Code Name: Brick

After rumors a few weeks ago that a German store had received new MacBook Pros, we now have 9to5 Mac and MacRumors reporting that they have strong evidence that a new line of MacBooks (not the Pros) that could be arriving as soon as October 14! Supposedly, the tip off comes from the same supplier in Asia who let the world know about the ‘Rainbow iPod Nanos’.

It is rumored to be code named ‘Brick’. What is interesting about this is what the name may illude to. While some are speculating it refers to the form factor (I hope not, I thought we were past the brick laptop stage) Macenstein are saying it may refer to something else. They are deciphering it as a Windows killer, literally saying this about it: “After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!”

But what would break the Microsoft market share? To answer this question, we have to look at what has probably constricted Apple’s market share until now. The answer is the price point. If you compare them, a PC could cost $200 less than a similarly spec’d MacBook. If Apple dropped the price of the MacBook to around $1000, they would be in an excellent position to make an agressive push into the market.

While this would be fantastic (I want to buy a MacBook for university), it could mean massive changes to the walled garden Mac users currently live in. In my opinion, Apple products are only as good as they are because they only have a 7% market share. Apple know their market very well and know what they want. Should millions of people join the market, they might have to diversify what they do for the Mac, moving it ever closer to Windows. I don’t want a product that doesn’t work like I want it to. Windows only has a bad name because Microsoft have to deal with the fact that 1 billion computers running Windows turn on every day and not all of those will work the way they’re supposed to. Apple will have to deal with this as well should their market share grow dramatically (but logically it won’t grow enough to threaten Windows).

On a personal point, Macs are only cool because on 7% of people have one! Lets face the facts, we have Macs because we are egotistical, competitive and want to say “Look at me, I have a Mac and you don’t because you can’t afford one.” Macs are cool because it is an exclusive club and that is something that we are protective of! If Macs evolve to take over 90% of the market, I would switch to Windows (should it improve) just to stay cool and say “Look at me, I have a PC and you don’t.”

Dear Apple,

Don’t change =)

iPod Nano 4G

As you know, I originally voiced my concern over the rumored new Nano design, saying that it was hidious and against Apple’s design legacy. Well I’m retracting all of that to now say that the Nano makes perfect sense when you’re holding it in your hand.

Today I went to my local Apple store to check out the new Nanos and the new iPod touch. The Nanos look amazing, all 9 colors seeming to explode out of their display stands. Picking one up I instantly new it was a lot thinner than any other iPod (although the curved design probably help making it appear thinner). I also discovered that the new curved look made perfect sense. It’s more comfortable to hold and use, and doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall out of your hand when you use it.

The screen, although the same and the 3G Nano, looks amazing. Colors burst off the screen, everything is crisp and sharp. Browsing through music lists is much easier as you can see more of it now that the screen is in portrait. The album art looks great when a song is playing, Cover Flow is smoother, menu transitions are smoother, the accelerometer is fast and responsive, everything is fantastic! I seriously have no quams with this iPod.

Unfortunatly, you can’t please everyone, as I found out from commenter Sam:

“I would like to comment on the new iPod nano which I have recently seen. I can safely say that the price cut of the nano has clearly affected the design budget. Whilst it is all we have come to expect from Steve, it has none of the swank sexiness that makes us buy Apple products. Somewhere it just falls short. Also there have been no new feature updates apart from the accelerometer, which is really little more than a gimmic and has no real application in the nano.

The new nano falls far short of the stardnard standard (ahem, spelling Sam!) for Apple.”

Well I’m sorry to hear that Sam. I hope that you’re able to come to love the Nano over time like I have =)

I’m so glad that the Nano has returned to it’s original tall and thin design. It just makes more sense. If I didn’t already have an iPhone, and iPod touch and a 2G iPod nano, I would rush out and buy one of these babies right now!

iPhone 2.1

Today is such a happy, joyous occasion! The 2.1 firmware update was released early this morning for all iPhone users! Firstly, let’s look at what Apple said the update would include:  

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduces time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages (in case you missed the beep the 1st time)
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

  As soon as I switched my iPhone on after updating I instantly recognized that everything was snappier. The contact list loaded must faster, the scrolling is smoother and I now don’t feel worried about stressing it to crashing point.

The two fixes I am most happy about are the faster backup times and faster application install. Like many other people I experienced 20 minute backups that didn’t even work when I was forced to restore my iPhone. That was annoying. Now, after the 2.1 update, the backup took about 20 seconds. The is a massive improvement which I am so happy about. I can now quickly sync my iPhone before I leave the house without having to furiously cancel the backup.

The second fix I am really happy about is Applications.  Applications now load lightning fast, about 20 seconds from my experience. This is down from around 3 minutes of hell when my iPhone refused to do anything until the application installed.

There are more signal bars in more places but at the moment, I don’t know if there are less call drops because I never had any. Similarly for the battery, it will take a full day of normal use for me to see if that battery life is better.

The new Genius feature has been implemented very well. It works just like iTunes 8, no compromises for being on a mobile device, you can do it all (including saving Genius playlist!)

I’d also like to include a new, unmentioned feature: New 3G, EDGE and GPRS icons in the status bar. However useless and insignificant, I still wanted to mention it. Let me have my fun.

I’m confident that this update will quell all the uproar about the iPhone and that we will all be able to live in peace and harmony with our revolutionary phones/digital music players/mobile internet devices (not that I experienced many of the earth shattering, God forsaken imperfections with the iPhone. Were they really that bad?) Meanwhile, you can check up with Engadget to see what their response to the update was

iPod Event and iTunes 8

As most of you know, 2 days ago was the Apple iPod event that I (and many others) posted about. Well now that the event is done and dusted, what has come out of it? In short we saw iTunes 8, a new iPod Nano and a new Touch (plus some new headphones but they don’t count). Because these will require a fairly long post all together I have decided to split them. This one is about iTunes 8, the first new product I got my hands on.

Before I start I would just like to point something out: *cough, cough* (kevinrosewasright…)

Browsing

The new browsing feature in iTunes 8 is a grid view. While this is a fairly obvious feature and one that is available in other media players (such as Windows Media Player) it has taken until version 8 of the world’s most popular digital jukebox for it to arrive. Before now, I didn’t feel like I needed grid view but now that I have it, I’m not going back. I think of it best as a comfortable mix between Cover Flow and the list view with albums covers. Music is viewable in the same categories as were previously available: artists, albums, genres and composers. For those who don’t wish to flow through their music with ease, the list view is still available. Cover Flow has been drastically improved. Where as before when Cover Flow would lag if you scrolled fast, now it breezes through albums with no hiccups.

Genius

Genius! I love Genius!! Genius is a brand new feature to iTunes 8 that attempts to mix the world’s of Pandora and Last.fm with the smart playlists already available. What Genius does is analyses your entire music library to tell you what music goes great together. This is not a process that just analyses your music alone, Genius synchronizes with Apple’s database containing millions and millions of other data like yours, making the analysis more accurate. All you have to do is select a song, then hit the Genius button down the bottom right of you iTunes window to create a Genius playlist. This new playlist suggests a list of songs that sound great together. My personal experience with Genius has been great, the playlists it creates contains songs that I wouldn’t have put side by side but now I can see why. Choosing ’15 step’ by Radiohead gives me a playlist containing Bloc Party, Coldplay, Madonna, The Fray and even Bob Dylan. The oddest sounding playlist that makes perfect musical sense. You really have to try it for yourself but be warned, some haven’t had the best experience with it so far. As time goes by, Apple’s database will grow and evolve and so will the Genius’ recommendations.

Podcast Management

Something overlooked by nearly everyone is the more refined podcast management options in iTunes 8. In iTunes 7, you could tell iTunes to check for new podcasts and how often to, tell it what to do when new episodes were available and how many episodes to keep. This was great, but not if you have different podcasts which you want to download/keep at different times. iTunes 8 adds the ability to choose all of the aforementioned settings for each individual podcast. I find this useful when I get lapse at listening to daily podcasts, but when still want to keep the podcast feed, and when I still want my weekly and periodical podcasts to still always download. This new revision of podcast management give you greater control over you content and how you use it. A must for anyone who listens to podcasts!

Visualizer

The incredibly date iTunes visualizer has been given a new breath of life with a new audio visualizer! For those who didn’t know this feature even existed, play a song and hit ctrl+T (command+T for Mac) and see what you were missing. I love and hate this visualizer. I love it because it’s georgous and pretty and fantastic in every way. I hate it because it’s so pretty it distracts me too much and I have to turn it off. This is different from the visualizer that I saw but it is still amazing. While this is nothing to be over the moon about and is by no means a key feature, it’s still nice to have.

While all of these new features are an amazing improvement to what iTunes 7 offered, it all comes at a price. The RAM consumption of iTunes is phenomenal! Currently, iTunes is taking up 317.5MB of my 2GB or RAM. Talk about hulking! I have no idea if this number varies from library to library but it has definetly increased since the introduction of iTunes 8. For me this is no problem, but if you have an older computer, multitasking may become an issue.

 

See why I decided to split all of the new products up?

3 Days to Go

Three days out from the now announced Apple iPod Event the rumors are starting to become settled and more concrete. Here is a round up of the new products you can expect from Apple on September 9th (if the rumors turn out the be true, which they will):

New iPod Touches and Nanos (New iPod Classic?):

This rumors is a given considering the FCC released their dimensions earlier this week.

The iPod Touchshould be getting a face lift to be more in line with the new iPhone 3g and the iPod Nano will receive the curved treatment (luckily the screen won’t be curved judging from the images.) Details here and here.

iTunes 8:

Being a completely new update there are going to be quite a few new features. Here is a list from Kevin Rose’s blog post:

iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have.

With iTunes 8, browse your artists and albums visually with the new Grid view; download your favorite TV shows in HD quality from the iTunes Store; sync your media with iPod nano (4th generation), iPod classic (2nd generation), and iPod touch (2nd generation); and enjoy a stunning new music visualizer.

There is the mention of the 2^nd generation iPod Classic! But it’s probably just a face lift.

What isn’t mentioned in Kevin Rose’s post is the rumored inclusion of a new visualizer from Robert Hodgin. The visualizer is called Magnetosphere and looks awesome! This rumor came up after Hodgin removed the free download from his website saying that he had sold the rights to Magnetosphere to a 3rd party. Later on, Kevin Rose confirmed that Magnetosphere was the visualizer he saw in a build of iTunes 8. More info here.

It all seems to be coming together in the land of Apple. Watch out for all this stuff on September 9th!

iPhone: My Story

After 6 weeks of trying, 2 breaches of the Trade Practices Act and 1 unanswered complaint later, I finally got my iPhone 3G. It hasn’t been an easy process and Optus haven’t exactly lived up to my expectations but now I can confidently give my unequivocal and somewhat bias review.

Feature: The phone

Obviously, the most crucial feature of a phone is the phone and the iPhone definitely delivers. The Phone application is fast, snappy and very responsive. Scrolling through contacts is intuitive and easy, making a call using the large keypad is a breeze and checking your voice mail is only a tap away. In all, the phone application is the most polished of all the phones I have had and is far superior in terms of design and ease of use to many other phones on the market.

Feature: The iPod

The other great draw of the iPhone is the built in, wide screen iPod. The layout is similar to the Phone application with a bar down the bottom of the screen which you can customize to have catagories such as artists, albums, videos, podcasts and audio books for quick and easy access. Turning the iPhone on it side brings you to Cover Flow a georgous feature that allows you flip through your music with the flick of a finger. Movies look spectacular on the 3.5 inch screen, allowing you to view them in cinematic wide screen. The iPod application is the best Apple has produced yet, which is a big statement in itself.

Feature: Mobile Internet

On of the biggest draw cards of the iPhone 3G is the mantra of ‘The Internet in your Pocket’. With applications such as a full web browser, Google Maps (with GPS), the iTunes Music Store, a Weather application and YouTube, the iPhone lives up to this and so much more. Where ever in Australia (or around the world) you are, you can to connect to the internet to do nearly anything you once were confined to your computer to do. The beauty of the iPhone is you can now do it on the go.

Feature: Your personal data, everywhere!

Contrary to what people may still think about Apple products, they CAN play nice with Windows. This is no different for the iPhone. The built in Calandar, Email and Contacts applications can fully synchronize with Outlook to bring your life from your computer to where ever you are. And forget about clicking through you events and contacts to tediously find the one you were looking for, just flick your finger to effortlessly fly though your information. The Email application works great, with integration with any email service you throw at it. If that wasn’t enough, you can view files such as PDF and Microsoft Office documents right from in the application. There is not doubt in my mind that Apple have got this personal data integration down pact.

Feature: iTunes Application Store

The newest feature to the iPhone is the ability to download applications to run on your phone. There are thousands of free and paid applications available for download from Bloomberg Stocks to a simple Koy Pond. Downloading applications from either iTunes or directly from your iPhone is easy, only needing your password and a single click.

Conclusion

In all honesty, the iPhone is the best mobile device I have used. I can now carry one device for everything from music to the Sydney traffic cameras. If you are thinking of buying a new phone, why not consider one that can cater for every aspect of your mobile life?

Got any questions? Just send me a reply below.