For years I had heard how Apple's designs and operations were elegant.  I remember the 1984 commercial where big iron's grip on consumers was being smashed by the "David" known as Apple.  Microsoft was the evil empire and Jobs the white knight.  Then I bought an iPod.

The design is elegant and it is easy to create playlists and download music.  No matter about the reports of a short battery life and the likelihood that I'll have to buy another iPod in 2-3 years if I want to continue to enjoy my music collection.  It somehow won't happen to me. 

But recently I began exploring ways of creating a wholehouse music system around the iPod and I quickly discovered that the openness and reliability I had associated with Apple isn't what I thought it was.  Since my music is on my pc and I wanted to listen to it on my stereo and because I have a WiFi network I looked into options for streaming my songs from the computer to the stereo.  It seems that on an iTunes-based system only Apple can provide you the hardware to do that.  I am now faced with setting up another network just for my music.  I am told that if it interferes with my existing network I can either operate one network at a time or I can try adjusting the power settings.  So much for multi-tasking and being able to listen to music in the back of my house.  Nevertheless, for my music files that are in any number of other formats I can choose from a whole slew of options like Roku's SoundBridge to stream my music to the stereo and around the house.

After reading reviews of the AirPort Express Station for iTunes I became even less convinced that Apple is the way to go – more than a few consumers complained that the station gave out after two years.  Pony up another $130.  Sound familiar?

The whole industry is working to provide us with easily accessible entertainment anywhere we want it (particularly in the living room) but as Apple grows it seems to be employing many of the same tactics its competitors were accused of using such as exclusivity and premature obsolescence.  As that success continues it is also increasingly falling victim to the challenges faced by the industry including viruses and hardware issues.  The number of viruses targeting the Mac OS has increased more than 200% this year over last and recently MacBook Pro has had problems with random shut-downs. 

Moral:  hardware providers who live in glass houses should watch out for hammers. 

Rob Floyd

 

 

 

Tired of the kids sitting around for hours on end playing video games? Wish they'd do something – get some exercise?  Expecting a houseful of nieces and nephews or grandkids for the holidays?  Do yourself (ahem) them a favor and buy the new Wii (pronounced We) from Nintendo.  This is 3 dimensional gaming.  What do I mean?

Swing the remote (called the Wiimote) like a bat to knock the onscreen baseball out of the park.  Practice your tennis backhand, your golf backswing or bowl a 300.  You can play doubles tennis and work up up a sweat boxing an onscreen opponent.  And just like board games where everyone wants to pick the shoe to move around the board, the Wii lets you choose a representative character.   Called avatars, you can select from any number of characters to represent you on the screen. 

All of the games and characters are animated but one wonders if being able to insert your real likeness into actual film clips can be far behind?  Nevertheless this is a great start to a whole new world of immersive gaming and for about $250. 

Football anyone? I hear Madden NFL 07 is available. 

Rob Floyd