What Will Happen at MacWorld 2007?
Ok, lets do this and do it quickly:
Will his Steveness squat and squeeze out any of the following happen tomorrow at MacWorld?
0. “iPhone”……………………………………….Probably not. Either way, please shut up about it.
1. Final “iTV”…………………………………….Yes.
2. Widescreen Videos From iTunes………Yes.
3. New Displays (\w iSights)……………….Maybe. Lets go with Yes.
4. Leopard Launch Date……………………..Yes.
5. iLife 07………………………………………..Yes.
6. iWork 07………………………………………Yes. With spreadsheets.
7. 802.11n Wireless Support……………….Yes.
8. A small device that when swallowed will turn your shit in to gummy bears…..Yes.
9. Updated iMacs………………………………Yes.
Ok, its out of my system now. Enjoy the show!
The Zune is Nice, but Not Nice Enough
The Zune, Microsoft’s new attempt to dethrone the iPod, is nice. Its a little big, but nice. I really mean that. From what I’ve seen so far in the form of video, articles and so forth, the Zune seems to be a decent Video / Photo / Music device. That sounds like me complementing a Microsoft product and, well, it is…but there is a catch. As nice as it may be, I don’t see the Zune even scratching the surface of the mammoth structure that is iPod’s dominance. Here’s why: Right now the iPod has an commanding lead in the market share of digital music players…ok its more like a Super Space Captain Commanding lead in the market share. I couldn’t find the current number, but for the sake of argument, lets say 75% (I’m being generous to Microsoft with that figure, I think.). So lets be generous to Microsoft again and say that every single person that doesn’t own an iPod agrees with me on how nice the Zune is goes out and buys one for Christmas / Festivus. Well even with that uber-generous assumption, you still won’t dent the iPod market share. As well all know, if you have something that dominating competing with you, you can’t win by just rounding up stragglers, you have to win by converting their users. Thats where “nice” just won’t cut it. “Nice” isn’t enough for me to take my $300+ investment in my iPod and put it away in my bottom desk drawer and go out and make another $300 dollar investment to switch to your team. To convert the invested iPod masses, you can’t just come out with a slightly bigger version of what they already paid for and go on about how great your screen is. You’ve got to bring something a little better than that to the party. Oh sure, they have their WiFi features, but those were castrated by DRM long ago with silly rules and axed functionality. The only chance the Zune has if Microsoft cuts the price in half…at least. Even then, its a hard sell.
The OS X Dilemma
One last thing about the Zune and this “big boy” talk before I go concentrating on finding half-naked lady picture for today’s Friday Feature: Why didn’t Microsoft make the Zune work on OS X? If you think that doesn’t matter, go ask your Mom if she knows what the Zune is. Hell, go ask your sister or dad or the guy that sleeps on your couch, they won’t know either. All new electronics go through the trickle-down effect: Geeks to Wanna-Be Geeks to Young People to Everyone Else. So whats the problem? Well guess what a major chunk of Geeks use for their every day computing? OS X. Believe it. I know more and more people in the industry switching to Mac and I live in St. Louis. I would imagine the Geek-Owning-Macs share is a factor of 10 higher out there. So when these Geeks go to try out the new Zune, they can’t. So they obviously won’t use it. Which seems like a minor-issue if a rather small group doesn’t use the product, until you think about the percentage of people in the important “Everyday People” group that are going to call up their Web Developer son to ask if the Zune is worth buying. That Web Developer son would reply “I never could really try it out. You are better off going with an iPod.” It wouldn’t have taken much to put together a version of Zune software for the Mac or even just license another company to do it.
Editor’s Note: I got pulled away at the end of that last sentence to do some, get this…work! I just wanted to let you know that I’m posting this, but if my train of thought wanders in this article or it suddenly ends, its because someone made me work, not because I had a mild stroke halfway through.
Smart Playlists Auto-Update on the iPod
Smart Playlists is one of iTunes strongest, and probably most under-used features. You can make an automatic playlist with nearly any criteria you want – a particular word in the title, the number of times a track has played (or not played), how you’ve ranked a track (either good or bad) and so on. iTunes comes preloaded with a few smart playlists, one for ’90′s Music’, ‘Recently Added’, and ‘Top 25 Most Played’. Well, you can also make a Smart Playlist to make all of your podcasts play one after another, which is the point of this rambling.
I’ve got roughly 30 podcasts that I subscribe to. Most are fairly short, coming in at under 10 minutes in length (C|NET, Slate, Onion Radio, various NPR shorts). While it’s pretty easy to pick out and play a single podcast on the iPod, it becomes cumbersome when you’ve got a dozen episodes to listen to because you have to let a single podcast run thru to the end, have it go back to the main menu, and then navigate manually to the next program to want to listen to.
You can make a Smart Playlist that puts all of your unplayed episodes into one playlist and they will all run in one long really good radio program. Go to File -> New Smart Playlist
You should get a window similar to the photo accompanying this post (click on the photo for a larger version). Choosing the genre and play count are key – putting a restriction on the time is my personal choice. Set genre to ‘Podcast’, and play count to ’0′. I chose to make this playlist a collection of all the short stuff because I want to make sure that I have the time to listen to a longer podcast. 20 minutes works well for what I’ve subscribed to.
Now, while this so far has been a mind-blowing ‘Oh God why didn’t I think of that’, this next revelation will just make you weep with just how amazing the iPod really is. Make sure that ‘Live Updating’ option is checked. If you’ve got a newer iPod (Nano, and I would assume Video iPods) this playlist updates itself live, on the iPod, away from iTunes. So, you can start with a jam-packed playlist and as you listen to each episode they drop out of the playlist one by one. The smart playlist works for the older iPods, but does not update itself away from iTunes. Despite not auto-updating on the older iPods this tip is most-usefull for you long-time iPod users. Your iPods don’t show what podcast episodes you’ve listened to already. Newer iPods place a dot before new episodes, just like in iTunes. For the 3G and earlier iPods this smart playlist takes the guessing out of ‘have I listened to this yet’? Let me know if this works differently on any of the various iPod models that I’ve not been able to test it on.
Why Are They Still Called MP3 Players?
I’m getting pretty sick of hearing “MP3 Player” 5 times every commercial break.
At one point will people stop calling them MP3 players and start calling them “Music Players” or “Digital Music Players” or something else? Anything at all? Most players manufacturers don’t even want you to use MP3s, they want to be used with AAC or WMA. Of course I realize that MP3 is the catchy term (for some reason) that the public is familiar with, but really when will it stop? The tech community really needs to thing of a new catchy term that can be used for all of them that isn’t tied to a file type that everyone still supports but no one wants you to use.
Steve Jobs is doing and suing everyone and everything he can to protect the term “iPod” from this fate, so thats out. Lets call them…ok, I don’t know what to call them. But some marketing firm needs to get on this; maybe that same team that made up “WiFi”. That term means exactly dick and the public eats it up. We need something like that for MP3 Players.
Of course, none of this will help with the annoyance for this holiday season, but next year it might.
Suggestions? Anyone?
iPod Battery Charging Guidelines
It’s a good thing to occasionally review how to take care of your things. This is from http://www.ipodbatteryfaq.com/
Lithium ion batteries are good for 300-500 charge/discharge cycles. A “charge/discharge” cycle generally consists of an extended charging period, and an extended discharging period. A quick charge, listening for 30 minutes, and charging again, for example, does not constitute a full “charge/discharge cycle”, but could rather be considered a portion of one.
Also, many, many factors affect how much you get out of each charge, as well as how long the battery will last overall. The main factors include charging patterns, the routine amount of discharge (i.e., Do you use it until it dies? Use it for an hour or two and recharge?), temperature, storage, usage frequency, etc. Lithium ion batteries do not take kindly to frequent full or complete discharges. When possible, the optimal usage pattern – for any lithium ion battery – is a partial discharge, followed by recharging. A partial discharge can be anything less than a full discharge. However, an occasional full discharge is desirable (e.g., once every 30 charges) to calibrate the battery. Lithium ion batteries do not significantly degrade, or develop “memory”, even if charged at irregular intervals; irregular charging is acceptable. An iPod can also safely be attached to external power for extended periods of time. (For extremely extended periods of time, such as months, the battery will essentially be the same as if it were in “storage”; lithium ion batteries do not store well for extended periods of time at full charge. However, there is no way around this under these circumstances.) When possible, always use the AC adapter (or vehicle adapter) for extended charging, not a FireWire cable attached to a computer.
I Didn’t Get A Nano
Yes, I just recently got a new iPod. The battery was beginning to show its age on “Perry White,” my old 3rd Generation, 10 gig, no click-wheel iPod. It was time for a new iPod; but unlike every other person replacing or getting new iPods this week, I did not get a Nano. Let me repeat that: I did not get a Nano. Looks like weird thing to read this week huh?
“Perry White 2.0″ is a 20 gig iPod Photo. I love it. The color screen and click wheel are fantastic, not to mention the extra ten gigs of breathing room for my growing music collection. The thing I like the most going from the third generation to the fourth generation iPods is the demise of the touch-sensitive buttons. Granted they were a fantastic idea, but in practice, they were just too touchy…which come to think of it, is the general pretense of “touch-sensitive buttons.”
Why didn’t I get a Nano? Well to be honest with you, when I held that little device in my hand, I really had to think about it for a second or two. However, it came to capacity. I wanted more space. Although the Nano has the stank of brain-numbing coolness all over it (How does apple design these things!?), it came down to size. To me bigger is better.
I guess that makes me a Size Queen King…and now I suddenly feel very insecure sexually.
iTunes 5 and some crappy phone
Meanwhile at Apple’s media event….
iTunes 5 has been announced, and released today at some point. It sports a new, cleaner look and options for a more refined shuffle.
Here is a great, blurry bigfoot-type picture of the new iTunes.
They also released some crappy phone with Motorola(picture).
But here is the big news: All of Madonna’s music is now available on the iTunes Music store! Finally you too can tie a string around your wrist and talk about how important your money-grubbing religion is while listening to Madonna on your iPod (or crappy cell phone).
Update: There’s more (thank god). Looks like an iPod Nano?
If I were you I would keep checking that flickr gallery below for more.
Pictures courtsey of ipodlounger’s flicker page
What’s your Podcast subscription list?
Before iTunes 4.9 added podcasting support I didn’t listen to all that much content. It was too difficult and scattered to keep track of the podcasts, and I only found the ones that were mentioned on some random blog. I followed the TWiT Cast and that was it. With iTunes though, my list of shows has grown substantially. At the moment I’m following Diggnation, Engadget, Gillmore Gang, The MacCast, MAKE, Battlestar Galactica, NPR Science Friday, Chris Pirillo and I’m still with the TWiTs.
I’m wondering for how long I can keep up with all the audio (I already don’t listen to every file I download) and what’s going to be first to be removed from my list. As far as I can tell from other people’s experiences it’s not uncommon to subscribe to a dozen feeds and whittle that down to 3-4 after a while.
Like every company wanting to push a product, Apple had good self-centric motives on adding support for podcasts. An average song is what? 2, 4 minutes max? But podcasts can go on for 30 minutes to an hour or more (damn long-winded GillmoreGang). If we’re just talking music moving from house to car is no big deal. I’m not involved in listening to music – it’s in the background so walking out on a song is easy. Podcasts though, it’s a show and I want to keep listening to that conversation wherever I go until the show is done.
Every time I have to pause a podcast because I have to take my dog on a walk, every time I have pause to go to work I get a twinge of frustration and irritation that I can’t keep listening to my show.
That twinge of frustration is immediately followed by the desire for an iPod.
And now they’ve got color screens (not like that has anything at all to do with podcasting, but dang it’s cool).
I’ll be placing an iPod order sometime soon.