apple juice

I used to loathe going to the apple store. I feel as though I know one or two things about technology, and I felt the apple store employees were unwilling to acknowledge that and treat me like an advanced user.

Recently I’ve noticed a change, the last few experiences were very pleasant. I’m not sure if new training occurred for the employees, but the employees I have worked with are quick to assess my skill level and respond appropriately.

Over the past month, my iPhone’s home button stopped responding consistently. This morning, I made a genius bar appointment (via the Apple Store app), came in, was promptly helped, she quickly verified the problem, and I walked out with a new / (refurbished?) iPhone within 10 minutes.

To make the whole process even smoother, after syncing my phone, it’s as if nothing ever changed. It’s set up exactly as it was before. (I did have to enter numerous passwords for all of the cloud-synced services)

given how much this blog was originally about apple stuff, it is funny how little I post about all things Mac these days.

but, I wanted to give a little shout-out to iTunes, which received a major version upgrade last week. i would certainly recommended updating to this version when you have the chance.

the genius feature, while not new with version 9, is easily my favorite new function from the past few versions of iTunes. I think it gets a bad rap as it tends to repeat stuff if your library isn’t that large, and it doesn’t always stay within the same mood.

but on the whole, it makes interesting playlists quickly. i think through some serious manipulation of the smart playlists, you can make some pretty nice “radio-style” playlists… but it’s really not worth the effort when you can click the genius buttton and start listening.

i actually sent in an enhancement request to apple, something I’ve never done before with iTunes. I can’t imagine how much thousands of hours I’ve used iTunes, and this never occurred to me before.

what if you had the option to get “relative dates” when you shrink the last played or date added fields? Then, instead of seeing a whole list of dates and times, you would see last played as “Last month” or “Last week”.

A few months later, I don’t really care about the specific time of day, and I’d just like a quick visual for how long it has been since the last play.

(on a related note, I’ve long felt that instead of simply storing play count and last played date, storing every plays timestamp could lead to some interesting smart playlists, show me things that i’ve listened to 10 times in the past week, for example. as it currently stands, you can only pick things that have, for example, play counts greater than 10, and that the last play is in the last week)

Anyway, upgrade when you get the chance!

“I’ve reached a point where I can no longer just sit back and watch this. The iPhone ecosystem is toxic, and I can’t participate any more until it is fixed. As people have told me so many times: It’s Apple’s ballgame, and Apple gets to make the rules, and if I don’t like it, I can leave. So, I don’t like it, and I’m leaving.”

(Via stevenf.com.)

Probably not stuff that your average iPhone user cares about, but this kind of stuff bothers me too… so I chose not to go the iPhone route…

Classilla: Building a Secure Web Browser for Mac OS 9
and the Classic Macintosh OS

I know I’m a total nerd, but I love this stuff…

Apple announced today what once seemed impossible. They are transitioning the Macintosh to Intel processors.

For all the news and hype this will generate, for the people who matter, the users, it is basically a non-issue. Apple has the engineering prowess to pull this off, as they have in the past with similar changes. The users will never notice. Well, they will notice in the sense that their laptop batteries will last much longer, and we should see much more regular processor updates. But comparing mhz with Dells is no longer the issue.

It all comes down to interface, user experience, and Apps. iMovie, iPhoto, Final Cut Pro, all of Apple’s pro apps. OS X is already regarded as the best system on the planet. The situation will only improve.

The obvious downside is that the developers have work to do, more work in compiling on two processors. In the end of it all, they need to sell new versions, and targeting two platforms will, in theory, create better, more stable apps. (Having to debug on multiple processor types, while a major pain, tends to bring out problems in your code.)

I’m excited for this change, I think it will allow some great new products. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but here we are! One thing though, no G5 laptops, sorry Joey.

I’d be forsaking my identity as an Apple -fanatic if I didn’t give my dedicated readers a quick update on the new products from Apple…

Mac mini – It has been shot down by the budget department for the near term, but I hope to someday get one of these to add to my home theater setup. I imagine hooking it up to the yet-unpurchased HDTV, and running iTunes, iPhoto, games, etc. on the big screen. For me, it makes a perfect little media server. For my sucker PC using friends, it offers a cheap way to get over to the Mac. Get a KVM and see what I’ve been crowing about for all these years!

iPod shuffle – There are two camps on this one, “what no screen!” and “freakin’ awesome!” Basically, a 512MB or 1GB iPod. Also doubles as a little thumb drive to store files on and shuffle (ha ha) files around. If you can’t figure out why there is no screen, think of this device more as extension of iTunes. You can get a random selection of your favorite songs from a playlist or genre you’ve set up. I especially liked the article I came across where the CEO of Creative Labs basically called iPod shuffle stupid. Where’s the screen, FM tuner, umpteen other features we have? He doesn’t care about elegant design, usability, interface… only adding more and more features.

“Actually, to me it’s a big let-down: we’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older. It’s our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that — that’s a four-year-old product.”

“So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people — it’s worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don’t have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it’s a non-starter to begin with.”

Can you tell that he is about to feel the cold slap of marketing genius? I think Apple will sell a lot of these.

There were various other announcements from Apple and other third party companies. I’m very excited about iPhoto 5, and also the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger.

Forget the U2 iPod Special Edition.

I need the iPod Photo.