All posts by Tim Anderson

apple

Apple’s space-age Campus 2 plans revealed: complete with amphitheatre

I am just back from San Jose; and on the flight back happened to be seated next to a Cupertino resident who had just received a brochure from Apple entitled Apple Campus 2, along with a letter from Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer beginning “Dear Neighbor”, describing the plans and requesting support.

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I found the document fascinating for several reasons. First, this will be a remarkable building. The building is a four-storey circle that looks like an elegant flying saucer come to land. It will include “one of the largest corporate campus solar installations in the world” and will be 100% powered by renewable energy. It will also have 300 electric vehicle charging stations. The “High performance smart building” will use, according to the document, 30% less energy than a typical office building.

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The majority of the parking will be underground and Apple will create a landscape that is 80% green space, 120 acres of it, creating “a peaceful environment for our employees”. Currently there are 4,273 trees on the site; this will increase to 6,000 trees.

The landscape design of meadows and woodland will create an ecologically rich oak savanna and forest reminiscent of the early Santa Clara Valley. Extensive landscaping including apricot, apple, plum and cherry trees will recall Cupertino’s agricultural past.

The site also includes a “world-class auditorium to host product launches and our corporate events”. For unstated reasons there is also an amphitheatre in the enclosed garden.

It sounds delightful; but Apple does note that “As with the current site, Apple Campus 2 will not be open to the public.”

Another key point: “The campus will be clean, with no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite”. The reason of course is that Apple has exported such activity to China, far out of sight of its genteel Cupertino neighbours.

Since the site, delightful though it may be, will be closed to the public, Apple’s appeal for the support of local residents is based on other things: improvements the company plans for surrounding roads, and the fact that Apple is the largest tax payer in Cupertino. The new campus will “allow Apple to remain in Cupertino,” the brochure says, with the veiled threat of departure should the plans not be granted.

Finally, I was intrigued by Apple’s solicitation of support. Here are the options on the reply-paid card:

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There is no option to object to the plans; but there is space for written comments.

Apple says that the plans will be considered by the City of Cupertino “later this year”, that it will break ground immediately approval is granted, and expects to occupy the campus in 2015.

laptops, mobile, reviews, tablets

Review: Kingston 240GB V+200 ssdNow SSD kit

Prices for SSDs (solid-state drives) are falling and capacity is rising, so much so that fitting one now looks eminently sensible if you value performance and can manage with a bit less space than a hard drive offers – though note that you should really run Windows 7, or on the Mac OSX Snow Leopard or later, as these operating systems support SSD TRIM, improving performance by telling the drive which blocks of data are no longer in use and can be safely deleted.

The primary benefit of SSD is performance, but you also get silent running and lower power consumption.

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This Kingston kit is a generous bundle, suitable for converting a laptop or desktop. It includes a USB-powered external disk caddy which assists with the transfer of your existing data as well as enabling you to continue using your old laptop drive for external storage if you wish. There are also brackets and cables so you can fit the drive into a desktop PC, and a CD containing an Acronis disk clone tool.

The recommended method for installation depends on whether you are upgrading a laptop or a desktop.  The first step is the same for both and may be the hardest: reduce the size of the data on your existing drive to less than 240GB. Next, if you are on a laptop, you remove the existing drive install the SSD, fit the existing drive to the caddy and connect it with USB, reboot using the CD, boot into Acronis and clone the existing drive to the SSD.

If you are on a desktop, your existing 3.5” drive will not fit into the caddy, so you fit the SSD to the caddy, connect, reboot into Acronis, clone the existing drive to the SSD, and then switch off and replace the existing desktop drive with the SSD using the brackets provided.

For this review I used the former approach but either should work well. On a three-year old laptop running Windows 7 64-bit I was rewarded with a Windows Experience Index for the hard drive of 7.7.

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However, this laptop only has SATA 2, whereas the drive supports SATA 3 and would work faster if this were available.

Kingston quotes 480 MB/s for sequential writes and power consumption of 0.565w idle rising to 2.065w for writes.

If you do not need the kit you can get the SSD a little cheaper on its own.

An excellent kit though, and the Acronis cloning solution is cleaner than others I have seen which require software to be installed in Windows.

 

apple, laptops

Fast service at Microsoft store in San Jose

I made a brief visit to the Valley Fair mall in San Jose yesterday and took a quick look at the Microsoft and Apple stores.

Personally I like the Microsoft stores. It is probably not the cheapest place to buy a Windows machine, but you do get the Signature install which as Microsoft notes:

Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down—removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you!

So much for the famous Windows partner ecosystem, eh! But I reckon this is worth the extra cost for most people.

Now, before looking at the following images, which were just snapped as I passed, note that:

1. It was a quiet Monday afternoon and none of the stores was busy.

2. I guess San Jose is Apple land; certainly I have not seen the Seattle store this quiet.

Nevertheless, there did seem to be a mismatch between the numbers of staff and customers. When I went in I was offered help three times and a free drink once.

The guy in yellow at the front left is protesting about some alleged Microsoft misdemeanour.

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The Apple store was not exactly heaving and there were plenty of blue shirts, but a few more customers.

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apple, gadgets, smartphones

A vending machine with a difference: this one buys your old phone

I`m visiting San Jose and looked into the Valley Fair shopping mall. I was intrigued to see an inverse vending machine, one that buys your old phone or other gadgets.

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You tap the screen to start the sale or get a valuation. Then you pop your old phone into the receptacle and the machine checks it out, using “Advanced machine vision and artificial intelligence” to work out what you have put in. You have power up your device for a second stage evaluation, presumably to check whether it actually works. Finally, you get paid in cash or credit, with an option to donate to charity.

The EcoATM machine will take anything, though some devices have zero value in which case you have only the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from recycling.

I was offered up to $104 for my 8GB Apple iPhone 4, though it was a valuation only since the machine was sadly not fully working. Of course you could do better on eBay, but instant cash and no hassle has its attractions.

OK, so what if you grab someone else’s phone, throw it into the machine, and walk away with the cash? The makers claim to have all sorts of anti-theft measures, including video of you doing the deed, though conceptually the idea does seem vulnerable to abuse.

These machines are USA only at the moment, though an international roll-out is planned.

Find out more here, or by watching the video below.

audio, reviews

A taste of the high end at a bargain price: Behringer 3031A active loudspeakers

8 Comments

I have been taking an interest in active loudspeakers after sampling AVI’s ADM 9.1 model which deliver clear, uncoloured sound in a convenient package with built-in DAC and remote volume control. though they lack bass extension and really need a sub-woofer to perform at their best.

The ADM 9.1s are good value considering that you get a complete just-add-source package; but still not exactly a casual purchase at £1250 (May 2012). What about some of those active monitors at the low end of the music studio market, can that deliver some of the active magic at a lower price?

A quick hunt led to these Behringer 3031A active monitors which offer a remarkable specification for the price – around £300 at the time of writing. Ribbon tweeter, 150w amplifier in each speaker, 50Hz to 24 KHz frequency response, what can go wrong? I could not resist getting a pair for review, especially as there are surprisingly few reports on these speakers out on the internet, considering that they have been available since 2009.

Note that I am reviewing these as hi-fi speakers even though they are designed for studio use.

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Why so few reviews? It may be because Behringer has a mixed reputation in the pro audio community. The products are popular and good value, but the company is accused of lack of originality in design and poor quality in manufacture. Since the prices undercut most competition there could be some industry in-fighting going on. Behringer undoubtedly aims at the low end of the studio and hobbyist market, and manufactures in large Chinese factories, but I doubt their quality is all that bad given that their largest reseller Thomann offers a 3-year warranty. Still, a cautionary note there.

“They’re heavy”, said the delivery man, and I unpacked the monitors to find a pair of very solid, weighty loudspeakers (15Kg each according to the spec). The cabinet is MDF though the front baffle is some kind of plastic with a metal plate into which the drivers are set. There are two slim vertical ports. No grilles and these will not win prizes for appearance, though they are not too bad. This is about the sound though; look elsewhere if you are after hi-fi as furniture.

Wiring up

The B3031As have two balanced inputs, with XLR or 1/4” jacks. Most hi-fi cables use unbalanced RCA phonos; however you can easily get RCA to jack plug cables from a music equipment store or online. Using a balanced connection is better, if your pre-amplifier offers that option, but I used an unbalanced mono 1/4” jack for each input without any issues. One interesting and cost-effective choice is the new Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus, around £350 from Richer Sounds in the UK or $600 in the USA, which has balanced outputs and includes a pre-amplifier, though I have not tried this combination.

I tried the B3031As in two configurations. The first was with a Beresford Caiman DAC, which also has a built-in pre-amplifer. The second was with a Naim 32.5 pre-amplifier. Neither of these has balanced outputs. My source is a Logitech Squeezebox Touch. Note that this also has a volume control and built-in DAC, so for the most cost-effective system you could go straight from the Touch to the speakers, though I have not tried that as yet.

The main point is that you must have some sort of pre-amplifier output with a way of adjusting the volume, since the B3031As do not really have a volume control. There is an input level trim control which in effect is the same thing, but this is only designed for setting a convenient level during setup, not for constant use.

In order to use the Caiman I have to set the input trim near its maximum, in order to get a full range of volume from the speakers. The Naim 3.5 has a more powerful output and I can set the input trim to 0dB with very satisfactory results.

Although the sound was good direct from the Caiman, I got better results from the Naim, though obviously this adds greatly to the cost. A full pre-amplifier is also more convenient since you have additional inputs available.

Controls

The back panel of the B3031A has several controls. The on-off switch is conveniently sited on the top. The inputs are slightly less conveniently on the underside, though this does mean that the cables hang vertically which is tidy.

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Then there are several additional controls:

Input Trim: Control input gain from –6dB to +6bB, as mentioned above.

Low Frequency: Cut the response from 60Hz and below between 0 and –6dB. The purpose is to integrate smoothly with a subwoofer or, if monitoring, to simulate a small speaker system.

Room Compensation: Cut the response from 300Hz and below between 0 and –6dB. The purpose is to reduce excessive bass if the speakers are sites against a wall or in a corner.

High Frequency: Adjust the response around 8kHz from +2dB to –4dB. The purpose is to tailor the high frequencies to allow for room effects.

Power mode: You can set the power to On, Auto, or Off. This one mystifies me. You do not need Off since you can more easily press the Power switch on the top. The Auto mode is meant to put the speakers into standby when not in use, but in my tests it was a disaster. The speakers would turn off during quiet passages. Admittedly that was with the rather low output from the Caiman DAC; but I suggest NOT using this option.

Mute Low and Mute High: mutes the high or low drivers, apparently “for service use”.

Frequency response

Each speaker comes with an individual calibration certificate, which is a nice touch especially at this price point.

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I presume this is done in an anechoic chamber; the frequency response in a normal room will be less even. One point interests me though. The certificate shows that the bass response does not begin to drop noticeably until 40Hz; yet the published specification is 50Hz-24Khz. That accords with my listening tests, in that the bass is well extended and unlike AVI’s ADM 9.1, these speakers work fine without a subwoofer.

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Electronics

The amplifier packs are easy to unscrew from the back panel so I took a look, though I do not recommend this as it may invalidate your warranty. Also note that amplifiers can give you an electric shock even after they have been unplugged, thanks to the charge held by capacitors.

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Note the beefy toroidal transformer.

Listening tests

So how do they sound? In a word, excellent. They display the characteristics you would expect from an active system: exceptional clarity, a somewhat lean sound due to absence of boom, neutral tone, and an honest reproduction of the source which occasionally counts against your enjoyment if it is slightly distorted (play Peaceful Easy Feeling by the Eagles. Hear the distortion? Good, you have an accurate system).

I positioned the speakers on stands well into the room and only a few feet apart. These are more suitable for hi-fi than some monitors because the ribbon tweeters have a wide dispersal, which means the sweet spot of good listening positions is larger.

When I first switched on, I thought the bass was a little light. Then I played Stravinksky’s Firebird in the great performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Doráti. The drum sounded with dramatic effect; it is obvious that these speakers have no problem with bass.

I played Roads by Portishead, a demanding track that begins with a pulsing low-frequency tone that can easily cause speakers to buzz or the sound to break up. The B3031A coped with this as well as I have heard; then Beth Gibbons’ vocals come in with startling clarity, a stunning contrast.

The B3031A’s coped with Sade’s By Your Side, on which the strong bass can easily overwhelm and distort, with ease. You can hear the silky vocals, the pumping percussion, the fingers sliding on the guitar, the ticking cymbals, the swirling organ.

Ashkenazy playing Chopin sounds dynamic and natural. There is no boominess in the lower end nor breakup in the loud passages.

Is there anything these speakers do not do well? A few observations. If you like to rock out to heavy metal, I am not sure that this type of speaker is the best, though the B3031A is better than some in this regard. They are just a bit too polite, and further, maybe a floorstander with the chest-shaking bass that only a floorstander can deliver is a better choice.

Although the sound is generally excellent, these speakers do not quite have the refinement and limpidity I have heard from active ATCs costing many times more, for example.

Be reasonable though. You can get a pair of these delivered for around £300. What else would sound as good for the money?

Conclusion

My immediate conclusion is that these are a fantastic hi-fi bargain. If you can live with the looks and the Behringer name, you are getting a real taste of the high-end for what most audio enthusiasts would regard as as a low-budget price.

Admittedly the setup is a little more complex than some, since you need a pre-amplifier of some kind, though there are now DACs around at a reasonable price which have this included.

Specifications

Inputs: Balanced XLR or 1/4” jack.

Input trim: –6dB to +6dB

Tweeter: 2” ribbon

Woofer: 8 3/4” Kevlar

Woofer amplification: 100w RMS 150w peak at 4 ohms, 0.1% THD

Tweeter amplification: 30w RMS 75w peak at 6 ohms, 0.1% THD

Crossover frequency: 3.6Khz

Frequency response: Quoted 50Hz to 24Khz, no range given.

Max spl: 113dB at 1m per pair

Power consumption: max 200w

Dimensions: 400 x 250 x 290mm

Weight: 15Kg

Buying the B3031A

If you buy a pair of these pay special attention to whether you are buying a single speaker or a pair. In the pro music market, monitors are often sold individually, which means that great price must be doubled if you are after a stereo pair. That said, the B3031A is often, but not always, sold in pairs. This usually works out better value. Check the small print carefully!

  

apple, mobile, smartphones, tablets

Hands on with Samsung’s Galaxy Note

I had a quick hands-on with Samsung’s Galaxy Note. It is a lovely gadget though I have some reservations about its appeal.

The two notable features of the Galaxy Note, which runs Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” but will upgrade to Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, are its 5.3” 1280 x 800 AMOLED screen and its stylus, which you can slide out from an integrated holder. The device is beautifully slim and light, but the large screen means that you do feel a little conspicuous holding it to your ear as a phone. Whether you mind about this is an individual thing, but I can imagine that some will be put off using it as their main mobile phone.

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Behind the gorgeous screen sits a 1.4GHz dual-core ARM CPU, as part of the Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC, and an ARM Mali-400 GPU. Video flies on this thing, and its high resolution goes a long way to make up for the small screen – small relative to a TV or full-size tablet that is. It is the perfect device for watching video on the go if you would rather not carry an 10” tablet around with you.

If you do need a larger screen, and have a network-connected Samsung B handy, you can use a feature called AllShare Play to stream the video to the TV. Typical scenarios might be showing your holiday video to mum and dad when you go round to visit, or showing your business presentation to customers on a TV in their conference room. I am sure this will become commonplace on many devices, especially as it uses standard DLNA protocols, and it is handier than having to fiddle with wired HDMI connections.

Then there is the stylus. Android is designed for touch control, so a stylus is not that useful for navigating the UI, but does come into its own for note-taking, sketching and drawing. Samsung calls the stylus the S Pen, and it is supported by several apps. There is a multimedia memo app called S-Memo, Touchnote for creating multimedia e-postcards, Zen Brush for sketching with a pressure-sensitive brush effect, and TouchRetouch for photo editing, among others.

I found it easy to take a photo, crop it, write on it, and attach it to an email. Sharing on Facebook or the like is easy too.

A great device; but I am not sure of the market, and not sure that there is much enthusiasm for styluses outside niche uses. HTC achieved disappointing sales with its Flyer tablet last year, even though this is also an excellent device to play with.

The other problem is that the Note is too small to be an excellent tablet and too large to be an excellent phone.

It is great for games though, and if you are looking for a pocketable but powerful multimedia tablet it could be just the thing.

Full specs are here.

reviews

Ubuntu 12.04: a fresh take on Linux

Canonical has released Ubuntu 12.04, a “long term support” version which will be supported for five years on both desktop and server.

I installed the new release on Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Installation was straightforward: download iso of install CD, mount in new Hyper-V VM, install, and wait while updates are downloaded.

This is the first time I have tried Unity, the desktop shell originally designed for netbooks which is now the default in Ubuntu. It is a clean, minimalist shell with a launcher on the left edge. The launcher is like the Windows 7 taskbar, in that it lets you quit as well as launch applications. The screenshot below is more or less the default, though I have added Google Chrome and locked the Terminal to the launcher.

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I found the new Ubuntu a little perplexing at first. What about applications not on the launcher?

The secret is the top left button, called Dash home. Click this, and a dashboard appears.

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At the foot of the screen are icons for Home, Applications, Files and folders, Music and video. Each one displays different shortcuts, but also operates as a search scope. In Ubuntu 12.04 search is a primary means of navigation. For example, to install the Audacity sound editor, I selected Applications and typed “Aud”. Audacity was then listed as an app available for download. There is also the Ubuntu Software Centre which is Ubuntu App Store.

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Where the search UI gets rather odd is with the new Head Up Display (HUD). Run Audacity and it appears without any menu. If you click on the top bar (Mac style) the menu bar appears. Alternatively, you can press Alt, and a search box appears that says “Type your command”. I typed “pref” and the Preferences menu items appeared in a list.

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However, this only works for applications that support it. If you run a LibreOffice app (the office suite that comes with Ubuntu 12.04) and press Alt, you get the HUD search but it will apply to the Ubuntu desktop and not the Libre Office app.

Some apps, such as Terminal, show menus both on the app window and in the top bar. All a bit messy and confusing.

Underneath it is still a variant of Debian Linux of course.

The strong points of Linux, and Ubuntu in particular, are evident in this release as you would expect, including multiple desktop workspaces, and easy discovery and install of new applications. Another key feature is Ubuntu One, cloud storage and sync with 5GB free. An additional 20GB is $29.99 a year. There is also a music streaming service for $39.99 a year, with 20GB of storage included and apps for iOS and Android. This only covers streaming of your own music files and photos, though you can purchase additional tracks from the Ubuntu One Music Store.

I have long since given up expecting that Ubuntu, or any desktop Linux, will truly unsettle Windows or Mac, even though considering the price (free), Ubuntu 12.04 is great, and with applications like LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox and Chrome, and GIMP, it easily meets everyday computing needs. Rather, it is Android, which is Linux-based, that has disrupted mobile computing, and in tablet form is beginning to encroach on laptop territory. Still, I doubt Android would have happened without desktop Linux before it.

apple, comment, mobile, smartphones, tablets

Which online storage service? SkyDrive is best value but lacks cool factor

3 Comments

This week both Microsoft and Google got their act together and released Dropbox-like applications for their online storage services, SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively.

Why has Dropbox been winning in this space? Fantastic convenience. Just save a file into the Dropbox folder on your PC or Mac, and it syncs everywhere, including iOS and Android mobiles. No official Windows Phone 7 client yet; but nothing is perfect.

Now both SkyDrive and the new Google Drive are equally convenient, though with variations in platform support. Apple iCloud is also worth a mention, since it syncs across iOS and Mac devices. So too is Box, though I doubt either Box or Dropbox enjoyed the recent launches from the big guys.

How do they compare? Here is a quick look at the pros and cons. First, pricing per month:

  Free 25GB 50GB
Apple iCloud 5GB $3.33 $8.33
Box 5GB $9.99 $19.99
Dropbox 2GB   $9.99
Google Drive 5GB $2.49 $4.99 (100GB)
Microsoft SkyDrive 7GB $0.83
(27GB)		 $2.08
(52GB)

and then platform support:

  Web Android Black
berry		 iOS Linux Mac Windows Windows
Phone
Apple iCloud ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ Limited X
Box ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Dropbox ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ X
Google Drive ✓ ✓ X ✓ X ✓ ✓ X
Microsoft SkyDrive ✓ X X ✓ X ✓ ✓ ✓

Before you say it though, this is not really about price and it is hard to compare like with like – though it is obvious that SkyDrive wins on cost. Note also that existing SkyDrive users have a free upgrade to 25GB if they move quickly.

A few quick notes on the differences between these services:

Apple iCloud is not exposed as cloud storage as such. Rather, this is an API built into iOS and the latest OS X. Well behaved applications are expected to use storage in a way that supports the iCloud service. Apple’s service takes care of synchronisation across devices. Apple’s own apps such as iWork support iCloud. The advantage is that users barely need to think about it; synchronisation just happens – too much so for some tastes, since you may end up spraying your documents all over and trusting them to iCloud without realising it. As you might expect from Apple, cross-platform support is poor.

Box is the most expensive service, though it has a corporate focus that will appeal to businesses. For example, you can set expiration dates for shared content. Enterprise plans include Active Directory and LDAP support. There are numerous additional apps which use the Box service. With Box, as with Dropbox, there is an argument that since you are using a company dedicated to cross-platform online storage, you are less vulnerable to major changes in your service caused by a change of policy by one of the giants. Then again, will these specialists survive now that the big guns are all in?

Dropbox deserves credit for showing the others how to do it, Apple iCloud aside. Excellent integration on Mac and Windows, and excellent apps on the supported mobile platforms. It has attracted huge numbers of free users though, raising questions about its business model, and its security record is not the best. One of the problems for all these services is that even 2GB of data is actually a lot, unless you get into space-devouring things like multimedia files or system backups. This means that many will never pay to upgrade.

Google Drive presents as a folder in Windows and on the Mac, but it is as much an extension of Google Apps, the online office suite, as it is a storage service. This can introduce friction. Documents in Google Apps appear there, with extensions like .gdoc and .gsheet, and if you double-click them they open in your web browser. Offline editing is not supported. Still, you do not have to use Google Apps with Google Drive. Another issue is that Google may trawl your data to personalise your advertising and so on, which is uncomfortable – though when it comes to paid-for or educational services, Google says:

Note that there is no ad-related scanning or processing in Google Apps for Education or Business with ads disabled

Google Drive can be upgraded to 16TB, which is a factor if you want huge capacity online; but by this stage you should be looking at specialist services like Amazon S3 and others.

Microsoft SkyDrive is also to some extent an adjunct to its online applications. Save an Office 2010 document in SkyDrive, and you can edit it online using Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps have frustrations, but the advantage is that the document format is the same on the web as it is on the desktop, so you can also edit it freely offline. A snag with SkyDrive is lack of an Android client, other than the browser.

Conclusions

There are many more differences between these services than I have described. Simply though, if you use a particular platform or application such as Apple, Google Apps or Microsoft Office, it makes sense to choose the service that aligns with it. If you want generic storage and do not care who provides it, SkyDrive is best value and I am surprised this has not been more widely observed in reports on the new launches.

One of Microsoft’s problems is that is perceived as an old-model company wedded to the desktop, and lacks the cool factor associated with Apple, Google and more recent arrivals like Dropbox.

audio

Wireless speakers from Dynaudio: the new Xeo

Want to declutter your hi-fi? Dynaudio has one of the tidiest designs yet with its new Xeo range. What you get is a pair of active speakers with built-in DAC and wireless transmitter. The only wires you need are mains cables to power the speakers. There is also a remote for selecting the source and controlling the volume.

Xeo 5 is a floorstander with dual woofers.

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Xeo 3 is a standmount or bookshelf model measuring just 170 x 281 x 246mm.

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Both models have a 100w power rating (50w woofer and 50w tweeter).

You attach your sources to a transmitter box that accepts analog, digital or USB connections, though there is only one SP/DIF digital input which could be a nuisance, and it is optical only. Maximum digital resolution is 25 bit / 48 kHz.

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The range of the transmitter is (roughly) up to 50 meters through obstructions, or up to 100 meters in free space.

Price is around £1180 for the Xeo 3, or £2450 for the Xeo 5, plus £210 for the transmitter.

A neat solution; but for that kind of price you will want good sound and I hope to report on that soon.

apple, retro

My tribute to Jack Tramiel, Commodore PET and the Atari ST

Jack (or Jacek) Tramiel has died at the age of 83. He was born in Poland, survived Auschwitz, and emigrated to the USA in 1947. He founded a typewriter import company called Commodore Business Machines, which transitioned into digital calculators and then a computer called the Commodore PET.

This was my first computer, which I acquired second hand.

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I had an external disk drive that was almost as large as the computer itself. There was a word processor called WordCraft that was rather good, though you could only fit a page of A4 into the 32K of RAM. A spreadsheet called VisiCalc that was excellent. And a database manager whose name I forget that was terrible.

The great thing about the PET was that you had to program it. BASIC was in ROM, and in essence when the computer started up it said to you “write some code.”

You could also get a book called The Pet Revealed which indexed every address and what it did. This was a computer you could actually understand.

Tramiel left Commodore in 1984, after a triumph with the bestselling Commodore 64. He acquired the video game company Atari from Warner Communications. In 1985 Atari released a 16-bit computer called the Atari ST, based on the Motorola 68000 CPU.

atari-st
Picture © Bill Bertram, 2006

The Atari ST was my second computer. At the time, the choice was between the Atari ST, the Commodore Amiga, the Apple Macintosh, or a PC.  The Mac was too expensive, and the PC was both expensive and looked out-of-date with its character-based user interface. The ST (or “Jackintosh”) won over the Amiga for my purposes (mainly word processing) thanks to its excellent high-resolution 640 x 400 mono monitor and low price. I was sold.

The ST proved a great choice. There were many superb applications, and ones which come to mind are Protext, Signum, Superbase, Notator, Calamus, Logistix, Degas, Neodesk; and for gaming Dungeon Master, Populous, Falcon and more. I still have it in the loft though I really should find a better home for it.

The ST was also well supported for programming. I used mainly GFA Basic and HiSoft C. There was also an innovative game creator called STOS.

Admittedly there was a touch of “held together with string and glue” about the ST which I suspect was to do with Tramiel’s personality and desire to prioritise bringing value to the mass market. That said, my 1040STE in the loft still works so I cannot complain.

I learned a lot and achieved a lot with Tramiel’s computers. Thank you Jack Tramiel.