Dear Apple: no.

The new iPod Shuffle. It's probably the prettiest thing I've seen in my life. Unfortunately, it is crap.

Removing the buttons sounds pretty stupid. They almost did it right, with the buttons being on the headphones. But oh no, you're stuck with the shitty stock headphones! Some other company will make an adaptor, right?

Well, almost. You remember those "authorization chips" that accessories for the iPod Classic/other iPods of that era need to work? Apple is now putting those in the headphones. We can essentially expect $10 headphone adaptors that cost 3¢ to make because Apple is being a shit. Anyone who's read this blog before knows I love Apple, but you'd have to be a pretty huge Macfag to not see what's wrong here.

Focal XS speakers

They're a pair of computer speakers that I used at the Apple store today. They're $600 and good enough that I think I will pass up the Klipschs and get these after I am working. By that I mean they are very good. Granted, the Apple store isn't the ultimate testing environment, but it wasn't that busy and they sounded pretty great.

The first song I demoed on them was something orchestral. It was quiet in the store at the time. For maybe 15 seconds there didn't seem to be any sound, or if there was it was being drowned out by something being played elsewhere in the store. Putting my ear up to the speaker revealed that the sound was coming from the speaker. If you ask me, that's a pretty good statement about transparency. I honestly thought that it was coming from somewhere else.

I turned off this orchestral song after a bit though. These speakers have an integrated iPod dock. This is useful, if you ask me. My friends bring over iPods often and these would be nice for when that happens. Plus, the dock connects to your computer so on top of playing the iPod through it, you also use it to sync the iPod. Pretty cool, if you ask me. Anyway, I used the iPod Touch that was docked with it to listen to some songs I'm familiar with via iTunes previews. The Apple store employees don't care how loud you make things, so I did get to turn them up. They didn't sound strained or distorted even when played loud with songs that are generally loud (ie No You Girls by Franz Ferdinand). Testing conditions weren't the best though, so I'm sure I was missing some of what they have to offer. They were hooked up with the Apple TV, so they were spaced kind of far apart around a large television, and they were stuck to the table slightly behind the TV. This drowned out the sound a little.

The cabinets are plastic and resonate a lot, but for whatever reason the sound of cabinet resonance didn't seem to be there. This is just fine.

The sub was on the table though, so I didn't get to really hear that as I should've. It has a 6.5" down-firing driver and a front firing port. It didn't sound strained with the bassiest songs I tried and did sound rather musical instead of making boring thumps like a lot of computer subs. I tried No You Girls by Franz Ferdinand and Raspberry Jam Delta-V by Joe Satriani on them, for example. They both have intricate bass lines (which really make those songs awesome, if you ask me) that came out just fine. I also tried Under The Influence by The Chemical Brothers which is a very bassy song. At a few parts of the song, there is a loud bass sweep that starts deepish and goes deeper. The sub didn't sound strained during any of this.

I don't know if they have an active EQ or not. They did, however, sound like they could have benefitted a little from an EQ adjustment. I would have turned down the treble. I don't know if the iPod Touch I used in the store had any EQ settings or not though, so I can't be sure if that was the speaker's doing or the iPod's. I should have checked.

Next time I go I'll be sure to bring my iPod so I can try more of my own music. Hopefully sometime I'll get to try them in some better testing conditions though, like perhaps a quieter store or another Apple store where they aren't set up inconveniently around a TV. However, they left me very impressed. It's not unlikely that I'll pass up the Klipsch's and get a pair of these.

Conflicting emotions

Today I was kind of bored and decided I'd rate reviews of things on the Apple site so people won't waste their money. I'm on Beats by Dr. Dre now and several reviews say "these are crap headphones, buy bose instead" and I have no idea how to rate these reviews. It's terrible.

So sue me

This has been killing me for a while now. Does anyone else hear sosumi (the Mac's infamous error sound for years) at the end of It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) by REM? Tell me in the comments if you do. I hear it every time and it's slowly making me insane. The first few times I didn't know it was the song so I went through all my spaces and open apps looking for the error message.

Apple netbook? Yes please.

So analysts are saying that Apple might make a netbook sometime next year. I am all for this. I love netbooks. It's so nice to have a fully functional computer to carry around with you everywhere. I mean I don't actually have one, but I've got my eye on that Acer Aspire One. Still, if Apple made one, that'd be incredible. Knowing me, I would buy it on a whim without thinking, assuming I had the money on release. It'd probably be about $500 knowing Apple, which is about the most I want to spend anyway. I think they could make a pretty great netbook if they decided to go into that market. I mean they went into portable media players and phones, so the next step is (or should be, rather) netbooks. I hope they release one soonish though. I know that if I get a netbook it'll be sometime next year, and it'll be after I've gotten a few other things (namely speakers). Hopefully that'll be enough time for Apple to announce a netbook, or at least enough time for some believable rumors to show up online. Analysts are like wishful thinking, they will either tell you what you want to hear or the opposite of what you want to hear. I get my hopes up when I see some spy shots, "in the wild" shots, descriptions from people who have been useful in the past (Kevin Rose, anyone?) etc. If so much as one of those should show up before I get mine, you can expect me to go into a shell of no-netbooks until there is proof of an Apple one or proof that there won't be an Apple one. If they don't make one though, there's still the Aspire One, which is a really great netbook. The screen is pretty high res and colorful, the speaker's not bad, and it comes in some pretty powerful configurations, especially for it's price and size.

Whoever says iPods aren't durable is stupid

Or at least new iPods. Chances are, you know of my iPod Classic 80gb. Today while at the mall I dropped it due to trying to change songs without putting a coffee down. Now I have dropped it before, a few times on cement, but those times it was in the iPod sock. This time it was fully unsocked. Not only does it still fully work (as opposed to breaking open, freezing, exploding, liquifying, or doing anything else that an iPod-hater would tell you), but it suffered no cosmetic damage. I'm not exaggerating. When I spend a lot of money on something, I tend to be kind of crazy about keeping it working and retaining it's out-of-the-box beauty. I looked it over on all sides maybe four times and it didn't seem to have suffered any significant scratches on the back, and the whole front, screen and all, were still totally intact. Anyone who says iPods break easily is either stupid or stuck in the past (when they did break easily).

Oh and while we're on the subject, the battery is not guaranteed to die forever after a year and a half of use. My girlfriend's 4th gen, black and white iPod died recently. To my understanding, it was pretty old. The screen was more worn out than the battery. But it didn't die on account of the battery, it died due to a hard drive failure. Anyone who tells you that iPods are a ripoff because of that is pretty stupid.

So I'm using one of the new Macbooks

Yes, I'm in an Apple store at the moment, posting from one of the new Macbooks. It's very nice. The trackpad is really great. I mention that first because I'm sure at first glance, the first thing most people will think is that it'll be bad without a dedicated button. But actually, the whole thing being a button is very nice. It allows for a lot of productivity since you can click anywhere, and if you don't feel like doing that, you can click in the bottom as if it had a button there and that won't make it strange to use. I like it a lot. It's also very smooth and easy to run your finger on, so you'll probably like it. It's also really big, which is great. The button isn't too hard or too easy to click, so it won't be distracting. I also like the "gestures." It took about one second to get used to all of them and I really like it. For example, the four finger "swipes" to activate Expose is really nice. It's very functional and because of the smoothness, it's just a joy to do. There's various ways you can "secondary-click" (which is the Mac term for right click). One way is to set a region of the trackpad to be your "secondary click" area so that when you click there, you get the menu. Another way (my preferred way, which is very nice and functional) is to set it so that a two-finger tap brings up the secondary-click menu. It's pretty nice and easy to get used to, I really like it.

They include Spore Creature Creator on all the Macbooks in the store so you can test the graphics. I ran it for a few minutes and I'm very impressed. The new Macbook is great, I'm definitely going to get one.

Edit: I've found what some people might consider to be a fatal flaw. There is quite a noticeable amount of blur when things move on the screen. It's not so bad when it's slow, but if you're doing something like dragging a window quickly, it's pretty noticeable. When I dragged a window around pretty fast, icons in that window blurred a noticeable amount. This won't keep me from getting one, but it is kind of annoying.

So how 'bout them Macbooks?

Anyone seen the new Macbooks? Sexy as hell. I'll get one sometime. And then life will be amazing.

Crabapples are the best kind of apple

I remember when I was little and we had a huge crabapple tree in our front yard. I asked my dad one day if they were poisonous since I didn't know what they were. He said they weren't, but just like every other person ever, he said they'd cause a stomachache (I've never had any kind of ache from eating them). I tried one and they are the fucking greatest thing ever. I don't know why people don't like them. They're like candy, but the best kind of candy. They're sour and sweet and they're awesome and they don't cause diabetes like regular candy. There is really nothing not to like. I spent the next week eating every apple on that tree and then I was sad because there were no more. Then when there were more, I was pretty damn happy. I can't wait to live in my own house so I can plant them all over my yard. Let's face it, everyone is vegan for crabapples. Some are just too afraid of what their friends and family will think to admit it.

The new iPod Nano, my first impression

Today I got to stop by the Apple store and use the new Nanos (also iPod Touches). I had a pretty good time. The employees were very kind as usual. As you'd expect, this post is about the new Nano. So instead of filling your face with random useless info (I walked to Cold Stone Creamery and got some ice cream and it was good), I'm gonna get right to it.

It feels VERY good in the hand. It's very light (but still not too light) and thin. The curved edges definitely help to make it feel smaller. I probably spent a total of four minutes just fondling them and getting high off the colors. Speaking of the colors, my favorites on the Nanos would be silver (the black click wheel made it look a lot less basic and a lot more hell-yes), blue, and green. The build quality was probably the best of any iPod I've used yet. To put an end to this paragraph, it looks and feels very good in the hand (the curved click wheel wasn't annoying at all, despite my expectations).

So how's the interface on that awkward long screen? Really good. The spacious menus made navigating much easier. They also smoothed over all the animations, such as that sliding animation between screens. I definitely prefer it to the interface of previous iPods.

Cover flow was very good on the new Nano. It's definitely something I would use. From anywhere under "Music" you can turn the iPod on it's side and get to it. If you do it on the Now Playing screen, there's also an animation that rotates the album art 180º and shrinks it into cover flow. Then you scroll.

I like that because it's a nice way to get right from Now Playing to scrolling by album. The accelerometer is responsive and quick, so there is hardly any turn-and-wait. You do have to turn it a pretty good amount though, but that's actually a good thing because it prevents accidental-cover flow. And cover flow has really been improved over what was in the previous iPods. Album art loads much faster and there is a lot less lag. The animations are smoother and scrolling is much easier. You can also scroll by letter by scrolling very fast, which I found to be very useful. And I know it wasn't like that just from the store having a small library, because on the new Classics it is still just as laggy and slow as ever, and all the iPods in the store have the same content on them. So essentially they took something that was totally useless before and made it pretty great. Something you might not know though is that when it's rotated, the buttons on the click wheel don't rotate their functions. So Menu is on the left, fast forward is on the top, rewind is on the bottom, and play/pause is on the right. It's not nearly as awkward as you'd think, though.

By the way, the new Now Playing screen is very pretty. I like the big album art covering the top, it looks very good (though I bet it looks kinda ugly when you play songs that don't have the art) and how they fit everything else on bottom without making it look cramped. Text is small, but readable. Animations (such as when you press the center button to change functions) are smooth here as well. I also like how they worked in Genius. For those who don't know, holding down the center button while on Now Playing brings up a menu on the top where you can choose to add that song to the On-the-Go Playlist or make a Genius playlist out of it) The Nano gets an A+.

And while I'm here, I'll say a few words about the other new iPods. The Classic is pretty pointless, as I've said before. Plus, it's an insult to everyone who owns the old Classic (me). Despite the nice improvements in the iPod Nano, you don't get any interface changes (no smooth animations), cover flow is still useless (I know it doesn't have an accelerometer, but they could have smoothed the animations and given it letter-scrolling), Genius seems out of place (if you hold the button on Now-Playing you don't get a pretty menu on top, it takes you to a whole new menu where you can't see the now-playing screen where you then choose what you want to do with that song), and it has support for the remote feature on the new iPod in-ear headphones. Why's the last one bad? Those of us with the old Classic (which is essentially exactly the same) are taunted with more (for us 80gbers) space and the headphone support and the lazy addition of Genius for the same money we paid for our 80gb iPods, and those with 160gb now have a less valuable iPod because the 120 is closer to 160 for the same cash the 80 once was. That sounds stupid, but when you pay $350 for an MP3 player, you want it to retain value for a while. Plus, the 160gbers, even if they're OK with paying another $250 for the unexciting new Classic, lose 40gb of space. I think we would've been better off if the Classic was left alone and if the new headphones used an adapter or something to connect through the dock connector (that way everyone with a recent iPod could use the remote).

The touch is cool. It's not super different from the old one. The thinness is very noticeable though. It's extremely thin. The back looks neat with the curved edges. It's pretty much the same as the old one, except for the built in Nike+iPod and the speaker. Oh yeah, and the speaker hardly makes it worth getting to replace a current touch. I guess it would be convenient if you forgot your headphones and wanted to put it right in your ear, but otherwise it has little purpose.

Things I think would make the iPod better

So I've owned an iPod (80gb Classic) for maybe six months now and it's been great. It's convenient, easy to use, and so far I haven't had any problems (other than the infamous problem with the Classics and the click wheel not being very responsive) with it. Great as it is, I think it could be a bit better.

One thing I'd really like to see would be an "Advanced" mode. The iPod as it is, is very user friendly and doesn't present any complicatedness that would cause confusion in someone illiterate. However, I would like a little of that complicatedness. Most specifically I'd like to be able to view statistics of files saved on the iPod. Things like format, bit rate, maybe where you got it from (downloaded on iTunes, from a CD, etc), resolution (in the case of videos and photos) and things of that nature.

I'd also like them to bring back fullscreen album art. Well it wasn't really full screen, but anyone who's used an iPod Video will probably know that among the various functions you can perform when you click the middle button on Now Playing, one of them simply enlarged the album art and made it mostly fit the screen. I thought that was neat, and now they've gotten rid of it.

Another improvement that could be made would be to be able to turn Repeat on or off without going into Settings. It's nice that you can toggle Shuffle from the now playing screen, but I don't know why they left Repeat out of it.

Oh, and DRM kinda sucks. It only happens on iTunes downloads of course, but it's annoying when you want to do something with your downloaded songs. However, Apple has started to do something about it, it's called "iTunes Plus." Basically an iTunes Plus song has double the bit rate of a regular song (256 instead of 128) and no DRM, so you're free to burn it, distribute it, or use it however you want. They also cost the same as a non-Plus song, so everything about it is great. The only thing is, not all their songs are iTunes Plus.

Firewire would be nice too. They slowly started taking away Firewire support a while ago (now you can't even charge with it) and I think that sucks. Firewire is fast. Even though USB has a higher mbps, it can't stay at that mbps most of the time so instead of 480mbps, USB gives you maybe 300 or 200. Firewire stays at a constant 400 (or 800) so it's nice and fast. It's no big deal if you're only syncing over an album or a song, but for big syncs like video and such, Firewire would be nice. And I'm sure that iPhone users and their 2+ hour syncs would also appreciate it.

Anyone who knows iPod history will understand this, we really need more stuff in the box. There was once a time when you got a dock, a remote (it clipped to your shirt and you could control your iPod with it), a case, their awful shitty headphones, and I think an external charger. That was what came with your iPod. And in the day of Firewire you also got both a USB and a Firewire cable. Now you get their awful shitty headphones, a dock insert for your iPod radio, and a USB cord. If the iPod wasn't such a nice player I wouldn't have gotten one for the total lack of stuff in the box.

Bring back the bigger engraved text. On the older iPods (video and before) when you got text engraved it was nice and big. On the Classic it's pretty tiny, and you still have the same size limitations as when it was bigger.

Make the click wheel more responsive. It used to be that you could touch it anywhere and you'd get a response, but on every Classic I've used it's been totally dead in the center and would randomly have other dead spots on and off. Annoying.

Fill the interface with PG-13 content so parents will stop buying them for their spoiled asshole children. I'm being serious.

Give it a radio to shut up the "it doesn't have radio" people. It's not like they'd even listen to it though, since listening to radio somewhat defeats the purpose of the iPod. Then again, those people usually have something against the iPod anyway, so they'd just find something else to not like about it. Maybe we don't need a radio after all.

Those would make the iPod better. Get crackin', Apple.

Where is my fucking Mini Cooper?

I won't have a license for a while but they're just so awesome.

In other news, blogging to no one is actually kind of fun because I can write anything I want and no one will read it. I mean, I'd write anything I want anyway, but now I can write more anything I want.

ANYONE WHO'S EVER SUPPORTED KIDZ BOP SHOULD BE SHOT

ANYONE WHO'S EVER MARKETED TO KIDS BY SPELLING IT WITH A "Z" AT THE END SHOULD BE SHOT

THE JONAS BROTHERS SUCK

This is fun!

Anyway it would be kickass if the rumors about Apple planning to reduce price on future gadgets are true. If it was I'd have an orgasm out of all my organs and then it would also get easier to get that 24" iMac.