My very first car was cheap as in it was given to me. I lived in Alabama at the time, and in those days, for some reason, the car’s value had to be listed as something, so the relative who handed the vehicle off to me gave me a sales slip for $300 in cash and “other considerations.” It was a well-worn 1957 Chevrolet, with 3-speed manual transmission and an AM radio. Forget about air conditioning, and forget about the car for that matter. After a few weeks, it just wouldn’t start. After getting an estimate from a repair shop, a real breath-stopper, I decided to buy my very first new car, a yellow 1967 Opel Kadett, imported from Germany by Buick. The decision was made out of necessity. I didn’t have much in the way of a credit rating, but the local Buick dealer was able to sell the paper to a bank.

The price was approximately $2,100. Payments were $50 a month. The sole option was an add-on AM radio, installed in a slot below the dash with readily accessible controls. The car lasted a few years, until replaced with a turquoise blue Toyota Corona. That car had a built in AM radio.

A few years passed before I upgraded to a blue 1976 Buick Skylark hatchback with white vinyl roof and — get this — white leather seats. I never could keep them clean, so I wonder why I made such a foolish decision. But it had air conditioning, an AM/FM radio, and an automatic transmission. I was in the lap of luxury.

Continue Reading…

This coming weekend, yet another movie about Steve Jobs will premiere, bearing his name as the title. Ahead of the release, it has become controversial, but you have to wonder why. It’s based on Walter Isaacson’s best-seller, and thus was officially approved by Jobs before he died. If you’ve read the book, you’d see that there are extensive interviews with him, plus interviews with friends and co-workers.

So where’s the problem?

Well, it appears that Apple some time back reached the corporate decision to disavow the book, in part because Jobs doesn’t come across as a particularly sympathetic character, to put it mildly. In agreeing to the interviews, Jobs allegedly did not work out an arrangement with Isaacson to exert any sort of editorial control, and thus had to accept the results. Or at least that’s the claim. Instead, Apple has given its corporate blessings to yet another biography, “Becoming Steve Jobs,” written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, both of whom supposedly knew jobs over the years. That book reportedly treated him in a more flattering fashion, although Apple would say that it was more balanced.

Before I go on, I do not pretend to have any deep insights into Jobs. I know what most of you know, although I did meet him twice for brief periods over the years. In both cases, I asked some casual questions, and got terse responses. It’s not that Jobs was necessarily rude, but he clearly had other priorities. His approach was to deliver the end of his brief responses as he walked away rapidly, which made it impossible to ask a follow up unless I wanted to follow him around. But he was seldom warm and fuzzy before journalists when questioned, although he could command a room with the best of them when delivering a keynote.

So now we have a movie with a pedigree when it comes to the participants. The script, from Aaron Sorkin, is adapted from the Isaacson book and focuses in several key events in the life of Jobs.

Now Sorkin is a highly-acclaimed screenwriter known for such movies as “A Few Good Men,” “The American President” and “The Social Network.” On TV, he did such programs as “The West Wing” and “The Newsroom.” Yes, he was the one who wrote those famous words, shouted by Jack Nicholson at Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth!”

So there’s little doubt that Sorkin can handle the chore. The director, Danny Boyle,” has a number of worthy credits that include “28 Days Later…” and “Slumdog Millionaire.

The cast reveals some curious casting decisions. In the role of Jobs is a German actor, Michael Fassbender, who is well known as the young Magneto in the latest “X-Men” movies, and has a variety of additional credits that include “Inglorious Basterds.”

Seth Rogen, best known as a comic actor and the star and producer of one of the worst super hero films ever, “The Green Hornet,” plays Steve Wozniak. Other players include Jeff Daniels, of “Dumb and Dumber” fame,” as John Sculley. But I would presume that decision wasn’t made to attack the character. Indeed the real Sculley has given his blessings to the film.

Regardless, this is a movie with an A-List team behind it. It may even be Oscar bait.

But Apple clearly doesn’t like it, because the lead character’s personality is adapted from Isaacson’s book. Indeed, there’s a published report that no less than Laureen Powell Jobs, Steve’s widow, went around and tried to persuade such actors as Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio from taking on the role. Certainly the image of the “Dark Knight” portraying Jobs, another dark figure, would have been interesting, and I have little doubt that Bale could pull if off.

And, although he doesn’t in the least resemble Jobs, I have no doubt that Fassbender delivered a credible performance, but I do not plan to see the film. I am more interested in Apple products than the personalities, good or bad, of the people who run the company except in passing. I bought the Isaacson book, read a chapter, and opted not to continue.

Obviously reactions to Jobs, the man, are polarized. So he may have been just a wonderful husband and father, and his family will want him remembered that way. However, Jobs also had his famous nasty side. He was clearly a temperamental character, and thus you can easily believe the nasty stories about him as well.

Apple Inc. is probably considering the perspective of history, and how Jobs will be perceived going forward, particularly as the memories of those who saw him in action fade over time. So if a book or movie emphasizes the good points over the bad, that would also allow Apple to convey the image they wish to convey of the co-founder of the company.

However, knowing that Apple executives and Jobs’ family are not in favor of “Steve Jobs,” the movie, might actually have the perverse effect. People might just want to see it in order to discover for themselves what Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive and Mrs. Jobs do not want you to see. I do not, however, expect this to be a number one blockbuster, although some biographies do well at the box office. “Lincoln,” for example, had a worldwide gross of over $275 million dollars, which meant a healthy profit based on a reported production budget of $65 million. With a budget listed at $30 million, “Steve Jobs” doesn’t have to do near as well to return a decent profit for all those involved.

As most of you have noticed if you check the ads for consumer electronics, the price for 4K sets is going down. Way down. When I did a casual check of Walmart’s site, I found some below $400. But they were for sets with relatively small displays; the cheapest was rated at 42 inches.

To be realistic, the promise of “stunning lifelike detail” is rarely realized, particularly on smaller 4K sets. Indeed, when I visit a TV department in a store, many of these 4K or Ultra HD sets are showing still pictures, not movies or sports. The main reason is that the enhanced resolution, roughly four times higher than a 1080p set, is not always visible with moving pictures.

If you watch a 65-inch 4K TV from eight feet away, you’ll approach the minimum size/distance ratio to deliver a discernible improvement. But just barely. So unless you’re accustomed to sitting up close, which may be useful for gaming, the value of 4K is essentially non-existent for smaller sets. So you’re better off paying less and getting 1080p if the only improvement is display resolution.

There is more to 4K, but not all sets offer the feature, and these are the elements that will improve picture quality noticeably even on smaller sets. That is, if they offer a wider color gamut and HDR, short for high-dynamic range. The result is brighter and more detailed pictures, such as extremely inky blacks and brilliant whites. If a set offers HDR, that’s one half of excellence. The other half? Well, source material that contains HDR content.

Here’s the rub: HDR is largely the province of more expensive gear. Cheaper 4K sets offer 4K — period! Take VIZIO, for example, one of the major manufacturers of lower-cost 4K sets. The new M-series has garnered very good reviews, excellent for prices that, for some models, are less than $1,000. But there’s no support for HDR.

The only VIZIO that supports HDR, so far as I can determine, is the high-end Reference Series, which is now available to order. There are two models. The cheapest, 65-inches, lists for $5,999.99. Ouch! The other model has a 120-inch display and it sells for — take a deep breath — $129.999.99. Are you saving your nickels yet?

Not only does a Reference Series 4K TV cost a few arms and a few legs, it supports HDR and reportedly includes a pretty decent surround sound audio system. But at that price? All right there are cheaper sets with HDR, but not the cheapest.

Into the mix comes the 2015 Apple TV, which is expected to hit the stores later this month. As you may know, the new Amazon Fire TV and the Roku 4 support 4K. But not the new Apple TV.

But neither the Fire TV nor the Roku 4 support HDR, and it may well be that streaming 4K fare won’t even be available in HDR because it will obviously consume more data and thus use a higher bit rate. Indeed, for most people, 4K streaming video is little more than a boast, not something that will offer a genuine improvement to the picture quality of your set, even if you’ve invested six figures in that VIZIO Reference Series.

Indeed, 4K is in flux, as standards for HDR and higher color gamuts stabilize. It will take time for these extras to filter down to the more affordable sets. It will also take time for content providers to get with the program.

Just as important, Apple is not always known to add technologies until they are tested and proven. If standards are in flux, that’s a huge argument to leave well enough alone for now. Don’t forget that iPhones with support for 4G and LTE arrived a year or two after the competition, when the chips were reliable and power efficient. Don’t forget how the early LTE implementations on Android gear would sap battery power quickly.

So the answer may well be that Apple wants the Ultra HD/4K situation to stabilize more before adding the feature to an Apple TV. Indeed, it may well be that the new model already contains the hardware to support those technologies, and merely needs a firmware update to turn them on.

But that’s just a guess, and not an educated one. It’s not something Apple is apt to reveal, although there have been published reports that the A8 chips are perfectly capable of supporting 4K.

So ideally, Apple will turn on that feature, and maybe even add support for more advanced HDMI technologies, in a future update. I hope that’s true, which is not the same as having any inside knowledge of the situation. But it would be unfortunate not to future proof the Apple TV so early in the game. Customers spending up to $199 for one would be very upset if, some months from now, they discover that Apple is adding 4K support. But not to existing hardware.

The arrival of new 4K streamers from Amazon and Roku puts the pressure on Apple to compete. Let’s see how it plays out. Remember that, other than developer samples, no Apple TV has shipped yet. Things could change between now and then, especially if a software update is all that’s needed.

Within 30 days after Apple Music debuted, Apple touted 11 million signups. But since they were for 90-day free trials, it meant, obviously, that had actually paid for the service. With contradictory surveys showing how many planned to actually keep their subscriptions active when it came due, the potential for success remained a huge question mark.

It didn’t help that there were loads of complaints about the messy user interface. Did Apple screw up, or were people just expecting too much? Or somewhere in between? The other day, I read an article suggesting Apple made a major mistake in designing Apple Music, which seems peculiar. After all, Apple has done well enough with iTunes, although it doesn’t always get the love.

In an interview after the first 90-day signup period elapsed, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, declined to reveal how many paid members Apple Music ended up with. He talked more about playing a long game, which implies that signups were nothing to shout about. Or maybe they are waiting to see how long it’ll take to beat Spotify, which had over 20 million paid subscribers as of June of this year.

Well, on September 29th, I had to make a decision. Some of you simply turned off the auto-renew option so your Apple Music account wouldn’t renew. I realized I hadn’t done so. Not that $9.99 is that much money, although I can think of other purposes for it.

Decisions, decisions!

Now those of you who have followed my posts about Apple Music know that it worked all right for me, more or less. It took a while for the service to get a solid handle on my preferences that include classical, country rock, jazz, pop, classic and other musical genres. But not urban or hip hop or anything related to rap. Well, except perhaps for a 1980 tune, “Rapture,” from Blondie.

It took a while for the system to realize I was no fan of Tom Jones, Barry Manilow, or Eddy Arnold for that matter, though I suppose there was something in my original settings that led to the stubborn inclusion of these and similar artists for the first few weeks.

Let me assure you that I did spend that time assiduously catching up on music for a change. In recent years, I’ve been lost in talk radio, and only switch to music stations in the car when Barbara is with me. She keeps cable news on in the background at home, but is only too happy to ditch it when she’s on the road But probably because my cable news tastes differ from hers, and it avoids an argument. But when it comes to music, we are in simpatico.

However, I have rarely used the iPhone as an audio interface for music in the car. In the past, I’d use the CD player, but gradually moved the tracks over to iTunes. Yes, there’s enough free space on my iPhone to carry a decent library, but the interface of the typical auto infotainment system isn’t terribly kind to such setups. So I seldom bother.

That takes us back to Apple Music and the decision I made on September 29th.

It turns out that I hadn’t touched any tracks from Apple Music in six weeks. Not a one. This doesn’t mean I didn’t launch iTunes, but every song I played, when I played anything, was something that I had already purchased. So why did I need to spend an extra $9.99 each month?

Why indeed!

So the decision was inevitable. I decided to go without. Now maybe I will decide I must listen to something that I do not already own and isn’t being played in rotation on a classic rock or oldies music station. At that point, I may decide to subscribe. But since I am not committed to any particular timeframe, I suppose I could cancel the following month and try it again when the mood returns.

I’ve long taken this approach with Netflix, largely because I can binge the few shows I don’t want to miss in a few days, or at most a week or two. So why pay for something year-round when I’m not using the service all that often? Perhaps I’m coming across as a cheapskate, but I don’t see the need to pay for things when they go unused, although I realize the convenience of not having to restore my membership. I suspect Netflix — and perhaps Apple — will earn huge profits stemming from the fact that most customers aren’t so picky. But if you’re on a tight budget, it hardly makes sense to pay for service when it’s not being used.

Obviously, I’m far from the typical would-be Apple Music customer. I grew up buying music, and started visiting record stores when I was an overweight teen who enjoyed spending a precious dollar or two on a new 45 from one of my favorite artists. My weight normalized at 18, and perhaps I’m just too old to change my ways, but there is something about owning music and not having to worry about whether the credit card can handle another charge, or whether a service will outlive me. Of course, at my age, I fully expect Apple will be around long after I’m gone. Even then, I’d rather own a physical object than something that lives on a drive as a digital file.