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This week Dave and his tech panel answer more of your questions in our Miami studios via the Ask Dave Hotline. Call us … toll-free 1-800-899-INTO (4686) … with any consumer electronics question, opinion, help another listener or tell us what your favorite app is and why. You can also participate via our FREE “Into Tomorrow” App (iOS/Android/Intel AppUp). Thank you for your participation!
Tech News & Commentary
Team Discussion – Apple’s new iPad line up
The team discussed the introduction of the new full sized iPad just months after the 3rd generation had been introduced, the iPad mini, and the iPad 2 still being in the line up.
Consumer Reports
with Terry Sullivan
Halloween is just a few days away. And if you plan on shooting your own spooky videos, Consumer Reports Associate Editor Terry Sullivan shares some tips on how to capture the best quality video when there’s not much lighting.
Mike in Pembroke Pines, Florida listens via the iPhone App asked: “I have a MacBook Pro – late 2010 Edition. I wanted to put Windows 8. Wondering if it was compatible like the previous versions are and what the major differences would be.”
Bootcamp 4 doesn’t support Windows 8, so you may run into driver issues if you try to force it to install anyway. Future versions of Bootcamp will almost certainly support Windows 8, but it may not happen until a little bit after it Windows 8 is released.
If you want to run it, for now you will have to install it in a virtual environment, something like Parallels, VMWare Fusion, or VirtualBox.
That should let you use it without too many issues, but you won’t get the performance you would on a native installation, and you won’t be able to do some things like play games.
About the differences, you will lose the start menu and gain a large screen full of active tiles, it introduces File History, since you have a Mac you may be familiar with Time Machine, File History is basically that but for Windows.
You will also be able to store your files on SkyDrive and you will use the menus on top of windows and get a full Ribbon style interface instead.
The Blue Screen of Death is gone, and the Task Manager is modernized and reworked, which could be either a great way of trouble shooting problems using a more informative tool, or another complex piece of software to hang when your computer decides to stop working.
The Windows Store will allow you to buy software including productivity applications and games. Some people talk about Xbox integration, it looks like it won’t be as cool as it sounds. Instead of integrating to the console, you will just get something called Xbox for Windows on the Windows Store, and that’s where the Windows games will be.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they
have been playing with recently.
• Mark recommends: Carmaggedon, $1.99
“A number of years ago, I played a little game called Carmaggedon on my PC. The objective was simple. Either crush all your opponents cars, kill all the pedestrians in a zone, or both. The game was goofy and brutal at the same time. It’s biggest claim to fame was that the game got banned in its home country of Germany, and eventually was allowed to be sold only after they changed the color of the blood in the game to green. Apparently we were killing Vulcans. Anyway, Carmaggedon has come to iOS, supporting iPhone (including the 5), iPad (including Retina display) and iPod. I found the game to be fun. Good sound, great graphics. But I wish they would’ve let me steer by tilting my device instead of using thumb buttons to steer right and steer left. That simply doesn’t feel natural to me, since I know how to actually drive. Carmaggedon was free for its first 24 hours (I hope you noticed it and grabbed your copy then, like I did) but now it sells for $1.99. If you’re feeling bloodthirsty, this blast from the past is for you. If you’re feeling bloodthirsty and have Android, they’ll have your version out next year.”
— Mark
• Rob recommends: DJAY for iPhone, $0.99
“It transforms your iPhone or iPod touch into a full-fledged portable DJ system and integrates with your music library, giving you access to your favorite tracks and playlists. You can perform live, record mixes on-the-go, or enable Automix mode and let djay mix your favorite playlist from your music library automatically. I’ve used this to mix my Zumba® class playlist. I like to mix my songs instead of having too many breaks in between songs, gotta keep the heart rate up. The app is fairly easy to use. And it’s fun. You can slow down the beat or speed it up and makes for some interesting remixes. Download from the App Store for 99 cents.”
— Rob
Guests in this hour:
Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder of Reddit.com, Hipmunk.com & BreadPig.com
Alexis is known for several successful startup comapnies. Find out why he thinks startups can and must save America.
Larry in Newbern, Tennessee listens to the Podcast and asked: “I was wondering if there was an app or anything for the iPhone where you’re playing a game and it has a chat room in there and stopping your game and tying in gets frustrating on that little keyboard and you hit the wrong buttons a lot. I was wondering if there was an app where I could use my headset and voice to text, something like that.”
It depends on what iPhone you have. For example the iPhone 4S comes with a built-in speech-to-text option. So, if you’re using that one, you should see a little microphone on the keyboard that should allow you to dictate text to your phone.
Even if you speak the text, your game will still likely be paused while you talk, so it may not give you as good a solution as you might want.
Other than that though, you won’t find anything that will do what you need. There are text-to-speech apps for the 4S and the previous iPhones, but they require that you open the app first to dictate. They won’t integrate with games and other apps.
Unfortunately, you won’t find a good solution that does not involve using the phone’s keyboard.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Mark from Harlan, Indiana listens via the Android App and asked: “My question is about my internet DSL connection. I would love to cut my cable line and use internet tv. But my problem is the very inconsistent speed I receive. I pay for 7 meg. But rarely hit 3 meg. They replaced my modem with no real difference. I also get times with no service. Is DSL a fancy name for dial up. Thank You.”
No, DSL is actual broadband, but what kind of speeds you get depend on a lot of things that you don’t really have much control over.
The current fastest DSL demoed is something around 300mbps, but that’s being fairly close to a node, when you move a little farther away from the node your speeds start dropping, and even using the same connection, at double the distance the speeds dropped to 100mbps. Most residential DSL is considerably slower than that.
Now, the reason you’re getting 3 mbps instead of 7 mbps, may be that you’re far away from a node, but it may also just be that the phone wires around you or even in your home are very old, the quality of the wires affects your speed.
If your problem wasn’t the modem, and your ISP hasn’t offered up any other alternative, you may be out of options. You talk about wanting to cut the cable and use Internet TV, have you considered using the cable company to do that? they might be able to give you faster internet access, and you may be able to get rid of their TV service using the internet service. Remember, however, that getting rid of actual TV service and trying to use the Internet as your television does come with its own set of problems. You won’t have any live sports, or at least very little live sports, unless you pay for an ESPN subscription. And you won’t be able to watch some of the most popular network shows until a day or two after they’re aired. Some networks archive shows the same day, but if the show is hot they like to leverage that. When you break it all down, while you can easily replace premium service like movie channels and such, it is usually not worth it to replace basic TV service with streaming content only.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Facebook Participation:
We asked: “Anyone looking forward to the unveiling of the rumored iPad Mini today? Or are you tired of Apple product announcements?”
Here are some of the responses we got:
Daniel: You can never get tired of Apple product announcements. Looking forward to the revamped iTunes too!
John in New Jersey: They are sooo insecure about their product they scheduled this before Microsoft’s device release. If they were not concerned about it, then they wouldn’t have done this.
Dale: Yawn! Yes
Matt: I have no interest. They are way behind on releasing a smaller, more affordable tablet. This is them playing catch up.
Amber: Yep, I’m tired of the “big announcement”. I’m at the point of “who cares”, just put your product out there to sell. You don’t have to make a big announcement
Laura: #snooze
Denise: I have an iPad mini it is called an iPod touch LOL
Tom: Tired of announcements of coming soon this or that. Just say the date and do it and get over it.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners:
Dane-Elec: Several 8GB USB Flash Drives from Marvel’s The Avengers Collection
Magix: Copies of Music Maker 2013 – Create your own tunes! Even beginners can easily create music.
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software
Steve Nicholls: Copies of his book “Social Media in Business – Succeeding in the New Internet Revolution” – A guide to the understanding of social media’s business value.