Despite this obvious flamebait/troll, I'll answer anyway.
I'm quite atheist, so I personally find it hypocritical to celebrate Christmas. I don't even like paying lip-service to a holiday that I don't even have the slightest belief in. It's best for everyone this way. I don't feel like a hypocrite, and people that actually DO want to celebrate the birth of Christ don't have me polluting their holiday by making it a commercial event. Instead, I celebrate the Solstice. Here in Edmonton, when this time of year comes around, the amount of daylight that we get is much too little, so celebrating the lengthening of days again is something I can get behind. I don't have any pagan beliefs either - no 'official' ones anyway - so I'm just happy that the days are getting longer.
As for buying gifts, this is a good time of year to do it. Lots of sales.:)
Timbuk2 started making bicycle courier bags, so they're unreasonably durable in my experience. Waterproof, too. They've started making things like laptop bags, or if you want to, you can buy one of their courier bags and add in one of their laptop cases that fit inside. They make one that fits the 17" Powerbook, I'm fairly sure.
Oh, and they also make a neat little iPod case that'll go on the strap of the bag. (As well as a cellphone case, radio case, and strap bag. Totally handy stuff.)
I just got an iPod for Solstice (actually, I got it a few weeks early), and the single best feature about it is the games.
That's right. The 4 crappy games that came on it are a blessing.
I HATE shopping. I've hated shopping since I was young and my mother dragged me out to malls to shop around. Back then, they didn't even have chairs everywhere. I stood around and hated the experience. Now, when I go shopping there are chairs everywhere, but nothing to do. It turns out, I still hate the experience.
But now that I have an iPod, I can listen to the music, toodle around with Parachute or Name that Song, and look up every once in a while to say, "Yes dear, that looks great." I don't know if any of the other MP3 players out there have these little time wasters on them, but they should.
(Oh, I hear the iPod does other things, too, like keep your contacts, alarms, notes and files. So handy!)
CDBaby was supposed to set something up with the iTunes Music store, but after the initial announcement and ballyhoo, I didn't hear anything else about it. Anyone with any CDBaby + iTunes experience yet, or more info on it?
While I'm not condradicting you, I'd really like a list of things that are falsified. I've heard things are twisted, but I don't know of the purely falsified, outright lies.
With all sincerity, post some links or let us know what the falsified sections are.
It was edited out that I'm using a G5 with OS X. Thanks to all of you that have answered, even with non-OS X information. I've managed to glean enough from here and there that I've so-far managed to solve most of my problems, except for WMA encoded AVIs, which even DivX Doctor has no solution for on OS X systems.
When I submitted this story, I wanted it to go to the Apple section. My problem is that I DO have a Mac, and I'm having problems. Fortunately, the Win2000 box in the house has the same problems.
Oh, and to the AC that followed up, thinking that s/he was being clever: the story explicitly states that I have 3ivX installed.
I've managed to clear up most of my problems, except WMA encoded AVIs, but so far there's only a codec for OS 9, which I don't have. Alas.
Basically, they're doing what all good HCI (Human-Computer Interface) teams do. They're grabbing all the good stuff and throwing away all the not-as-good stuff. There's nothing particularily new here, except for the addition of certain visualizations. Most of these ideas are already implemented in M2 (Opera's email client) or in Mail.app (OS X's default mail client) or in various other Unix mail clients.
M2 is basically one big folder, and all the other folders you define are filters on the main folder. They also have a quick reply pane at the bottom of the message so you can fire off a reply that doesn't require very much input.
OS X's Mail.app has the little green dot beside a sender's name when they're online and available for chat. It threads things (like any good email client. Strangely, MOST Windows clients don't. Hmm.) can colour code things and has a pretty reasonable filtering facility (though nothing as on-the-fly as what IBM proposes.)
The thing I hate most about working under Windows is the lack of a really solid email client. Opera's M2 is the best I've found so far, and I hear Outlook 2003 FINALLY allows you to respond to emails properly, instead of the fscked up way that Microsoft has always demanded. (Yes, you can embed your replies, but it's never been quite right. Outlook strongly encourages top-posting.)
Oh, and Mozilla's was good, but I find the browser far inferior to Opera, so I gave up on it. Maybe when the forked email client is finally stable, I'll give it a try again.
1) I've never heard of anyone having problems with skipping, in all honesty. I haven't taken mine and shaken it, or gone running with it yet.
2) Too big and heavy? Jeebus, it's sort of unreasonably light. The reaction of most people I've seen when they first encounter an iPod is 'wow! It's so small and light!' I'd cycle with it, and I'm a bit of a weight weenie. I know that the solid state ones are lighter, but if you're worried about that much weight, I think that there are other problems.
3) I rip all my stuff at 224kbit AAC, so I'm glad the iPod is so big. That said, 10GB is pretty much perfect for the amount of music that I want to carry around.
4) The iPod battery doesn't always fail after 18 months, like you imply. In any case, you can get a replacement for $50US or buy a Belkin external battery pack, and run it off of double AA batteries if you really want to.
5) From all accounts, the iPod harddrive is significantly LESS fragile than most notebook harddrives. Factor in that it spins very little (only to stick another song in the cache), I don't think you're as likely to damage it as a laptop harddrive. Frankly, from the construction, I suspect that any impact big enough to ruin the harddrive in the iPod would probably take out the iRiver, too.:P
6) Just make a playlist! No big searching for songs! I have two playlists specifically for cycling, so I just start one of those up and go.:)
7) The iPod IS an external hard drive. A buddy of mine is a developer, and got a developer build of Panther. He didn't want to mess with his laptop before he went to a conference, so he put Panther on his iPod and booted off of it! Slick. I'm using mine right now to hold my contacts and calendar information. I'm sure that I'll put more things on it over time. Oh, and I think I just convinced a friend to get one, since he loves taking digital photos, and Belkin makes a memory card reader now. He can store all of his holiday photos on an iPod, and not haul a laptop with him.
I've had my iPod for a couple of days, and already I love it to death.:)
Actually, I'm going to correct myself, and set everything straight.:)
The webpage is for an American institution, the price is in US dollars, and it's $369 US. The price I originally quoted was approximately $379CDN, and for a 10GB iPod, instead of the 5GB iPod advertised on that site.
I was talking in Canadian money, too. After the education discount, a Canadian 10GB iPod is only $10 more than the price advertised on that web page for a *5*GB iPod.
It seems clear that it's this bookstore that's ripping you off, not Apple. Because you can get a new 10GB iPod for $299 from Apple directly, this page seems wildly out of date.
Apple can set whatever price they want on their products. That's not price fixing.
Find someone that's willing to buy it for you through their higher education discount. In Canada, a $439 10GB iPod goes for about $379 if you use an educational discount, if I recall correctly.
And you think that AA or AAA batteries will SAVE you money in the long term, perhaps?
The iPod has to run a hard drive and power a bunch of other things with batteries, and these things typically take a lot of power to run. So, pretend that it takes 4 AA batteries to run the iPod. Here, it's $4 for a two-pack of AA Energizers, so that's $8 to run your iPod. Since they're not rechargable, it only takes about 10 packs before the cost of buying one of the third party replacement batteries (I'm working in Canadian money here, BTW) is cheaper.
If you want to buy rechargable batteries, you can buy NiMH batteries with a charger for about $50CDN. These will last at least as long as the built-in battery, but the recharging is somewhat less convenient. Admittedly, the convenience of being able to carry spare batteries just in case can be a match, if you use it that much (and we assume that 4AAs last as long as one charge on the iPod battery).
I think that it's probably better to have an internal, non-swappable rechargable battery, personally.
As for Oggs, I used to have everything ripped to ogg, but I've switched to AAC, since I really like iTunes. (I know that there's a plugin to listen to oggs with iTunes, but it's REALLY bad under windows. It works great on my Mac, though). If you're using iTunes, re-ripping your library isn't so bad.
I have to use Windows at work (obviously, if you look at my email address) and I use the very capable Deskwin virtual desktop system. The problem is that Windows apps don't really like playing nice with it, and it still gives me the occasional problem. Expose at home on my G5 is a wonderful thing to use. I don't close or minimize or hide windows anymore. Why bother?
All I need now is someone to copy this functionality for Windows, and I'll be a little bit happier.
(BTW, for anyone using a Mac with Expose, try hitting F9 or whatever your 'show all windows' button is, and then pressing tab or `. It's like the rich man's alt-tab.)
Perhaps that's true. However, you'd think someone with such an obvious knack for coding would be able to do something as simplistic as follow a standard that has been set. It isn't that much of a burden. An anti-social programmer with no actual respect for authority (which is what a coding standard is - at least in part - an extension of authority) is not a good person to have on a team.
And while you're right about complex problems taking a special kind of insight to solve, the truth of programming is that it's largely simplistic tasks broken up by the occasional bout of complexity. Usually, that complexity is easily decomposed into many more mundane tasks. Usually, working hard can almost be a substitute for being clever.
Yeah, these people are great, right up until the time when they leave, and leave a morass of code that works well, but is indecipherable, and takes 5 people to decode it ANYWAY. I've seen the programmer that you talk about, and some of them are TRULY great programmers, able to both produce brilliant, functional code very quickly AND make it accessable to anyone. (I worked for a summer for a professor like that. I saw him hand optimize TCP/IP code in assembly, and implement a TCP/IP 'replacement' over UDP for testing purposes in about 3 hours. AND I could read and understand his code.)
However, I've seen the flipside. Brilliant programmers that don't feel that they should have to follow any rules, write their own code, and generally don't get along with anyone. In the end, these people end up being a liability. When they inevitably leave, you can't work with what they left without a considerably longer ramp-up time, and you usually end up re-writing their code anyway, 'cause while it was well designed to do what it was originally intended, their goofy style ends up being inflexible as well.
Programmers that can follow an arbitrary coding standard are, in the long run, more useful than programmers that generate a lot of code that nobody can use.
At some point, a poll was circulated around my company, asking people what the ideal office size was. It was basically only programmers that answered 3 or 4. Everyone else wanted to share with as few people as possible. Artists, designers, whoever.
I work with 3 other people in my office now, and I really like it. I'm REALLY lazy most of the time, so not having to get up to ask someone a question, and just yelling it out to my office suits me just fine. As well, my two immediate team leads are right near me, so if I have a question about a design decision that I'm making, I can clear it with them if it's sketchy. Why would you want to be in an office by yourself? I've had the office to myself before, and it's usually just kinda lonely.
It's worth pointing out that while you can play vinyl today, it's much harder than it used to be. Cassette players are becoming fewer and fewer, and it's not inconceivable that CDs are on the way out in the next few years (in favour of DVDs or some form of digital media, say). Hardware to play those formats doesn't last forever. You're probably as likely to have something that plays AAC files - even your encrypted ones - 20 years from now as you are to have a CD player that will play your CDs. And, like everyone else is quick to point out, you CAN always rip the music to CD, and make sure you rip it to the format of the day every time it looks like there's a major shift in technology.
Besides, who listens to their 20 year old music?;)
You don't have to use iTunes, you know. You don't have to buy Apple's music at all. What Apple is selling you is music that has to be listened to using their software and hardware. That's the ACTUAL product that you're getting. If you don't like the product, don't buy it, and don't ruin it for the rest of us. I hope Apple shuts this hole quickly so I don't have to put up with the RIAA imposing some draconian measure that only lets you play the songs on one computer during a full moon with four lawyers looking over your shoulder. It hasn't even reached Canada yet, and you're already trying to make it so that nobody has any right at all.
Oh, and don't give me the line that you're doing this as some sort of protest and this is all very altruistic. Altruists don't hide in their basement, quietly breaking the law. If you're going to protest, get on the news. Shout your name and address to the heavens, say that you're going to keep doing this until your rights are acknowledged, and music is as free as you believe it should be. Breaking your terms of agreement with Apple in the safety of your home doesn't impress anyone, and doesn't get anything done.
Maybe, but one on one is, by definition, significantly more intimate. Not only that, but if you can listen from a distance, there's considerably less impetus to actually approach a person and talk to them about their music. This way, if you want to interact, you HAVE to get close to the person - well within touching range.
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Despite this obvious flamebait/troll, I'll answer anyway.
:)
I'm quite atheist, so I personally find it hypocritical to celebrate Christmas. I don't even like paying lip-service to a holiday that I don't even have the slightest belief in. It's best for everyone this way. I don't feel like a hypocrite, and people that actually DO want to celebrate the birth of Christ don't have me polluting their holiday by making it a commercial event. Instead, I celebrate the Solstice. Here in Edmonton, when this time of year comes around, the amount of daylight that we get is much too little, so celebrating the lengthening of days again is something I can get behind. I don't have any pagan beliefs either - no 'official' ones anyway - so I'm just happy that the days are getting longer.
As for buying gifts, this is a good time of year to do it. Lots of sales.
It's definitely on the new Gen 3 iPods. I was also under the impression that the newest firmware update would put the game on your iPod.
Timbuk2 started making bicycle courier bags, so they're unreasonably durable in my experience. Waterproof, too. They've started making things like laptop bags, or if you want to, you can buy one of their courier bags and add in one of their laptop cases that fit inside. They make one that fits the 17" Powerbook, I'm fairly sure.
Oh, and they also make a neat little iPod case that'll go on the strap of the bag. (As well as a cellphone case, radio case, and strap bag. Totally handy stuff.)
I just got an iPod for Solstice (actually, I got it a few weeks early), and the single best feature about it is the games.
That's right. The 4 crappy games that came on it are a blessing.
I HATE shopping. I've hated shopping since I was young and my mother dragged me out to malls to shop around. Back then, they didn't even have chairs everywhere. I stood around and hated the experience. Now, when I go shopping there are chairs everywhere, but nothing to do. It turns out, I still hate the experience.
But now that I have an iPod, I can listen to the music, toodle around with Parachute or Name that Song, and look up every once in a while to say, "Yes dear, that looks great." I don't know if any of the other MP3 players out there have these little time wasters on them, but they should.
(Oh, I hear the iPod does other things, too, like keep your contacts, alarms, notes and files. So handy!)
CDBaby was supposed to set something up with the iTunes Music store, but after the initial announcement and ballyhoo, I didn't hear anything else about it. Anyone with any CDBaby + iTunes experience yet, or more info on it?
While I'm not condradicting you, I'd really like a list of things that are falsified. I've heard things are twisted, but I don't know of the purely falsified, outright lies.
With all sincerity, post some links or let us know what the falsified sections are.
It was edited out that I'm using a G5 with OS X. Thanks to all of you that have answered, even with non-OS X information. I've managed to glean enough from here and there that I've so-far managed to solve most of my problems, except for WMA encoded AVIs, which even DivX Doctor has no solution for on OS X systems.
When I submitted this story, I wanted it to go to the Apple section. My problem is that I DO have a Mac, and I'm having problems. Fortunately, the Win2000 box in the house has the same problems.
Oh, and to the AC that followed up, thinking that s/he was being clever: the story explicitly states that I have 3ivX installed.
I've managed to clear up most of my problems, except WMA encoded AVIs, but so far there's only a codec for OS 9, which I don't have. Alas.
Oh, there're lots. Eudora, The Bat, Pegasus...just go to Tucows and look at the number of email clients that are listed.
:P
Oh, and Outlook Web Access is lousy. It doesn't thread. If it does, it's sufficiently well hidden that it doesn't really count.
It's true, Outlook can do it (in a way that I find substandard, BTW) but I did only say 'most'. :)
Basically, they're doing what all good HCI (Human-Computer Interface) teams do. They're grabbing all the good stuff and throwing away all the not-as-good stuff. There's nothing particularily new here, except for the addition of certain visualizations. Most of these ideas are already implemented in M2 (Opera's email client) or in Mail.app (OS X's default mail client) or in various other Unix mail clients.
M2 is basically one big folder, and all the other folders you define are filters on the main folder. They also have a quick reply pane at the bottom of the message so you can fire off a reply that doesn't require very much input.
OS X's Mail.app has the little green dot beside a sender's name when they're online and available for chat. It threads things (like any good email client. Strangely, MOST Windows clients don't. Hmm.) can colour code things and has a pretty reasonable filtering facility (though nothing as on-the-fly as what IBM proposes.)
The thing I hate most about working under Windows is the lack of a really solid email client. Opera's M2 is the best I've found so far, and I hear Outlook 2003 FINALLY allows you to respond to emails properly, instead of the fscked up way that Microsoft has always demanded. (Yes, you can embed your replies, but it's never been quite right. Outlook strongly encourages top-posting.)
Oh, and Mozilla's was good, but I find the browser far inferior to Opera, so I gave up on it. Maybe when the forked email client is finally stable, I'll give it a try again.
1) I've never heard of anyone having problems with skipping, in all honesty. I haven't taken mine and shaken it, or gone running with it yet.
:P
:)
:)
2) Too big and heavy? Jeebus, it's sort of unreasonably light. The reaction of most people I've seen when they first encounter an iPod is 'wow! It's so small and light!' I'd cycle with it, and I'm a bit of a weight weenie. I know that the solid state ones are lighter, but if you're worried about that much weight, I think that there are other problems.
3) I rip all my stuff at 224kbit AAC, so I'm glad the iPod is so big. That said, 10GB is pretty much perfect for the amount of music that I want to carry around.
4) The iPod battery doesn't always fail after 18 months, like you imply. In any case, you can get a replacement for $50US or buy a Belkin external battery pack, and run it off of double AA batteries if you really want to.
5) From all accounts, the iPod harddrive is significantly LESS fragile than most notebook harddrives. Factor in that it spins very little (only to stick another song in the cache), I don't think you're as likely to damage it as a laptop harddrive. Frankly, from the construction, I suspect that any impact big enough to ruin the harddrive in the iPod would probably take out the iRiver, too.
6) Just make a playlist! No big searching for songs! I have two playlists specifically for cycling, so I just start one of those up and go.
7) The iPod IS an external hard drive. A buddy of mine is a developer, and got a developer build of Panther. He didn't want to mess with his laptop before he went to a conference, so he put Panther on his iPod and booted off of it! Slick. I'm using mine right now to hold my contacts and calendar information. I'm sure that I'll put more things on it over time. Oh, and I think I just convinced a friend to get one, since he loves taking digital photos, and Belkin makes a memory card reader now. He can store all of his holiday photos on an iPod, and not haul a laptop with him.
I've had my iPod for a couple of days, and already I love it to death.
Actually, I'm going to correct myself, and set everything straight. :)
The webpage is for an American institution, the price is in US dollars, and it's $369 US. The price I originally quoted was approximately $379CDN, and for a 10GB iPod, instead of the 5GB iPod advertised on that site.
I was talking in Canadian money, too. After the education discount, a Canadian 10GB iPod is only $10 more than the price advertised on that web page for a *5*GB iPod.
It seems clear that it's this bookstore that's ripping you off, not Apple. Because you can get a new 10GB iPod for $299 from Apple directly, this page seems wildly out of date.
Apple can set whatever price they want on their products. That's not price fixing.
Find someone that's willing to buy it for you through their higher education discount. In Canada, a $439 10GB iPod goes for about $379 if you use an educational discount, if I recall correctly.
And you think that AA or AAA batteries will SAVE you money in the long term, perhaps?
The iPod has to run a hard drive and power a bunch of other things with batteries, and these things typically take a lot of power to run. So, pretend that it takes 4 AA batteries to run the iPod. Here, it's $4 for a two-pack of AA Energizers, so that's $8 to run your iPod. Since they're not rechargable, it only takes about 10 packs before the cost of buying one of the third party replacement batteries (I'm working in Canadian money here, BTW) is cheaper.
If you want to buy rechargable batteries, you can buy NiMH batteries with a charger for about $50CDN. These will last at least as long as the built-in battery, but the recharging is somewhat less convenient. Admittedly, the convenience of being able to carry spare batteries just in case can be a match, if you use it that much (and we assume that 4AAs last as long as one charge on the iPod battery).
I think that it's probably better to have an internal, non-swappable rechargable battery, personally.
As for Oggs, I used to have everything ripped to ogg, but I've switched to AAC, since I really like iTunes. (I know that there's a plugin to listen to oggs with iTunes, but it's REALLY bad under windows. It works great on my Mac, though). If you're using iTunes, re-ripping your library isn't so bad.
Yeah, I know about that. But sometimes, I like being SO lazy that I hit F9 and just cycle through all the windows.
Besides, I said it was the RICH man's command-tab (alt-tab). It's fancier, but does the same thing.
I have to use Windows at work (obviously, if you look at my email address) and I use the very capable Deskwin virtual desktop system. The problem is that Windows apps don't really like playing nice with it, and it still gives me the occasional problem. Expose at home on my G5 is a wonderful thing to use. I don't close or minimize or hide windows anymore. Why bother?
All I need now is someone to copy this functionality for Windows, and I'll be a little bit happier.
(BTW, for anyone using a Mac with Expose, try hitting F9 or whatever your 'show all windows' button is, and then pressing tab or `. It's like the rich man's alt-tab.)
Perhaps that's true. However, you'd think someone with such an obvious knack for coding would be able to do something as simplistic as follow a standard that has been set. It isn't that much of a burden. An anti-social programmer with no actual respect for authority (which is what a coding standard is - at least in part - an extension of authority) is not a good person to have on a team.
And while you're right about complex problems taking a special kind of insight to solve, the truth of programming is that it's largely simplistic tasks broken up by the occasional bout of complexity. Usually, that complexity is easily decomposed into many more mundane tasks. Usually, working hard can almost be a substitute for being clever.
Yeah, these people are great, right up until the time when they leave, and leave a morass of code that works well, but is indecipherable, and takes 5 people to decode it ANYWAY. I've seen the programmer that you talk about, and some of them are TRULY great programmers, able to both produce brilliant, functional code very quickly AND make it accessable to anyone. (I worked for a summer for a professor like that. I saw him hand optimize TCP/IP code in assembly, and implement a TCP/IP 'replacement' over UDP for testing purposes in about 3 hours. AND I could read and understand his code.)
However, I've seen the flipside. Brilliant programmers that don't feel that they should have to follow any rules, write their own code, and generally don't get along with anyone. In the end, these people end up being a liability. When they inevitably leave, you can't work with what they left without a considerably longer ramp-up time, and you usually end up re-writing their code anyway, 'cause while it was well designed to do what it was originally intended, their goofy style ends up being inflexible as well.
Programmers that can follow an arbitrary coding standard are, in the long run, more useful than programmers that generate a lot of code that nobody can use.
...at least in my experience they do.
At some point, a poll was circulated around my company, asking people what the ideal office size was. It was basically only programmers that answered 3 or 4. Everyone else wanted to share with as few people as possible. Artists, designers, whoever.
I work with 3 other people in my office now, and I really like it. I'm REALLY lazy most of the time, so not having to get up to ask someone a question, and just yelling it out to my office suits me just fine. As well, my two immediate team leads are right near me, so if I have a question about a design decision that I'm making, I can clear it with them if it's sketchy. Why would you want to be in an office by yourself? I've had the office to myself before, and it's usually just kinda lonely.
It's worth pointing out that while you can play vinyl today, it's much harder than it used to be. Cassette players are becoming fewer and fewer, and it's not inconceivable that CDs are on the way out in the next few years (in favour of DVDs or some form of digital media, say). Hardware to play those formats doesn't last forever. You're probably as likely to have something that plays AAC files - even your encrypted ones - 20 years from now as you are to have a CD player that will play your CDs. And, like everyone else is quick to point out, you CAN always rip the music to CD, and make sure you rip it to the format of the day every time it looks like there's a major shift in technology.
;)
Besides, who listens to their 20 year old music?
You don't have to use iTunes, you know. You don't have to buy Apple's music at all. What Apple is selling you is music that has to be listened to using their software and hardware. That's the ACTUAL product that you're getting. If you don't like the product, don't buy it, and don't ruin it for the rest of us. I hope Apple shuts this hole quickly so I don't have to put up with the RIAA imposing some draconian measure that only lets you play the songs on one computer during a full moon with four lawyers looking over your shoulder. It hasn't even reached Canada yet, and you're already trying to make it so that nobody has any right at all.
Oh, and don't give me the line that you're doing this as some sort of protest and this is all very altruistic. Altruists don't hide in their basement, quietly breaking the law. If you're going to protest, get on the news. Shout your name and address to the heavens, say that you're going to keep doing this until your rights are acknowledged, and music is as free as you believe it should be. Breaking your terms of agreement with Apple in the safety of your home doesn't impress anyone, and doesn't get anything done.
Maybe, but one on one is, by definition, significantly more intimate. Not only that, but if you can listen from a distance, there's considerably less impetus to actually approach a person and talk to them about their music. This way, if you want to interact, you HAVE to get close to the person - well within touching range.