Well, I just watched the new Steve Jobs keynote. Man, he looks like death warmed over. Very gaunt. Apparently he had a bad bout with the flu recently, and has been battling back after surgery for his pancreatic cancer.

So I guess it's no wonder that Bloomberg was updating its obit for Mr. Jobs. Uh, unfortunately, they published it on the web, causing a shitstorm among the Mac Faithful that his Jobsness had kicked.

Bloomberg acknowledged the mistake, and retracted the obit. Jobs opened up the keynote with a text screen: The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

New iTunes 8, multi-colored iPod nanos... yawn.

There's this new GENIUS feature in iTunes 8, that I really don't get. Something about the software deciding what songs go together. And I guess it can do this better than you? Maybe because you're a chimp? Do you feel comfortable about sending information about your music library to Apple?

Hey, maybe we could send the government data about what books we've read, so they could make recommendations for us... eye roll.

Just a wild guess, but perhaps the "genius" playlists will include lots of songs that you don't own, encouraging you to buy them.

There's a new accelerometer feature in the new Nano. Which create "user interface enhancements." Turning the Nano sideways, does the same thing that it does on the iPhone or iPod touch. But get this: you can "shake" to shuffle. As you're playing a song, if you shake the unit, the song changes to a random song in the playlist. Hmmm. I bet runners will love that. As they jog and jostle along, they'll have endless variety as their song changes with nearly every footfall! Good christ. It's like they didn't even THINK before adding that one.

When Steve demonstrated shake to shuffle, the crowd burst into applause. Groan.

Then he goes on about how environmentally friendly the new Nanos are. No mercury, no arsenic. "Highly recyclable" (the aluminum and glass). OK.

The one cool thing: a voice recording app built in. And a new set of headphones with a controller (volume, pause, play, previous, next...) and a microphone.

Voice-Recording, what a sensation. It IS of course a useful feature, but it should be in the iPods since the first revision. Even my 20EU Cheapo player has voice-recording. So, Yawn.

Then the "Genius"-Feature. Well, it's nothing new, similar techniques were used for example by last.fm. At work we listened to last.fm quite a lot. The only problem was that the songs last.fm was choosing didn't fit our taste most of the time, after a few "choices" by last.fm we killed it off and went back to listening to our mp3. So, i don't really get the point of that feature, it's propably aimed at people who are listening completely aimlessly. And i think Thalo is 100% right about the intention behind that: Selling more Songs.

Did anyone recognize that the 160GByte Ipod is now obsolete and the "new" one is 120GByte? That's progress. Toshiba just released 240GB HDs in that formfactor.

iTunes8, "new" visualizer by buying Magnetosphere. Hmm... grunt, grunt.
New Grid-View. Hmm... Perhaps i'm an old grunt, but my preferred view is the simple list-view.

That Shake-Feature, i kind of like the idea. My guess is that this feature will be activated on accident quite often as Thalo pointed out. LOL! Besides the colors are nice. Nice fluffy colors, owww. I would by some green or yellow or blue, ah, wait, i have my cellphone, don't need a Nano.

When Steve demonstrated shake to shuffle, the crowd burst into applause. Groan.

I hear if you squeeze it you get one of those high-pitched sustained David Lee Roth screams.

The one cool thing: a voice recording app built in. And a new set of headphones with a controller (volume, pause, play, previous, next...) and a microphone.

Voice recording. Very useful, as brother smithz says. New colors? Ought to take a page from Henry Ford and offer any color you like, as long as it's black. Freedom of choice. Freedom of choice. Okay, you sold me. I do buy my shirts because of the color, but I'm still trying to figure out, not the propriety really, or even the necessity, but…hmm, how can I put this into words? Do we care what color the cover is of our dictionaries? I guess I see little more than the baboon's butt when I see those rainbow of colors like that for the iPods. It may be multi-colored, but it's still a butt. [See: the lipstick analogy.] And I'm not saying the iPods aren't good. They are good. Music is a wonderful thing. Any smart little device that lets us take it on the road with us is great. But there's some indescribably chimpdom to that rainbow of colors. I can't quite put my finger on it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not for a colorless life. But I guess I see these colors as too pre-canned. And isn't the point that the music itself have color? I guess there's a part of me that says that if you want to show off a really beautiful piece of art (and music is art), you don't put it in a multi-colored gaudy frame.

quote:

I hear if you squeeze it you get one of those high-pitched sustained David Lee Roth screams.

That's a killerfeature for me! :-) Well, you may listen to this, it's the vocal track of "Running with the Devil". Quite some of those broken whistle-register screams inside.

I guess the shake to shuffle thing could be fun, but again, aren't there an awful lot of activities that shake the unit? If you are in a boat and the water is choppy, does the song change? If you're bouncing around in your schoolbus, does the song change?

I'm hoping Apple tested this enough that the iPod can tell the difference between an intentional shake, and and ambient one. But unfortunately, that hasn't been their track record. I can't tell you how many times I've seen things and gone, what, no testing?

Apple's M.O. is that they let the public test things, and fix them on about the third revision.

Oh wow, brother smithz... it's so cool to hear one of my favorite songs from back in the day, with the vocal track separated. So funny.

Your first post about Dave gave me an idea. I will cut a snippet of a scream and then use it on my cellphone, for example as a signal for incoming short message. Whoo-hoooo!

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
But get this: you can "shake" to shuffle. As you're playing a song, if you shake the unit, the song changes to a random song in the playlist. Hmmm. I bet runners will love that. As they jog and jostle along, they'll have endless variety as their song changes with nearly every footfall! Good christ. It's like they didn't even THINK before adding that one.

It's highly unlikely the engineers didn't think out and solve the problem you describe. I assume the shake to shuffle feature is cribbed from the Sony Ericsson cell phone/MP3 player. They've had it for a few years now. When I got my Sony Ericsson about a year ago I was surprised to find it had this odd shake to shuffle feature. I never use it although I suppose it may be useful if you are playing a set playlist and want a random choice for one song or so.

On the Sony Ericsson you need to hold down a button while you shake the phone. Just shaking the phone won't do it. This button normally switches you in and out of the MP3 player mode. So holding it down and then shaking the phone gives the button another function. I think originally Sony Ericsson only required that you to shake the phone very vigorously without holding down any buttons. More vigorously than any walking or jogging would do. Maybe people shook so hard that the they were flinging the phones out of their hands and so Sony Ericsson eased up on the shaking and added the requirement that you hold down the button while you shake, which doesn't require any more effort because you need to have your fingers on some part of the phone while you shake anyway. I guess shake to shuffle can be a useful feature because you can do a one time shuffle without needing to set the player to shuffle mode. I don't use any sort of shuffle much because I normally listen to audio books or lectures and they need to be played in sequence.

I think the Sony Ericsson shake to shuffle feature is just sort of a gimmicky throw away feature only added in because of the presence of the accelerometer. The accelerometer is used as an interface control but it also turns the the device into a pedometer; a very good one. Sony Ericsson calls its phone/MP3 player the — you guessed it — the Walkman. (Walkman - pedometer, get it?) The pedometer is damn useful. You a can record how many steps you take normally during the day or on a treadmill or jogging and it will automatically calculate distance and the number of calories you burn. It records this continuously, day after day, week after week, and has some good built-in apps to analyze the data it collects.

The Sony Ericsson has a lot of useful features. I don't carry a small calculator with me anymore because the phone has a good one. It is also a damn good FM radio that displays the name of the show you are listening to and also the name of the song that's playing. It is a useful voice recorder. It has a few "Genius" features most of which I don't use. One of them is the ability to identify songs. I have used this feature a few times. I was in my dentist waiting room a few weeks ago and there was a tune playing that I liked. All I had to do was let the phone listen to it for a few seconds and it identified the tune, the name, artist, date of release, and information like that.

All and all I'm pleased with the device. I use it to listen to audio books, lectures, and music everyday while I'm working or plugged into my car audio system while driving. The price was right — nothing. It came as part of my two-year sign-up deal. I use the pedometer everyday on walks and jogs. I used to load up with a cell phone, a MP3 player, a pedometer, a calculator, and a voice recorder to make notes to myself. And when I exercised, I added a stopwatch/timer. Now I only need to grab my cell phone and I'm good to go. The phone is small. It is a thin slider type that doesn't take up much room in my shirt pocket. I have the default screen set to display only the time so lately I've been looking at my watch and wondering why I'm now carrying two watches. Especially since the one in the phone is never wrong because it is set remotely. It can be set to trigger an alarm, my appointment list, and my task list, which my watch can't do. All my watch can do is tell me the time which the phone does easily at a glance. Why do I take a second watch with me everyday? The phone is already an extremely useful and accurate pocket watch. Habit I guess.

I guess the shake to shuffle thing could be fun, but again, aren't there an awful lot of activities that shake the unit?

Let me put on my cynical and smart-alecky mask and say that what we really need is the chiaPod. Why stop at a choice of vibrant rainbow colors and shaking? The chiaPod would be like a Chia Pet in that you could water it to make the playlist grow, or something like that. And sort of like those virtual pets that are, or used to be, all the rage, you would have to intermittently feed the chiaPod (a small, rechargeable, low-capacity battery could be inserted and removed just for this purpose). And every once in a while you would have to change its "diapers" as well. I haven't quite worked out yet how that would work. Maybe a plastic case at the bottom collects pocket lint that needs to be expelled one in a while or else the unit won't work. But I *do* know that if you shake the baby too hard (as measured by that same internal accelerometer) it will send off an instant message to Child Protective Services.

The chiaPod would come in just two colors: chiaBabyBlue and chiaBabyPink.

Something tells me that I really shouldn't be laughing while listening to David Lee Roth sing without the benefit of background music. I mean, I think we would all look pretty silly naked and without our clothes on. But it really is funny how that vocal track sounds when it's all alone like that. It, errr, perhaps doesn't sound as rock-n-roll spontaneously combustible like we're used to hearing it. It sounds…it sounds…oh, I shudder to think that all this time I thought David Lee Roth was the incarnation of rock-n-roll excitement and sex appeal and not just a slick performer. Another illusion dashed on the rocks of reality.

Hilarious, smithz.

It sounds like HighHopes needs an iPhone. He just might be able to get rid of his need for a computer all together.

The 8GB iPod Touch is priced the best at $230. I think it would make a great travel device. You can put up to 10 hours of video on them. You can load 5 or 6 hours of video with room left over for hundreds of songs. Or audio books.

BN, be quick and listen to the real track or (even better) some live footage of Dave. This will maybe help. One of my favourites is the US-Fest 83 Footage. They were a bit wasted on stage i guess... Here...

ps. I would like to see ChiaJobs

quote:

Originally posted by RicoX:
It sounds like HighHopes needs an iPhone. He just might be able to get rid of his need for a computer all together.

I don't know about an iPhone. I'm pretty well satisfied with this device. It does everything I want it to do with features left over. I have a 4GB chip in it. I could replace it with an 8GB one, but I've yet to run out room with the 4GB. It does play videos, but of course the screen is too small and only suited to some sort of talking head type program. I did use it to check my email once or twice when I was on the road and expecting an important message that needed my immediate attention, but other than that I've don't use it to connect to the Internet. As I said, I got it mainly to listen to MP3s, as a pedometer and exercise aid, and of course, as a nice, small very clear cell phone. I only sporadically use it as a voice recorded or to listen to the radio although I do enter important appointments and other tasks into it. It also takes rather impressive pictures and videos for its size.

Hey, you can't beat the price. It costs me nothing. I have to pay for the service anyway and there is no rate discount for buying a phone separately. Anyway, I would have gotten this phone in any case because it's small and has all the features I want.

quote:

I think the Sony Ericsson shake to shuffle feature is just sort of a gimmicky throw away feature only added in because of the presence of the accelerometer. The accelerometer is used as an interface control but it also turns the the device into a pedometer; a very good one. Sony Ericsson calls its phone/MP3 player the — you guessed it — the Walkman. (Walkman - pedometer, get it?) The pedometer is damn useful. You a can record how many steps you take normally during the day or on a treadmill or jogging and it will automatically calculate distance and the number of calories you burn. It records this continuously, day after day, week after week, and has some good built-in apps to analyze the data it collects.

Oh yeah, jobs talked about the iPod being used as a pedometer. But it needs some sensor in the shoe from Nike. I didn't quite get it.

Pedometers are cool, but all I really need is a watch to tell me how long I've been walking or exercising. I do it by time rather than steps or distance.

Yeah, I'm hoping the shake feature has been tested. You'd think, right? But it's Apple.

Gimmicky, throwaway features are their stock and trade.

That Ericsson sounds cool. But I still haven't gotten to the point where I'd actually use my phone for entertainment. Every "fun" feature on my phone gets tried, but usually abandoned by me. I have two iPods, an old 3rd gen, and a newer one with video. I use the old one for listening to music while exercising, and I've used the new one to watch a few TV shows while traveling, but in general, the digi-tool I rely most upon, is a laptop computer.

Small, handheld digi-devices are cool, but I don't see them as essential in my life yet. I use the phone (motorola RAZR v3), and yes, I have used the calculator feature on my phone... I haven't really used the camera feature except to fool around with, but I'm leaving myself open that I might someday (to record accident photos or fight crime, who knows). The iPod, it's OK, but to me it's a uni-tasker. Like my digital camera.

I suppose there's still a gulf for me between essential functions, and casual entertainment functions. I'm not impressed by "time-killing" slacker stuff like games or other garbage. And when I indulge in it, I grow bored pretty fast. I have to be doing something more boring (exercising) to even listen to my iPod.

But with a laptop, I find most of the functions I'm likely to need in a portable device. I don't need it to fit in my pocket. It might be nice, but I think full blow CPUs the size of iPhones are a ways off.

I've said this before, but the digi-device I'm most impressed with, and which has changed my life, is the GPS navigator. The one I have is the Garmin nüvi 260. I can see that functionality being added to a phone, that makes sense to me. But Apple does it, and the accuracy isn't as reliable.

I always go back to the metaphor of the Swiss Army Knife. Somebody had to sit there and say "never know when you're going to need a toothpick!"

But would they have ever, ever said... "you know what a knife REALLY needs, is the ability to play music!"

I think the jury is out on whether music and watching video are actually on-the-go activities. I think of when I listen to music, and it's usually a kind of distraction that I do to get my mind off of something else... or else I set out to sit down and relax and really enjoy it. Like sitting down to watch a TV show. But I don't walk down the city streets listening to tunes, and I don't wear the iPod around the house while I vacuum or clean the floors. I don't watch Battlestar Galactica on the iPod while driving or fishing or walking. The last time I used the iPod to watch video, I was staying over at a friend's house, in their guestroom (no TV)... and was able to quietly watch South Park before bed. A little personal TV, that seemed one of its better functions. Entertainment for me as I tried to relax in a strange bed where there was no TV nearby and I didn't want to wake up the rest of the house.

I think one of the things we need to think about with our digi-devices, is this: are they fulfilling functional needs, or are we making time FOR THEM? A Swiss Army knife is functionality-in-potential, but it's functionality that's compact and at least somehow inter-related.

Now, I do understand that digital information, by definition, is related... but the function and potential feature-sets are so expansive, you wonder why industrial designers put it together in portable handhelds. Is it simply "because they can", or do they really think about WHY things go together.

Take a game-playing system, for example. Anything game related is appropriate. But would the game system be better or worse if it had a fancy digital weather station built in? So maybe as kids rotted in front of these games on their couches, they could check barometric pressure or wind direction of the outside world that they're not playing in.

That's cross-functionality. And sometimes it works. Personally, I hate the idea of camera/phone, but my brother friggin' loves it. He takes more pictures on his phone than he ever did with a camera.

I'm the opposite. I pick up the camera and go out to take pictures. I actually don't want anything to do with the phone at that point.

In my Garmin, there's stupid cross functionality. I can download my photos to it, and use it as a photo viewer. Huh? What does that have to do with navigating? I've never done it. I thought maybe I could come up with some kind of system to record landmarks of trips I've been on, and save them as photographs for later memory refreshment, but nah. The cross-functionality lacks INTEGRATION. Lacks reasons that features are together in a set.

I suppose all I want, is for shit to MAKE SENSE. It's irritating when it doesn't. I can think of ten things I would have rather had in a GPS than a photo album. I can think of ten things I would have rather had in a phone than a music player.

What I do know, is that the only way to prove that a feature is useful, is if you use it. Be honest now, how many of you have used all of the features of the iPod... for real? I've actually BACKED UP on it, used it as a USB or Firewire hard drive, more than I've used some of the bundled software features.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
…but to me it's a uni-tasker.

Uni-tasker? Do I detect a fellow Alton Brown, "Good Eats" fan? Hey Bro'

hahaha, yeah I love Alton.

Food and science together, what a great combo. Since I saw the episode on brining Turkey, I haven't roasted poultry without a good soak in brine first.

quote:

There's this new GENIUS feature in iTunes 8, that I really don't get. Something about the software deciding what songs go together.

And then it will find hidden meanings in the combinations and automatically report you to the Department of Homeland Security.
.

Yeah, obviously that's the slippery slope.

It starts as a way for a big Corporation to find out what you're listening to, and determining how best to make you into a voracious consumer of their products...

But then you think, wait, isn't that kinda BIG BROTHERY?

I love that scene in the movie "Minority Report" where after Tom Cruise gets his new eyes, he waltzes in to a store, there's a flash of a retinal scan, and suddenly he becomes inundated with customized advertising... "how did those slacks you bought work out? Do you need shirts with them?"

I'm not sure I want Apple computer's marketeers to look at a computer program and determine what combination of sounds or rhythms gives me pleasure or makes me feel exalted. I'd be annoyed if they later tried to use that information to pitch crap to me.

I don't see people working with that kind of marketing information to try to do anything like STOP PEOPLE FROM FIGHTING. We all know how to push Islamic extremists' buttons, for instance. Uncover women, draw cartoons of the prophet, badmouth the Qur'an. But does anybody ever use that information to try and come up with a way to COMMUNICATE more effectively?

We concentrate on the types of feelings and images that get people to buy shit. I wonder if marketeers couldn't use that vast power to figure out what calms people down, gives feelings of brotherhood and love of fellow man. George Orwell describes this in 1984. People could be dialed in to go from anything to murderous mob-rage, to tears of patriotic pride, just by images and words.

Or, maybe we could all learn how these postmodern processes work, and refuse to allow ourselves to be controlled by them. Treat them with suspicion. View them for what they are, exploitative.

After re reading Double H's post's in here I think he just might be the real digikid among us.

I wouldn't be surprised if his wife packs a couple of bottles of Gogurt in his lunch pall every morning.

And where does it say that the Genius playlist feature contacts Apple. All it does is create a playlist according to an individual song you choose. You are confusing it with the Genius Sidebar which displays songs from the iTunes Store that go together with your collection.

quote:

And where does it say that the Genius playlist feature contacts Apple. All it does is create a playlist according to an individual song you choose.

Yeah, but based on what? I don't think it's exclusive or internal to your library. How the holy hell would a piece of software know what music goes together for you, unless YOU program it? So there must be some kind of bullshit market-data substrate for that.

And where else are they gonna COLLECT that type of information, but someplace that's a huge retail data-mine, oh, maybe like the iTunes store.

It's the height of Apple hubris. To me it's the same as them designing your web sites for you on dot-mac-now-mobile-me, giving you a few of their skins and themes, instead of letting you customize... it's all bullshit marketing. And it all seems to come from a kind of attitude that their customers are fucking rubes.

But don't take my word for it. This is right out of Apple's mouth:

quote:

Sending Information About Your iTunes Library to Apple
Genius is able to make playlists and give you great recommendations by periodically sending information about your iTunes library to Apple. This information will only be sent to Apple if you choose to turn on Genius.
The information sent to Apple includes details about the media in your iTunes library such as track names, play counts, and ratings. This information will be stored with an anonymous Genius ID and not linked to your iTunes Account. When using the iTunes Store or Genius sidebar, Apple will also use your purchase history to give you better recommendations.
The information about your library will be anonymously combined with information provided by other Genius users. Apple will use this combined knowledge to improve Genius playlists and recommendations for everyone.
If you would like to use Genius for more than one library, you must turn on Genius from each. To turn off Genius, select Turn Off Genius from the Store menu. Once you turn off Genius, iTunes will no longer send information about your iTunes library to Apple. If you used Genius for more than one library, you must turn off Genius from each library.

Oh you have gotta be kidding me. I wonder what data the geniuses will collect on whether any of the items in your music library has come from peer-to-peer networks.

This sounds like some weird plot. We spend all this energy removing spyware, and now Apple suddenly wants us to embrace it? Come on.

quote:

Sending Information About Your iTunes Library to Apple
Genius is able to make playlists and give you great recommendations by periodically sending information about your iTunes library to Apple. This information will only be sent to Apple if you choose to turn on Genius.

What a nifty feature. What if condoms could do this? Think of the possibilities. "Sensor indicate she's just not getting into it." And then you get a pack of "ribbed for her pleasure" condoms in the mail. But only if you turn on this feature. It's not a horrible idea to customize products. But Apple only seems to want to offer choice if they can split your wallet open a little wider, cause I sure as hell don't see a lot of choices regarding the interface of their operating system, including choosing the bloody fonts.

But let's be honest. I'm a moderator at a Mac site and I don't particularly like Apple anymore. I think they're ding-a-lings. If I didn't have so much software invested in the Mac, I would have gone PC a long time ago. Like I said, at times it gets embarrassing to be a member of "the Mac community." And yet with our bitching here, I guess that makes us all – gasp – "community organizers."

People bitch and complain about the Patriot Act. Will these same people object when Big Brother Apple is looking over their shoulders?

quote:

Apple will use this combined knowledge to improve Genius playlists and recommendations for everyone.

Nice Orwellian double-speak there. "Recommendation." If you mean "we're going to try to sell you shit when your defenses are at their weakest" then say "we're going to try to sell you shit when your defenses are at their weakest." That's the new buzzword these days. "Maximize profits." And that basically means that after they have turned you upside down, they're also going to shake you to try get even more money to fall out of your pockets. But it's totally voluntary so that's fine. It's not a "questionable business practice" to try to maximize profits by sniffing your iPod and having some Brainiac computer try to decode the combination to your wallet. But I sure as hell wouldn't buy an iPod from Apple now, just on the principle of it.

I think they should have announced this feature after the election because my bullshit limit is about reached.