Apple’s Livingroom Strategy

Apple has released the first piece of their “10 foot experience” — the Apple Media Center, and Eirik Solheim is pondering what is missing…

What I miss in the Apple Front Row Experience as far as I can judge from the Apple web site at this point are:
- PVR functionallity with an electronic program guide
- A system for including broadband services
(Like Microsoft Online Spotlight or Beyond Media SnapStream Spotlight)
- Extenders (I guess it’s just a question of time before Apple integrates video streaming in their Airport)
- Support for HD content

To me, this whole thing is like watching a massive storm developing… It’s moving slowly, but it’s going to be enormous.
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“You could go blind…”

Gotta love this “Quote of the Day” from the KGB Report.

“Elsewhere, Apple Computer today introduced the first Video IPod, expected to be popular among porn fans with excellent eyesight.”
-Andy Borowitz

(more on Video iPod over here)

First Look at (5G) Video iPod

iLounge has up a pretty detailed first look at the new “Fifth Generation” Video iPod.

Here’s my take…

As per usual for newly announced Apple products, my drool factor for this thing is awfully high, but also as per usual, it’s a real mixed bag of an announcement.

On the upside, it’s an iPod, so of course it’s sleek and sexy. It’s thinner, it has a bigger screen, it’s available in black (without U2 even), it (predictably) came in at the previous generation’s price point. And hey, it has video!
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Hand-Crank iPod Power

How many cranks does it take to get to the chewy nugget center of your iPod? GeekTechnique finds out, in this how-to article on converting a hand-cranked flashlight and cellphone charger to a charger for an iPod mini.

Well, this setup works (yay!), but with a lot of cranking involved, so I have to be quite desperate for some tunes and miles away from another possibility to charge it, before I crank power my ipod this way… but hey, it is possible! (and for me, that was the point of doing all this)

Okay, well you’d have to be fairly desperate for tunes to be willing to crank this thing for all it’s worth, but it’s always nice to see ways to maintain a proper geek lifestyle in disaster-drill season…

First Impressions of iTunes 5

Now that I finally got the silly thing installed, I’ve had a little time to play with it…

Some first impressions –

Damn this thing is ugly. Burnt Aqua Unified? Were these corners done with pinking shears? It just all looks… Ummm… Out of place. Oh well. Looks ain’t everything (if they were, I’d probably never have another date.)
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Please quit iTunes before beginning this update

Generally Apple has their act together when it comes to usability (at least on their Mac software.) On the other hand, when they decide to hork it up, they do it well…

It being the weekend, I figured it was time to try the new iTunes 5 — where I trust Apple the least is in brand new products and updates, so doing a software update requires some planning; fix permissions and get a good backup beforehand.

So, having done my due dilligence, I ran Software Update. Check off the products, agree to a bunch of license agreements, download, download, download. Uh-oh, an alert…

“Please quit iTunes before beginning this update”
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Vaja iVod DJ iPod Case Review

I love Vaja cases.

To me, the Vaja is typically the premier case for any portable device I own. Unfortunately, they’re priced that way too, but that doesn’t make them any less worth it.

Naturally, when I got the new iPod 60, I needed a new Vaja case (since my old 3G case wouldn’t work with a clickwheel iPod). I couldn’t resist going with the new iVod DJ — it’s just entirely too sexy.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite all it’s cracked up to be.
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Apple iPod 60GB Review

The Apple iPod 60GB has been out for awhile — first as the iPod Photo 60GB in two different packagings, and finally as the plain old iPod 60GB, when Apple removed the monochrome iPods from the lineup a month or so ago.

So why review one now? Simple — when Apple reduced the price on the 60, I finally retired (well, resold) my old 30G 3rd Generation iPod and replaced it with a 60GB.

Now that I’ve had a month or so of using it under my belt, I’ve had a chance to form some impressions. Not surprisingly, this is more a “compare and contrast” exercise with the 3G iPod with the 4G color iPod than anything.
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iPod Generation Gap

The good folks over to the iPodlounge have been struggling to decide just what to call the “new” iPods.
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iTunes 4.9 with podcasts (sorta)

Apple has released iTunes 4.9.

Unless you’ve been in a hype-proof cave somewhere for the past two weeks, you probably won’t be suprised to learn that it does indeed come with podcast support.

Well, half-assed podcast support, anyway.

Apple offers a list of 3000 or so “blessed” podcasts via the iTunes Music Store, or you can add a podcast manually, if you can figure out the interface.

There is no support for doing some of the handy things a decent podcast client (like iPodderX) can do, like choose a playlist to automatically add a program to, convert it to AAC, or make it bookmarkable (the latter being exceedingly useful for spoken word podcasts.)

Even the stuff that is supported appears to be a bit wonky; it took me 3 times of shutting down and restarting iTunes 4.9 before clicking on the “Podcast Directory” button under Podcasts actually took me to the Podcast Directory, instead of the front page of iTMS.

Once I picked a Podcast and set it to download, it failed due to network issues — perhaps they weren’t ready for initial demand?

I assume they’ll get it all sorted out by and by, but in the meantime, I won’t be deleting my copy of iPodderX anytime soon.

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