Mild-Mannered Musings

Rip. Mix. Shuffle.

So I got my iPod shuffle today. Took a drive down to the Apple store, since they'd called last night saying it had come in. While I was at the store, I took a look at the Mac mini. Not a bad little box. Severely gimped in a few ways, but ways that don't matter to its target audience. It's interesting that there's this culture of "I need an upgradeable computer" going on in the PC world. I imagine the majority have never even cracked the monstrous tower case hidden somewhere under their desk. Might have to do with a fear of technology; might have to do with the 14,000 cables coming out of the back of it. Either way, it's a shame the mentality is there. The mini's perfect for that audience. It's just overcoming the FUD.

The shuffle is an impressive little device as well. It's wicked, wicked light. Less than an ounce, apparently. The playback quality is superb. I honestly think it sounds better than my iPod mini. Though the mini has some nice extras, like EQ settings. However, all of that's pretty much thrown out the window when you first use the shuffle. It's small, simple, and does its job quite effectively. Shuffle it shall. The pricing couldn't be better, either. $150 for 1GB is a steal, compared to its competitors. Heck, it's only about $30 more than a 1GB thumb drive. Slick stuff. I really like the Autofill feature. They should use it for all of the iPods. For the shuffle, it's a necessity. For other iPods, it would be quite a nicety.

Posted: 1/27/2005 02:45:05 PM Permalink

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Sharing Some Wealth

Before I had my Apple epiphany (induced by Mac OS X, of course), I spent a year or two dabbling in Linux and FreeBSD. I've always had a special place in my heart for the latter. I don't know if it's the fuzzy little daemon icon or FreeBSD's rock-solid performance, but there's just something about the OS that has always fascinated me. One of the smaller things it does is send out the results of its daily maintenance scripts to the root account. I know other Unixes and other distributions do this, as well, but FreeBSD was the first OS I ever encountered that did it.

Well, after I learned that Mac OS X had its roots in BSD, I became surprised that I wasn't getting those same types of emails. Turns out it's because they are just sent to /dev/null by default! So, I re-enabled those and even ended up rolling my own /etc/security script. If you're a Mac administrator, you might want to check it out!

Posted: 1/20/2005 11:36:58 AM Permalink

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Egocasting

There's an interesting article up on The New Atlantis titled The Age of Egocasting. It's definitely worth a read; though I'd set aside a significant chunk of time because it is quite lengthy. (Which isn't without irony, as the author cites shortened attention spans and ADHD in the text) While the article begins with a history of the remote control, it becomes apparent midway through that the author is actually discussing the way we consume media. TiVo and iPod both get a mention, as well as the usual laments over social isolation in public spaces (pshaw! I don't want to talk to the bum playing sax on the subway anyway!) Good stuff :)

Posted: 1/17/2005 11:04:41 AM Permalink

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No! Bad rumor! Bad!

I first saw it come up on Engadget this morning and now others seem to be joining in. Folks, Apple just said in their Quarterly Earnings Call that shoehorning a G5 into a PowerBook is a tremendous thermal challenge. I mean think about it, the PPC 970 runs so hot that Apple had to beef up the PowerMac with liquid cooling to keep it from burning your house down. The iMac G5 makes use of several fans and a chimney system to keep its chip cool. These are things that just aren't available to PowerBook technology yet.

In addition to just the heat issues, the article to which everyone is pointing claims that the G5 will make an appearance in the iBook line as well. All of this second quarter this year! Let's forget that the reporting news source isn't exactly reputable. Instead, let's make use of that old "logic" thing. Currently, the iBook and PowerBook lines are terribly similar. Sure, the PowerBook processors might be a little bit faster, but I think the major difference these days is that the PowerBook is aluminum and the iBook is plastic. Oh, and the PowerBook can drive dual displays, whoopdeedoo.

I'm sure that Apple is anxious to release a PowerBook G5, just to differentiate it from its glossy sibling. When the iBook had the G3, it was easy to justify the added cost of a PowerBook G4: better CPU! Now it's much more of a challenge. Unless you have a penchant for aluminum, you might have a hard time shelling out the cash for a 12" PowerBook over that 14" iBook.

No, what I think is much more likely is that this is some sort of typo or other confusion. The MacRumors Buyer's Guide shows that the iBook and PowerBook could both stand an update. Maybe it's time for those Dual core PowerBooks to make an appearance. Refreshes make much more sense than completely new models. I doubt Apple was able to resolve the thermal issues over the past few days and I doubt they've decided to further blur the line between the iBook and the PowerBook.

Posted: 1/14/2005 03:08:46 PM Permalink

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2. Do not eat iPod shuffle

Tuesday was a great day for Mac fans. Steve Jobs' keynote was fantastic, heralding a new direction in Apple strategy: Go for the cheap! So many of the arguments I've had over whether the Mac is a better platform ended up coming down to two factors. The first, games, doesn't really seem to be picking up too much. Though I'll definitely point out that World of Warcraft is easily the most popular game out right now and was a simultaneous Mac/Windows release.

The second factor is price. Simply put, some people just can't see the value in the platform. I can't quite understand why, personally, but maybe I have blinders on. Either way, the Mac mini certainly changes things. There's a new star player on the field that's going to bring us many new fans. Much like Jobs said in the keynote, I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said they would buy a Mac, just if it were cheaper.

But heck, at that price I'm about to buy one to replace my little Linux server. A year or two back, I setup a little Shuttle SV25 with Gentoo Linux. I use it for storage and as a little NAT router. Things I know Mac OS X is quite capable of doing as well. Plus the mini is even smaller than the Shuttle, so it'll fit nicely next to my receiver. Then it's just an Apple DVI-Video adapter away from being a little media center. Add Bluetooth keyboard and mouse... Airport... Yeah, I think I'll get one for myself.

In addition to the Mac mini, Apple also announced the iPod shuffle. Swweeettttt. Another product for the less affluent amongst us, but I think I'll buy one of these too. The fact that you can easily use it as a USB hard disk is a very attractive option. I'm curious to see how it handles dividing the space. If it's using partitioning, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to make the space reserved for files into a nice FAT32 partition. Then I can load it up with various tools and my most important data. Easily accessible from both Windows and Mac OS X.

And 1GB for $150 is an outstanding price. Considering most flash players are quite a bit more expensive and most USB keychain drives are only slightly less expensive, it seems Apple has picked a perfect price point. I wonder what kind of margins Apple gets on them. Since the actual storage (i.e. USB HDDs) is only a little cheaper, I imagine the margins must be quite slim as Apple adds accessories and additional logic chips.

It's good to see Apple starting to penetrate lower-end markets. Especially since they aren't losing any of the fit and polish in the process. People can now afford the "luxury" quality at an "econo" price. With any luck, these two new products will become gateway drugs that lead switchers to the greener pastures of the PowerMac and larger iPods. Now if I just had the money to buy some Apple stock...

Posted: 1/14/2005 08:33:20 AM Permalink

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