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iPod Review – One Year Later

I’ve had an iPod for just over a year now, so I thought I would make a few notes on it. I know the iPod is a beloved product, and the music player in some people’s minds, but it, like any other product (by Apple or otherwise) could use some improvements…

I have the 5th generation 30GB iPod with video. It was given to me by the lovely Dana. Before the iPod I was using a Rio 500, and an iRiver IPF-180T.

I had one annoying issue with syncing my iPod, but other than that, it’s been pretty much problem-free.

Now, in comparison, the Rio 500 still beats the iPod for bookmarking. The Rio has a button that will set a bookmark in any MP3 file. No so with the iPod. It does not support bookmarking of any audio file. This is annoying, especially as it was a feature I used daily, and had to give up on when I moved to the iPod.

The iPod does remember what is playing when you turn it off and continues from there (of course my cassette player did this in 1975 as well) but this fails when you plug your iPod into your computer! So if I’m half way through a podcast, and then want to charge or sync my iPod, it forgets where I was after ejecting, and I’m back at the home screen, and damned if I can remember what I was listening to. Sucks…

The iPod interface is simple, but I know at least one other person who has one that occasionally will not turn off, and has said “Couldn’t they just put a damn ON/OFF button on it?” Sometimes mine won’t turn off, so I just put it in my bag and hope it turns off automatically after a few minutes.

The iPod interface also requires you to look, or at least be able to feel around and guess where to push. Other players (with actual buttons) allow you to memorize where the buttons are and what they do. I could operate my Rio while driving and never take my eyes off the road. This seems to be a big concern with the iPhone as well, it will require visual attention to be able to use it.

The Rio kicks the iPod to the curb in regards to bookmarking, but that’s about it. As for the iRiver, the one I have is a cheap, low-end model, and the interface is horrible. The advantages it has is that it can record using a built-in microphone (I wish mine had an audio input though) and has an FM tuner. You can also combine these and record live from the radio. I guess it also plays WMA files, but I don’t have any of those. I mainly use it as a cheap, portable recording device, even though the quality is fairly poor in noisy situations. (I did use it to record myself snoring once.)

In summary, I do love the iPod, but it’s not the ultimate player. It could use some improvements. I’m not sure Apple will ever improve it to my satisfaction, but I thought it was worth critiquing.

(This post just talks about the iPod as an audio player. I plan to follow-up with it’s use as a video player as well.)




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Linksys NSLU2 versus ????

We put a Linksys NSLU2 in place about 4 months ago with two 500GB drives attached. One drive is meant to mirror the other for backup purposes. (See Small Business – Server & Backup)

Things have not been perfect. At least a few times in the last month I’ve had to reboot the NSLU2 because it could not be seen on the network. In most cases pulling out the power cord, plugging it back in, and powering on the device solves things, but really, should we have to do that? Shouldn’t the thing just work?

NSLU2 We’ve also had some weird permission problems. We’re a Mac-shop, and most of the files don’t really rely on having their unixy-permissions correct, but some do, like the files that go onto the web sites. A file on my Mac set to -rw-r–r– gets copied to the NSLU2 and is then set to -rwx——. This is bad bad bad! If we try to upload files directly to a web site, or even to our Macs, and then to a web site, they can’t be viewed, as the permissions are hosed.

I’m also not happy about the fact that we can’t plug the NSLU2’s drives into a Mac and get to the files. I’ve tried using Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem but it didn’t work. This means if the NSLU2 dies, we would have to get another one to get to the files.

I think the NSLU2 is a nice little device for the hacker to play with, or maybe for a home network of Windows machines, or even Macs, where file permissions don’t matter, but I’m just not sure it can cut it for a small business.

AirPort Extreme

I know other companies make NAS devices that may fit our needs, but looking at the Apple AirPort Extreme, it just might fit the bill. It probably doesn’t have some of the nice features of the NSLU2, but we could easily add a USB hub and our external drives and be up and running. I trust Apple hardware to be reliable, easy to use, and work seamlessly with our Macs. The price is about double the NSLU2, but it may be worth it.

We have two other options right now. We could install Linux on the NSLU2 and see if that fixes the problems. My reservation there is that NSLU2-Linux is a hacker project and I’m not sure what we’d lose/gain by switching what is running on the NSLU2.

The second option would be to take an old iMac running Mac OS X and attach the drives to it. This should take care of our permission problems, and also make it easy to attach the drives to any other Mac as needed. The downside here is that the iMac is older and since it would have to be running all the time it could fail. It also does not have some of the features of the NSLU2, but I can probably add them with a few cron jobs and Perl-fu.

So right now we may stick it out with the NSLU2 as is, but I’m always looking for better solutions.



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Stevenote 2007 Now!

Wow, I am so hyped about the Macworld 2007 Keynote!

I don’t know what products will be announced today, but I’m 50% sure that in about 4 years, I might be able to afford some of them. Used. On ebay.

Awesome!

(P.S. Dear Mac people, please don’t cause the interweb to meltdown today, some of us have work to do…)



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iTunes, Playlists, Sharing, Recommending…

I was thinking about music recommendation sites/engines (which seem to be all the rage nowadays) as well as the proliferation of iPods (and iTunes users) and the fact that the Zune thinks it so cool because it does some sort of simple sharing (which is supposedly “social” in nature.)

So if it really is “all about the playlist” (I think Lucas Gonze said this once, so I’ll give him credit) why doesn’t Apple follow through… Here’s my thought:

If you’ve got an iPod, chances really good that you use iTunes. iTunes does playlists. It can even do things like make a smart playlist of tracks you have recently played, and feed them back to a service like last.fm, which can show you neat stuff like what you listen to the most, what your friends are listening to, who your musical neighbors are, etc. last.fm doesn’t really feed back to iTunes or your iPod though – here’s where Apple could step in…

Let’s say that your iPod feeds back to Apple’s iTunes Music Store the tracks you’ve played, and does the “people who like X also like Y” thing, but then also provided samples (low bitrate, 30 second preview, whatever) back to you as downloads in iTunes (heck, they could be automated, podcast-style) which then get synced to your iPod. So each day you sync and get something new, of which you might want to purchase.

This is just a rough idea, I’m sure Apple could create a good experience for sharing playlist data, and recommending music.

I know there are sites that do somewhat similar things for podcasts (AmigoFish, GigaDial) but they require some sort of manual labor on the user’s part. Automation and simplicity would be the key though, provide benefits to the users without forcing them to do any/much work.

Thoughts?





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Am I a Laptop Guy?

It’s been over a month now since I got an iBook. I’ve had old PowerBooks before, but they were never that portable (meaning they had almost useless batteries, and no wifi.)

So, having a working laptop is an interesting thing. I know, some people live by their laptops, but I’ve always been a desktop guy. These are my observations so far on carrying around and using an iBook.

  • It’s heavy. Even though it’s a 12″ iBook, and it weights just 4.9 lbs, carrying it around is an effort. I put it in an over-the-shoulder bag I have that also carries the power supply, and other misc. stuff like a webcam, ethernet cable, Moleskin notebook, pens, etc.
  • Wifi is awesome. Mac OS X makes wifi pretty seamless. I remember trying to help a friend set up wifi using Windows, and we couldn’t figure it out.
  • It’s nice to have with you. But should I take it everywhere? Over the holidays I skipped bringing it somewhere and once I was there realized I really should have brought it. So it still requires thought as to whether I should lug the thing along or not. At least I have the option of lugging it and having it available to use instead of one of the Windows machines that seems to be everywhere.
  • I still don’t think of it as a main machine. To me my desktop Mac will always be my “homebase” computing machine – the powerhouse – with tons of RAM and disk space and running as a server, while a laptop is the portable solution to connecting and working.
  • Sitting on the couch reading my aggregator while watching TV is very relaxing.

Those are my notes so far. I’m sure I’ll have more as I go.