A note to those who feel they need to tell me why they won’t be getting an iPod nano

1. The last couple of days I’ve heard much the same thing from a surprising number of people. It goes a bit like this:

…blah blah blah blah blah iPod nano blah blah blah blah blah blah so expensive blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah only 2Gb blah blah blah blah not enough songs blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah but why? the 20Gb is only blah amount more blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I’m getting a 60Gb blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah lame blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…

2. And all that after just showing the thing.

3. I don’t understand the preoccupation with having to have all your music with you at the same time. I bought a 2Gb nano, I’ve filled it with a random selection of my favourite tracks, a few Podcasts, bunch of favourite photos and my calendar and contacts. All told, the music accounts for about 1.59Gb, which translates (for me) to 353 songs, or 24 hours and 0.39 seconds of music. So I have with me enough music for every minute of the day, or every minute of a flight from Sydney to London, or a bus trip from Sydney to Adelaide… you get the point. Not to mention a quick scan of my favourite albums comes to 6.5Gb — I figure if I can’t fit all my faves on the 4Gb model why spend the extra cash? And for those who are going to get a 60Gb because you have sooo much music and it only barely fits, yeah well, so you have a bigger cock than me. Whatever.

(more…)

Gasp!

iPod nano in black, for monkeys everywhere

1. Look what I got!

2. : )

The iPod and Perception

1. An excellent colmun on Gizmodo discussing the design of the iPod written by Luke Williams, Design Manager at Frog Studios (the company that, amongst other things, designed the Apple IIc):

A Designer sprang into the frog New York studio the other morning with a little more energy than usual.

“I know why everyone says the iPod looks clean!� he exclaimed.

The iPod has become—in the minds of most of our clients—the example of great product design. We found ourselves constantly trying to figure out why everybody we asked perceived the iPod as being “clean.�

Of course, we were aware of the obvious cues such as minimalist design; the simple, intuitive interface; the neutral white color. But these attributes alone inadequately explain this seemingly universal perception. It had to be referencing a deeper convention in the social consciousness… so, if a designer claimed that he had the answer—we were all ears.

2. Read the rest here.

iPod nano

Steve Jobs holds up the iPod nano for his worshippers
Photo from Reuters

1. It’s so…tiny! And comes in black! I could put it in my mouth! It’s like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odessey, and we’re the monkeys! Actually, that analogy works entirely too well.

2. I wonder, Apple releases an iPod that is sexier and smaller and less expensive than the Motorola ROKR iTunes phone that was released at the same time…is Apple really giving the phone project its full attention? The iPod nano is so small that you could easily carry that with your phone with no loss of mobility (especially when you can carry it on a lanyard), why on earth would anyone buy the damn phone? It’s not even one of the sexy Motorolas. A RAZR ROKR? Eich….

The best angle on the Apple/Intel switch yet

1. Muhahahaha! (The Joy of Tech)

Weather forecast in Hell, a chilly 3 degrees

1. I’m going ice skating in hell today. Apple, after years and years and years and years and years of rumours, are finally going to use Intel processors. Wait, let me let it out.

2. OMGWTF!!?!?!?!??!!?!?!!1!!!?!!!!

3. Right. As the Reverend Steve explains, the PowerPC roadmap is going nowhere (sorry Mac freaks, that G5 PowerBook is nowhere in sight), and Intel has a strong processor roadmap. And Intel chips run cooler for the same performance. So, I guess my next PowerBook upgrade will be the Pentium M, which isn’t such a bad thing — thems are great processors. A fast PB with 8hr battery life? Bring it on.

4. (Oh God, Dvorak got something right, and everyone else will be eating crow…!)

Apple Legal and the Steve Jobs Keynote Explosion

1. Well. no wonder Apple is suing Think Secret. They. Practically. Got. It. All. Right. The “predicted” details were spot on almost all of the time. Someone had a serious brain fart when they thought they could leak such detailed knowledge and get away with it. Someone’s gonna get spanked.

2. As an aside, here’s an interesting point. Remember the bit in the Keynote (you have seen the broadcast, haven’t you? :) where Jobs makes a joke about how Apple stocks were down, but there was still more of the Keynote to go? Well apparently Apple shares stayed down, according to Reuters. To quote the article:

But rumor sites had anticipated the new products, and Apple shares fell nearly 4 percent[*].

“I think that the expectations were about as high as they could get for it,” said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.

So much for rumour sites helping Apple eh? So, Lisa DiCarlo from Forbes, how does that crow taste?

3. Anyway, back to business. The crowd seemed pretty subdued this time around. There was less applause than there were last year, or so it seemed to me. I guess the biggest hysteria came from the sexy hardware, but there wasn’t so much of that this time around. The Mac mini is totally sweet, but the iPod shuffle left me a bit cold. Firstly, it has a stupid name. Secondly, I’ve never seen Jobs have to sell so hard on the merits of a device that, by his standards only a few months ago, was not worthy of Apple’s attention. However, it is the cheapest high capacity flash based mp3 player available, and because of that it’s gonna sell. I might even buy one myself — for the odd time when I don’t have room for an iPod. From a hardware perspective it might as well be “Year of the budget Conscious”.

4. From a software perspective — fwoar! I totally dig the new GarageBand and the iLife ’05 suite in general. Man, GarageBand! Where was this when I was in a band? 8 track simultaneous recording, live notation, pitch correction… I would pay Au$119 for that alone. Hell, I would’ve had to pay a lot more than that for other programs. And this one has four other programs that come with it. And being able to edit HD in iMovie is crazy, considering there’s not that many HD consumer cameras around (and, you guessed it, they don’t come cheap), and anyone who regularly shoots HD could probably afford to get Final Cut Pro HD. I also can’t wait until Tiger is released, with Spotlight and Automator the two features I didn’t know I needed. Kick ass.

[*] I should clarify. It fell 4pc on the day of the Keynote. Since then, Apple has posted record earnings and share prices have shot up again.

Cringely’s Annual Predictions (and another rant about a headless mac)

1. Cringely has an interesting idea. Nestled in a column full of 2005 tech predictions, he throws out this one:

3) Apple will take a big risk in 2005. This could be in the form of a major acquisition. With almost $6 billion in cash, Steve Jobs hinted to a group of employees not long ago that he might want to buy something big, though I am at a loss right now for what that might be. Or Apple might decide to throw some of that cash into the box along with new computers by deliberately losing some money on each unit in order to buy market share.

We might see that as early as next week with the rumored introduction of an el-cheapo Mac without a display. The price for that box is supposed to be $499, which would give customers a box with processor, disk, memory, and OS into which you plug your current display, keyboard, and mouse. Given that this sounds a lot like AMD’s new Personal Internet Communicator, which will sell for $185, there is probably plenty of profit left for Apple in a $499 price. But what if they priced it at $399 or even $349? Now make it $249, where I calculate they’d be losing $100 per unit. At $100 per unit, how many little Macs could they sell if Jobs is willing to spend $1 billion? TEN MILLION and Apple suddenly becomes the world’s number one PC company. Think of it as a non-mobile iPod with computing capability. Think of the music sales it could spawn. Think of the iPod sales it would hurt (zero, because of the lack of mobility). Think of the more expensive Mac sales it would hurt (zero, because a Mac loyalist would only be interested in using this box as an EXTRA computer they would otherwise not have bought). Think of the extra application sales it would generate and especially the OS upgrade sales, which alone could pay back that $100. Think of the impact it would have on Windows sales (minus 10 million units). And if it doesn’t work, Steve will still have $5 billion in cash with no measurable negative impact on the company. I think he’ll do it.

2. Apple historically has spurned market share for profits. Back then, there was perhaps more arrogance at upper management because Apple was so strong, and the competition so far behind. Now that the competition has caught up and is so dominant over the PC market (and I use the term PC as Personal Computer, not just Wintel boxes), would it be too risky for Apple to try a move like this. But, given the stupendous success of the iPod, I can’t think of a better time for Apple to try it. Question is, is the cheap box going to translate into sales of more expensive boxes? Or would the cheap box only interest current Mac owners? I (and probably every other Mac owner world wide) would be very interested in picking up something like this to build a PVR (which I have talked about before). It’s perfect — a place to keep all of your videos and pictures and music, all accessible using a bluetooth mouse. It’s brilliant. And it provides the perfect launching pad for a portable video player (can you say iPod video?).

3. Picture this. A headless box like this sitting next to your TV, acting as a TiVo. But, alas, you are often out and never have time to watch your favourite TV shows. So your little mac records everything it thinks you like, and converts those episodes into an encrypted format and syncs with your iPod video. On your way out the next day you have all the TV you’ve missed, all there for your enjoyment. At the same time, Apple quietly negotiates a deal with Hollywood whereby Apple hardware can legally rip DVDs into a format which can only be played by an iPod video. Soon following this is a landmark deal where Apple sells movies online using a DRM protected version of H.264/AVC in two formats — a version for the TV screen and a version for the iPod, with Pixar being the first to release in this format.

4. All this is pure punditry. But I would put money on the fact that someone at Apple has already thought of this. More importantly, all the bits are in the right place. Apple has the hardware, the software, the uber-branding, and most importantly the success of iTMS and iPod behind them to convince the TV and Movie industries to move this ahead. No one, and I mean no one, has the cred. Who else can say that they are the CEO of a computer company and a movie studio? If you were a studio exec, who would you listen to?

Man sues Apple: “They made me buy an iPod”

1. No, really, this is the dumbest shit I’ve heard for a looooong time. According to this BBC report, Californian Thomas Slattery is suing Apple because he feels it is unfair that music he bought on the iTunes Music Store can only played on an iPod, forcing him to purchase one himself. He obviously did not know that you can very easily burn your songs onto a CD, then re-rip the music into normal mp3 tracks that can be played with anything. He also very obviously did not read the fine print, the bold print, or any other bit of information on iTMS. You know, I’ve often wished I could play my PS2 games on my PC, so I might just sue Sony for not letting me. While I’m at it I might sue Microsoft and Bungie for not letting me play Halo 2 on my PS2. Or Nintendo for not letting me play FFTA on my Palm. Or Kawasaki for not selling parts for my Suzuki. What a fucktard.

2. (The /. kids had a few words to say about him too.)