In my home, we use a combination of a Squeezebox in the Living Room and an Airport Express in the Office.
It has its issues, but the Squeezebox works well in the Living Room because it's unobtrusive and self-contained: you don't need a computer or a TV to control it. In the Office, the Airport Express is perfect because it can be controlled by any computer in the room, and being an office, there are plenty of them.
The biggest downfall, actually, is the wireless. Wireless just isn't as reliable as wired. Once every few weeks, I'll find that one of my base stations needs to be power cycled. Sometimes all of them do. And this is something that's a pain for my wife, who just wants to listen to music.
The problem is worse in the Living Room, which is close to the kitchen, which contains the microwave. As you know, microwaves interfere with 802.11. That's not a big deal when you're surfing the web, but it sucks to have your music drop everytime you make a bag of popcorn.
This problem is only going to get worse when sharing movies starts becoming possible. Ethernet totally has the bandwidth for this. Wireless does not.
It's a pain, for sure, but now's the best time to do it.
I find it amusing that pretty much everyone is trying to push functionality onto the Mac mini.
Now I'm as guilty as the rest, but has anyone stopped to consider that the mini is just a low-cost, small-footprint Mac aimed at potential switchers?
I suspect that deep down, we know that's all the mini is, but we're just trying to find some kind of rationalization for buying one. (I'll admit it: I've been wanting to get one to act as a dedicated server for my iTunes Library, a function I think it'd perform quite well.)
Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.
Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.
Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock or a USB cable extender (sold separately).
For those who are freaking out about not having a screen ("how do I choose which album to play?"), realize that you're not the target market for the iPod Shuffle.
The target market for the iPod Shuffle is people who buy/download the songs they like and really don't care the order in which they're played. It's basically like having your radio station that plays all your favorite songs all day. Teenagers will eat these up, and at $99-$149, many can afford them.
Would I want one? Probably not, but then I already have an iPod. They've already got me.
Tivo has realized that, aside from DirecTV, they're going to have to sell their own units on their own merits...
Perhaps you missed this other announcement. DirecTV will be selling their own non-TiVo DVR (and spec-wise it's pretty nice). They claim they'll continue to sell/support TiVos, but it's unlikely they'll be adding any features or pushing them much.
Boy, if those dunderheads at Microsoft know what's good for them, they better get to work at developing a way to take advantage of all that bandwidth and even do something as crazy as deploy applications via the network.
Were the suit about a buzz-worthy product like the next generation iPod, I could buy that argument, but this is for an audio breakout-box for GarageBand. This isn't a tool that the general public really cares about.
And this wasn't a vague rumor about flash-based iPods that could be the result of anyone's wild conjecture. It was
specific information about inputs, outputs, the form factor, the manufacturers, release date, etc. That's the kind of information that can only be known by some one who's worked with Apple and has presumably signed (and violated) an NDA.
Apple really cares about who this vendor is, so at the very least they can stop working with them. The only way to find that information out is to file a law suit and subpoena the rumor sites who published the information.
Apple has not at all been coy about it's iTunes+iPod business platform. iPod sales support the iTunes store, which in turn increases the "value" of the iPod. Break that cycle and you start losing market share.
I don't think there's anyone out their who naively bought Real songs to put on their iPod. Anyone who's savvy enough to know it could be done had to know that eventually Apple was going to pull the plug.
I know you're (mostly) joking, but I'll bite anyway.
I work for a company that employs almost equal amounts of technical folks and artists, and the simplest way to answer your question is that artists don't take "No" for an answer.
It's all too easy for technical types to find reasons why something can't be done (but CCDs aren't good at capturing pink! but pink doesn't compress well! but the human eye is too sensitive to pink! -- I'm obviously making these up). Artists are great at ignoring your excuses and pushing you anyway.
Sometimes you're right, and it really can't be done. But all to often what you thought was impossible is possible. You just had to think about a different way.
And besides, the artist can then demonstrate your technology in a really cool way that you would have never imagined.
That would be like Cray selling off their supercomputer division. Apple is primarily a hardware company, and OSX is just icing on the cake.
Apple was primarily a hardware company. But as the last quarter's results show, and as innumerable analysts have speculated, Apple is more-and-more becoming an iPod company.
Ok, yeah it's a bit of a long shot. But not as long as it was four years ago.
What if IBM just buys Apple's (computer) hardware division?
Apple's already separated things out nicely so that things like the iPod and the Airport Express are in their own division. And unlike the hardware division, the iPods have amazing market share.
They've also been trying to increase their revenue from software (frequent releases of OS X, iLife, pro software like Final Cut).
If Apple's no longer a hardware company, who knows, maybe they might be more willing to ship OS X for other platforms.
I say start small. Give them Firefox. No one's going to do something as dramatic as install a whole operating system on their PC just because you gave them a CD. Anyone who would do that has already done so.
But installing Firefox? That's pretty low-risk, and people may do it for kicks. Bonus points if you set the default home page as a web page delivering your holiday greeting of choice.
Many people will point to the two Belkin products which seem to serve this purpose. Clearly these people have not used one of these. While they do usually work, they'll also take a ridiculously long time, and drain the battery of your iPod in the process.
Moreover, the pictures that you import won't immediately be visible on your iPod. You still have to plug your iPod into your computer, add them to iPhoto, then sync them back to your iPod through iTunes.
So, far from ideal, especially for a product called the iPod Photo.
Like many Google technologies, they'll probably put it out there to see if it sticks before thinking about making money from it. That's pretty much what's happened with Google News, Orkut, Gmail, etc.
And even if they never charge for it, they're reinforcing the notion of Google as the search king, which keeps people coming to google.com.
Which is quite the contradiction from the article's title, "AT&T looks into closing its Windows". Of course, since when has CNet been the pinnacle of journalism.
Exactly. In general, CNet seems to prefer a cutesy weak pun to an accurate headline.
Hmm, well I certainly didn't mean to distort the facts. I'm not sure why you're objecting to "admitted" (he didn't announce this on his own accord. Some one asked, he admitted). I used "gave up" because it was once a goal (to increase Mac market share) to pursue another one (to dominate the digital music field).
I think defending your (and my) beleaguered platform has made you a bit sensitive. I suggest you stop reading CNet.
Steve Jobs has repeatedly said that the iTMS exists to sell iPods. He, in fact, has recently admitted that when they decided to write iTunes for Windows, they gave up on using the iPod to convert people to Macs.
So why exactly would they want to open this up, and help other companies sell devices?
Folks have often argued that they should at least open it up in areas where Apple doesn't yet have a market. They key word people are forgetting when they make this argument is yet.
Again, how is it in Apple's interest to let other companies piggyback onto Apple's extremely difficult (legally, technically), barely-profitable venture that is the iTunes Music Store?
It doesn't have to all be music, particularly if Apple ever re-releases Home on iPod -- a feature that was once advertised as part of Panther, but then pulled:
Home away from home
Ever thought you could carry your home in the palm of your hands or in your pocket? You can. Panther's Home on iPod feature lets you store your home directory -- files, folders, apps -- on your iPod (or any FireWire hard drive) and take it with you wherever you go. When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you're "home," no matter where you happen to be. And when you return to your home computer, you can synchronize any changes you've made to your files by using File Sync, which automatically updates offline changes to your home directory.
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It has its issues, but the Squeezebox works well in the Living Room because it's unobtrusive and self-contained: you don't need a computer or a TV to control it. In the Office, the Airport Express is perfect because it can be controlled by any computer in the room, and being an office, there are plenty of them.
The biggest downfall, actually, is the wireless. Wireless just isn't as reliable as wired. Once every few weeks, I'll find that one of my base stations needs to be power cycled. Sometimes all of them do. And this is something that's a pain for my wife, who just wants to listen to music.
The problem is worse in the Living Room, which is close to the kitchen, which contains the microwave. As you know, microwaves interfere with 802.11. That's not a big deal when you're surfing the web, but it sucks to have your music drop everytime you make a bag of popcorn.
This problem is only going to get worse when sharing movies starts becoming possible. Ethernet totally has the bandwidth for this. Wireless does not.
It's a pain, for sure, but now's the best time to do it.
Don't you know? The next PowerBook (and all other future Macs) will run on Intel chips. Dvorak said so!
Now I'm as guilty as the rest, but has anyone stopped to consider that the mini is just a low-cost, small-footprint Mac aimed at potential switchers?
I suspect that deep down, we know that's all the mini is, but we're just trying to find some kind of rationalization for buying one. (I'll admit it: I've been wanting to get one to act as a dedicated server for my iTunes Library, a function I think it'd perform quite well.)
The target market for the iPod Shuffle is people who buy/download the songs they like and really don't care the order in which they're played. It's basically like having your radio station that plays all your favorite songs all day. Teenagers will eat these up, and at $99-$149, many can afford them.
Would I want one? Probably not, but then I already have an iPod. They've already got me.
Perhaps you missed this other announcement. DirecTV will be selling their own non-TiVo DVR (and spec-wise it's pretty nice). They claim they'll continue to sell/support TiVos, but it's unlikely they'll be adding any features or pushing them much.
Oh. Wait.
You may love .NET or you may hate it (there seems to be no in between), but you can't say Microsoft hasn't been thinking about this a bit.
And this wasn't a vague rumor about flash-based iPods that could be the result of anyone's wild conjecture. It was specific information about inputs, outputs, the form factor, the manufacturers, release date, etc. That's the kind of information that can only be known by some one who's worked with Apple and has presumably signed (and violated) an NDA.
Apple really cares about who this vendor is, so at the very least they can stop working with them. The only way to find that information out is to file a law suit and subpoena the rumor sites who published the information.
I don't think there's anyone out their who naively bought Real songs to put on their iPod. Anyone who's savvy enough to know it could be done had to know that eventually Apple was going to pull the plug.
I work for a company that employs almost equal amounts of technical folks and artists, and the simplest way to answer your question is that artists don't take "No" for an answer.
It's all too easy for technical types to find reasons why something can't be done (but CCDs aren't good at capturing pink! but pink doesn't compress well! but the human eye is too sensitive to pink! -- I'm obviously making these up). Artists are great at ignoring your excuses and pushing you anyway.
Sometimes you're right, and it really can't be done. But all to often what you thought was impossible is possible. You just had to think about a different way.
And besides, the artist can then demonstrate your technology in a really cool way that you would have never imagined.
Apple was primarily a hardware company. But as the last quarter's results show, and as innumerable analysts have speculated, Apple is more-and-more becoming an iPod company.
Ok, yeah it's a bit of a long shot. But not as long as it was four years ago.
Apple's already separated things out nicely so that things like the iPod and the Airport Express are in their own division. And unlike the hardware division, the iPods have amazing market share.
They've also been trying to increase their revenue from software (frequent releases of OS X, iLife, pro software like Final Cut).
If Apple's no longer a hardware company, who knows, maybe they might be more willing to ship OS X for other platforms.
Stranger things have happened.
But installing Firefox? That's pretty low-risk, and people may do it for kicks. Bonus points if you set the default home page as a web page delivering your holiday greeting of choice.
thanks
This was also mentioned recently in New Yorker's Talk of the Town
Steve Jobs, is that you?
Moreover, the pictures that you import won't immediately be visible on your iPod. You still have to plug your iPod into your computer, add them to iPhoto, then sync them back to your iPod through iTunes.
So, far from ideal, especially for a product called the iPod Photo.
And even if they never charge for it, they're reinforcing the notion of Google as the search king, which keeps people coming to google.com.
Exactly. In general, CNet seems to prefer a cutesy weak pun to an accurate headline.
If we all stop using Internet Explorer, the terrorists have won!
I think defending your (and my) beleaguered platform has made you a bit sensitive. I suggest you stop reading CNet.
So why exactly would they want to open this up, and help other companies sell devices?
Folks have often argued that they should at least open it up in areas where Apple doesn't yet have a market. They key word people are forgetting when they make this argument is yet.
Again, how is it in Apple's interest to let other companies piggyback onto Apple's extremely difficult (legally, technically), barely-profitable venture that is the iTunes Music Store?
One poster in the macrumors forums claims that songs de-DRMed through Hymn no longer play.
Can anyone verify?
For a more comfortable fit, I might suggest putting them in your ears.
Home away from home
Ever thought you could carry your home in the palm of your hands or in your pocket? You can. Panther's Home on iPod feature lets you store your home directory -- files, folders, apps -- on your iPod (or any FireWire hard drive) and take it with you wherever you go. When you find yourself near a Panther-equipped Mac, just plug in the iPod, log in, and you're "home," no matter where you happen to be. And when you return to your home computer, you can synchronize any changes you've made to your files by using File Sync, which automatically updates offline changes to your home directory.