steam. Valve would be stupid to compete in the console wars offering the same old product wrapped up in a non-upgradeable package that gamers connect to their TVs. A much more innovative solution would be to leverage technologies that bypass the rapid upgrade cycle that defines PC gaming, and that’s where services like OnLive have come in and found success. For a Steambox to succeed, it has to offer everything Steam does today, and more. Simply dumping Steam onto a console isn’t going to do that.

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Apple hasn’t pushed the new iPad’s specs into the limelight, a trend they’ve run with for all their mobile device offerings. Traditionally, specs were the lifeblood of a PC marketing campaign. That specs on paper were a meaningless comparison is something computer nerds have known about for years (even if they didn’t always admit it), and today comparing specs is mere mental masturbation. Consumers don’t care about which device has a better CPU or which has more RAM, they care instead about the experience a given device offers. “Does it do what I need it to?” is the question they ask themselves.

That said, there’s some merit in noting a device’s specs, if only to compare it to its predecessors. “Will this upgrade be worthwhile”, for example, is a question that specs can help answer.

Horace Dediu compares the new iPad to the 2008 MacBook Air, a device we really wanted to buy back then, but considered its specs too meager in comparison to the MacBook Pro we were using at the time.

The new iPad now exceeds the total display resolution, has similar speed and storage capacity while having twice the battery life of the thinnest laptop of four years ago. It also has very high quality cameras and GPS and cellular network connectivity which have yet to appear on mainstream PCs. It’s still a lot smaller and half the price and has a larger selection of available software titles at prices a fraction of its elder cousin.

The only value that a desktop of 2008 has over a new iPad is the size of the screen and a larger hard drive.

Dediu’s point isn’t that the new iPad is a better computer, but that it’s another step in narrowing the gap between traditional PCs and the iPad. Put another way, consumers are finding the new iPad perfectly capable of handling their daily tasks, just as the 2008 MacBook Air did four years ago. If anything, it puts a lot of emphasis on the idea that implementation is more important than raw specs, and why you really don’t need the latest hardware to be relevent.¹

Critics may dismiss this by pointing out how the 2008 MacBook Air was considered under-powered, and how no one in their right mind would buy a 2008 MacBook Air today, but that would miss the point entirely: by re-engineering the software and hardware to be both simple and fast, Apple has created a device that is replacing traditional computers at home. And it’s doing this using the hardware equivalent of a four-year-old notebook computer. The irony is that while we didn’t buy the MacBook Air four years ago because we considered it underpowered, we didn’t think twice about preordering the new iPad. In fact, since the original iPad, we replaced our MacBook Pro for everyday computing tasks.

It’s become a better PC.

Looking back at our initial experiment in 2010 to use the iPad almost excusively for home computing, we see that several things have changed since, which have further cemented our decision, and why we haven’t felt the need to jump back into the notebook game.

When we bought our original iPad, we also bought a Mac Mini to serve as a headless media center. Its chief purpose was not only to serve media to our LCD television, but to serve as a mechanism for getting stuff onto, and off of, our iPad and iPhone. The synchronization process was typically a pain using a headless Mac, and though it became easier with VNC apps, it still wasn’t an ideal solution.

iCloud has mostly changed that. Since we’ve had the ability to back our iOS devices up wirelessly to the cloud, we’ve had almost no need to physically connect our devices to the Mac Mini.² Our iPhone 4S, for example, has never once been hooked up to the Mac Mini, and we’re better for it.

In truth, we rarely listen to our iTunes library anymore; most of our music listening is via Pandora. Still, it’s nice to have our music library with us, but a requirement for this has always been physical synchonization. Not only is this no longer necessary with the latest versions of iOS, but more importantly, we don’t even need to be home to get at our music collection. iTunes match is a great service that compliments the “basic” iCloud offering, and has allowed us to dismiss our Mac Mini even more.

iCloud and iTunes Match are two big changes that came about more recently, but iOS in general has gotten better. Switching between apps is now faster than it was in 2010, and the two years of application development has enabled a much better workflow than we had when we first adopted the iPad as out primary computer.

No need for the Mac Mini anymore?

Unfortunately, we’re still not at a place where we can totally remove our Mac Mini from our home. Apple TV was another solid blow to our need for a media center, but there remain three reasons we’re still holding onto the Mini.

First is the issue of media acquisition; most of the media we consume can be obtained via our iOS devices, but there are others we still obtain through other channels. While Apple’s video offerings for film and television have expanded significantly over the past couple years, others still require alternative approaches, like being able to grab content from a TiVo hard drive, ripping media from optical disc, or downloading from the internet. As Apple’s offerings continue to expand, the need for consumers to rely on these other distribution channels will lessen, and we hope that television networks and other publishers come to understand this. In most cases, consumers will opt for the easiest method of obtaining what they want, and Apple’s service is sufficiently easy for people to forego most other channels.

Second is iPhoto, which for many of us, makes up a large portion of our media library. The 64GB maximum storage size on the iPad keeps it from being able to store our entire iPhoto library, which could somewhat be alleviated with a more well-built iCloud component for iPhoto. So basically, we’re forced to wait on either an iCloud/iPhoto revision such that our whole iPhoto library is in the cloud, else wait on a larger hard drive option in the next iPad. Hopefully, the former option will be taken up by Apple in the near future.

Third is the issue of app development, and the concept of “eating your own dog food”. There are plenty of code editors available for the iPad, but no way to run custom code on the device.³ You might argue that users can still write HTML apps on the iPad, but again, this is a somewhat limited alternative. We have to think that Apple is at least toying with the idea of an iOS app that could be used to write code for actual compilation and submission to the AppStore, but if they are, no one’s hinted at it. The closest solution we’ve come up with in the meantime is to store code in the cloud (e.g. Dropbox) and use an iOS code editor to access it (e.g. Textastic). We then need VNC or similar app to access our Mac Mini, so we can manipulate the simulator.

Of these three obstacles, the first isn’t a deal-breaker; we wouldn’t be too upset if we had to limit our video consumption to what we can get through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The third issue is variable, because we’re only throwing around the idea of doing some hobbyist development at the moment, so we could very well end up either not doing it at all, or doing it in such limited increments that we could just borrow someone else’s computer for brief coding sessions. ⁴ The second issue is the real deal-breaker here, because our library is too big to fit on our iPad unless we decided to seriously limit what apps are on it too. For many people, this may not be an issue at all, but for those of us with digital photo libraries going back 15 years or so, the obstacle is unsurmountable at the present.

To be clear, these issues may all be moot for the average computer user, as such users are likely not computer savvy enough to obtain media from unconventional sources, don’t have massive photo libraries, nor do any app development. This is why we continue to recommend the iPad to friends and family who we know have comparatively low requirements.

As we plan to take ownership of our new iPad later today, we have little regrets about moving away from traditional PCs. Aforementioned obstacles aside, the experience has been quite a good one, and its enabled us to take our computer places that we would never have lugged our MacBook to. With the iterative improvements to the new iPad, we fully expect the experience to only get better after today.

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We expect that a lot of people don’t know what “PC” stands for, or at least give it any real thought. The idea of a “personal computer” came about at a time when computers were huge, expensive, and used by several people in research facilities and universities. At the time, what made a computer “personal” was that it was owned by a person instead of a company or organization. As more and more people relied on desktop computers at home, the “personal” half of the term had less and less meaning; in homes where several family members used a computer, the desktop and file structure became a mish-mash of the user’s personalities. Things changed a bit when home operation systems began to use local accounts, one for each user. But even then, the form factor of a typical computer simply doesn’t lend itself to the level of connectivity that something “personal” ought to.

Compare this to an iPod, for example. An iPod is cheap enough for most everyone to own, and its contents are a reflection of the owner, containing her tastes, styles, and interests. Even the exterior of the device can be customized by the owner, either by choosing a specific exterior color at purchase, else using cases and decals. Furthermore, the form factor of an iPod is perfect; most people can use their iPod at home, on their commute, at work, and in the gym.

While computers have become smaller, and notebooks more common, they still don’t reach the level of closeness that people have with their iPods, because they’re still very task-specific tools.¹ This is where mobile devices have stepped in to become the everywhere tool in a person’s life. While smartphones have been reasonably successful, their size makes certain tasks limited, or cumbersome. To great success, the iPad has found the middle road between what’s small enough to go most everywhere and what’s large enough to still be useful for most tasks. And the iPad form factor, a tablet, makes it ideal for tasks that most people would never have considered doing on a computer, or on a mobile device.

Stephen Hackett comments on several tasks he uses his iPad for:

I can do all of these things on my MacBook Pro, or even my Mac mini at home. The iPad, however, makes these tasks not only easier, but more enjoyable … especially on the couch, with a beer.

The success of the iPad isn’t in just in what all it can do, because contrary to what some may claim, the iPad is not “just another tool”. Rather, the iPad is successful because not only does it do a lot, but it lets you integrate the iPad into all your daily tasks, be it in the kitchen, at the office, on the couch, or even in the bathroom. The iPad is a more natural fit for how we live our lives, instead of constraining our tasks to a necessary time and place that most traditional computers require.

If anything, the iPad is a more personal computer than a PC, which is really what this “post-PC” hub-bub in the press is all about. “PC” has become a misnomer, because compared to the iPad and its emulators, PCs are not personal, they’re impersonal.² Inasmuch as what the iPad can do, it may differ little from a conventional PC, but the idea Apple is pushing with their post-PC nomenclature is that tablets are opening new doors for how computers can be used, and it’s about as drastic as the difference was between PCs and what came before.

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The iPad home button may be an iconic piece of iPad history, but iconic doesn’t mean practical. People said the scroll wheel was emblematic too, but the iPod received a makeover with touch technology as soon as Apple realized the wheel was a point of failure. Dave Caolo thinks the home button is too important, and likely doesn’t equate it with the forgotten scroll wheel. After all, the wheel only changed form, and was no more complicated to use when it went touch-sensitive.

As Bill Williams was keen to point out, the whole mess isn’t a problem if a dynamic home button appeared based on the iPad’s orientation. We propose to take the idea one step further and provide illumination to the area of the bezel that’s active. This visual cue would remove any sense of confusion a user might have over how to get back to the springboard, and instead of a “push”, perhaps a swipe in a given direction would do the trick just as easily.

Apple stands for sleekness in design, and the home button is a remnant of the old.¹ As long as Apple can maintain the intuitive feel of their hardware interfaces, there’s no reason to stick with a home button that’s prone to failure; the home button may be robust for now, but as owners of some older iPhones will tell, the mechanism doesn’t stay perfect forever.

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Two months ago, we reported on the death of our Jawbone UP. It lasted longer than other folks’ units, but ultimately succumbed to a battery issue. Jawbone customer service was prompt in getting me a new UP, and so I didn’t have too much untracked activity time.

Our second UP band had a couple hiccups since we received it. Nothing major, but the band randomly “reset” twice, requiring a sync with our iPhone to get working again. Then, about two weeks ago, the band succumbed to the same fate as our first UP. So much for Jawbone having worked out whatever issue caused the original’s death.¹

Customer service was again prompt, and we had an RMA number and shipping number a couple days after reporting the problem. We’re now on our third UP band. On the plus side, it means we have two replacement caps in case one gets lost², but we also have two dead bands that we haven’t thrown out yet.

Around the time the second band died, Jawbone released an update to their iPhone software. We didn’t notice any substantial changes, and the food tracking log remains mostly useless. Time will tell whether the third band will last longer than two months, but we’re hoping that this time, Jawbone replaced the UP with a version that doesn’t have the same issue the earlier ones did. You’d think that at this point, they’d have done enough testing to get a longer-term solution out there.

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An Apple-produced television set is still in the rumour-mill, but the concept still mystifies us. Media outlets are proposing that Apple will do with the television industry what they did with the computer, music, and cell-phone industries. But TV isn’t the same beast, because of much of what TV is is not the hardware, or even the software, but the content distribution. That is to say, what brings value to your television beyond its size and image quality is what you have connected to your TV: a DVD or Blu-ray player, a gaming console, or simply your cable tuner. All of these accessories make use of content from different distribution methods, be it optical media, digital streaming, or something else.

Apple influenced computers by re-engineering the hardware and software; they made computers simpler.¹ They didn’t invent a better internet. And they backed content distribution formats that already existed, favoring those with longer expected lifespans (first optical discs, now digital streaming) versus those that were on their way out (first floppies, now Blu-ray). People bought Macs because they were easier to learn, were more stable, and abstracted a lot of the things Average Joe hates about computers (blue screens of death, configuration issues, et al).

Apple repeated the process with the music industry by making a better mp3 player, and then pushing a distribution method that already existed (digital downloads), albeit in a pay-for-content form. People bought iPods because they had better interfaces than the competition, generally greater storage capacities, all wrapped in a robust package that interfaced nicely with Apple software.

When Apple took on the cell phone market, they took on hardware that, like PCs earlier, were built on a myriad of shaky hardware platforms, with non-intuitive software interfaces, and with limited downloadable apps available through expensive, extremely proprietary outlets. People bought iPhones because the price was right, and because the iPhone easily leveraged the market Apple built with the iPod.

With tablets, Apple further abstracted the things Average Joe hates about PCs, providing the iPhone’s intuitive UI in a larger format for better web browsing and general computer use. Arguably, they made the tablet space, which is somewhat of a first for Apple.²

But televisions aren’t tablets. While Apple may have thrown around the idea of taking on carriers directly with the release of the iPhone, they ultimately signed a deal with AT&T to use existing infrastructure. Now surely, in the television space, Apple is better positioned to take on the carriers, because Apple already has a distribution platform they’ve successfully used since the iPod was born. But unlike each area Apple tackled before, televisions aren’t inherently broken. You can argue that TVs should be easier to set up, what with channel scanning, picture calibration, input configuration, DVR setup, etc. But these are problems with accessories, particularly those utilizing legacy inputs. If Apple sold a TV that dismissed legacy devices entirely (as Apple once shirked floppies and Blu-ray), would consumers buy the device? Would enough consumers buy the device to make entering this market worthwhile?

The Apple TV of today (the iOS-running media box) is a perfect test of this market, and it’s not clear just how profitable it’s been for Apple. The Apple TV is great because it’s instant-on, and it’s not hard to see how embedding this device into a conventional TV may make sense, just as some TVs sold today already offer some internet services like Pandora, Netflix, etc. But if you can buy an Apple TV today for $100, why would anyone replace their entire television to the tune of $2000 just to have a fully-integrated solution? For such a solution to be elegant, it would likely reserve only HDMI inputs, and no matter how Apple wanted to go about it, setup would remain tedious without lots of hardware being integrated off the bat (like an audio solution).

Sure, we can envision a sleek, Apple-branded television that comes with surround-sound speakers, complete with an audio configuration wizard to optimize sound. It would indeed be an elegant solution, but at what price? People don’t replace their TVs as often as they do their computers and mobile devices. If anything, most people wait until they actually have the space for a big-screen TV, their TV dies, or a major new display technology is unveiled.³ So sure, we can envision such an object, but not outside Apple’s research lab.

For a consumer product, Apple would be better off working with TV manufacturers to create “Apple TV-ready” televisions, where a designated HDMI port would always be the default when turning a TV on, such that the first thing a user sees is the Apple TV. With some fancy integration, attached Apple TVs could control access to other input ports to access attached consoles and legacy hardware, so in effect, an Apple TV “brain” would ensure a perfect user experience. With no Apple TV attached, however, the television would simply revert back to the “generic” menus most TVs have today.

Think we’re wrong? Drop us a tweet and explain what would compel you to shell out big money to replace your existing HDTV.⁴

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We mentioned earlier that we were interested in doing a side-by-side comparison of the Jawbone UP’s sleep analysis and that done by the Sleep Cycle iPhone app. Well, user alexw at the official UP forum beat us to the punch with a sample one-day analysis. As expected, because the UP is attached to you, it’s accuracy is better than Sleep Cycle, which relies on the iPhone sitting on the corner of your bed.

Another user compared the UP to another body-mounted device, and the results were very similar. It sounds like the UP’s sleep analysis will be a much better log of sleep activity than what Sleep Cycle offers, so the UP is definitely an upgrade. The downside at the moment is that several users have noted bugs in the sleep analysis display, which at least for one night, didn’t show up at all in the detailed, landscape-based mode. Jawbone has already released an update for the UP, which is a good start, but on our end, the logged sleep from last night remains missing. Hopefully the update ensures that future logged nights display correctly.

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