Kristian Widjaja's Blog » Gadgets

The Apple Migration

Kristian — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:27:36 +0000

It all started with one innocent iPod. A couple of years ago, my wife, Yuli, gave me a nice 30 Gb iPod Video. That was my very first apple product. I used it, it was cool, and that was it. Then, we got an iPod for my son so that he could have white noise when sleeping. Last year, Microsoft provided cash back on eBay purchases, and since Yuli’s computer was near its end-of-life, we decided to get a 13″ Macbook for just about $500 (after discounts).

Earlier this year, my company started to provide iPhones as an option in addition to the Blackberry phones that it normally provides. I, of course chose an iPhone (3G S) because of all the Apps! After Yuli saw what cool things my iPhone could do, she wanted one too. Also, my home-built Windows XP PC was starting to crash very often, so I was eyeing for my new computer to be an 8-core Mac Pro. So on Black Friday, 11/27/2009, I bought Yuli an iPhone and myself a 3.0 GHz 8-core Mac Pro.

The Apple Migration has come full circle.

Blu-Ray loads a lot slower than DVD!

Kristian — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:12:47 +0000

I recently bought a Panasonic DMP-BD605 Blu-Ray player. When I tried to play a Blu-Ray movie, I found that it loads a lot slower than DVD! Some google searches reveal that slow loading is a common problem amongst Blu-Ray players. The quickest Blu-Ray player happens to be the PlayStation 3.

The following video demonstrates how long it takes to load a disc and navigate to the main menu, using a regular DVD and a Blu-Ray disc. I used a Panasonic DMP-BD605 with firmware version 1.5 and Quickstart enabled

Here are the summarized results :

Load Times (min:sec)
	Initial load	Go to Top Menu
DVD	0:31	0:06
Blu-Ray	1:10	1:03

As you can see, the Blu-Ray takes more than twice to initially load a disc versus a DVD. What’s worse, navigating to the Top menu takes over 10 times longer on a Blu-Ray disc versus a DVD. I cannot believe that people tolerate this kind of latency when they are used to the shorter times on a DVD. It gets to a point that it is way too slow for my taste and I am seriously considering to return this Blu-Ray player.

The picture quality of Blu-Ray is unmatched for sure, but I’ll be happy to wait a few more years until load times become more acceptable.

Palm Pre: iPhone Killer?

Kristian — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:33:08 +0000

This is Palm’s latest phone. Could it be an “iPhone Killer” as mentioned in the video? Even though the Palm Pre seems to have many technical feats, the iPhone has gained large momentum in its number of apps, and many happy followers.

Shazam: Identifying music on your iPhone!

Kristian — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:46:52 +0000

Have you ever listened to a song on the radio, liked it, but didn’t know what song that was, or who performed it?

The same thing happened to my friend April who shared on Facebook that she heard a song on the radio which she liked. She used Shazam on her iPhone to record a sound clip, and it was able to identify that song: “Infinity” by “Guru Josh”, a song from the 1990′s! Amazing!

I wished I had this app when I was still DJ-ing for the Stanford Ballroom Dance Club. It would have saved me some research.

If I ever get an iPhone, I’ll be sure to install this app.