Archive for the 'Apple' Category
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Apple today released two new iPods: the iPod Photo and the iPod Special Edition: U2. Both have been rumored for a while.
This interests me because I’ve recently decided to get an iPod. I’ve wanted one for quite a while, but hadn’t really been able to justify the expense. I considered asking Sherri to get me one for Christmas last year, but requested the Firewire HD and DVD Burner instead. With the growing size of my music collection and my new interest in Podcasting (I’m tired of burining CDs every day for my commute), I’ve made up my mind to get the iPod. I’ve been trying to decide if I should put it on my Christmas list, or wait until my birthday (in February) since Apple usually anounces new iPod models at Macworld in January. Looks like it’s safe to shoot for Christmas… now, which one?
The field before today had three choices: the 20gig model ($299), the 40gig model ($399), and the Mini ($249). The mini is out- I want storage. Of the standard models, the 40gig makes a much better choice for me. Besides double the capacity for only $100 more, the 20gig model doesn’t come with a dock or remote. I want the dock, and it’s $39 separately. Might as well get the 40gig.
Now we come to the new choices. First, the $349 U2 iPod. It’s a 20gig iPod for $50 more than a standard 20gig iPod. For your $50, you get a black iPod with a red scrollwheel, signatures from the band laser-etched on the back, and a $50 credit towards a 400+ song “digital boxed set” of all of U2’s music from the iTunes Music Store. I find it interesting that there’s no indication of the price of this “digital boxed set”, which won’t be available until the end of November. I’m not a huge U2 fan, so the boxed set is irrelevant to me. The black iPod would be sharp without the red scroll wheel, but with it, it’s quite atrocious (at least in photos… I’ll report again once I see it at the Apple store). This one’s out of the running.
This brings us to the product everyone will be talking about, the iPod Photo. Available in 40gig and 60 gig flavors, it looks like a standard iPod but with a color screen. It can store photos which you can view on the 2″ screen, and it comes with an A/V cable you can use to show your pictures on a TV. The battery life appears to be a bit longer than the b&w iPod according to the spec sheet. The 40gig model is $499 and the 60gig model is $599.
The new device is intriguing. We have taken all of our pictures with a digital camera for a couple of years now. Having a Series 2 TiVo on my home network lets me view photos on my TV, and it turns out to be great. These days, we just dock the camera, push the dock’s sync button, and head to the family room to see our pictures on the big screen. The only downside to the TiVo setup is portability; an iPodPhoto would make an excellent way to show photos to everyone when we visit family. Aside from pictures, the extra capacity of the 60gig model sounds nice.
Being already prepared to spend $399 for a 40gig (standard) iPod, is it worth $100 more for the photo feature? If so, is it worth another $100 for the extra storage? If the photo option isn’t worth $100, is the storage worth $200? I’m sure for some, the answers will be yes. For me, I don’t think the benefit of the photo feature is worth the cost. I would use it some, but not enough. And $200 is too much for the extra 20gigs storage. If they offered a 60gig standard iPod for $499, I might consider it. Then again, Macworld is only a couple of months away….
Another short entry tonight, I’ll try to do something more substantial tommorow. For now, good news for OS X users who don’t want to shell out the big $$ for MS Office. Patch 3 for the 1.1 Alpha 2 version of NeoOffice/J, an OS X port of OpenOffice which does not use X11, has taken another step by moving the menus out of the individual windows and into the System Menu bar where they belong. (Via Tim Bray and TaoOfMac). Tim’s post includes a screenshot.
A note on the particulars: Currently, the main site doesn’t mention the patch except on the downloads pags, and that patch is the wrong version if you want integrated menus. So, first download NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha 2] from the NeoOffice/J download page, and then get the Aqua-menus version of patch three from this post.
Yesterday afternoon, I stumbled upon an article (not sure where) about Apple opening new ‘mini’ stores in smaller retail locations. This reminded me that my local mall has an Apple store going in! My location wasn’t listed in the article as a ‘mini’ location, so I searched around Apple’s site looking for some information. Serendipity struck, as it turned out that today was the grand opening. Not only that, but t-shirts were promised for the first thousand visitors. Excellent! I made a plan to be there when the store opened, at 10 am.
My wife warned me this morning that I should arrive early. I didn’t see a need, since I had not seen or heard any press about the opening. Whoops. When I arrived at 10 am, the line to get in the store was at least 100 yards long, maybe longer. It turned a corner and wrapped around a fountain. Visitors were being admitted in batches, as there was no way everyone present would fit in the store. I didn’t have the time to wait in line, so I bid my t-shirt goodbye and left. Kicked myself for not taking my camera for some pictures of the line.
Had to go to the mall this afternoon to take my daughter to a hair appointment. Once she was delivered, I cruised on down to the Apple Store. Very Cool. Been in one once or twice before. Very tempting to grab an iPod while I was there! I’m currently torn between requesting one for Christmas and waiting until MacWorld Expo in January to see what the latest and greatest iPod will be. Of course, my birthday is in early February :)
Didn’t leave empty handed… I picked up Jam Pack 3 for Garage Band. Didn’t even know this was out (or Jam Pack 2) until I poked around the Apple site today in anticipation of seeing the store. Jam Pack 2 is geared towards Dance/Urban/Hip Hop, with lots of “Remix tools”, bass lines, synths, and drum machines, including several classic Roland drum machines. Not my kind of music, especially when composing. I haven’t loaded up Jam Pack 3 yet, but it’s subtitled “Rythym Section”. I’ll post some more on that once I play with it.
Among the sights at the Apple Store… an employee dressed in fult Scottish Kilt and sporting a (presumably real) tatoo of the Finder icon in the right shades of blue. Kicked myself for not taking my camera twice.
The Software Update icon has been waiting patiently on my Dock for a while now. This morning I decided to oblige. There are three updates waiting to be installed:
Wow, that Sept 16 Security Update has been waiting a while, huh? I have Security Update enabled to run automatically once a week, so why am I so late? Triangles. Those little triangle icons next to each update indicate that a restart will be required. So?
Almost 23 days of uptime since my last reboot, which was, of course, for a OS X software update. Again, you may wonder, why the big deal? For me it’s about the interuption. For example, when I decided to go ahead and install these this morning, I had about 2 dozen websites open in tabs spread across two Firefox windows, several pages open in Mozilla (I’m using it to learn XUL, the book is pre-Firefox), a half dozen terminal sessions, about 10 sticky notes, a dozen documents in SubEthaEdit, and a few other assorted bits. I tend to keep things open and available. Rebooting means closing everything. What a pain. Zero reboots is my #1 most wanted feature in an OS X.
Here’s the kind of uptime I really want.
As detailed in my prior post, I can’t install iLife ’04, and I think my non-standard disk partioning is to blame. I’ve decided to bite the bullet and format the HD back to a single partition and re-install everything. I’ve copied my /Users directory tree onto my Firewire HD, so I should be ready to go. The notes I made during my upgrade to Panther should be helpful.
This is like Deja-vu all over again. See you on the other side.
Update: I’m back. Hard drive is re-partioned to a single 32gig OS X partition and spare, unformatted 5 gig partition for future use. Panther is installed and software update has been run (twice). XCode tools were installed and software update run again. I’ve transfered my documents, pictures, and music; I’ve moved my mail, keychain, and preferences. Firebird is installed and setup the way I like. I’ll be documenting the process soon, including some tips on how to restore iApps, Mail.app, etc. Haven’t tried installing iLife ’04 yet, but that’s next.
I did have one good scare… after formatting, installing, updating, etc., I was finally ready to attach the Firewire drive and start restoring my backed up data. When the volume mounted, I only saw the ‘Video’ folder, and not the ‘Users’ folder which contained all of my backup data. I think I might have hyperventalated :) I hadn’t yet installed iTerm, and Terminal wasn’t on my dock, so I had to scramble to find Terminal and check it from there. When I finally was able to ls /Volumes/Teapot there was my Users folder right where I left it. I had copied it using the unix command ditto, which apparently marked it as a BSD subsystem folder. And since Panther hides such folders (like /bin, etc.) in Finder by default, that is what had happened. Quite a little moment of panic, tho.