apple juice

i think facial hair is coming back. 90% of the men in the meeting this morning had some sort of beard/mustache/etc thing going.

i found the tape adapter for my car. hello iPod. mpr, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. with the iPod re-hooked up, i heard aimee mann, gnarls barkley, aphex twin, wilco, clap your hands say yeah and soul coughing. i love it.

“i can’t believe you bought a fucking robot” may be one of my favorite quotes of all time.

at the bike store this afternoon, i was told that there was “an archeological dig” going on down in the region of my bottom bracket.

speaking of bikes, tomorrow may be the maiden voyage for riding to school. this pretty much guarantees that i will be late for work, but it’s all in the name of saving the planet.

video chatting is amazing. i think i initially felt that it was sort of overrated, but now i’ve realized that when you want to really concentrate and talk with someone, video is the only way to go.

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.

I wonder how this device will compare to the iTrip, for which I wrote a quick review. It’s called the PodFreq from Sonnet.

It appears to have a few things going for it that iTrip and other FM transmitters don’t have.

• An external antenna.
• External Controls for the frequency

I don’t actually have a 3rd Generation iPod, so I will have to convince one of my friends to purchase a PodFreq so I can check it out. Unless of course someone wants to buy me a new iPod?