Well, I hadn’t really done much with Podcasts until iTunes 4.9 was released last week. And I have to say I’m enjoying it. I’ve been listening to a number of shows, Adam Curry’s PodFinder is great and his Daily Source Code is pretty nice. I wish the ESPN was less verbose and more news but it’s not bad. I liked Harry Shearer’s Le Show and the interview with Christopher Nolan (director of Batman Begins) was nice on another Podcast.
Just to try it out, I created a Podcast of my own. It took about 2 hours from start (including uploading). I used my iPod to record an interview and GarageBand and iTunes for the rest. It was longer than I expected and I would need to hone down my ummms, but I can say I’m not displeased with the effort considering it was all ad-libbed and done in one take.
Oh, and I also used Mail.app to create a @mac.com alias for feedback. It’s randcast@mac.com. I submitted the rss feed to the iTMS and we’ll see what happens.
For now, my personal blog can be found at http://homepage.mac.com/randmiranda/iBlog/index.html
Well, one of the “nice” things I found was that my iPod and my backup music library aren’t matching. Like more than 1,200 songs not matching.
I’m trying a new app to try and retrieve the songs from the iPod. It seems to be working but it is slow. I’ll post more on how it works tomorrow as well as the update on the system.
Now, I know why I’ve always used an encrypted disk image when I need security.
At my last job, I just moved on last month, I had the opportunity to do some Apple-related reviews. Here’s one of them, a review of the iPod photo. I have the 60GB model and I love it. Anyway, the story ran in the Today newspaper and all copyright matters go to MediaCorp.
IT SEEMS that an “iPod killer” has finally made it to the market.
But it’s not from Creative, Sony or any other maker of digital music players. It’s from Apple. And make no mistake about it: It’s one killer iPod.
Already No. 1 in the world with hard drive-based players, Apple has raised the stakes once again with the iPod photo, which comes in 40GB ($888) and 60GB($1,088) models.
On the surface, the photo model doesn’t seem that different from the last-generation of iPods.Its clean, white front uses the soft-grey touch disk found on the 4G (fourth-generation) iPods and the iPod minis. It’s a touch thicker,but hardly noticeable unless compared with the mini. It’s not until you turn it on that this iPod begins to shine, literally and figuratively.
The colour screen grabs your attention immediately. It’s easy on the eyes and more readable than the greyscale versions. Apple has also changed the system font to Myriad for greater visibility.
The iPod photo includes an option to save the playlists and gives you control over playback speed on audio books (or recordings such as classroom lectures via a third-party recorder). The title of a song and/or albums scrolls in the “now playing” field.You can view the album art in colour while a song is playing.
As the name implies, you can view photos. Set to sync with your photo library (or whatever folder you choose), you can view photos on the go. Sadly, video isn’t an option, yet.But this seems more a case of legal restrictions over fears of copyrights of studio movies being violated rather than limitations of the product.
Hook up the iPod’s dock and connect an A/V cable to a monitor or television and you can have a photo slide show (which has options for length of slide, music to choose from and fade/wipe options) right there on the big screen. Perfect for family reunions.
You can also set the iPod to make a full-sized backup of your computer’s photo library and the ones that can be viewed onscreen.
And that’s where the larger size of the hard drives shine. Apple advertises 10,000 songs and 25,000 photos on the 60GB model and that seems likely, though not too many people are going to have those numbers. Still, being able to use the iPod as an external hard drive is nice.
On a 60GB model, almost 7,500 songs and 1,000 photos were synced. And along with the full-sized photo library backup, I backed up my entire hard drive as well. And being on a Mac, I was able to make the backup drive bootable in Firewire mode in case I need to boot a computer off the backup drive. All together, the songs, photos and backup drive took up about 50GB of space, leaving plenty of room left.
And for the icing on the cake, not only did Apple add colour and photo capabilities and excess storage space on the photo iPod, the battery life has improved as well. On two models set to play constantly (with backlight off) until shutting off from a drained battery, I was able to get 15.5 hours twice, 16 hours once and a little more than 16 hours once. Perfect even for an extended airplane ride.
On one model with the photo slide set to repeat (again, with backlight off), I was able to get about five hours.
So, assuming you listen to your iPod for three hours a day, you’d need to charge it once every five days. And with the battery likely to last for about 1,000 full charges, you’d likely be set for about 5,000 days. And by then, you’ll probably want a new model anyway.
The bottom line: If you have an iPod and are happy with it, enjoy it. But if you want more space, a longer battery life and more nifty, easy-to-use options, then Apple’s latest iPod is picture-perfect.
