dave: May 2007 Archives

One of the great things about using iTunes to manage your library of music/podcasts/audiobooks is the seamless nature of the experience. Everything just works together, especially if you have an iPod to bring your library (or part of it) around with.

If you have internet access, of course you can add new podcasts from the iTunes Music Store. Most of them are free and many of them are even interesting. Jonesing for a Jamie Oliver fix? He's got some cooking shows in there. Eager for a dose of Steve Jobs? The last Macworld keynote (the iPhone one) is there in all it's nearly two hours of high-quality QuickTime glory.

(A quick note for Mr Oliver: just because it may be amateur podcasting doesn't mean that it has to look like it. How much would a tripod for the camera cost? What about a boom stand for the mic? Just those two things would do wonders for the quality of the video.)

One of the nice things the Music store can do for you is to fill in any album art you may have missing. But this highlights one glaring problem with the iTunes Music store.

Some things can only be obtained from the store with a validated account, which means a credit card with a billing address in a country for which there is an iTunes Music Store. Currently, this doesn't include Hong Kong. I guess this is fair enough: Apple Inc. have their reasons for not opening an iTunes Music Store in HK, whatever those reasons are. (And they're probably related to our stupid Parallel Import laws, where monopolies are enshrined in law.)

But, even if I want some of the free stuff (like album art, or the free Wednesday singles), I need to validate my account with my credit card! I can download free podcasts, but not free songs? What? How's about a Consistent User Interface, guys!

MacSaber 1.1 has been released, now with expanded 17″ PowerBook support and keyboard backlight effects. I invite you to take your very expensive laptop into a dark room and swing it around* for improved dramatic effect.

...because every new macbook owner really wants to swing their purchase around in the air. NOTE: if you have bought a MacPro, the solid lump of aluminium, swinging it around could be considered hazardous to your health, nearby walls, etc. You can just use the mouse controls. Apparently, if you have a MacBookPro, this app does cute things with your illuminated keyboard.

So, the Apple Store was down for a few hours today, and the rumour sites went crazy. A possible 15.4" inch MacBook was rumoured, with LED backlighting and the latest Intel Chipset (which would have been a huge graphical update).

Unfortunately, the only bump was to CPU speeds (+0.16Ghz), minimum RAM (2x512MB), and disks (120GB). No big graphics options, matte screens, backlit keyboards, 1440x900 screens, thought-readers, etc.

UPDATE: Also upgraded: the Superdrive is now 8x, which is useful.

A quite disappointing update really, but, it does mean that the base MacBook has a 4MB shared cache and 1GB RAM, which were reasons enough to upgrade to the middle WhiteBook in the past. There's still no Superdrive in the base model, though, which is pretty poor for a laptop marketed to content creators.

Having griped that, the middle spec Whitebook is still probably the best value for money of the portApples. And now that the magsafe Airline adaptor is available on the HK store, it makes a lot of sense for me to get one. I can use my laptop while some inconsiderate twerp has reclined his seat back as far as it goes in cattle class.

Unfortunately, the crap graphics card (Intel GMA950) has about the same level of grunt as an Nvidia FX5200, which was a basic GPU four years ago. It's completely unacceptable for a modern laptop. The X1600 in the MacBookPro is just about the minimum acceptable GPU for a 2007 laptop.

UPDATE: And yet, disappointing upgrade or not, I've been thinking about it all morning. If it had had a bigger screen, or a GPU, I'd be posting this from my new notebook.

Oh well, back to trying to edit a movie on my G4 mini, which is an otherwise capable machine, but the least powerful of my computers here.

Is it just me, or have the Apple Online Seminars pages changed colour scheme recently?

I seem to recall that they were like most of the rest of the Apple website — light colours and a hint of pinstripe — but now they've been overtaken by the dark transparency of the Pro Apps.

Those entries below look awfully similar, yesno? As I'm likely to be very busy for the next few months (even busier than normal), I've set up my del.icio.us account to post new items. This will most likely provide a weird and eclectic set of postings and links.

So say hello to 'robot dave'

Unfortunately, this is not very well implemented at the moment, and can only post on a daily basis. I'd prefer something once every week, or so, but I'll have to wait until I can program it myself later.