Wednesday, March 15, 2006

iPod HiFi

The iPod HiFi misses the boat in my opinion. It is, for all intents and purposes, just giant iPod speakers. Speakers are a dime a dozen.

If Apple had mad the iPod HiFi networkable with, perhaps, airport express functionality, they would have had a winner. As it stands, it is SO much easier for me to just hook an airport express up to my stereo and stream tunes directly from iTunes to my home stereo. I have no real reason to buy the HiFi.

Just as Apple missed the boat with the newest iMacs (they should have included a TV tuner and DVR software), they have missed the boat with this product. It might be good, but leaving out networkability prevented it from being killer.

Macbook Pro

Recently work purchased a new laptop for me to take on the road. My TiBook had gotten long in the tooth and the road had taken a huge toll on the poor thing. It was dented and scratched and the screen close to the hinge had begun to separate. Its drive was way too small for the applications that I needed on the road—so I ended up using an external firewire drive that drained the battery fairly quickly.

The Macbook Pro was a breeze to setup. I set my TiBook to target mode and the new laptop set itself up on its own.

Powering up is at least 4 times as fast as my old laptop—even with less RAM. The dual Intel core just screams. I am convinced that moving from the old G4 processors to Intel was the right move to make.

My only complaint is that Classic is no longer supported. I don’t often need to run OS 9 but when I do…well, I want to be able to. I’m disappointed that the PC card slot has been eliminated and that Firewire 800 is no longer available. Fortunately I don’t have firewire 800 devices.

All my old apps still work—Photoshop isn’t much faster. I’m looking forward to apps that are native to the new architecture.

All in all, I have to say that this *book is sweet!

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