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Converged Devices Will Never Have The Depth of Their Standalone Counterparts

According to a report in the UK’s Sunday Times, music phones (ie cellular phones that also play mp3 music files), could spell death for iPod sales. What has brought them to this conclusion? Sales of the Sony Ericsson Walkman line of music phones. The company reported, last Friday, that they have sold 17 million Walkman phones last year, and has sold more than 20 million since they were first introduced just over 18 months ago - a sales rate of that is far superior to the first 18 months of iPod sales. In total, Sony Ericsson has sold just over 43 million music phones, but this is nothing compared to music phone king Nokia.

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Your iPod Should Be Left at The Door

Michigan kids do not need iPods, in fact kids around the nation do not need iPods. I know some people (like Steve Jobs) think that the iPod will make you smarter, will help you retain more information, and help you succeed as a student, but the reality is it won’t. Why not? Because the iPod, just like any other electronical device in the classroom, including desktop/laptop comupters, cell phones, calculaters, etc. are nothing more than distractions. How do I know? I use to be a teacher…and the last thing I or any of my former colleagues would want is more electronic devices in the hands of children.

Children Should Use Technology

But they should use the “right” technology, and unfortunately, that does not include an iPod. Computers are a fantastic tool to use to assist in the learning process, but even they have their drawbacks, mainly the learning curve involved with teaching a student how to use a computer or particular program. It takes time, time that is taken away from the basics. Just like sell phones, and graphing calculators, the iPod is a potential learning tool that can easily be exploited and mis-used by today’s more “advanced” youth, serving as a distraction to their learning and that of others in the classroom - a lose-lose. While I applaud Michigan’s proactive technology plans, their is no room for the iPod in the classroom.

So I got this iPod here, hangin’ out in the cupholder in my car while driving down to Virginia. 5 hour trip, maybe 6 if you hit a lot of traffic on the NJ turnpike. No problems right? Wrong. The battery on the iPod lasted a good 3 hours, and the iPod indicated that it had plenty of juice left (about half). No more than 2 Fugees songs later, the battery is completely drained. Yeah, it’s an older iPod, but I didn’t think the battery was going to be this crappy. Replacements are not that cheap either (going through Apple), plus if I were to do it myself, the labor involved that requires precision surgery to this already beaten iPod.

So I reverted to standard FM radio, and was quickly reminded why it sucks so bad. That new Puff daddy and Christina Aguilera song was played about 8 times in a span of 2 hours. No wonder so many people have iPods… so they can listen to the same shit just like when they are listening to the radio, just in higher quality sound, and no commercials.

Why doesn’t this damn iPod have a battery that doesn’t suck? Upon arrival to my friend’s place, I quickly jumped on Google to search some ways to remedy this battery dilemma. Stumbled upon this site :

http://www.vsa.cape.com/~danh/ipod.htm

A pretty intuitive site about iPods and their batteries. Unfortunately since I didn’t have the iPod since it was new, I don’t know the charging habits / usage habits of the old user. So it may very well be the user before me has run it down.

A little more searching brought me to this nifty idea : http://www.chrisdiclerico.com/2005/01/18/altoids-ipod-battery-pack-v3/

That seems like way too much work for someone as lazy as me, but if I’m bored one day… you never know…

So here I am, with an iPod, jamming away to some Tribe Called Quest, when my co-worker walks over and hears that I’m listening to “Scenario” and begins to sing “Here we go yo, here we go yo…” Promptly after he raps his rendition of this classic tribe song, he looks at my iPod and sneers “damn, that thing is old” and runs back to his desk and grabs his black Nano (yes, I’m sure it was a nano, I know now what they look like). Ugh, even my co-worker loves to snob it up with his iPod, thus reinforcing this general loathe I have for these iPods.

But alas, I give my first real hands-on test of this thing, and suprisingly, I like it. The scroll wheels i s pretty accurate. The volume output is very sufficient. The menu navigation, whilst simple, is easy to access and figure out. It is still a little bulky (remember, 4g iPod Photo 20gb) but for the amount of stuff it can hold, it’s pretty good. Not too shabby. My opinion is starting to change on these iPods. I’m really starting to believe that until…. iTunes becomes a pain in my ass, again.

What a piece of crap. See my rant on my last post. See what I’m going to rant about…

Ok, got my cord, now all I have to do is hook it up to my PC and download iTunes right? Wrong. iTunes installed pretty well, but everything after that was a mess. Despite telling it to manually manage my iPod(s) - it went ahead and formatted and deleted everything on the iPod. Then, the program froze and became none responsive.

Sweet. End task.

So I went online and did a little research on an iPod forum, only to find 15978137 different iPod forums, with about 91782391827 posts being “where can I get free music for my iPod?” After a little sifting (an understatement), I found out that Winamp could manage an iPod without issues. Wish I knew that before I plugged the damn thing in. iTunes is now uninstalled from my computer.

I also found this program that some people suggested to get, for ease of connecting it to any computer. It’s called YamiPod and it loads onto the iPod itself, allowing easy connections to virtually any computer.

Anyway, once I’m done loading the 15GB of Hanson and Backstreet boys albums off of doctechnical’s playlist, I’ll let you know how this thing works.

I walked into Staples Express today in Midtown to pick up some toner, only to walk by essentially what you can call an “iPod shrine”. Seriously, it had a bigger section than pens and highlighters, which in Staples, is a huge section. I pick up the toner and meander over to the iPod section to see if I can pick up a USB or firewire cord and a charger of some sort so I can hook this thing up to the computer, because one can only take a certain amount of this All American Rejects/Fallout Boy/Shania Twain(?) mix that is currently on the iPod. $45 for a charger that doubles as a cable! Made in China. Listen man - I have relatives there - I know this crap doesn’t cost them 50 cents to make. I leave Staples empty handed in terms of iPod stuff.

So, I went on eBay and bought a firewire plug and charger for this iPod. You know a product has been completely whored out when eBay is filled with accessories. Look at this BLING I found while looking for a pouch to carry this thing in. How do you make sure EVERYONE and their mothers know you have an iPod? Buy one of those things. It amplifies the “loudness” of your iPod ten fold.

Damn, this iPod is scratched up pretty bad, looks like homeboy dropped it a couple times pretty good also. Anyone know how to restore one of these besides taking my buffer out and waxing it? I wanna make mine as shiny as I can, so I can be an attention whore just like you.

Yeah, that’s right. I called you an iSnob. You wear your shuffle in the most conspicuous place ever. Of course you didn’t buy the black one - that one isn’t shiny enough; you bought the neon blue one. The reflective paint can innocently blind all people walking the opposite direction as you when you’re strutting down the street, or it can reflect just enough light in that hot girl’s eyes doing that leg workout on the OBGYN-looking machine while your at the gym, walking on the treadmill (otherwise known to you as “working out”).

Oh what’s that? “I don’t have a shuffle. It’s a Nano, you jackass.” Pardon my ignorance! I was too busy counting the money I saved buying my “off brand” MP3 player (Creative, Dell, Samsung, you know, brands you’ve never heard of before) which does more than your iPod could ever do, and looked better, and had a battery that didn’t die on the 3rd day after your extended warranty ended.

After you glare at me and continue to do whatever you were doing with your iPod of some sort - I reach into my pocket and pull out, *gasp*, my iPod Photo 20GB. “After all that bickering, you have an iPod? You hypocrite!” No - not really. I found my iPod at a bar, some poor sap named Jacob who likes (and I mean, REALLY likes) All American Rejects is sitting at home crying; and since he failed to register his iPod, I have no way of finding out which Jacob in New York City owns it. And guess what? I still don’t use it. However, I will now force myself to - and blog about it.

Thus begins my iBlog.

Could Apple and Microsoft Be in Court Soon?

Peter Ha has an interesting post over at CrunchGear about an Apple iPod Shuffle patent that looks (and sounds) an awful lot like a Microsoft Zune. According to Peter,

“This is somewhat strange, but you can’t deny the facts. Apple was granted a patent that would allow “A two shot injection process for forming an enclosure for an electronic device”. Sounds a lot like the Zune doesn’t it? Keep in mind the patent was filed August 16, 2005 and was meant for the first-generation Shuffle, but we know that it was shipped as a single layer shell. Does Apple plan on using this for future iPods or is it dead in the water? Did Microsoft ‘borrow’ this particular design and just tweak it a bit? Maybe it’s just coincidence, but don’t you love rumors?”

I’d have to agree that the patent looks like and describes a Microsoft Zune. What is more interesting though, is why has this form factor not been used? The first generation iPod shuffles look nothing like this. Could we quite possibly see a new iPod Shuffle form factor for the third time?

Here is what the patent picture looks like:

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