I wrote about it on Mac.Blorge. Apple is getting into the fitness market - and a little more as well. Some of the news is cool (Apple fitness, tailored to you - awesome) and some creepy (identity metrics and more).
I was underwhelmed by the MacBook Air. I think it is geared to the business traveler who doesn’t need an actual optical hard drive or any serious storage space because they will only us it to write letters and such. I don’t want a laptop I have to buy a separate hard drive for to store photos, movies, files, etc on. I think they should have kept this in development until someone made a ultra slim hard drive to put in it. Because the MacBook Air with a massive slim hard drive of 160GB or more PLUS the Ram and Flash is has already would have truly been stunning. I’m guessing some gadget heads will buy the air out of a need to have the latest thing right out of the starting gate. I keep seeing comments around the net from people who don’t get that it only has a flash drive and RAM who think the 500GB is plenty of space for a computer, but trust me, it isn’t that kind of memory, folks.
As for the rest of it? The iTunes movie subscriptions and the improvements on the AppleTV and such? That was better than the MacBook Air, frankly. I still wish the AppleTV was also a true DVR, but this is a step in the right direction. Too bad Time Warner countered the innovation with an announcement of a crippling price hike based on bandwidth. Sometimes the entertainment and technology sector can’t win for shooting itself in the foot all the time.
I was also concerned with Apple’s recent Bad Apple legal tactics against bloggers and other fans, and had high hopes they would do something to rectify the situation a bit, but this reaction to a fan tells me I shouldn’t hold my breathe. I had a press pass to this even this year, and no way to go. Now I’m a bit glad I didn’t try harder to find the money for airfare. I would have enjoyed seeing my friends in California, but I would have been disappointed with the overall Keynote. I probably would have had fun wandering around after though - maybe next year.
In December a lawsuit was filed against Apple accusing it of making its iPod into what is known as “crippleware”. This mean that while components in the iPod will play “industry standard” WMA files, Apple’s iPod restricts playback to Apple format AAC files. This is true - iTunes does in fact convert all MP3s to AAC files, and I must agree that I find it a pain in the ass. However, I find it a paint in the ass from the other direction - I’d like the industry to let go of the idea of the WMA file as main stream, as the quality of the songs in WMA usually are just not great. I don’t think that is going to happen, but since I follow all things music and apple news so closely, I’ll be following the lawsuit to see where it heads.
LifeHacker posted their list of 23 iTunes extras and add-ons here. Are they really the best? That I don’t know, but I do know that I don’t use many iTunes add-ons. Most of the ones I’ve tried, like iWow, don’t play well with Leopard. Others don’t play well with iTunes at all on a MacBook, causing speaker issues. Many don’t have adequate updates and support once they are created, tossed in the dustbin by their programmers.
If you find an extra or add on for iTunes you want to try, by all means use it. My MOG and Last.FM “recently played” lists come from an iTunes add on. When they work, they work great. But when they don’t they can be hard to uninstall. I suggest learning to use the Activity Monitor - a handy way to stop a process causing an iTunes Freeze so that you can figure out if the freeze may be due to a plug in or not. If it is, you can then uninstall the plug in. If it isn’t, you can trouble shoot using Activity Monitor.
Do you use iTunes add ons? What are your favorites? Did LifeHacker leave any off its list?
The holiday guide to iCrap. Thanks for the tip, Wm.!
Creating a short movie card or holiday podcast is the ultimate in easy with a Mac. I just used my MacBook to make this tiny, miniature pod cast for Cre8Buzz:
I had never used Garage Band to make a pod cast before, and it took about 30 seconds from the time I opened the program to the time I hit export to iTunes to say what I wanted and add background Rockabilly holiday music. Easy peasy!
If I can think of enough to say I may do a longer pod cast email for all of my far flung friends and relatives this year. I probably wont do an iMovie, I’m too camera shy, but I bet some of my friends like Meleah will. How about you?
(Don’t forget to help me win the Cre8Buzz contest, too!)
Apple released the Apple Gift Guide this week. I can’t believe it is almost Christmas! The link below will get you free shipping on items ordered from the Gift Guide. Enjoy!
Apple Store Gift Guide - Free Shipping on all Gift Guide items.
