March 16, 2005
Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've created, John Deere
This has so much potential for so much evil: Giant Grasshopper Monster Machine
Don't forget to check out the videos.
I just wish there were videos of it using its giant evil chainsaw arm.
I can't help but be reminded of this.
Posted by Chris Coleman at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2005
MacWorld impressions
Well, it's that time of year again -- the time of year that I get all depressed because my lowly salary doesn't allow me to buy whatever new device/software/service Steve Jobs has telepathically commanded me to buy. The UberGeek himself, Colin, has requested that I share my impressions, which I gladly do now.
From the looks of things, this year's MacWorld is the best in a long time. Certainly one of the best since the powers that be decided that those of us on the east coast are unworthy to worship in the temple, and started denying us the July expo, anyway.
One great thing about this year was that the rumors were pretty accurate. I doubt it's possible to ever be 100% right about everything, but close is good enough for my money (which is $0), when it comes to Apple rumors. I had high expectations, and they were mostly fulfilled. Let's dig in...
iPod shuffle
Man, I really, really wanted to hate this thing. The whole idea of an iPod without a screen was blasphemy. As recently as Monday morning, I made sure to give the concept a healthy trashing on MacCentral:
They seem credible, but no screen is absolutely moronic. Even the CD player in my car tells me what track I'm on, and the RDS system (occasionally) tells me what I'm listening to on the radio. People want the information. If this thing sells for $99, it might still be pretty hot. If it's much more than $129, I'm not counting on it because it takes all the great advantages of the iPod and (presumably) throws them right out.
Note, however, that I gave the idea credit where it was due, and also managed to slip in a price prediction. Looks like I was right, sort of.
The more I see of the iPod shuffle, however, the more I like it. I really like it. I like how it plugs into a USB port, and the button layout on it isn't bad either. The icing on the cake is that it can be used as a flash drive. I was sort of considering buying one. I may invest in one of these, but I've got other things to worry about first. The price point of $99 is a pretty magic number for me, however.
Mac mini
Yeah, this thing is hot (probably literally, but that's not really relevant). It's like a half a G4 Cube, but twice as powerful! That's like four times the power and one-fourth the price! Take that, cube-buying idiots!
Seriously, though, how can I not love this thing? It's small, and relatively powerful. It smacks my eMac around. Sure, there's no keyboard and mouse, but people who don't care about having a pretty keyboard, and I'm sure that's somewhere around 90 percent of this machine's target market, can buy a $10 piece of crap keyboard with a Windows Start Menu key. Hell, that's what you get when you buy a $500 PC anyway.
I'd love to say I'm going to immediately sell my eMac and buy one of these, but it would cost more than my eMac to configure one the way I want it, although it's hard to put a price on stylish design. My eMac cost $1088, and that includes an educational discount of about $100 that I mangaged to squeeze out of Apple. The Mac mini, as I would buy it (which is pretty much fully decked-out), would cost me $927, plus the price of more RAM. I have a nice 17" Viewsonic display that I could use with it, but that would defeat the purpose of buying a tiny little computer to replace the all-in-one machine on my desk right now.
I am crazy about this machine. I really hope that it's a step toward a media center machine from Apple. It's almost all there now. It just needs a video input, and I can stick one next to my TV. An media browser/TV recorder application that can access my photos, movies and music for quick and easy access would complete it. I have big ideas for such a machine/application, but that's for another time.
iLife '05
This looks great. I followed the Keynote on Macrumors and Maccentral, and I was really impressed with what I heard. I was more impressed when I read about it on Apple's site after the keynote. I was sold when I watched the keynote this morning.
I'll be honest and say that I don't have a lot of use for most of the apps that come with iLife. I really do wish Apple sold them separately. And I think it's just plain dumb that Apple tries to make you think iTunes should be a part of the suite, when it's a free program. But man, is the new iPhoto cool.
The new organizational features in iPhoto are a godsend. iPhoto has always done a better job than anything else I've used, and the speed boost that came with iPhoto 4 was what made me finally ditch Image Capture. I hope that the calendar feature is as good as it looks. When you get up to an iPhoto library with thousands of photos, anything new is worth checking out. I can't wait to use it.
The new books and prints that iPhoto offers are an absolute steal. I can pay $.19 to do my digital prints at Costco, which is great, but it'll also be nice to be able to get them done through iPhoto and have them mailed to me for the same price. I hope I can get a matte finish on them, because glossy is obviously for suckers. I'm probably most excited about the new books. The layout options are stunning, and the prices are very good too. I'm already thinking up reasons to make one. Would it be weird to take a vacation just to get a book made of the photos I would take?
I'm going to gloss over iDVD, iMovie and Garage Band. The upgrades all seem solid. High definition video is a big step for iMovie, though I'm not sure what you'd play HD video on until you have a HD media format to transfer it to. And even then, you'd need an HDTV monitor to play it on. It's cool, but cool is about it. iDVD is really only useful if you use iMovie. I'm thinking about starting a little project to turn the videos of Heat Vision and Jack into a DVD, but who knows if I'll ever actually do it.
Multi-track recording in Garage Band is probably going to be a huge step for a lot of users. As far as I know, nothing else out there even comes close to this for the price. I've made a few cool tracks out of the Apple Loops that come with GB, but that's about it. I have no musical skill, and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Sort of a side note, here, but in one of my MacCentral rants I hypothesized that that the partially-revealed iPod shuffle banner that some spies managed to get some shots of were part of a new iLife look or ad campaign.
And another thing: The colors make it look like an iPod banner, but what about the possibility that Apple is expanding the look of the successful iPod ad campaign Macs, Mac OS X, Tiger, iLife '05, or some other software?
Turns out that the banners were, in fact, for the iPod shuffle, but there is a new look for iLife (and a matching look for iWork).
iWork
All right, so half of this new product is just an upgrade to Keynote, another program that I'll never use. It still looks nice. If I ever find myself in a situation where I need to make a presentation, I really doubt that I'd choose PowerPoint.
I'm excited to try out Pages, but again, I'd rarely use it. I don't even think I've used Word for anything since I was last applying for jobs. If Pages has good résumé templates, I'll be all over it next time I'm in the market for employment. The templates I did see look beautiful -- much nicer than the tired old crap that Microsoft pushes.
I certainly can't argue the price on any of this. Keynote alone used to cost $99; iWork costs only $79.
Tiger
Where do I start when talking about this beast? Words can't describe how excited I am for Tiger. The best thing you can do is just go to Apple's Mac OS X site, and take the Tiger tour.
My picks for top features are Spotlight, Mail and Dashboard.
A little bit about Spotlight: Sure, it does pretty much the same thing as about a dozen Windows desktop search tools that are out now. But it does it much, much better. I've used Copernic, Google Desktop Search and MSN Desktop Search, and I can say that they all pretty much blow compared to Spotlight, which I've also used. Even MSN feels tacked-on, but Spotlight is fully integrated.
If Apple wants to win converts, they'll hurry up and get Tiger out to the masses, and get it on the Mac mini. If you want to convert a few Windows users, make them take the Tiger tour. It's very impressive, especialy when you run it full screen.
And in the end...
So what will I buy? Almost certainly, iLife '05. It'll essentially be like paying $79 for iPhoto, but whatever. I'm sure I can come up with the cash. I might pay for Tiger, but I've got a while to worry about that. I have every intention of buying a new PowerBook when Apple finally sticks a G5 in it, so maybe I'll just wait it out and get it then. I'll amost certainly wait for the second revision, to save some money, so I may be waiting a while.
I really like the iPod shuffle, but it doesn't fully meet my needs. I may consider it as an interim solution, sort of like my eMac, until the 40 GB iPod photo drops to $299. It all depends on how antsy I get.
My MacWorld grade: A-
Posted by Chris Coleman at 12:35 PM | Comments (2)
December 14, 2004
Damn clean hippie
I'm working on Danielle's site for her. She had some issues with her redesign, so I decided to go ahead and put together something new for her, which I had been promising for a while.
It's not quite finished, but it is up and running. It's basically a new style on top of this site's layout, but it still looks pretty good. I'm sort of proud of the XHTML and CSS. Hopefully I can get things finished up for her tonight, and then get some work done on Funk 'n' Gumbo's site.
Don't bother straining your eyes looking at that. Just go to Danielle's site.
Posted by Chris Coleman at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
December 02, 2004
Buy now for the holidays!
So I picked up at hot Nintendo DS today at [name of store deleted] (hot in the sense that everybody wants one, not that it's stolen).
I decided to be a nice guy and share my good fortune with the Internet. That means you can bid on it on eBay. Don't be afraid to give my auction a helping hand.
Check out my auction. Get it while it's hot!
Posted by Chris Coleman at 08:19 PM | Comments (3)