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Dec. 18th, 2001
iPod People
Dec. 18th, 2001 05:00 pmThis is for Debbie Ohi, who asked:
You may have noticed that my mood has been a bit more sprightly these last couple of days or so. I'm attributing it to the fact that I have now, for the first time in many years, music on the go again. My Walkman was retired once I started using CDs on a regular basis, and the idea of carting around tons of CDs put the kibosh on any notion of getting myself a Discman. An MP3 player was the best choice, and though they've been on the market for a while, there hasn't been one that cried for me to buy it... until the iPod. Being able to grin and smile and mouth along and semi-bounce to my favorite songs takes the edge off going to work every morning. It makes a difference when you hear the beat physically and not just in your head.
Ah, but back to the iPod. On the face of it, it's no big deal. It's an MP3 player - it stores the digital files, and plays it back. The cons are apparent from looking at it - the silver back is prone to getting microscratches, it retains fingerprints easily and really demands a carrying case which Apple doesn't provide. There's no software or hardware EQ, which makes the playback a little flat, and the earphones, though touted having neodymium magnets, aren't all that hot.
However.
It looks fucking cool, as is usual from Apple. From the packaging - which unfolds open in a move so obviously made for Christmas it makes me tingle - to the lines and color of the appliance, it screams design at you. The controls appear arcane at first, with four buttons surrounding the circumference of a scroll wheel that is barely noticeable until you realize it rotates, but within a couple of minutes you'll get the hang of it.
The manual is basically - plug the iPod into the machine, download the songs from iTunes, and listen to the music and a labelling of what each button does. That's it. You don't need any more - it's as simple as that.
And it's small - the size of a pack of playing cards, as advertised, and while obviously heavier than a deck of cards, it fits neatly into my shirt pocket and doesn't weigh it down.
The ultimate selling point - 5 GB of data (in practice, 4.6 GB) in a Firewire drive. The cons of this are that the 20 MB buffer for songs doesn't give allowance for any MP3 files bigger than that - and will keep the drive spinning if the file is above that size. Also, there's been some rumor flying around that using it as a HD will drastically shorten the lifespan of the device - which I can believe to a certain extent because it heats up pretty fast while recharging and there doesn't seem to be a cooling system. But it obviously wasn't designed for you to run OS X off it - I have no doubt it'll still be useful as a recovery disk or to cart around small files that don't require the drive to spin constantly.
But Firewire - damn, it's fast. 1.8 GB of songs from my library, nearly 500 songs, sucked down in about a minute and a half and organized, no mess, no fuss, just plug and play. It even charges the iPod when doing so. Some may whine about not being able to play the iPod while charging but hell, if you're hooked up to your main computer anyway, why are you playing the songs off the iPod?
So, weighing all this, the iPod is a definite thumbs up if you're an Apple user - the US$399 (S$748) price may put you off if you're not, but looking at what you're getting, it's pretty comparable to what's on the market these days. All it really needs is some kind of EQ and a decent carrying case and it should be almost perfect. I am very, very happy with my little Calliope.
P.S. I have tickets for The Fellowship of the Ring tomorrow night at 9 pm. More gushing after, I'm sure.
You may have noticed that my mood has been a bit more sprightly these last couple of days or so. I'm attributing it to the fact that I have now, for the first time in many years, music on the go again. My Walkman was retired once I started using CDs on a regular basis, and the idea of carting around tons of CDs put the kibosh on any notion of getting myself a Discman. An MP3 player was the best choice, and though they've been on the market for a while, there hasn't been one that cried for me to buy it... until the iPod. Being able to grin and smile and mouth along and semi-bounce to my favorite songs takes the edge off going to work every morning. It makes a difference when you hear the beat physically and not just in your head.
Ah, but back to the iPod. On the face of it, it's no big deal. It's an MP3 player - it stores the digital files, and plays it back. The cons are apparent from looking at it - the silver back is prone to getting microscratches, it retains fingerprints easily and really demands a carrying case which Apple doesn't provide. There's no software or hardware EQ, which makes the playback a little flat, and the earphones, though touted having neodymium magnets, aren't all that hot.
However.
It looks fucking cool, as is usual from Apple. From the packaging - which unfolds open in a move so obviously made for Christmas it makes me tingle - to the lines and color of the appliance, it screams design at you. The controls appear arcane at first, with four buttons surrounding the circumference of a scroll wheel that is barely noticeable until you realize it rotates, but within a couple of minutes you'll get the hang of it.
The manual is basically - plug the iPod into the machine, download the songs from iTunes, and listen to the music and a labelling of what each button does. That's it. You don't need any more - it's as simple as that.
And it's small - the size of a pack of playing cards, as advertised, and while obviously heavier than a deck of cards, it fits neatly into my shirt pocket and doesn't weigh it down.
The ultimate selling point - 5 GB of data (in practice, 4.6 GB) in a Firewire drive. The cons of this are that the 20 MB buffer for songs doesn't give allowance for any MP3 files bigger than that - and will keep the drive spinning if the file is above that size. Also, there's been some rumor flying around that using it as a HD will drastically shorten the lifespan of the device - which I can believe to a certain extent because it heats up pretty fast while recharging and there doesn't seem to be a cooling system. But it obviously wasn't designed for you to run OS X off it - I have no doubt it'll still be useful as a recovery disk or to cart around small files that don't require the drive to spin constantly.
But Firewire - damn, it's fast. 1.8 GB of songs from my library, nearly 500 songs, sucked down in about a minute and a half and organized, no mess, no fuss, just plug and play. It even charges the iPod when doing so. Some may whine about not being able to play the iPod while charging but hell, if you're hooked up to your main computer anyway, why are you playing the songs off the iPod?
So, weighing all this, the iPod is a definite thumbs up if you're an Apple user - the US$399 (S$748) price may put you off if you're not, but looking at what you're getting, it's pretty comparable to what's on the market these days. All it really needs is some kind of EQ and a decent carrying case and it should be almost perfect. I am very, very happy with my little Calliope.
P.S. I have tickets for The Fellowship of the Ring tomorrow night at 9 pm. More gushing after, I'm sure.
Obsolescence?
Dec. 18th, 2001 08:39 pmWarning: Mac geek ruminations follow
Apple has announced, less than a month after I purchased Cassandra, that they're providing combo CD-RW/DVD drives in their Titanium Powerbooks, rather than the straight DVD which is in Cassandra. My initial reaction was, "Fuck, they couldn't tell me to wait a goddamn month?!?"
But calming down a bit, I sort of expected that Cassandra would be outclassed by her peers in about six months - Ziggy and Mike both lasted about that long. I didn't expect them to upgrade her model in less than a month, especially since they'd speed bumped the Powerbooks in October.
On reflection, do I really need a combo drive? Sure, it's nice to burn audio CDs with, but I don't do that all that often, and that being said, I have a perfectly serviceable, though slow external Iomega CD Burner which works fine. Also, if sheer desperation demands it, I could always use Dad's iBook, which has a combo drive in it already.
To be honest, if I really need a burner, I might actually be better off buying one of these external Firewire babies, powered from the bus, which means I can both read from a CD and write to one at the same time. In fact, I was looking at one anyway before this announcement came out.
The good news is, though, that Apple is apparently going to offer an upgrade path at US$299 for those who bought Powerbooks after October 16. The bad news is, that's only going to come in mid-January, it doesn't look confirmed, and I'm not sure if the Powerbooks here in Singapore will qualify. That being said, it's nice to have options open.
In the meantime, I'm still the owner of the coolest looking laptop on the face of the planet, CD-RW drive or no.
Apple has announced, less than a month after I purchased Cassandra, that they're providing combo CD-RW/DVD drives in their Titanium Powerbooks, rather than the straight DVD which is in Cassandra. My initial reaction was, "Fuck, they couldn't tell me to wait a goddamn month?!?"
But calming down a bit, I sort of expected that Cassandra would be outclassed by her peers in about six months - Ziggy and Mike both lasted about that long. I didn't expect them to upgrade her model in less than a month, especially since they'd speed bumped the Powerbooks in October.
On reflection, do I really need a combo drive? Sure, it's nice to burn audio CDs with, but I don't do that all that often, and that being said, I have a perfectly serviceable, though slow external Iomega CD Burner which works fine. Also, if sheer desperation demands it, I could always use Dad's iBook, which has a combo drive in it already.
To be honest, if I really need a burner, I might actually be better off buying one of these external Firewire babies, powered from the bus, which means I can both read from a CD and write to one at the same time. In fact, I was looking at one anyway before this announcement came out.
The good news is, though, that Apple is apparently going to offer an upgrade path at US$299 for those who bought Powerbooks after October 16. The bad news is, that's only going to come in mid-January, it doesn't look confirmed, and I'm not sure if the Powerbooks here in Singapore will qualify. That being said, it's nice to have options open.
In the meantime, I'm still the owner of the coolest looking laptop on the face of the planet, CD-RW drive or no.
Agh! My eyes!
Dec. 18th, 2001 09:43 pmTried installing Windows XP Professional on Virtual PC, and this is the result.
Christ Almighty, the color scheme alone could halt a pack of stampeding hippopotami in their tracks at fifty yards. The icons are kiddified, and make it look like something out of McDonaldland. It's like someone wanted to do OS X's Aqua interface but was on acid while doing it, and hence made a horribly wrong turn somewhere just before Tasteville. It's just so... wrong.
I need to go flush my eyes out now. Excuse me.
1:00 a.m. - edited for a slightly better screenshot to show off Aqua's window button colors
Christ Almighty, the color scheme alone could halt a pack of stampeding hippopotami in their tracks at fifty yards. The icons are kiddified, and make it look like something out of McDonaldland. It's like someone wanted to do OS X's Aqua interface but was on acid while doing it, and hence made a horribly wrong turn somewhere just before Tasteville. It's just so... wrong.
I need to go flush my eyes out now. Excuse me.
1:00 a.m. - edited for a slightly better screenshot to show off Aqua's window button colors
