December 27, 2004

Zoom… Enhance… Magnify

I enjoy the CSI TV shows. My wife and I regularly watch all three versions of it; Las Vegas, Miami, and New York. I think each spin-off has ended up being less interesting than the last, but one thing is really starting to bug me about all of them… The computers.

I don’t know much about forensic science other than what I see on the shows, so I don’t know how accurate the DNA analysis and fingerprinting and other things are, but the computers have gotten ridiculous lately. In an episode of CSI: NY we watched last night, the CSI people were watching a crummy surveillance video of a guy in a pawn shop. He had his head down so you couldn’t see him on camera. So what did the CSIs do? Just zoom in on the shop owner’s glasses of course! Of course it was pixelated, but no matter, just press the enhance button to get a crystal clear, high resolution image of the shop owner’s face, as well as a nice shot of the guy in the reflection of the glasses. Nevermind that they were dealing with a grainy, low resolution surveillance video, this software can create image information out of thin air!

Then we have all of the other ridiculously specialized software that I just don’t see existing. In the same episode last night, a guy was bitten on the ear by another man in a fight. So, to identify who bit the man, all they had to do was take impressions of everyone’s teeth, then fire up their “teeth - bitemark matching software” which was able to quickly scan each set of teeth and match them exactly to the bitemarks on the ear of the victim. Now how many times are you going to use a piece of software like that? Enough to warrant spending thousands or millions of dollars developing it? I think not.

Finally, we have the databases of seemingly limitless information available to CSI at any given time. Again, in an episode last night they needed to find out which companies in the New York area had two different kinds of duct tape so they could compare the two types of adhesives. No problem! We’ll just cross-reference the duct tape distributor database with the heat-retardant duct tape database to see which shops in the area carry both types. Now I’m sure the CSI have lots of information available to them, and some of it is stored in a database, but come on… Duct tape distributors? That just doesn’t seem like something that would be cataloged with any kind of precision or consistency.

I know they create these programs just to make it look more interesting than it really is, since it’s a TV show and all. But recently it seems like a crutch to their story. If you’re running out of time in an episode, just have an incredible piece of software create information out of nothing so we can arrest the guy and move on to next week’s show.

That being said, I still watch these shows every week because they are awesome. :)

February 26, 2004

Microsoft Knows Best

A client asked me to send all of their web site files to them in a zip file this morning for their files. They use Windows, I use a Mac. So I right-clicked on the file and chose to zip and compress it as a Windows-compatible archive. They should have been able to double click the .exe file and uncompress the archive, even if they didn’t have any compression software like Winzip installed and were using an older version of Windows. And I created this on my Mac and sent it to their Windows machine.

But of course in the Windows world it just can’t be that easy.

No, instead of just double clicking the file and getting back to work, Microsoft Outlook decided that because the file ended in .exe it must be some sort of evil virus, so it helpfully deleted it and wouldn’t let the client open my attachment. I had to rezip everything as a plain zip file and send it to him so that his email program would give him permission to open the file that I sent him.

Come on people… Why still use Windows? It’s crazy! Not only is it crazy that the computer tells you what you can and can’t open or do, it’s crazy that the security is so bad on the system that you need a feature like that in the first place. Macs really do Just Work. And they really do let you just work too, rather than messing about with the innards of the computer and always second-guess installing anything for fear of filling your computer with viruses, trojans, and spyware/adware.

Before some smart ass Windows geek points it out, I’m aware that it was probably a virus scanner that deleted the file from Outlook, or a setting in Outlook that could have been disabled, but that isn’t my point. The point is that I was sending the guy a legitimate file, and the computer wouldn’t open it without a manual override of some kind. Therefore wasting more of his time, and my time, in order to send a file that wouldn’t send off all kinds of alarms. Plus I don’t like Windows and this is my blog. :)

January 06, 2004

Cool Non-Apple stuff announced today

Like I’ve already mentioned Apple announced some really cool new software updates and additions today, as well as the new iPod Mini. However they weren’t the only cool things announced at MacWorld.

Elgato System announced the EyeTV 200, and the EyeHome, both of which are extraordinarily cool looking.

EyeTV 200
I’ve written about the original EyeTV before, and the EyeTV is basically the same with a few exceptions.

It now uses Firewire instead of USB, which allows for much higher quality video capture from the device to your Mac. It encodes in MPEG2 instead of MPEG1, and is powered through the Firewire cord so you don’t have to have an AC adapter plugged in anymore. It also comes with a wireless remote so you can change channels and recording settings from across the room.

This new model is $309, whereas the old USB version of the EyeTV is only $180, which includes a third-party wireless remote that I have also mentioned before.

It would be nice to see a sample of the quality difference between the two on their web site, so you could tell if it was worth the extra $120 to get the 200 model.

EyeHome
This one is almost cooler than the EyeTV itself! It’s a little box that connects to your TV on one end, and to your Mac through an ethernet cable or wireless internet on the other. With the supplied wireless remote you can watch the TV shows that EyeTV recorded, listen to any song from your iTunes library, view pictures or slideshows from your iPhoto library, listen to internet radio stations, browse news sites, watch MPEG or DivX movies from the Movies folder on your Mac, and more.

And with a Wi-Fi router in the house, you don’t even have to run wires! Just connect the box to your TV and attach a Wi-Fi to ethernet adapter, and you’re good to go! The device then communicates with the Mac to access all of your digital content right on the TV. You could watch your iMovies directly on the TV from the Mac without having to run wires directly from the Mac to the TV, and without having to burn to CD or DVD first. You could download Ahem… Legal… Ahem… movies from the internet in DivX format, put them in your Movies folder, then watch them immediately on your TV!

Pretty incredible that it can do that, especially wirelessly with Wi-Fi! The EyeHome thing is $219.00, so if you got the EyeTV 200 and the EyeHome, you’d be looking at $550 for this system. But that isn’t too much more than a TiVo and most importantly, there are no ongoing subscription fees with the EyeTV method. With TiVo you have to pay around $15 a month for the service, which could make up the small price difference quite quickly. Plus if you went with the lower quality EyeTV, you’d only be out $400, which is only $100 more than the 80hr TiVo.

Hopefully someday I’ll be able to afford this setup. Gotta pay off the Macs it connects to first though!

Many iPod Mini’s & iLife

Apple announced the rumored Mini iPods this morning, along with some nice updates to its iLife software package.

iPods
Before announcing the iPod Mini, Steve released the sales figures for the “bigger” iPods. 730,000 for the fourth quarter of last year alone, and around 2,000,000 total. Wow! The iPod has 31% of the MP3 player market, and 55% of the MP3 player revenue. Not bad for one of the most expensive players on the market. I can confidently say they are worth every penny however.

The 10gb model of the old iPods has been bumped up to 15gb for the same price of $299. The other iPods stayed in the same configuration.

iPod Mini
This is the new “mini iPod” that has been rumored for a couple of weeks all over the internet. It comes with a 4gb hard drive and is roughly the size of a half inch thick stack of business cards. That makes it noticeably smaller than the current model, and definitely the smallest 1,000 song storage device available to my knowledge. The scroll wheel was redesigned to have the buttons actually part of the wheel, due to a lack of space on the front of the smaller iPod. Without actually using one yet, I’m going to guess this is going to make my only complaint with the current iPods even worse. Not only will you have to feel out the buttons for hands free operation, but now you have to try to press the correct quadrant of a super sensitive scroll wheel. But since I’ve never seen or used one, I could easily be wrong.

They also come in colors now; silver, blue, green, gold, and pink. I personally like the plain silver one myself… I think the others are a little tacky, but I know of some people that always asked me if mine came in other colors, so I guess there is a market for it.

The price for this new mini model is $249.00, which in my opinion is a little steep, considering you can get 11gigabytes more storage for only $50 by going with the new 15gb iPod. But I also read on a Mac news site that Apple retail employees think it will be a big seller because a lot of people were intimidated by even the 10gb iPod, worrying that they would never be able to fill it up with songs, and would be wasting their money. So now they can store 1,000 songs in an even smaller device than the original iPod, and they get a choice of 5 colors to go with it. Most of my friends think the new iPod is too expensive as well, but they are all geeks like me who are only thinking about the gigabytes, rather than other features that may appeal more to less computer savvy people. So Apple may be able to move these pretty quickly anyway, despite some people’s first reactions. I still can’t help but think if they had priced it at $150 or even $200, it would be flying off the shelves.

iLife
The iLife apps were all updated today, with the exception of iTunes.

iPhoto
iPhoto gets Rendezvous picture sharing, faster browsing, support for up to 25,000 pictures, smart albums, new slideshow transitions and options, the ability to rate your favorite photos, some new organization options, and a great new preview/slideshow mode.

Rendezvous Picture sharing
This will be a very welcome new feature indeed. I have an eMac and a 12” Powerbook, and have already been running into the problem of keeping my pictures synced between the two. Sometimes I sync the camera with the Powerbook, which means I don’t have them on the eMac, and vice versa. Now I can sync to either one, and easily browse all of the photos regardless of whether they are stored on the eMac or the Powerbook. You can also easily drag and drop photos from one album to another, so syncing the libraries together will be a snap.

Faster Browsing, support for 25,000 photos
This will be nice… I’ve already noticed quite a bit of slowdown when browsing our collection of 1,500 photos on the eMac, so hopefully this will help out that problem a lot. The speed on the eMac is tolerable right now, but I certainly won’t complain about a speed boost.

Smart Albums
Smart albums look cool as well. They work like smart playlists in iTunes, allowing you to make albums by date, or by rating, etc. So for instance you could display all pictures taken from December 15 to January 2 of 2004, with a rating of 4 stars or more. This would give you a smart album of pictures taken during the holidays, and would display your favorite photos of the bunch. And when you added new pictures from that time frame, perhaps from a family member’s camera, they would automatically load themselves into that album so you can have them all grouped together automatically.

New slideshow transitions and options
With the old iPhoto the slideshow automatically did a fade between each picture. But now with the new version you have a selection of transitions like cube, mosaic flip, dissolve, and wipe. You can also load an entire playlist from iTunes to play during the slideshow, rather than having the same song repeat over and over like the old iPhoto did.

New onscreen slideshow controls
This is one of my favorite new features. Now when you view a slideshow you can choose to see onscreen controls, which allow you to rate the picture, rotate it, or delete, all while the picture is being displayed full screen. Before it was hard sometimes to see enough details in the image from the thumbnails to decide whether you wanted to keep it or not. Now you can view them full screen, and still delete them or flip them on the fly. When the slideshow is over, the changes are reflected in the pictures in your iPhoto library.

iMovie
iMovie adds new transitions and titles, bookmarks, audio scrubbing, and easier movie sharing.

New transitions/titles
Going from memory, there are some new title effects like spin, which spins a the word in from the center of the screen, a picture cutout mode, which shows a black background with the words filled with a picture, and a movie cutout mode which does the same thing only with a movie clip. There is also a Star Wars style title effect…

Bookmarks
This along with the new waveform view for audio tracks should allow syncing transitions and video clips to music changes a lot easier. For instance make a bookmark right where a symbol crash is, then put your video transition at that bookmark to sync them perfectly. At least that’s the way I understand the feature, without actually using it. Audio scrubbing also allows you to sync things easier, as you can “fast forward” through the music and still hear it, so you can find quiet spots, etc.

Better Sharing
You can now select a single clip or several clips from iMovie and export them to the web, email, a bluetooth phone or PDA, or just as a Quicktime file to the desktop. Very handy.

Direct Trimming
Trim out part of a video just by clicking and dragging to shorten the clip. If you decide you wanted the long version later, just click and drag it back out, and it will still be there, iMovie doesn’t destroy the editing video clip until you empty the iMovie trashcan.

iDVD
I haven’t used this one much, as I want to get a good full DVD ready before I burn one. And now with the new iDVD, they can hold up to 2 hours of video, including the menus and everything.

New Themes
I think there are 20 new themes included in the new version, and the ones Steve demoed looked very nice and professional, just like the old ones.

Menu Transitions
Now you can put transitions between menus, like cube, wipe, and page curl.

New Slideshows
The slideshows now have customizable transitions, just like iPhoto, and you can also add a playlist to them like in iPhoto, so you don’t have the same song looping over and over.

DVD Map
You can now see a tree outline of your menus, so you can see how people will progress through all of the menus in the DVD and how they all interconnect.

GarageBand
This is the new iLife app that was announced today, and it looks absolutely incredible.

• 100 Software instruments
• 100 Audio Effects Presets
• 2,000 pre-recorded audio loops
• 15 Digital guitar amps
• 64 track digital mixing
• More more more…

Software Instruments
Using the onscreen piano keyboard in GarageBand, or a USB/MIDI keyboard sitting on your desk, you can play over 100 different instruments in real time on the Mac. Record them, mix them, etc. Steve had Jon Mayer help demo this feature live onstage and I thought it was quite impressive. Using only one little keyboard he played a bass, piano, organ, guitar, drums, percussion, etc and mixed them all into a quick song. Apple is offering a beginners keyboard for $50 to make this part more fun than clicking on screen to play the notes. Another cool thing is that once you lay down the rhythm and notes, you can change the instruments on the fly. So you could play a piano track, then change it to an organ sound in the middle of the song.

Pre-recorded Loops
Choose a drumbeat, a bassline, a guitar riff, a piano track, some percussion, etc. then drag them all onto the screen and arrange them how you like. They all sync up automatically to the same tempo on the fly, allowing anyone to create simple songs and background music with ease. Jon liked the fact that you can pick out a bassline and drumbeat, then play your guitar live through your Mac, along with the beat you had already started playing. This is basically a more simple version of Apple’s Soundtrack, but is still incredibly cool.

Record
You can plug in a guitar, bass, keyboard, or mic into your Mac and record in real time along with existing tracks already in GarageBand. For instance if you play guitar you could lay down a drumbeat, bass and piano them play over that sound in real time and hear yourself on the Mac or through headphones, etc. You can record it and mix it down after that.

Guitar amps
Plug a guitar into your mac with a $20 adapter, and you can play through 15 different digital amps in real time. They sounded like real guitar amps to me, but some guitar purists may not like them. For most people they will be great though, and it adds the effects in real time and records them directly to the Mac.

Mixing
All of the features above work perfectly together. You can play the piano parts on your keyboard, play the drum beat and bassline with pre-recorded loops, and then lay down the guitar and audio tracks on top of all of that in real time, and record it all.

Export
1 click exports your song to iTunes, where you can listen to it, add it to an iMovie project, sync it to your iPod, burn it to a CD, play it as background music in a slideshow, etc.

I of course haven’t used this app yet, but if it is even half as cool as it looked in the demo Steve gave on stage, this app will be a ton of fun to play with.

All of the above programs are part of iLife, which Apple is releasing on January 16th for $49, but it will be included with every new Mac for free. I’ll be pre-ordering my copy tonight!

It’s really mind blowing at how all of this stuff is integrated on the Mac. I mean out of the box you can record your own songs, burn them to CD’s with a few clicks, put them into an iMovie project along with digital still pictures, burn it all to a DVD, upload it all to your web site, and the list goes on and on. There is just so much fun stuff to create on the Mac…

I think John Gruber said it best in his post about today’s announcements:

“Apple is going after … People who want to be producers, not just consumers.”

Be sure to read the rest of his post as well. He always says exactly what I’m thinking in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.

There were a few more announcements today like new Xserves, Final Cut Express 2, MS Office 2004, etc. but they weren’t that interesting so I’ll just ignore them.

Overall I’m really really excited about getting the new iLife suite, and the new iPods are pretty cool too, I just won’t be trading in my 10gb model to get one anytime soon. Apple announcement days are the best! Much more exciting than Christmas.

January 05, 2004

iSync

I’ve used iSync only a little bit since I got my Macs, mostly just to sync the Address Book and Bookmarks between the two machines. But tonight I really saw some of its power…

I have trouble remembering when my wife is going to be working, since she has several part-time jobs and a very confusing schedule. So today she told me her schedule for the week over the phone and I entered them into iCal. Just double click when the event starts, enter the details, then drag down the pretty little block until the event ended. Couldn’t have been easier. I actually learned how to use the program while I was talking to her on the phone. The basics of the program of course, I’m sure there is a lot more to it. But anyway… I plugged in my iPod to the eMac to charge it up for the trip to work tomorrow, and thought it would be cool to have all that info I entered in iCal, on the iPod so I’d have it with me everywhere. So I first ran iSync on the Powerbook where I entered the dates, which synced my calendar to my .Mac account on Apple’s servers. It also uploaded my bookmarks, address book, and files while it was at it.

Next I ran iSync on the eMac, where the iPod was plugged in. It downloaded all of the new info from the .Mac account, added it to iCal, or Address Book, or Safari, depending on the info. Then it added all the relevant info to the iPod, which was my Contacts, and my new calendar info. Then I picked up the iPod a second later and was able to browse my wife’s schedule for the coming week right in the palm of my hand. Pretty amazing stuff! The info went from the Powerbook, through the internet to the eMac, then through a wire to the iPod. All completely seamlessly. “It just worked” you might say. Making the hardware and software for a computer really does have its advantages… Way to go Apple!

December 23, 2003

Macs Love RAM

I just added a 512mb chip of RAM to my Powerbook, for a total of 768mb now. Wow does it ever make a difference! Everything is faster from loading web pages to running a Photoshop filter. I had Safari, Mail, iChat, NetNewsWire, Photoshop, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and Preview all open, and could switch between them instantaneously with no lag at all, even if a filter was rendering or something in Photoshop. I also played a simple little game that I have on here with all of that going on and there was no lag in the game at all. Before it would occasionally lag when I just Safari, Mail, and iTunes open, which isn’t much of a load. If you have a Mac, definitely get as much RAM as you can, at least 512mb, it makes a huge difference!

December 22, 2003

Meet Ronin

Things are still busy at work but I thought I’d post and notify everyone that my new 12” Powerbook finally arrived last week. I named it Ronin, because it’s small and agile like a ninja! And I couldn’t find any ninja names that I could pronounce so I went with Ronin which means a Samurai with no Master.

Look at some pictures of me opening it

As you can see I was pretty excited about it…

So far it has been perfect. The battery life is great (over 3 hours with normal use I think, though I haven’t put a stopwatch on it), and the screen has no dead pixels or the dreaded white spots (though that was never a problem on the 12” anyway). It seems very speedy overall, a little faster than my 1ghz eMac, since the eMac has more programs and files on it at the moment. I’ve used Photoshop on it however and it is quite speedy, though it slows down considerably when other programs are open, since it only has 256mb of RAM. But tomorrow another 512mb chip comes from UPS, so then it should be flying along without any problems at all.

The size is just perfect. I knew the 17” would be too big, but I liked the size of the 15” when I saw it in the store. However now that I have the 12” at home and on my lap, I really think it is the perfect size. It’s small and very lightweight, and fits comfortably on your lap. The relatively small screen size is not a problem, especially thanks to Expose’. I do keep a lot of programs full screen that I would normally have in a smaller window on my eMac, but like I said, Expose’ makes switching between them a breeze. I can also plug in a second monitor when at my desk at home or work, for when I am doing some serious Photoshop work or have Photoshop and a text editor open to work on a site.

I really like the keyboard as well, it’s solid but “soft” at the same time. I love typing on laptop keyboards since the keys are closer together and you don’t have to push them as far. It’s almost like typing on a flat surface but you can still tell where the keys are.

The wireless reception seems terrific. I just received my new Netgear 802.11G wireless router this morning and hooked it up when I got home. All I did was plug it into the power and the cable modem, then woke up the Powerbook and it was already online. I get 4 bars (full strength) all over my house, except on the couch in the living room where I get three bars. I walked down the street about 150 ft. and finally lost the connection. I could easily share my internet with the neighbors, assuming their computers picked up the signal as well. But I won’t do that, because my neighbors suck. The old lady anyway. Her and her freakin’ terriers don’t get to share my internet! So anyway I’m typing this on my kitchen counter right now. Wow! I really love wireless!

I haven’t had a chance to try out the DVD burner yet, since I don’t have any blank DVD’s. I’ll try to find some cheap somewhere though so I can start burning some of our videos to DVD. My wife Jenee’ has really been enjoying iMovie, and created a quite good and exciting video tonight of some footage we took at her parent’s house this weekend of her riding horses. I’m hoping to have enough good footage so that next year we can send out Christmas DVD’s to the family of our activities during the past year. Should be a fun project!

The left side wrist rest gets warm when you do some processor intensive tasks like playing a game or working in a graphics application, but it isn’t enough to really notice. It’s warm, but nicely so. The fans also rarely come on, and when they do, I have to put my ear right up to the keyboard to hear them. It’s a virtually silent machine. Very stealthy, just like a ninja!

This is definitely the nicest computer I’ve ever owned. I highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in a laptop.

December 14, 2003

Saddam and his Powerbook

So yeah they found Saddam and everything, but this is by far the funniest thing I’ve read all day…

From AP:

Hussein told capturing forces that his only regret was that due to the timing of his apprehension, he would never have the opportunity to play Halo on his 17” Powerbook. Soldiers were able to capture Hussein by following a power cord running to Hussein’s laptop from a neighboring structure. Hussein told U.S. forces, “Although I was stuck in a whole, couldn’t bathe, and have pooped on myself on numerous occasions while down here, the Powerbook’s backlit keys made computing easy.”

That gave me a good long chuckle this morning, picturing the bearded, filthy Saddam in his hole with his Powerbook on his lap… hahahahaha.

(Quote taken from this thread on MacDailyNews. It’s the second one down, before it turned into a big flame war.)

December 09, 2003

iTunes Music Store

I really like the iTunes music store, and have purchased one album and one song from it so far. But one thing that really annoys me about it is when the albums are incomplete or only for sale by song. What is the reasoning behind that? Why would the artist or label say, “You can sell all of our songs, except this one”. I guess there are a lot of licensing deals to work through with different companies, but still it seems silly to me for there to be just one or two songs from an album that didn’t get put on the store. The only reason I could think of is perhaps one of the songs is a coversong, and the owner of the copyright or whatever doesn’t have a deal with Apple for the song to be on there… But I really have no idea how that works at all.

I just know it is frustrating to want to actually buy an album for the first time in 3 years, and then be able to get all but one song of it. Granted the iTMS is still great and encouraged me to make my first album purchase in forever, but I’d still like to see some more complete albums on there.

Also, where are the Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead? Two of my favorite artists that are absent from the store, though there is a Billy Corgan Celebrity Playlist, so I assume it is his label that is holding the songs back, and not him. But again, I have no idea how it all works.

The album I did purchase from the store was the new self-titled POD album. The process was extremely easy, perhaps too easy. It’s a little scary to press a button and know that $10 just disappeared from your bank account. But after that the downloads start immediately and the tracks are downloaded one by one. Then they were automatically added to my iTunes library, sorted into the “purchased music” playlist, and then easily synced with my iPod. Perfect!

The Second Precious

Wonder of wonders, I ordered my second Mac yesterday, less than a month after I got my first one! When it rains it pours I think they say. After two years of wanting them quite badly I finally get not one but two of them! This one is being paid for by work, and then I will apply my overtime hours to pay it off. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

So anyway, here is what I got:

12” PowerBook with SuperDrive

• 1ghz G4 Processor
• 256mb Ram (we will purchase another 512mb from someone else. Apple RAM is way overpriced)
• Upgraded to 80gb Hard Drive
• Airport Extreme added on
• Bluetooth
• Superdrive (DVD Burner)
• And of course all of the great pro-apps and software that comes with it.

I also got a few extras:

• Logitech MX500 mouse (I love my MX700, but didn’t want to lug around the base station and the mouse, so I figured just a cord would be easier, but other than that it is identical)
• Epson C84 Printer (free with rebate, hooray!)
• Lacie 160gb external Firewire hard drive

And later this week we will be purchasing a Minolta DiMage Z1 camera, 256 mb Memory card, the extra RAM for the PowerBook, and a Wireless Router for home so I can post to my blog from the toilet if I want to. Or the couch, if you prefer a not-so-graphic scenario. :)

So this has turned out to be a very nice Christmas as far as material possessions goes… But I’m not complaining! We didn’t have much of a Christmas last year because of money problems, so it’s nice to have some nice things under the imaginary tree this year, even if we will be paying it all off until next summer.

And I made sure to pay the extra $20 to get the 2-3 day shipping this time, so I don’t have a nervous breakdown waiting for the FedEx man to get here.

But yeah, no Christmas tree for us, with a huge male doberman in the house most of the day we don’t want him to get the wrong idea and start marking his territory on the new tree that just sprouted out of the floor in his room.

December 02, 2003

iPod’s only weakness

I love my iPod as much as the other million plus people that own them, but one thing has been bugging me lately…

Operating the iPod without looking at it is nearly impossible. I listen to my iPod the most in my car, hooked up with a cord to the audio input on my car CD player. I normally sit the iPod in the passenger’s seat, because it slides off of my lap, and I don’t have a holder for it. But there are quite a few problems with this arrangement…

When I’m driving I of course can’t be looking over at the passenger’s seat all the time to navigate the menus and pick albums or songs or artists. So I have to instead blindly reach for the iPod to change a song. But because it is sitting loosely on the seat, many times when I am just trying to grab the iPod, I hit one of the buttons and it will either pause the song, or skip to the next/previous one. This normally wouldn’t be a problem on most electronic devices since you can “feel” the button before you actually press on it, but because the iPods buttons are so sensitive, just lightly brushing one of the touch-sensitive pads as you pick it up will change one of the settings. Yes, of course I am aware of the hold switch, which deactivates the buttons to avoid this problem. But the hold switch is not that easy to turn on and off with one hand, and I frequently just want to skip a track, and flipping the hold switch on and off every time I do that seems like too many steps for something so simple. So instead I have adopted the technique of dragging my hand from the far side of my seat to the near side, until my fingers touch the iPod. Then I slide my finger down the right side of the device until it hits the next track button. Seems kind of silly to have to do that doesn’t it?

I’ve also had trouble with “double-clicking” the iPod buttons accidentally. Again, this is only a problem in the car. I generally don’t pick up the iPod to press the buttons, instead I just leave it sitting on the seat and press the buttons from the top while it’s sitting there. But if I hit a bump at that moment and my arm briefly shakes, I press the button twice and end up skipping a song. Then if I wanted to hear that song, I have to run my finger down the left side of the iPod until it hits the previous track button. Again with most devices this wouldn’t be a problem because the buttons have some resistance and movement, so it would be much more difficult to accidentally press a button twice.

The last problem is the jog-wheel on the front of the iPod that is used to navigate all of the menus, control the volume, etc. Because it doesn’t actually move, it is impossible to “feel” where you are in the menu system. For instance with most devices I’m pretty good at memorizing complex interfaces and operations so that I can operate it without looking. Like maybe a watch that I’ve owned for a few months, I can probably skip through the different modes and set the stopwatch automatically without looking. I memorize how many clicks it takes to get to that mode, then what button to press to start/stop the stopwatch, etc.

But on the iPod there is no way to feel when you have changed to the next menu item. I’m not sure if the original iPod wheel clicked, or if it just smoothly turned and still relied on the audible click to let you know when a menu item changed, but in my opinion it would be best if the wheel itself “clicked” into position, rather than just having an audible sound. If this was the case, it would be easy to memorize the steps to change the album or artist.

• Press menu a couple of times to return to the root menu
• Scroll counter clockwise for a turn or two to make sure you are at the top of the iPod’s menu tree (normally Artists)
• Press the enter button to enter the Artists listing
• Scroll clockwise three clicks to select Blink-182
• Press enter twice to start playing the first song

Similar steps would let you easily change artists or playlists or albums, after you had memorized where your favorites were. But since the jog-wheel on the new iPods doesn’t move at all, you really have no way of knowing when you have clicked down to the next menu item. Sure there is a soft click sound, but when you are already playing loud music in the car, you can’t hear it anyway.

Now of course perhaps this could all be avoided if I made a “on the go” playlist of the albums I wanted to listen to before I left the house, and just let that play, but I would never remember to do that and by the time I get halfway to work, I might not want to listen to the same albums anymore. So I have instead started putting the iPod on shuffle, playing through all 1,300 songs, and just hitting skip until I find a song I want to listen to.

These are minor annoyances, and there are probably some relatively good ways to work around them like getting a carholder for the iPod, or buying one of the remotes so I can just use that to control the iPod instead of the interface on the device itself, but I will likely never spend the money on either of those things. And I understand the reason for making the wheel solid and unmovable, after some complaints of getting dust or debris in the bearings of the original iPod and causing it to lock up and not turn anymore, but it seems like there must be a way to make it easier to use without having to direct all of your attention and concentration at it.

November 22, 2003

TI 99 / 4A - My First Computer

I ran across a picture of this system on a forum somewhere this morning, and recognized it as my first ever computer! I could never remember what it was that I used to play with when I was a kid, other than it was a Texas Instruments machine of some kind. So it was really cool to run across this and remember the old games I used to play on it. According to Old-Computers.com it had a 3.3mhz processor, and 256 bytes of RAM. Wow! That’s an old computer. It could display 16 colors and had 16kb of Video Memory.

There are apparently emulators for it, which run on just about every modern operating system. Here are some screenshots of some of the games I used to play on it:

Parsec

From Michael Fox’s Homepage

“The player battles alien ships on a planet in outer space. The aliens attack in waves of different battle ships. The player guides the ship through the attacks and must successfully guide the vessel through refueling tunnels. Up to 7 different types of alien ships attack at different levels. The player must also guide the ship through an asteroid belt to advance to the next level. The game features speed/sensitivity control, pause capability, and female speech to tell you the current conditions. Excellent hit-map graphics, sound effects and never-ending action. Peripheral requirements: Joysticks are optional. Speech Synthesizer is optional.”

I had the speech synthesizer add-on, though I don’t really remember this game talking… But anyway this is a popular shooter type game and I played it quite a bit.

Alpiner

“This one or two player game is a “climbing” game of skill and challenge. There are a total of six mountains that one can climb; Hood, Matterhorn, Kenya, McKinley, Garmo and Everest. Climbers must face different animal hazards including lions, bears and skunks. They must also face natural hazards such as rockfalls, forest fires, and avalanches. And watch out for the Abonimable Snowman. This program features excellent color graphics, sound and color. Peripheral requirements: Joysticks are optional.”

I remember this one too! Again it’s hard to remember every detail, since I was like 4 or 5 when I played with it I think. But I do remember it looking like that, and I seem to remember the Abominable Snowman would kill me everytime and I couldn’t get passed him.

Carwars

“If you enjoy the excitement of high-speed racing, combined with the challenge of out-maneuvering a canny opponent, then Car Wars is your kind of game. Pit your speed and skill against the computer’s as you try to get your car around the track without getting “crashed” off the field. Various levels of difficulty allow you to add even more excitement to the action of this one-player game. The TI Wired Remote Controllers are optional.”

This one was kind of like Pac-Man with race cars in a way, but I remember playing it a lot and it seemed pretty fun. :)

MunchMobile

I remember this one the most of any games on that system… You drove down the road in this car, and extended our arm out to grab food from the side of the road. You had to time it just right though, or your arm would be extended and hit a garbage can or something and damage you. And when you got to the end of the level you parked at your house and it added up your score. It was a fun one.

Just thought I’d share my first computer experience… And post it here for my own info and nostalgia too.

November 19, 2003

Paradise Found

My “Precious” (the name for my new eMac) arrived on Monday, after days of waiting and hundreds of visits to fedex.com to see exactly where it was every step of the way. So that’s why I haven’t posted for a few days, been too busy exploring the new system and getting everything setup! Not that it was difficult to setup or anything, my wife had already cut the tape on the box, so that I could unpack it as soon as I got home, so I just pulled it out of the box and plugged everything up, then fired it up for the very first time.

The setup went flawlessly, asking me to set my time zone, passwords, internet settings, register, etc. My cable modem was recognized and setup immediately, even before the computer had completely booted to the desktop, because I registered online during the setup process.

After all of that I saw my new desktop for the very first time, hooray! :)

Since I had setup my email account during the setup process, I fired up Mail and it loaded all of my emails and folders (I use IMAP) immediately.

I then checked out Safari, setup my AIM account to work with iChat, setup a few people in the Address Book, etc. I had all of our digital pictures on a CD from the old PC, so I put that in and dragged the folders to iPhoto, which imported each one as its own album. They are all there and look great. Total compatibility!

I had all my MP3’s on the iPod already, and didn’t want to have to network the PC or burn CD’s to get them onto the Mac, so I used xPod to transfer all of the songs into my Music folder. After a less than ten minute wait, all 1,200 of them had been transferred to my new machine. Then a quick Command+O imported them all into my iTunes library. After that I used iSync to sync my iPod, which added my contacts and calendar to the iPod, as well as the playlists from iTunes.

I also setup my new .Mac account, downloaded Backup 2.0 and took advantage of the other Member Freebies that are currently being offered, then setup my iDisk and all of that stuff. It was all seamless, fast and easy.

After all of that I started downloading programs, Launchbar, Konfabulator, MSN Messenger (I know, I know, but all my friends use that one), ImageWell, Synergy, and more.

I also setup my MX700 mouse, which is great, and the PowerMate, which really does make scrolling fun!

Tonight is the first night I really feel at home on the Mac. The first couple of nights were good, and I was excited, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the system yet. Today however, the third night of using it, I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable and am enjoying the system even more. I’ve burned CD’s, tried the audio chat on iChat (awesome), etc. My jaw has literally dropped several times tonight, finding new features that just blow my mind, having come from the Windows world.

Unfortunately I still have to use Windows all day at work, which is just heart breaking. It truly is depressing to have to leave the Mac World every day to go back to “Hell”. :) But hopefully that will change soon, as I am still planning on getting a PowerBook at work as soon as my boss is ready.

Speaking of MacWorld, Apple sent me a free 12 month subscription to the MacWorld magazine today. I opted for the electronic version, which you download, then read on a program called Zinio. The delivery is immediate, and it’s easy to store archives of the magazine on your hard drive, instead of having stacks of wrinkled magazines all over.

I just downloaded Kung-Log tonight, which is a program that interfaces with MovableType, letting you edit posts on your computer without having to do it through the web interface. The best part about this is that you can have realtime spellchecking, as opposed to, well, no spellchecking at all. So anyway, I’m using that to write this post and it is quite nice.

So that is what has been going on with me lately. I plan on posting thorough reviews of all my new stuff over the coming weeks, so expect a lot of nerdy Mac posts for a while. Well, forever probably, because I am never going back to Windows, and I’m always going to be excited about the Mac and be talking/writing about it all the time! :)

November 11, 2003

Today is the Day!

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for for over a year, at the least. The day I order my first Apple computer!

I’ve tried to get a loan to get one before, but my credit is bad at the moment, so today I tried with my wife’s info, and was approved, hooray! So I ordered the 1ghz eMac with Combo drive, and upgraded the RAM to 256mb and the hard drive to 80gb. I also signed up for a .Mac account. All of that was under $1000, including taxes and shipping.

The ordering process was extremely easy, in fact, it was almost too easy to spend $1000 in a total of about 3 minutes… I was originally going to place my order online, but due to an error on the site during my approval of the loan, I called in the order instead. My info was already in the computer from my loan application, so I just told them what computer I wanted and what options I wanted upgraded, got my total, and I was done! The customer service rep was helpful and didn’t try to sell me any upgrades other than just mentioning that they existed. I never felt pressured to buy more stuff at all.

But I did anyway.

After I got home and looked through the Apple Store for a few minutes, I decided to add on a few items, but found that I couldn’t add it on to my existing order, so I just made a new one.

Here are a few more items I picked up:

Klipsch ProMedia GMX A-2.1 Speakers.

I read a few reviews on Amazon.com and other consumer review sites, and all of the reviews seemed to be overwhelmingly positive, with most giving an overall score of 5/5 stars. And of course I am aware of the Klipsch brand name, as they are mentioned on the top of virtually every computer speaker list you will ever find. Yes, they are a little pricey, but I needed some good quality speakers, the built-in eMac speakers aren’t anything to write home about…

Logitech MX700 Wireless Mouse.

I’ve had a wireless mouse before, but stopped using it because the batteries would go dead every 2 weeks, and the resolution seemed very low, causing the cursor to be really jumpy and inaccurate. I’ve read good things about this particular wireless mouse though, many people saying it is just as fast and quick as a normal wired mouse. Plus it has a charging cradle, rather than AA batteries, so I won’t have to worry about buying batteries or recharging them all the time. And from what I hear I’ll also need to use USB Overdrive for the drivers, since Logitech’s own drivers leave something to be desired.

Griffin PowerMate

I just couldn’t resist picking up this little gizmo. I’ve talked about it before, and had it on my list of things to buy when I get my Mac, so it’ll be fun to use it finally and see how it really works. I look forward to messing with it and trying to come up with useful ways to use it. But even if it was just a big volume knob, it would still be pretty cool. :)

Well that is what has been going on with me lately. I should receive my eMac on Monday or Tuesday, according to Apple, but I’m really hoping it somehow magically makes it here before the weekend. Expect some lengthy reviews once I receive everything. :)

Oh yeah, the eMac is shipping with Panther pre-installed, so I guess that means all of the new macs are shipping with it now, as I’ve read that the Powerbooks are shipping with it pre-installed as well. It’ll be nice to not have to upgrade the OS as soon as I fire up the computer…

October 30, 2003

Predicament

So, the time to decide exactly what Powerbook to buy is getting closer. My boss’ house is refinanced, so I’m guessing we will actually order something in the next few weeks, end of November at the latest (I’m hoping!). He has been known to take a while to do things sometimes though, so hopefully this won’t be one of them.

I was originally planning to go with the top model 15” PB, since it had a much roomier screen than the 12”, Firewire 800, lighted keyboard, faster processor, etc. However after hearing a lot about their bad screens, bad hinges, display problems, etc. I am pretty worried about getting one. MacWorld recently posted a review of it and said 3 out of 6 of the ones they received had to be sent back because they were defective. That does not reassure me at all. I’ve always heard Apple’s first model of something new is usually troublesome, but I had no idea it was that bad. The question is, are they already resolving the problem, or will it not be fixed until the RevB Powerbook? I can’t wait until they revise the model, assuming it will be another couple of months. I’ll die if I have to wait that long. :)

So now I basically have a couple of options… I could see if my boss would pay for the 17”, which matches the 15” as far as features and speed goes, but is enormous and expensive..

Or I could take my chances with the 15” and hope I get a good one. Which from what I’ve been reading, doesn’t sound like a very good chance. Plus the Macworld review said it is only a 13% to 20% speed increase over the 12”, which doesn’t seem like that much.

Or I could get the 12” with Superdrive, add airport extreme, 60 or 80gb hard drive, etc. Then buy a 512 or 1gb RAM chip to max out the ram. This may be the best deal because it would still be much cheaper than the 15”, but would have 1.5 times more ram. And I doubt I will be using firewire 800 or the PC Card slot anytime soon if I did get the 15”, it would just be nice to have if I needed it.

And though the 12” screen is tiny, when using my friend Ryan’s this weekend, it didn’t bother me until I thought about trying to use Photoshop or a coding applicaiton on it. And the only time I will be doing that is at home or work, where I can hook it up to a second monitor.

Plus, I’d still probably have enough money left over to get one of these, assuming my boss would pay for it even though it isn’t really “work related”. :)

So, I think I have talked myself into the 12”, unless anyone else has any experienced advice on the subject.

Basically this is going to be my first Mac, and my primary machine both at home (web design, email/web/chat, occasional game) and work (Corel Draw, Photoshop, email/web/chat, bookkeeping, postage printing, etc.). Will the 12” be sufficient for me?

October 22, 2003

G4 iBooks

WOW! Apple is really on a roll all of the sudden! I don’t think anyone saw this coming, I don’t even know if any of the rumor sites caught it…

Apple just announced all new G4 iBooks, now completely abandoning their older G3 processor.

You can now get an 800mhz G4 iBook with a 12” screen for only $1099.00! Wow! That is incredible.

There is a 933mhz model with 14” display for $1299.00, and a 1ghz with a 14” for $1499.00. All models have a slot-loading combo drive, 256mb of RAM, and an ATI Radeon Mobility 9200 video card. They also now support Airport Extreme, and Bluetooth.

If you go to the education store there is a special iBook setup with only a CD-Rom drive for $949.00 and $100 discounts on the other models.

Wow… Apple laptops just got a whole lot more competitive as far as prices go.

www.apple.com

iTunes Music Store

Just about everyone on the internet has already covered the new iTunes Music Store for Windows topic, but I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to write about it, so I’m going to now even if it is a week and a half late. :)

To sum up all of my feelings in a word, I’ll have to go with “HOOOORAAAAAYYYYY!!!”.

On the day of the announcement I had Opera open with a tab on a Mac forum that was doing live updates, the live update page on MacRumours, the live update page on MacNewsNetwork, the announcement thread on YayHooray, and of course the iTunes page on the Apple web site, with it set to automatically refresh every 15 seconds. I came in early that day so I could take a longer lunch break and be there for the whole event, which I was. I was probably one of the first people to download it… I’m guessing I started my download less than 30 seconds after the new page hit the server. :)

I installed it here at work and everything went flawlessly. The download was fast, the installer was nice and helpful. Then I finally fired up iTunes on my very own computer!

I figured it would be very close to the Mac version, but without a doubt, it is identical to the Mac version in nearly every way, which is of course a very, very good thing.

The overall appearance of the program is identical to the Mac, with the exception of the sexy anti-aliased fonts that the Mac version has. But all of the animations and visualizations are the same.

It asked for the location of my MP3’s during installation, and they were all there when I started it up for the first time. Only 200 at work, but it found about 1200 at home and imported them all quickly and easily, even on my P3 866mhz at home.

After listening to some of my own MP3’s for a while I tried the radio stations, which I had not had a chance to try on the Mac version yet. There is a large selection of everything from rock to classical to jazz, and they are all high quality. I clicked on a Rock station (Radiostorm Alternative, if anyone cares) and it started playing immediately, just as fast as an MP3 on my own computer. The quality is just about as good too. I’ve had a few skips and “buffering” messages, but overall I am amazed at the quality of the streaming radio.

When I got home I started ripping CD’s with iTunes, and everything went perfectly. I just put the CD in and clicked on Import, and iTunes took care of the rest, downloading the track names from an online database like most rippers do and automatically adding it to my library. It even started playing the song as it was ripping it, which still impresseses me. :)

After I ripped a few CD’s I plugged in my new iPod. It immediately came up on my iTunes screen, where I could see all of the songs that were currently on it. I then pressed Sync and it synced all of my new files over. Completely seamless. 5,000 times better than doing it with MusicMatch.

I’ve browsed around the iTMS quite a bit, but haven’t purchased anything yet. I’ll probably buy an album the next time something new comes out that I want to hear, rather than re-buying an older album. But I love the iTMS anyway. The 30 second previews are awesome, the navigation is great, and I really like how the featured artists pages look, with all the information, music videos, etc. It really makes it feel like an upscale CD store or something.

My boss installed iTunes on his laptop the night that iTunes came out, after hearing me rave about it all afternoon. Then he plugged it in to the network yesterday morning, and as soon as he started iTunes my music library came up on his screen. “What? It was that easy? Just turn the thing on and open iTunes? Yup.”. I then went into his preferences and set his library to share, and immediately all of his MP3’s came up on my iTunes screen. I was just amazed. Why can’t anything else on Windows work this seamlessly and easily and automatically?

I mean seriously, if Apple can create an application that is so well integrated and easy to use on Windows, why can’t Microsoft get it right? Stupid Windows… I’ve probably said that phrase a couple of hundred times in the past few weeks as my Windows frustrations continue to grow. I swear if I don’t get a Mac soon I’m going to have a heart attack… :)

Anyway, if you are reading this on a computer, GO DOWNLOAD ITUNES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

www.itunes.com

October 08, 2003

AppRocket

AppRocket is basically a Windows copy of MacOSX’s LaunchBar. It is an application launcher, that you control with the keyboard.

You just hit Alt+Spacebar, which makes the AppRocket interface slide down from the top of the screen. Then you enter the abbreviation for the program, bookmark, song, or file you want to open, and press enter. It learns as you use it, so you can pretty much make up your own abbreviations for things. For example I typed MSN and it originally thought I wanted to go to MSN Shopping, but I didn’t want to go there so I pressed the down arrow until I found MSN Messenger, which is what I wanted to launch. Now whenever I hit Alt+Space, then type MSN and press enter, MSN Messenger launches. I can also type AOL for AOL instant messenger, PS for Photoshop, CD for Corel Draw, NZ for NewzCrawler, etc.

The app itself is tiny and fast, with only a 700k download. The only quite major drawback to this application is that it requires the .NET framework to be installed, as well as Windows XP Service Pack 1. The .NET framework is a 25mb download, and I don’t even know how big Service Pack 1 is. Needless to say this makes what could have been a painless, fast, easy installation turn into a pretty huge undertaking if you don’t already have .NET and SP1 installed, which I would imagine most people don’t. After you install .NET and SP1, installing AppRocket itself is very easy, and one of the quickest and nicest installs I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a whole lot to ask for people to download .NET and SP1 just to use their application, and I would imagine it will keep a lot of people from using it that normally would if it installed like every other application.

October 05, 2003

Apple iPod

8 days ago, while shopping for a few things at Target, I bought an iPod, hooray! I have of course wanted one since the day they were announced, but finally just went out and bought one last week. I took it to my work, ‘cause I thought that computer had a Firewire port, but it didn’t. And I knew mine didn’t, since it is around 3 years old. So I had to make a trip to Best Buy to buy a Firewire card for my computer as well.

I opened it up in the car on the way to work, and was extremely impressed with just the packaging of it, let alone the actual iPod. The packaging was perfect, every little detail was planned out and fit perfectly. For example, the AC power adapter was embedded down inside the styrofoam, and normally you would have to dig it out with your finger nails, or turn the whole box upside-down to get it out. But Apple put a little plastic tab on, so you could just grab that and easily pull it right out of the box, amazing! All of the other plastic wrappers and things were easy to open, not need to get out scissors or anything to try to break into the wrappings. There were a couple of vaccuum sealed packages for the earphones, etc, but they had notches in them to help you easily tear them open.

The iPod itself is tiny. Smaller than a deck of cards or pack of cigarettes, easily. It’s very “solid” and feels really sturdy and well-made. The buttons on the front are amazing, none of them move at all, they are all touch-sensitive, including the circular scroll wheel that you use to navigate through the on-screen menus with.

I got the 10gb model, which does not include a case, dock, or wired remote like the next model up, the 20gb. The 20gb model is probably a better deal, since those accessories alone add up to another hundred dollars, not to mention doubling the storage space, but it was a stretch to be able to afford even this model so I am quite happy with it.

The backlight on the screen is really bright, and the menu buttons light up as well, allowing you to very easily see the screen in any lighting conditions.

The interface is perfect, and really easy to use. I’ve had several people try to use it that have never even heard of an iPod before, and they had no trouble immediately figuring out how to use it like a pro. The only thing that isn’t immediately apparent is to hit the “Menu” button to go back a screen in the menus, but when you figure that out, everything else is extremely intuitive and natural.

Unfortunately I still have to connect it to my old Windows PC using the included MusicMatch Jukebox software, rather than iTunes on the Mac. The MusicMatch software isn’t too terrible though, and is pretty easy to use as well. You just create a library in MusicMatch by importing existing songs on your computer, or by ripping new ones from CDs onto it. Then you just hit the Sync button, and it copies all of the songs to the iPod that were in your library. When you delete a song from the library on your PC and Sync, it is automatically deleted from the iPod as well.

Right now I have 1,048 songs on the iPod, and I haven’t even filled it up half-way yet. Wow! Also, most of those are encoded at 192kbps, rather than the more standard 128kbps. The higher bit rate gives a better quality sound, but also increases the file size quite a bit.

My car MP3 CD player has a MP3-in port on the front of it, so I have been plugging my iPod into that, and playing it directly through my car stereo, which is incredibly cool. It only plays on the left speakers though, and I haven’t figured out why yet. I hope it isn’t just a mono in port or something. That would be inconvenient.

Click the read more link to see a few pictures of my new iPod!

Here you can see me pulling off the plastic packaging around the AC adapter. This is how the little tab was attached to help you easily pull the adapter out of the styrofoam packaging.

This is a wider shot showing me and my work area at work. It’s a huge mess, we aren’t the most organized people in the world, as you can see… You can also see the crappy Compaq I have to use all day! Hopefully this will be replaced with a 12” PowerBook soon. :)

After removing the outer cardboard “sheath”, you are presented with this lovely black box. It it cut in half, and folds out. One half contains the iPod and AC adapter, the other has the wires, manuals, software disc, etc.

Here is the iPod case when it is opened, with the iPod on the right and other stuff on the left.

Here you see the star of the show, the iPod itself! The outer plastic packaging says “Don’t Steal Music.” in several different languages. The great thing is, that is basically the only thing stopping you from copying music. There are basically no restrictions on the iPod, unlike most MP3 players.

The back of the iPod, showing you how to do basic things like turn it on, play music, etc., for people that don’t read instruction manuals.

Me reading the manual and holding the iPod. You can get an idea for how small it is, see it in my hand.

Me reading the manual still. You can see the iPod there on my Wacom Tablet, as well as some of the packaging.

Still reading the manual - my wife took these pictures like 10 seconds apart, that’s why it looks like I’m reading the manual for so long, it’s really not that hard to use! You can also see the iPod there compared to my mouse, very small!

This is one side of the outermost packaging, showing the iPod with the backlight glowing, as well as the buttons. It really does glow that strongly!

Check out Apple’s iPod site for more pictures and info on the greatest MP3 player in the world!

September 25, 2003

Macromedia Central

Macromedia Central is a new software/service/Flash application from Macromedia that is currently in Public Beta. It’s basically like Sherlock or Watson on the Mac. You use one centralized application and one standard interface to access a wide range of information from many different web sites. Central only has two sections right now, the Weather and a movie finder, but there are supposed to be quite a few more when it launches later this fall. The big difference between Central and say, Watson, is that Central is just made out of Flash (and perhaps some other technologies as well, I don’t know all of the technical details). Anyway you just click on a button on the Macromedia site and it downloads and installs itself right in your browser with Flash.

Once you launch the program, you can enter your zip code, and receive the current weather info for our area, as well as a forecast. You can set alerts so that Central will automatically let you know when it is about to rain, or snow, etc.

For the movie finder, you can browse movies by theatre, search for a movie, sort by ranking on RottenTomatoes, etc. You can see still shots from scenes in the movie, click links to go to the official site of the movie, watch a trailer, add a movie to your favorites, etc.

Overall I think it is pretty cool, and could really be useful when they get some more services ready for it. Hopefully it will be free, but I don’t really understand exactly what they are planning to do with it. Sometimes it just seems like they are using it as an example of what Flash can do, others they act like it is going to be some new product.

Update, someone from Macromedia has already found my post and answered my question… Central will be free for end users, and will be a platform of sorts for developers to use to sell their own specific applications. Central has built-in transaction capabilities. Sounds pretty cool to me!

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that this seems especiallly cool to me since it is all in Flash. I’m normally not a fan of most Flash sites out there, but this seems like something that Flash is really useful for, and something it can do better than HTML. I hope to see more Flash applications in the future.

Either way, by the time it comes out officially I will probably already have Mac, and will be enjoying Watson, and won’t have to worry about this at all.

Synapse Media Player

Minse told me about this MP3 player software called Synapse. It uses the Windows Media Player codecs, but puts on a new, smarter front end. It has smart playlists sort of like iTunes, and will sort by artist automatically. It also automatically recognizes new songs when you rip them or download them, and they are automatically put into the playlist, like iTunes (only if you download them to a certain directory that is being watched). The Brain is also included, which learns what songs you like, and when you turn it on it will play your favorites automatically. There is also a console that understands english commands. You can type things like “Play 311” and it will find all the 311 songs in its library and start playing them. You can then say “Play Weezer after this song finishes” and when that song is done it will find all the Weezer songs and start playing them. You can tell it to do just about anything, and it will understand it and do it. It makes it much easier to play the songs you want this way. It’s much easier to type “Play MxPx”, than to open up your My Music folder, find MxPx, select all the songs you want, click play, wait for Windows Media Player to open, etc. Or have to maintain complex playlists by hand.

One thing I would like to see in the future however is a hotkey that will bring up just the console in a small window, allowing you to type commands. Kind of like in Launchbar on the Mac, which lets you press Command+Space, then a few letters to launch programs, etc. You could press Control+Space on a Windows computer with this program installed, then enter a command like “Play my 10 favorite songs” without having to click on the program and find the console, and type it in, etc.

But it should be good enough to satisfy me until I get a Mac and iTunes. :)

Microsoft enters Anti-Virus business. Hahaha

Microsoft bought some Romanian anti-virus company and plan on releasing their own anti-virus program and bundling it with the next version of Windows. That is just hilarious and terrible on so many levels. Now they’ll be making money from their own mistakes and errors. Plus it’s just another monthly “service” for them to force the poor Windows user into paying, if they want to get any work done on their computer. Now they can either fix the huge, gaping holes in their software, or just force everyone to pay a monthly service fee to be allowed to download the latest virus updates to keep stuff off of their machine. I’m guessing they will like the latter idea…

I really don’t understand how anyone can think Macs are too expensive anymore. You don’t have to buy anti-virus software on them, don’t have to pay a montly service fee to keep them running, don’t have to go days or weeks without your computer when you get a virus every couple of weeks, don’t have to waste time patching them 3 times a week, and on and on.

I often wonder if when I actually do get a Mac, I’ll be able to just let crap like this from Microsoft just slide by without getting so pissed off about it. Maybe I’ll just be able to sit back and smile, laughing to myself at all the silly Windows users out there, knowing that I don’t have to deal with any of that anymore. I hope so.

September 23, 2003

7.5’ Computer Monitors

Wow. This is a really, really big monitor. Up to 96” wide, with a resolution of 6400 x 1200. Wow. Oh, and it only costs $17,500!

I’ve never heard of this company before, but apparently they are a very high-end PC manufacturer. And holy crap are their computers ever expensive. The next time someone tells me Apple’s machines are too expensive, I will be happy to send them to this site. Their cheapest desktop machine is $3,000, with the most expensive default configuration being nearly $8,000. However after customizing a system with all of the options maxed out it came out to $32,000 without a monitor.

It’s also quite interesting that this company completely rips off the Apple site. It’s basically an exact copy, only with their own bulky beast computers in place of the sleek and elegant Macs. Funny how even the biggest and most innovative PC manufacturers still copy everything Apple does, while simultaneously putting them down for not being fast enough or not running Windows or whatever bullshit excuse they have come up with at the moment.

They do seem like awfully nice machines, the only problem being that they still run Windows. I guess if you really like windows or something though, they would be pretty nice to have.

September 17, 2003

Taking Macs out of Schools

There is a pretty funny article on the St. Petersburg Times web site called Schools will give kids new Windows on the world that comments on a school superindendant’s decision to remove Macs from the classrooms. I’m surprised such a sarcastic article was published in a mainstream newspaper, but it is funny nonetheless, not to mention true.

September 16, 2003

New Powerbooks

Apple has announced new Powerbooks today. All models are upgraded, but the 15” has changed the most.

The 15” now has:

• Up to 1.25ghz G4
• Optional Lighted Keyboard
• 80 gigabyte hard drive
• Up to 2 gigs of RAM
• Built-in Airport Extreme Wireless
• Built-in Bluetooth
• Radeon Mobility 9600 Graphics card (64mb)
• Gigabit ethernet
• Firewire 400 & 800
• Superdrive

The top of the line model is $2599.00, which includes 512megs of RAM, the backlit keyboard, etc. There is another model that is only $1999.00 that has a 1ghz processor, no lighted keyboard, 256 megs of RAM, etc.

I must say I am very impressed with this machine. Oh yeah, it’s also been updated to the aluminum casing now, which should fix some of the old problems with the screens bending and being too fragile.

I was looking at the 12” before (which has been updated to 1ghz) but now I may have to try to talk the boss into spending a little more and going for the top of the line 15”. That is just a sweet machine.

The only problem is that it comes with a 4200RPM hard drive which seems pretty slow. Though for $125 you can upgrade it to 5400RPM, which is what most laptops have.

Apple also announced new Bluetooth powered wireless keyboard and mouse for $79 each. I don’t think I’ll be buying either one of these though. I’m going to have to buy a two button mouse when I get a Mac anyway. Holding control and clicking to right-click is just annoying.

September 14, 2003

Web Surfing License

Wired is running an article that explores the possibility of requiring people to be licensed to use computers on the internet. The reasoning is that people have to be licensed to operate cars, certain machinery, etc., so why not be licensed to use a computer? When you have your computer connected to the public internet, you can affect other people’s computers by letting your own be infected with viruses, etc. Just like you can damage other people’s cars on the open road. By being certified and having to pass basic computer literacy tests before you’d be allowed to connect to the internet, the article hopes that the spread of viruses, spam, and adware would decrease because there would be smarter, more educated people on the internet.

Hm. Riiiiiiiiight… Like your mom is going to go down to the “Department of Internet Licensing” or whatever and take a course and 2 hour exam just to check her email. And an accountant is going to take the time to do that just to use Excel and Quickbooks. Never gonna happen.

Not to mention 1 in 7 computers users can’t even turn the computer on.

However the article also mentions some universities requiring students to sit through a 45 minute lecture before they are given access to the school network and internet access. I think this is a much better idea. Don’t force people to be licensed, but at least require students to take a basic literacy course in creating secure passwords, etc. Older people are not going to go back and take a course on computer basics, but if it’s a required part of a college course, then the students wouldn’t have a choice. I know most colleges have basic computer literacy classes right now, but from what I’ve heard they basically just tell you how to use MS Office. Which is utterly useless. I mean sure, most people will need to learn how to use a word processing program at some point in their careers, but I would think it would be much more valuable for them to actually learn a little about how computers work, so that they could figure things out for themselves in the future rather than just memorizing steps out of a book on how to make a newsletter.

Or if they wanted to skip the training and lectures on how to keep your computer secure, they could just buy a Mac. :)