This was a feature that I thought about adding a while back, but it looks like someone beat me to it. Worth a weekly check in. Maybe if Apple would get that RSS feed of free stuff going, you wouldn’t go anywhere else.
Archive for March, 2006
29
Mar
Free from iTunes
Here’s a an email a friend I’ll call ‘iPodFan’ sent me today regarding the Creative Zen. You might remember, I played with the Zen:M back at CES and wished it didn’t suck.
————
My review of this review… and I’m completely unbiased!! ;)
Creative ZEN Vision:M Media Player
This is the same cost as the 30GB iPod with Video Playback. The ZEN Vision sells at Amazon for $299. The iPod 30GB is $289.99 at Amazon. ;)
My iPod’s hard drive kicked the bucket a mere week after its warranty ran out. Talk about rotten fruit. To get my life back in tune — and to spite Apple — I picked up this Creative media player.
Just like a cell phone, but with a delicate moving part, iPods have a useful lifetime… they won’t last forever. I’m sure Apple feels the spite, enjoy your Creative media player. Good luck getting it serviced if it develops problems.
In fact, upon further research, there are some interesting warranty features:
| Creative’s Warranty | Apple’s Warranty |
|---|---|
| warranty is not transferrable | transferrable warranty |
| warranty is only good in the country of purchase | worldwide warranty |
| labor costs are covered only for the first 3 months | labor costs are covered for the first 12 months |
| refurb models are only covered by a 30 day warranty | refurb models are covered by the same 1 year warranty |
| buyer pays repair shipping | pays shipping in the first 6 months |
Surprisingly, this stylish 30-Gbyte handheld held its own against my old iPod. It matches the video iPod’s MP3 and MPEG playback, makes up for lack of AAC support with DivX and Windows Media compatibility, and dazzles with its 2.5-inch LCD.
Same size screen, wonder how nice the Creative screen looks… I’ve never
seen one that was working on display.
(Editor’s Note - I’ve seen the screen, it was pretty nice.)
The menus and one of its buttons are customizable, and it has FM radio and a mike for recording messages. Plus, it mounted on my PC as a hard drive, so I could add files by just dragging and dropping — no more iTunes nightmares.
Windows Explorer for organizing your media… that sounds like loads of fun. FM radio: more fun. I am interested in the included Mike, is he cute? Does he take dictation? It’d be cool if they included a mic. (Sorry, pet peeve, Wired copy editors suck… I’ve seen so many typos lately.) My only iTunes nightmares are having to upgrade every ten minutes. ;)
My only complaint is that the vertical touchpad is a little too sensitive. And without iTunes Store compatibility, I have to get most of my video via BitTorrent. But that’s a small price to pay to escape Steve Jobs’ stranglehold on my music collection. — Erin Biba
Have fun getting sued. How does iTunes create a stranglehold? iTunes creates full quality Fraunhofer MP3 encodings at up to 320kbps, or VBR AAC, or even Apple Lossless (okay, that one is proprietary).
———
Thanks for the email, iPodfan! I love it when you’ve woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Keep ‘em coming!
Hmmmm….. this sounds like a great idea. Apple has been getting flack for iPods having potentially ear damaging loudness -
The move follows a class action lawsuit that was filed against Apple in a federal court in California in January, which claimed that iPods could cause hearing loss because they have the capacity to produce sounds in excess of 104 decibels and up to 115 decibels.
But it’s a 27.7 mb download for a volume limiter and “bug fixes?” That seems kinda big. I’m not sure we’re getting the whole truth here, folks. Apple has notoriously put new software into iPod and iTunes software releases, so I wonder what else might be in here?
Didn’t think they were going to stop with The Daily Show and Colbert Report, did you? Apple added multi-“we-swear-this-isn’t-a-subscription-“passes to Lost and Desperate Housewives tonight. More on this tomorrow morning.
27
Mar
New Tivo?
No Series 3 Tivo yet, but Amazon has specs on a SD dual cable tuner (one analog, one digital). Sounds like they may have one input for an external tuner and one internal tuner. Probably not the most straightforward thing to hook up, but Tivo has been pretty remarkable in the past making this stuff just work.
No official word from Tivo yet, but Amazon, Buy.com and a few others seem to have product info, but no ship date.
(Via Zatz Not Funny….)
Haven’t been paying too much attention to our pals over at XM lately, so here is a little update. After a little tiff with Clear Channel about adding advertisements to their channels (CC provides programming to several XM channels), XM decided to add genre channels that match the CC provided channels.
Those new channels are:
U.S. Country - XM 17 - Country Superstars of the 80s and 90s
Flight 26 - XM 26 - Modern Hits 90s & Now
XM Hitlist - XM 30 - Today’s Hit Music
enLighten - XM 34 - Southern Gospel
XM Liquid Metal - XM 42 - Heavy Metal XL
Big Tracks - XM 49 - Later Classic Rock
The Heat - XM 68 - Rhythmic Hits
Escape - XM 78 - Easy Listening
XM Chill - XM 84 - Chill Music
Viva - XM 91 - Latin Pop Hits
They also will be adding 6 regional talk radio stations in the spring and summer.
If you can tolerate another subscription in your life, XM is really great. If you spend a lot of time in the car or just like ad-free radio, check out XM.
(Via Orbitcast.)
24
Mar
Mac OS X turns 5 today
Another Friday afternoon Mac post, sorry Windows people. Ars Technica takes a look back at the last 5 years of OS X. For you fogies out there, we can remember that OS X was arguably the second most important thing that Jobs did upon his return to Apple (the first being the iMac). OS X made Macs cool for developers to use and many normal folks followed their lead. Nice retrospective for this piece of tech I use every day.
You might wanna skip this post if you are not a Mac geek. Here is a personal account from one of the engineers who works on Photoshop as to why it’s not so easy to convert Photoshop and the rest of the Adobe software family to Mac on Intel.
‘But, c’mon’, I hear people saying, ‘Steve said it was just a recompile!’ Or, ‘Back during the PowerPC transition, you guys released a patch!’
Well, this time is different. And I really wish it weren’t. But let me tell you how…
Bottom line is, Xcode the development environment for Mac on Intel hasn’t been suited to a large application like Photoshop until just recently and Adobe wasn’t using Xcode. And Xcode is necessary to develop for Mac on Intel. If you’ve ever gone through this experience, you know that it is very costly from a human resource and financial perspective.
Definitely an interesting read to get some insight into what developing a program like Photoshop must be like.
22
Mar
Windows Vista Slipsta
Now, how is that for shocking? We’ve never known Microsoft to announce a product before it’s ready or slip on a very public schedule… oh wait, that’s Apple. Now, writing a new OS must be difficult, but after stripping out several big features (including WinFS, a next gen file system), you’d think that it would have been made easier.
Vista was supposed to ship right before the holiday season and it will now ship in January 2007. Vista’s most recent date slip won’t come without repercussion. MS has announced a new Windows chief and heads are expected to roll soon.
CNET has a nice roundup of stories regarding the date slippage.
Have to give credit for that title to my cousin Jason, tech geek extraordinaire. His puns and wordplay may only be slightly worse than mine.
21
Mar
Real Housewives
It’s Tuesday, and I’m a whore for the iTunes Music Store (hey, that rhymes).
Continuing iTMS’ tradition of free downloads promoting not-yet-launched tv shows, this week we see Bravo capitalizing on the success of the “Desperate Housewives” with their launch of “Real Housewives of Orange County.”
From Bravo’s website:
“The Real Housewives of Orange County” will follow five sophisticated women and their families who lead glamorous lives in a picturesque Southern California gated community where the average home has a $1.6 million price tag and residents include CEOs and retired professional athletes.
“Roseanne” it ain’t.
Ok, I admit it. Once I found out that Best Buy received their shipments on Thursday mornings, I have been known to find a reason to visit them a little more often towards the end of the week. But apparently, the news wasn’t exactly an exclusive.
This week, however, their might be a reason to take a trip over to the local BB. Emboldened by the delayed PS3, it looks like all y’all that have been waiting for an Xbox might get one real soon now.
“Today we have turned a major corner,” said Peter Moore, corporate vice
president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and
Devices Division at Microsoft. “With more consoles on their way to retail,
80 games available by June, and new content and experiences coming to Xbox
Live(R) all the time, there has never been a better time to own an Xbox 360.”
Oh, yeah, and to you other guys hanging out at the Best Buy on Thursday mornings, you should get lives.
(Via Engadget.)
Wow, I knew there was something about the new MagSafe connector I didn’t like (besides the fact iGo doesn’t make a tip for it yet). According to Gizmodo, a Dutch user had this image (and more) on Flickr but took them down after Apple quickly offered to replace the MacBook.
Haven’t heard any other cases of fiery MacBooks, but this picture is a little unsettling.
20
Mar
Windows MCE on a iMac
Not satisfied with just running regular XP on an Intel Mac, the folks over at the OSX86Project have gotten Windows MCE up and running on an Intel iMac. They don’t have the IR port working yet, but I imagine that it will only be a matter of time.
One other bit of PSP news today that I missed yesterday - at Sony’s announcement yesterday, Ken Kutagari also announced a couple of cool add-ons for the PSP, namely the rumored GPS add-on and an Eyetoy for video VOIP. Both of these devices should give Sony’s PSP a long deserved shot in the arm, but here’s one question, how about some kick-ass games?
Need a little content for your iPod? Google has made its videos (not the ‘for pay’ videos, mind you) available for download reformatted for the PSP and iPod. Thank God, I can finally watch “Road Trip Prank,” “Shtanga,” “Indian Exotic Dance in Office 2” wherever I want!
