Pillow Talk

The Age

Thursday December 1, 2005

GARRY BARKER

Garry Barker discovers the many charms of a remote control.

AFTER years of waiting and hoping, I am able to announce that Apple has produced a desktop computer that I can use without getting out of bed.

I am not talking about the PowerBook. I mean a big iMac with a 20-inch screen, meaty sound and a start-up chord to tell the neighbours I have hit the jackpot - a computer that can stand at the end of the bed and communicate while one reclines between the sheets.

Being able to compute and telecommute from one's bed or, not quite so shamelessly, from the living room couch, is the result of a convergence of wireless technologies and a software innovation called Front Row.

Front Row is another step towards making computers part of everyday living. No longer need you crouch over a keyboard, centimetres from the screen. Now you can sit back and enjoy the show.

The idea is not new. Microsoft tried it three years ago with its Media Centre, but it was unreliable.

Apple's Front Row is simple, elegant and entertaining. And it also works. It opens four doors into your Mac, all on the couch potato's list of things to do while doing as little as possible.

Using Front Row you can buy and play music from iTunes, view pictures in iPhoto, play and control a DVD, and run videos and movies, including iMovies.

Control is via a dinky little six-button remote about the size and shape of an iPod shuffle. Operation is similar to using an iPod. Even storage is elegant: a magnet parks it on the iMac's side.

Start the iMac and four big icons appear in a circle on the screen - iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie and DVD. Click the remote and the icons twirl, left or right. Click again and the chosen application produces a scroll menu. Each move has a sound effect - a clapper board for the movies, a shutter noise for iPhoto. Text is super-size, for viewing from the pillow.

Front Row is the big software innovation in the new iMac. The main hardware change is the iSight web camera, now standard fit, built into the upper edge of the screen. The internal modem has gone. If you want dial-up you will have to buy an external modem. But everyone is on broadband, aren't they, and the iMac has gigabit Ethernet as standard.

External changes are few. The iMac is still one of the best home computers on the market, an all-in-one, flat-panel machine with a style unmatched by any other brand.

In this first version, Front Row is fairly basic. It does not, for example, scroll a song title as the iPod does, and you do not get thumbnails of photos.

Wireless and software such as this have greatly changed home computing. My house has an Airport Extreme 802.11b network connecting everyone to the internet and to each other wherever they are, including bed. We have a communal printer connected through an Airport Express The only problem is you have to get up to retrieve the printed page - unless you can persuade another family member to bring it in, preferably with a cup of tea.

My iMac has a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse so I can write and send an email, read newspapers online, tune into internet radio,

download a podcast, read a blog, listen to iTunes music and play a DVD - and all without moving from the sack.

Videoconferencing on broadband connections using the iSight camera is possible, although there appear to be some local glitches with iChat AV in Tiger. Modem specifications and broadband configurations appear to be critical.

But making a Skype voice call to anywhere on the planet is easy and, happily, the cable on my Logitech microphone headset is exactly bed-length.

The iMac G5 comes in 17 and 20-inch widescreen models with 1.9 and 2.1 GHz processors respectively. Each has 512MB of RAM.

The 17-inch has a 160GB hard drive and the 20-inch a 250GB. A SuperDrive, an 8x optical DVD/CD burner, is standard. Prices start at $1999.

gbarker@theage.com.au

Mac File

I doubt the music industry will be cheered by the news, but the latest survey of the music market in the US shows that iTunes Music Store is outselling high street record shops. In a poll, it came in seventh - the first time it has made the top 10, outselling Tower Records, Borders and Sam Goody, once the biggest recorded music seller in the US. The rating is also interesting in that NPD, the consumer analysts who conducted the poll, counted 12 tracks downloaded from the Music Store as equivalent to an album, and then rated that number against album sales in the bricks and mortar stores. Wal-Mart, the biggest department store in the US, came in first, followed by Best Buy and Target. Amazon.com, which sells mainly by mail order, was fourth. NPD's analyst Russ Crupnick said it was not inconceivable that iTunes would continue to gain ground on retailers. The Recording Industry Association of America says digital sales are about 4 per cent of their market. Not huge but in the first half of 2004 online sales were only 1.5 per cent of sales, making the annual increase, albeit from a small base, about 160 per cent and apparently accelerating. About 80 per cent of legal digital downloads in the US are through iTunes.

You can follow Garry's blog at blogs.theage.com.au/barkersbyte