Teach42

Alright, might as well get this over with. Yesterday Apple announced their new products and yes, both major rumours were true. Apple released a ‘budget’ headless mac (basically an imac with new keyboard mouse or monitor) and a flash based iPod.

As you can see, it’s like a little slice of the cube they brought out way back when. You can get it with built in bluetooth, which is awesome, as well as a Superdrive. It’s a G4 which is decent, and upgrading it to 512mb of ram is reasonably priced. Maxing out the ram to 1GB will just about double the price of it though. It definitely gives Mac a ‘budget’ line, which is nice. However, I wish they had allowed you to add on a few other features. If it had a line-in port and a video-in port, it would be a perfect media center computer. I would love to be able to go through my photos and work on an iMovie on my 57″ HDTV while chilling on the sofa with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. And I guess I could still do that, but in order to be a true media center PC, you need to be able to use it as a Tivo. No video in nix’s that idea. It’s really too bad too. I know that I could probably get a USB device to do that, but that increases the cost even further and makes things messier. I like things to be neat if possible (which is ironic if you’ve seen my office lately).

The other device they brought out was the iPod Shuffle. Great size, great looks, great price, great functionality, great idea. No screen, no record, no reccomondation from me. Considering that Podcasting got is named for the iPod, it’s ironic that Apple released the most unfriendly MP3 player for podcasting yet. No ability to voice record, which I guess is understandable. Hey, somethings gotta give to keep the price down. But no screen? Let’s say I have 5 podcasts from the Dawn and Drew show on my iPod Shuffle. They all have the same introduction. I have to listen to about 15 seconds of each before I can tell one episode from another. What a pain in the patootie! (yes I said patootie, it’s a family site) It comes in 512mb or 1gb flavors. They’re trying out something new, where you’re supposed to let iTunes autofill your iPod with a random sampling of music (or not so random) and then it just plays on shuffle. It’s like a box of chocolates. “Daily gridlock feels less mundane when you don’t know what song will play next.” Unfortunately, if you actually want to CHOOSE what music your going to listen to, you’re basically screwed. Yes, you can make it play in order, but if you load up the maximum of 240 songs onto it, and you want to play song #142, you’ll have to hit >> 141 times. Boy, that sounds fun. I’m sure this will sell a bazillion units. It’s tiny, since it’s flash based people can job with it, you can plug it directly into a computer like a USB keychian drive (and use it for file storage as well), and it has a 12 hour rechargeable battery. All very cool. But without a screen, it’s a no go for me. Bummer…

Finally, the biggest disappointment of the day for me was that the phone I’ve been lusting after was released… in Brunei. Engadget has the story. The Motorola MPX300 that was released in Brunei yesterday, but has been pushed back to the second half of 2005 here in the states. Total bummer, it was supposed to be released in February. Why do I lust after it you ask? Well, it has major geek points for the dual flip design, enabling it to flip open like a traditional flip phone, or like a landscape mini mini laptop. Full keyboard for texting or moblogging as well. It runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE, so it’d be perfect for listening to podasts on as well as serve as your PDA. Additionally, it has built in camera, bluetooth and Wifi. Yes, you can make Skype calls from it, minute free. *sighs* I hate waiting for technology to catch up with my wish lists.

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