As far as recharging with the laptop: it's not as though I have to have it slung over my shoulder while I ride my bike! The thing lasts at least 15 hours, and wherever I am calling home base (my car, my home, my friends' home, whatever) is an easy to place to recharge the Shuffle. For free.
Here are 10 reasons why I would choose the Shuffle in a second over the Micro:
1. You failed to mention that the Muvo Micro requires a new AAA battery after ever 15 hours of use. This is huge for me. I can recharge the iPod shuffle wherever I can bring my laptop.
2. Size. The shuffle is slightly longer thanks to its built-in USB connector, but thinner and narrower, and the Micro with battery weighs more.
3. FM. I don't like anything I hear on the radio these days, and never listen. Besides, according to the review on The Register, its quality is "within the limits of any analog radio of this size that uses the earphones as an antenna. In short, the sound is a little hissy and it's easy to move just off-station as you're travelling around." Blah.
4. Voice recorder. I've got one in my cell phone, and I never use that, so I don't see why I'd bother with one in my MP3 player.
5. Button placement. I noticed the Micro has buttons on at least two surfaces. This makes it easier to accidentally press something. The Shuffle only has buttons on the front, and they require a very firm touch.
6. Appearance. I'm going to be wearing this thing. The Shuffle is more stylish. Your opinion may vary, and probably will since you just bought a Micro.
7. iTunes integration. I have been using iTunes to organize my library for several years. As far as I know there's nothing as elegant to move music in and out of my iTunes library as an iPod.
8. According to the specs on Creative's site, the Micro doesn't play uncompressed (WAV) files.
9. I wasn't sure if the Micro uses a separate USB cable or has an integrated connector, so I was just on the muvo.com site to take a peek at the manual. The link is broken ("too many redirects"). This is not the type of thing that gives me confidence in a product.
10. Micro requires a USB cable to sync up. To me that's a nuisance. I much prefer the USB dongle approach that the Shuffle and some other small players have.
What the hell - I am sure that the Micro suits most peoples' needs just fine, and in fact to many I'm sure that the FM radio alone is worth the extra 10 bucks you paid. But IMHO the shuffle is a better-designed product, which does what it promises beautifully, and doesn't try to sell me on extra "features" I'll never use.
Re:Lizard flag in early PPC machines
on
Apple Easter Egg
·
· Score: 1
The "iguana iguana powersurgius" worked in all the first-gen PCI Power Macs (7200, 7500, 8500, and I think 9500). With my 7200/75 I was never able to get the flag to fly off the pole though. Did anybody ever have any luck with that? Maybe mine just wasn't fast enough to generate all that wind speed.
There were even modifier keys you could use when bringing up the easter egg to get it to display FPS.
The linked article is Dave Massy's blog entry with comments at the bottom. Dave attacks the Firefox site's assertion that it is more secure because it is not "rolled into the OS" like IE is. In the comments at the bottom, this one by Dave Thomas puts it up so well...
"Now I'm pretty confident that Mitchell doesn't actually know the details of how IE is developed so I don't fully understand the basis of the statement."
The basis of the statement is:
(1) That Microsoft itself argued in a court of law that IE was embedded in the operating system.
(2) That many Windows apps, such as Explorer and the Help System, use the guts of IE to render content.
This is why people say IE is in the operating system. Because IT IS. No, not from a "I'm a kernel hacking geek" point of view, but from a practical one.
And why does this matter in terms of security? Because when IE gets hacked, it means all those programs that make up the OS environment are now vulnerable, and in many cases, now present new vectors for the attack, and more importantly, hacking IE can present a person with many channels into core OS programs.
This does not happen with Firefox. If you find an exploit in Firefox, you have exploited Firefox.
Forgive me for saying so, but you are basing which computer you buy on what video card you can put into it and how many apps will run on it. You haven't mentioned even once what you do with your computer, other than play a few old games, that you need all this horsepower for.
Fact: since 2000 my mom's iMac G3/400 with no antivirus software has been connected directly to a cable modem. She surfs where she wants, opens every email attachment that gets sent to her, clicks on pop-ups, downloads software, the whole bit.
Her computer is clean, and the only OS installation I have ever done on it are OS X upgrades. I've never reformatted it or even defragged it for that matter. Maybe one of these days something will compromise her machine. But I think 5 years of virus-free computing using a wide open machine is just cause to not bother with CPU-hogging, annoying antivirus software.
Am I a bit complacent? Maybe. I'll revisit that if and when she gets hit (or if I get hit with something on my own machine, which is behind a NAT router).
Well part of the problem is that the linked article is not actually Symantec's, it's just a ZDNet article saying that Symantec said a few things about Mac OS X.
The only malware specifically cited in the article is the lame "Opener" which was found on somebody's Mac last October, and proved to be less than scary.
They're analyzing a trend which should be obvious to anybody: Macs are gaining in popularity, so they are more likely to be targeted. There is no research baking up their claim (like any actual virii etc), just a simple little assertion.
Of course this is going to get Mac fans pissed off. The more Mac users get worried, the more Symantec stands to gain.
Yes, $200 is less than half the cost of the Mac mini (not mini-mac), but a Mac Mini is an entire second computer. You get to keep your Wintel jalopy too!
One Question: will your new mobo be compatible with your existing RAM? If not, factor in another couple hundred.
Second Question: if you upgrade your machine to Athlon 64, what exactly does that do for you? Assuming you've already got a GHz or so, you're not using it to meet tight deadlines in a production environment and aren't into the latest crazy games, will you really benefit so much from a faster processor?
I would say almost certainly dual core processors would run more efficiently than single core processors. The necessary communication between the cores to ensure cache coherency etc would run along much faster pipes in the chip rather than having to find their way back to the motherboard.
Not a fair analogy. Comic strips don't lead people to live performances.
You are correct that a web site alone is not enough to draw people to your music. But hard work and perseverence can create a buzz... take a shitty live gig, do a great job and direct fans to your web site, make them feel like they're part of some elite club for knowing about you, create a mailing list, have more gigs and some of those fans will follow you. These people tell others about how great you are, spread word of your internet presence, draw strangers in to hear how cool you are and then they too start attending your live shows.
This has worked for me. Not on any large multinational scale or anything, but the web is a great leveler - it is possible for me to have as much of a presence as U2 if I want.
As for internet cartoons? Well, imagine something really good, a diamond in the rough - imagine if "The Far Side" got its jump on the web before it ever existed in print, and gave links to buy bound softcover books. Hell, The Onion has had success with this and it started life as a web site.
Great theory, until the kid at the Future Shop tells the otherwise-computer-ignorant person "Macs suck".
People fear the Mac. They don't buy into claims that it's any easier to use, they don't believe it doesn't get viruses, they fear that their existing hardware and software won't work, they don't understand why it doesn't contain a Pentium, and in the case of the Mac Mini, can't understand why you would buy anything but the fastest computer you can afford.
Plus, Apple's going out of business, the Mac is the new betamax, it's a cheesy decorative toy so it can't be powerful, they won't be able to bring the files home from their Windows machines at work, and 1-button mice make baby Jesus cry. Macs are good for graphics and that's about it.
Good point. Still I wouldn't thrash my powerbook around while its hard drive is reading/writing. So... those silly little background tasks would have to be on remote volumes I guess.
If I was physically tilting and jostling my PowerBook to play a silly little game I would probably want to park the hard drive anyway, and keep it parked until the game ends.
Um, I would agree with you except that the Sawtooth G4 came out long before the iPod - and if I'm not mistaken there was no dock for the first gen. model.
The G4's internal FireWire port is a remnant of the pipe dream that storage devices such as hard disks, optical and zip drives would one day gain native FireWire ports right on the mechanisms.
I used to think that would have been a great idea, but now I'm glad HD manufacturers instead held out for the more suitable SATA bus.
Thanks fname! I had two points I wanted to make, and you just made one of them, perfectly. (mod parent up)
I would also like to point out that Apple is the only company I can think of that likes to save about 95% of its announcements until the big tradeshow so that the guy in the black turtleneck can reveal it to standing ovations. While it's a romantic thought, it's just unrealistic!
Apple is a multi-billion dollar company whose products are known to influence technology. In the weeks leading up to a Jobs keynote, everybody wants to know what they're going to announce! And surprise - Jobs will announce a few innovative or tantalizing products, and they're almost all shipping today.
Apple used to succeed at this most of the time. The Power Mac G4, PowerBook G4, and Aqua come to mind as recent "big surprise" keynote stand-outs.
But they can't expect this to work all the time. In fact they have to realize that as they continue to grow at this phenomenal pace, the world is watching Apple, and this childish game of "no product announcements" becomes increasingly unrealistic.
In fact, it's frustrating for people who use their "pro" software (I use Logic), because unlike software from other vendors, users of FCP, Logic etc have no idea of whether Apple is even aware whether the bugs and problems we must deal with every day, let alone whether there is a fix. Apple will just implement some new feature that wows people at tradeshows which causes us to completely rethink our workflows.
Nokia and Motorola announce groundbreaking cell phones long before they hit the market. Car manufacturers show off their concept cars and announce features appearing on next year's model all the time. Microsoft tells us what we can expect in Longhorn... blah blah blah I could go on.
My point? Apple can keep suing all the people they want and the only people who will win are the lawyers. If Apple wins this lawsuit, contact me and I'll host ThinkSecret in Canada, eh?
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Russia,
YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
I loaned my PowerBook for a few days
:)
You write a weekly column and use the word "loaned"?
What's next is Smugness Extreme. In a few years I won't be happy unless we see Core Smugness.
Cool about the wavs.
As far as recharging with the laptop: it's not as though I have to have it slung over my shoulder while I ride my bike! The thing lasts at least 15 hours, and wherever I am calling home base (my car, my home, my friends' home, whatever) is an easy to place to recharge the Shuffle. For free.
Maybe Jack Campbell could give him the $25000.
i'm glad you're happy with your purchase.
Here are 10 reasons why I would choose the Shuffle in a second over the Micro:
1. You failed to mention that the Muvo Micro requires a new AAA battery after ever 15 hours of use. This is huge for me. I can recharge the iPod shuffle wherever I can bring my laptop.
2. Size. The shuffle is slightly longer thanks to its built-in USB connector, but thinner and narrower, and the Micro with battery weighs more.
3. FM. I don't like anything I hear on the radio these days, and never listen. Besides, according to the review on The Register, its quality is "within the limits of any analog radio of this size that uses the earphones as an antenna. In short, the sound is a little hissy and it's easy to move just off-station as you're travelling around." Blah.
4. Voice recorder. I've got one in my cell phone, and I never use that, so I don't see why I'd bother with one in my MP3 player.
5. Button placement. I noticed the Micro has buttons on at least two surfaces. This makes it easier to accidentally press something. The Shuffle only has buttons on the front, and they require a very firm touch.
6. Appearance. I'm going to be wearing this thing. The Shuffle is more stylish. Your opinion may vary, and probably will since you just bought a Micro.
7. iTunes integration. I have been using iTunes to organize my library for several years. As far as I know there's nothing as elegant to move music in and out of my iTunes library as an iPod.
8. According to the specs on Creative's site, the Micro doesn't play uncompressed (WAV) files.
9. I wasn't sure if the Micro uses a separate USB cable or has an integrated connector, so I was just on the muvo.com site to take a peek at the manual. The link is broken ("too many redirects"). This is not the type of thing that gives me confidence in a product.
10. Micro requires a USB cable to sync up. To me that's a nuisance. I much prefer the USB dongle approach that the Shuffle and some other small players have.
What the hell - I am sure that the Micro suits most peoples' needs just fine, and in fact to many I'm sure that the FM radio alone is worth the extra 10 bucks you paid. But IMHO the shuffle is a better-designed product, which does what it promises beautifully, and doesn't try to sell me on extra "features" I'll never use.
The "iguana iguana powersurgius" worked in all the first-gen PCI Power Macs (7200, 7500, 8500, and I think 9500). With my 7200/75 I was never able to get the flag to fly off the pole though. Did anybody ever have any luck with that? Maybe mine just wasn't fast enough to generate all that wind speed.
There were even modifier keys you could use when bringing up the easter egg to get it to display FPS.
It should be able to run Longhorn.
Thank you Sloppy. That was brilliantly put.
Forgive me for saying so, but you are basing which computer you buy on what video card you can put into it and how many apps will run on it. You haven't mentioned even once what you do with your computer, other than play a few old games, that you need all this horsepower for.
Fact: since 2000 my mom's iMac G3/400 with no antivirus software has been connected directly to a cable modem. She surfs where she wants, opens every email attachment that gets sent to her, clicks on pop-ups, downloads software, the whole bit.
Her computer is clean, and the only OS installation I have ever done on it are OS X upgrades. I've never reformatted it or even defragged it for that matter. Maybe one of these days something will compromise her machine. But I think 5 years of virus-free computing using a wide open machine is just cause to not bother with CPU-hogging, annoying antivirus software.
Am I a bit complacent? Maybe. I'll revisit that if and when she gets hit (or if I get hit with something on my own machine, which is behind a NAT router).
Well part of the problem is that the linked article is not actually Symantec's, it's just a ZDNet article saying that Symantec said a few things about Mac OS X.
The only malware specifically cited in the article is the lame "Opener" which was found on somebody's Mac last October, and proved to be less than scary.
They're analyzing a trend which should be obvious to anybody: Macs are gaining in popularity, so they are more likely to be targeted. There is no research baking up their claim (like any actual virii etc), just a simple little assertion.
Of course this is going to get Mac fans pissed off. The more Mac users get worried, the more Symantec stands to gain.
Yes, $200 is less than half the cost of the Mac mini (not mini-mac), but a Mac Mini is an entire second computer. You get to keep your Wintel jalopy too!
One Question: will your new mobo be compatible with your existing RAM? If not, factor in another couple hundred.
Second Question: if you upgrade your machine to Athlon 64, what exactly does that do for you? Assuming you've already got a GHz or so, you're not using it to meet tight deadlines in a production environment and aren't into the latest crazy games, will you really benefit so much from a faster processor?
I would say almost certainly dual core processors would run more efficiently than single core processors. The necessary communication between the cores to ensure cache coherency etc would run along much faster pipes in the chip rather than having to find their way back to the motherboard.
People become addicted to Apple rumors because they tend to be first to market for a lot of stuff.
If you have an interest in where desktop computing is going, it's good to know what Apple's got in the oven.
Not a fair analogy. Comic strips don't lead people to live performances.
You are correct that a web site alone is not enough to draw people to your music. But hard work and perseverence can create a buzz... take a shitty live gig, do a great job and direct fans to your web site, make them feel like they're part of some elite club for knowing about you, create a mailing list, have more gigs and some of those fans will follow you. These people tell others about how great you are, spread word of your internet presence, draw strangers in to hear how cool you are and then they too start attending your live shows.
This has worked for me. Not on any large multinational scale or anything, but the web is a great leveler - it is possible for me to have as much of a presence as U2 if I want.
As for internet cartoons? Well, imagine something really good, a diamond in the rough - imagine if "The Far Side" got its jump on the web before it ever existed in print, and gave links to buy bound softcover books. Hell, The Onion has had success with this and it started life as a web site.
Great theory, until the kid at the Future Shop tells the otherwise-computer-ignorant person "Macs suck".
People fear the Mac. They don't buy into claims that it's any easier to use, they don't believe it doesn't get viruses, they fear that their existing hardware and software won't work, they don't understand why it doesn't contain a Pentium, and in the case of the Mac Mini, can't understand why you would buy anything but the fastest computer you can afford.
Plus, Apple's going out of business, the Mac is the new betamax, it's a cheesy decorative toy so it can't be powerful, they won't be able to bring the files home from their Windows machines at work, and 1-button mice make baby Jesus cry. Macs are good for graphics and that's about it.
...or, maybe they're trying to reduce the bloat in Gnome.
Good point. Still I wouldn't thrash my powerbook around while its hard drive is reading/writing. So... those silly little background tasks would have to be on remote volumes I guess.
Only the first revision "Sawtooth" G4 towers had the internal FW port. (See this post for a theory on the subject)
If I was physically tilting and jostling my PowerBook to play a silly little game I would probably want to park the hard drive anyway, and keep it parked until the game ends.
Pinball, anyone?
Um, I would agree with you except that the Sawtooth G4 came out long before the iPod - and if I'm not mistaken there was no dock for the first gen. model.
The G4's internal FireWire port is a remnant of the pipe dream that storage devices such as hard disks, optical and zip drives would one day gain native FireWire ports right on the mechanisms.
I used to think that would have been a great idea, but now I'm glad HD manufacturers instead held out for the more suitable SATA bus.
Thanks fname! I had two points I wanted to make, and you just made one of them, perfectly. (mod parent up)
I would also like to point out that Apple is the only company I can think of that likes to save about 95% of its announcements until the big tradeshow so that the guy in the black turtleneck can reveal it to standing ovations. While it's a romantic thought, it's just unrealistic!
Apple is a multi-billion dollar company whose products are known to influence technology. In the weeks leading up to a Jobs keynote, everybody wants to know what they're going to announce! And surprise - Jobs will announce a few innovative or tantalizing products, and they're almost all shipping today.
Apple used to succeed at this most of the time. The Power Mac G4, PowerBook G4, and Aqua come to mind as recent "big surprise" keynote stand-outs.
But they can't expect this to work all the time. In fact they have to realize that as they continue to grow at this phenomenal pace, the world is watching Apple, and this childish game of "no product announcements" becomes increasingly unrealistic.
In fact, it's frustrating for people who use their "pro" software (I use Logic), because unlike software from other vendors, users of FCP, Logic etc have no idea of whether Apple is even aware whether the bugs and problems we must deal with every day, let alone whether there is a fix. Apple will just implement some new feature that wows people at tradeshows which causes us to completely rethink our workflows.
Nokia and Motorola announce groundbreaking cell phones long before they hit the market. Car manufacturers show off their concept cars and announce features appearing on next year's model all the time. Microsoft tells us what we can expect in Longhorn... blah blah blah I could go on.
My point? Apple can keep suing all the people they want and the only people who will win are the lawyers. If Apple wins this lawsuit, contact me and I'll host ThinkSecret in Canada, eh?
Peace