it's automatic when you feel it
the front of our office looks like metal gear solid 4 starring cicadas - dead and dying bugs litter the parking garage and the walkway in. it's more than a little disconcerting.
the drive in to work from the new house is gravy - left at 7:35, stopped for a bagel, still got here at 8. all backroads (except i need to stay far away from tylersville, coming anywhere near that road seems to add ten minutes to the drive)
hiring movers is the best money i've ever spent. thanks to them, we had enough time to almost completely unpack. well thanks to them, renee's foresight to start moving things in a week ahead of time, and my brother and her sister, both of whom helped immensely.
we did have a few minutes for fun during this terribly long, exhausting weekend - i got in about five hours of MGS4, it's great as you would expect, a good reason to pick up a PS3. i talked about it last week on the podcast and i have a bit more insight this week. the in-game ipod currently works better than my real one, unfortunately, the death clock was dead on - it finally kicked the bucket this weekend. wow, a little over two years, apple. you're never getting another cent from me, ever.
we also saw the happening, which you should avoid at all costs. night has completely lost his touch, it would seem - the film had a great concept but was executed terribly, from the casting to the writing to the friviolous, cheap-feeling shock scenes that felt like they were thought up by a sixth grade boy doodling in class.
If my Ipod(s) die(s) within the next five years I'm using the frequent flier miles I get from P&G to fly out to Apple's headquarters so I can break two of their windows with my Ipods. I figure it cost be $500 for both they are going to have to pay $500 in some way.
My other plan is to find a way to endorse some PC company with Gillette or Tide to ruin Apple by out advertising them. I'll probably have to force the PC company to redesign their less appealing physical appearance and accessories though.
You know you can buy new batteries for them. I hear install isn't too difficult.
I bought one on ebay...easy to install, but completely worthless. It drained in about an hour....even when the iPod was turned off. I don't know if more expensive batteries are better, but I wouldn't waste too much money on one.
ak: i wish i could tell you what the problem is; unfortunately apple doesn't believe in error messages. or even error codes. they believe in adorable pictures that don't give you any useful information about the problem (i.e. bad battery, failed sector on the hard disk, etc). thanks, apple, for making me feel like a toddler.
fortunately i have kept a robust MP3 collection and haven't bought anything from the itunes store in a long time; i switched to amazon long ago. so there are only about four or five discs i will have to burn/rip to migrate from M4P -> MP3, and then it'll all end up in the zune i am going to get.
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Nickolini, that sucks.
JW, have you taken it to the Apple store? I was getting the same thing on a 1 month old iPod and they were able to do some sort of combo of buttons voodoo to get an error message. The funny thing is that that iPod was my generation two that still works today.
Come on, there have to be better options than a Zune. I mean, it's a Microsoft product. I mean "Man Gets Windows Vista to Work With Printer" is an actual title of an article talking about Vista. Not exactly a company known for their easy to use products.
yeah, remember my last ipod? took it to the apple store when the same thing happened. it was past the 90-day warranty as well. the "geniuses" at the bar pretty much laughed me out of the store. that one lasted almost three years... this one a hair over two. a few hundred dollars in five years and today neither of them work.
i'm not sure if a zune will be better quality wise, but i'm certainly not foolish enough to go on this particular ride a third time. fool me once, etc...
i know you will defend apple to the death and think everything microsoft makes is garbage. that is your right as an American, dangit! i have had much better luck with their stuff than apple's, however. XP, Office, their server platforms, MSSQL, Exchange, the xbox - these products have been fantastic for me. the days of hating everything MS are over, at least for me, and have been for a while. the only apple product i have anything positive to say about at this point is garageband :)
the zune's interface is hot, the device itself is slick, it's gotten good reviews, and - the best feature - IT'S NOT AN IPOD. i'm sold.
J don't forget about Microsoft Paint! There's a fine product that hasn't been changed in 20 years.
I'm not gonna' get into an Apple thing. That's stupid. If you like the Zune for the Zune's sake, then I think it's logical to get one. I wouldn't expect any better service than you got with Apple though (in fact, since there isn't a retail outlet for Microsoft in Kenwood Mall, I'd bet it'd be worse since you can't actually talk to a person). However, as an interface guy I'd encourage you to ignore its "hotness". Sizzle like that will annoy you in a few months. I have an iPhone and I'm growing to hate the zoom in and zoom out of all the apps as they launch. It was a neat sizzle, but now I just want to jump around to whatever. Sliding/fading crap like I saw on the Zune @ the Staples across the street would really get on my nerves unless there's a way to speed it up or turn it off.
So you're willing to give up the click wheel? The best interface ever for music? You must be really steamed. I really miss it on my phone.
I'm all about "Hotness" Artie, that's why we had a Commodore 128 and not a 64 as a child!
i have grown increasingly unhappy with the "best interface ever" in the last years. bear witness:
- the click wheel doesn't stop on a dime. in fact, i have noticed that it almost always overshoots where i intend to stop when scrolling through a long list of items (say, Artists). so let's say i land on the item below the one i wanted to stop on, even though i stopped moving as the selection bar was over what i wanted. if i want to scroll up, i barely move my thumb, nudge it up a little bit. the selection bar doesn't move at all. so i move it a little more. selection bar shoots up two or three items. i'm still not over the item i want. it's infuriating. possibly there was something wrong with my click wheel, or it's just poor design... either way, that's a strike against them.
- i'm driving to work, listening to a podcast. i get to work, shut the device off (i.e. hold play and hope that this time it will actually turn itself off instead of just sit there). after work, i come back out, plug it in, fire it up and resume playback of said podcast. except it's in a different position in the show (even though the playback time is the same). so i rewind a few seconds to get back to where i was. except jumping back five or ten seconds brings me FORWARD in the podcast, for whatever reason. eventually i rewind a full two or three minutes and i am back to where i was when i got to work. how tough is this to get right? strike two.
- i'm one of those lunatics that spent hours putting album art on all of my songs in my itunes library. and even though i have "copy album art when copying songs to ipod" checked, it randomly doesn't, and as a result there are a ton of songs that are annoyingly missing the art. i have to find the tracks on the device itself and readd the art. you're out.
i could go on and on... for the best music player in the world, there are some incredibly annoying flaws, and i am more than ready to chuck the line. even renee's 6G does some of the same stuff (plus hers has an annoying clock screensaver that turns on automatically after a few seconds, and you can't disable it). nope - i am ready for a change.
Sound reasonable. I hope the Zune is a better fit for you.
No, JW, you're not alone. The Scroll Wheel on my 3G Nano is just as touch sensitive and annoying. And yes, the same resume playback feature is standard on mine.