#apple

Quick News on iPods, the Web and on the Streets

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Today was the first day of the Apple Expo in Europe, Paris to be exact. I was hop­ing that Steve Jobs would be announc­ing the new “Core 2 Duo”-based Mac­books. But alas, that spec­u­la­tion wasn’t even close.

His announce­ment weighed more heav­ily in the release of prod­ucts from the iPod fam­ily, then the release of iTunes 7. Here’s the break­down of the new fea­tures per iPod fam­ily member:

iPod:

  • 60% brighter display
  • 75% longer video bat­tery life
  • Gap­less playback
  • Excit­ing new games
  • Search and Quick Scrolling
  • New head­phones
  • $249 for 30GB
  • $349 for 80GB

iPod Nano, 2nd Gen­er­a­tion:

  • Made of thin­ner aluminum
  • Col­ors of blue, pink, green, sil­ver and black
  • 40% brighter display
  • 24 hour bat­tery life
  • Gap­less playback
  • Search and Quick Scrolling
  • New head­phones
  • $149 for 2GB (sil­ver), $199 for 4GB (blue, pink, green and sil­ver) and $249 for 8GB (black)

iPod Shuf­fle, 2nd Gen­er­a­tion:

  • World’s small­est MP3 player
  • Alu­minum case with clip
  • 1GB — up to 240 songs
  • 12 hour bat­tery life
  • USB 2.0
  • Dock & ear­buds included
  • $79

I’m eye­ing that Shuf­fle for $79. Seems rea­son­able and func­tional if you play sports; espe­cially when you run a lot.

Any­ways, besides Mr. Jobs announce­ment, a cou­ple of the MA folks and I will be attend­ing Car­son Workshop’s Sum­mit: The Future of Web Apps tomor­row and Thurs­day. Should be some inter­est­ing and excit­ing time. It’s just too bad I don’t have a Mac­book (yet) so I can look as cool as those tech­f­reaks attend­ing. Oh well, I hope this Dell Lat­i­tude loaner can do the job of writ­ing notes and check­ing email.

The Future of Web Apps

So Which Should Come First, the Laptop or the Desktop?

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It’s been a great year for lap­tops I’d say. After send­ing ginor­mous rip­ples through­out the tech-world with Apple announc­ing that its going to be con­sum­ing some Intel baked goods, com­puter enthu­si­asts looked more closely at the prac­ti­cal idea of buy­ing a Mac.

Well, let me clar­ify that last state­ment… more “PC” enthu­si­asts liked what they heard, that the sim­ple Mac can do their bid­ding. Any­ways, with sec­ond quar­ter almost to a close, I’ve been see­ing a lot of deals espe­cially on note­books. Dell always have them but when you hear IBM/Lenovo have an annual sale to cel­e­brate its first year, you just can’t help but to look at what they’re offer­ing the T42 for 42%-off.

Entic­ing ain’t it. I mean, its a IBM/Lenovo Cen­trino lap­top. The thing just oozes with great qual­ity and build. But it’s still $1100+. Then again, its an “IBM”, or should I say “Lenovo” now. That, and Ronald­inho seems to like them.

Mean­while, the Mac­book is just sexay but expen­sive. Not to men­tion, the need to buy new soft­ware. Oh deci­sions, deci­sions… One ques­tion that keeps bounc­ing off in my head would be, “will I even use a lap­top when I get home?” Granted, I can use it when I’m in the liv­ing room down­stairs but that just takes away from loun­gin’ and relaxin’ with the roomies.

Blah. I shouldn’t even be think­ing about this. I should be con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting a good deal on Hawaii tick­ets in August. Damn. Did I men­tion, sav­ing up money for Japan (Novem­ber) and P.I. (Decem­ber) as well? When will we hit that lotto jack­pot? One can hope I guess.

PS. Here’s what Google Trends have to say in terms of the pop­u­lar­ity in search of the key­words: desk­tops, lap­tops and notebooks.

iPod Video

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iPod 5G Video

The iPod 5G (aka. Video) is sup­pose to drop in stores this week. What the heck was Apple think­ing by doing this? I mean come on, it hasn’t even been a year since the iPod Nanos dropped, and here its—the new 5G!

Besides that, I am won­der­ing whether upgrad­ing to a 30GB 5G is even worth it and a smarth move. The pros that I see with the 5G over my Photo would prob­a­bly be:

  • the video of course!
  • lighter and smaller form factor
  • sleeker design

And the cons would be:

  • the price dif­fer­ence I’ll need to cover when I upgrade
  • time it’ll take me to re-organize and synch with the new iPod and my PC
  • the money I need to spend in terms of acces­sories for it (i.e. cover, fm trans­mit­ter, etc.)
  • acces­sories that used the top-connector would be abso­lete with it

I guess one major fac­tor that needs to be addressed would be, “will I even enjoy watch­ing a movie for 1–3 hours on a 2.5-inch, 320 x 240 pixel dis­play?” Right now, I don’t think so. Just imag­ine hold­ing your iPod and hav­ing it in a com­fort­able posi­tion were your neck won’t be sore after watch­ing a movie. I just can not see any sce­nar­ios right now were this would be beneficial.

Besides, I just freak­ing went eBay crazy these past cou­ple of days. They were mostly sport­ing good pur­chases con­sist­ing of the following:

  • Colum­bia 300 Ric­o­chet Rebound Bowl­ing Ball (14lbs. 3oz.)
  • Mizuno Crush 2 Base­ball Bat (34 inches, 27 ounces)
  • Knobcuffs (for my bats)

Not to men­tion, I’m look­ing into invest­ing into some seri­ous glass for my pho­tog­ra­phy addic­tion. Alas, tech­nol­ogy… it gets bet­ter by the minute. I just hope peo­ple do as well.

Flickr at SF Apple Store

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Looks like the great Flickr staff will be bless­ing the SF Apple Store on the 2nd of August, 6–7:30pm. I’ll pro­lly check it out with James. Should be inter­est­ing and fun. Hope to get some Flickr schwag—maybe they have some secret stash =)

More info here.

Mean­while, I tried RSVPing for the event using Upcoming.org. I signed up with them but haven’t got­ten any con­fir­ma­tion email that usu­ally takes just sec­onds to receive. After some test­ing, it looks like it might be my mail server. Oh well, I hope it doesn’t fill up.

They seem to be the talk of the town lately. If I can recall, they just moved a cou­ple of weeks ago. Good times hope­fully. Maybe they’ll even announce a “New-In-Town Fickr Party” of some sort… just maybe.

Any­ways, the Apple Store is across the street (lit­er­ally). Just gonna cruise on by after work. I can’t wait to meet these cool peeps.

An Intel-ligent Apple

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Seems that Apple is going to drop & stop (shut ‘em down open up…) using IBM’s Pow­erPC proces­sors for Intel chips. I Never thought I will see the day were I might actu­ally like an Apple prod­uct (other than my iPod Photo). With this scheme, you can dual-boot with either Mac OS or WinXP—pretty sweet if you ask me.

How­ever, I’ll pro­lly be just using the Mac OS when I’m away from my com­puter. Pro­lly just put on the Screen­saver from the mac. It kicks ass ver­sus the default Mys­tify screen­saver on WinXP. Man oh man… other than the screen­saver and mac’s cool nav­i­ga­tion effects, that’s all I can stand from it.

Oh well, if you’d like to get more tid­bits, click here.

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