SleepingPoliceman

I’ll have to take care of the Apple posts for now.

boston.com: Apple cuts price on top iPhone, angering some early buyers

And by “some early buyers,” they mean jz. What have we learned, kids? It never pays to be an early adopter. You just get screwed when things quickly become cheaper and better made.

What no one’s talking about is the dramatic price drop in the 80 GB iPods. Just $249, when it used to be $349. Actually, I think it was $499 at one point. Whatever. I got a 60 GB used (sorry, “refreshed”) for like $180 and thought I got a deal. Still a deal, but not as much as before.

And of course there’s an iPod that is the same design as the iPhone. 8 GB iPod Touch: $299. So for the extra fifty bucks, you get a touch screen, wireless access at Starbucks, and a tenth of the memory. Whatever, man…maybe I’m a throwback, but I just want an iPod that allows me to carry a shedload of music with me. Give me the iPod Classic anyday.

(Seriously, though…give one to me. Any and all gifts are always welcome.)

Despite my need to save money and unsaddle some debt, I splurged a little yesterday and purchased a new iPod. Well, not a new-new iPod…but one of the “refurbished” older model. Finally, a sweet, sweet 60GB music player. And to think, three years ago I was still using a cassette Walkman.

The reason I splurged was because the refurbished model was pretty cheap ($230 instead of the original $449, or the $349 it is for the current-gen 80GB model). It was extra cheap because I decided to finally cash in a Simon debit Visa gift card that I got for Christmas ‘05. I had held onto the gift card for so long, Simon was starting to charge a penalty every month which was being deducted from the account. (Which is totally bullshit, by the way.) Anyway, now was the time to act, and act I did. I split the order between the debit card and my regular credit card, and ended up paying just a little more than a hundred dollars for the new iPod. Good times.

Except today I get an email saying that they can’t process my order because my payments aren’t authorized. Awesome. I had gone through all the steps of tying the debit gift card to my name and address (so I could use it for an online order), so that should be fine. I went and checked…and what Apple does is charge a damn extra dollar before they run an order. Because of that dollar, the amount on the debit card went under the amount I put in to use the card for (since I wanted to wipe off the entire remaining balance), so it was rejected. Every time they tried (three times), they took another dollar. So I went from having $123 on the card to $120. I called them and spoke to a very nice and helpful support guy named Johnny, who switched around the order so it took $119 from the debit card. And it went through fine.

But…fuck them for charging everyone a hidden dollar. The support guy spoke in vague terms about how that’s how they see if the card is legit or something…which is fine if they plan on taking that dollar off the regular order, or refunding that dollar. But I’m sure they don’t. It’s not that big a deal, because it’s just a dollar (or, in this case, four dollars…jerks). But still, it’s a dick move.

Now…send me my iPod, Apple. Please don’t be mad at me. P.T. still loves you, Apple.

If you’re tired of opening up the iTunes window every time you want to pause, start, or fast forward iTunes check out this nifty built in feature very few people know about.

For Windows users – I never knew this. Very cool.

read more | digg story

The Beatles have lost their court battle with Apple Computer over its iTunes download service.

I’m actually surprised by the outcome, but I’m glad it’s finally over. The best news to come out of the trial was testimony by the Beatles former road manager that the albums are being digitally remastered and will be eventually available online. I’d bet that Steve Jobs would do everything in his power to get their catalog exclusively on the iTunes Music Store (Jobs is a big fan of The Beatles, and named his computer company after Apple Corps waaay back in 1976). So let’s get on it!

Update: The gauntlet has been thrown down. C’mon Paul! C’mon Ringo! We all know you need more money!

read more | digg story

• Google Mars
• Sharp rise in CO2 levels
• ‘Creative Plumbing’ Delivers beer
• Iraq drives Bush’s rating to new low
• U.S. blunder may save Moussaoui (this is a non-story now)
• Mad cow disease found in Alabama
• Specks of ‘fire and ice’ in comet dust
• Canada’s lonely killer whale dies
• Under 30, on the cutting edge
• Google moon
• Milosevic found dead in his cell
• Motorist trapped in speeding car (Hey, fun boys, get a room!)
• C|Net’s Blog 100
• Judge to order Google to give up some data
• McCallum: "I think it’s going to be everything the fans always wanted the prequels to be."
• 10 Obscure Facts about Einstein
• Google News Foiled by 15 year old
• Sony delays PS3 (November launch now)
• Microsoft confirms that it created iPod packaging video (see the WIR from two weeks ago)
• 72 degree shelf for teenagers – ha!
• Contest to get WinXP to boot on an Intel Mac has been won
• Proving How the Universe Was Born
• The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters

Here’s a few links that jumped out at me during the week:

• Distributed Computing Cracks Enigma Code [News.com]
• MC Hammer has a blog [Blogger.com]
• Apple announces iPod Hi-Fi and Intel Mac minis [Apple.com]
• Apple’s Developer article on Ruby on Rails [Apple.com]
• What if MS designed the packaging of the original iPod? [YouTube.com] – this is genius.
• Google Sitemaps [Google.com] – there’s nothing that fascinating here, it’s more of a link for myself so I don’t forget about it.
• The Next Net 25 (Web 2.0) [CNN.com]
• Real Estate in South Florida [Sun-Sentinel.com] – again, probably not interesting to any of you outside S. FL.
• Penny Arcade trashes Sony Online Entertainment then SOE retaliates (scroll to “It’s a good thing I didn’t eat lunch” post) – [Penny-Arcade.com]

Yeah… whatever.

Now the real dilemma: WoW or actually be productive on my day off? Something tells me that this is going to be an easy choice. Oh well, at least I have a well-paying, stimulating, and rewarding job.

Yeah… thank God for that.

Various Mac and tech news outlets have received invitations to Apple’s headquarters next Tuesday where they’ll witness the unveiling of some “fun new products.”

Here’s what I’d like to see:

• An Intel-based Mac mini Media Center
• An iPhone (at least I know I’ll be holding off on getting a new phone for another week!)

Here’s what Apple will announce:

• Intel-based updates to Mac models that I have no interest in.
• New videos on the iTMS that I have no interest in watching (Nascar???).

* yawn *

Here it is:

A simple media center box. That’s all I want.

And here’s what it needs to do:

• Hook up to my television.
• Have a large hard drive for storing all of my mp3’s, all of my photos, and all of my movies. 500 Gigs.
• Be able to communicate wirelessly over Airport to stream music, photos, and movies FROM any computer on my network TO my TV/Surround system.
• Be able to stream FROM the box TO the other computers in my home. Both of these two items are easily achieved with Apple’s Airport technology.
• Have TiVo-like functionality. Be able to record shows, pause live TV, and have a Season Pass manager, exactly like TiVo’s.
• A dock for my iPod, so I can also play my music on the iPod through my stereo speakers.

It’s really not that complicated, and there are a ton of ways that I could roll my own device to do all of this. But it won’t be as pretty and won’t be as easy as Apple could make it. Christ, it’s really not that complicated!

Overall, L-A-M-E. LAME!

MacBook Pro – LAME (and what a stupid name!)
Intel iMac – LAME (who cares? You just announced the most recent iMac revision a few months ago!)
iWork ‘06 – LAME (So lame, in fact, his Steveness wouldn’t even demo it!)
iLife ‘06 – LAME (I don’t podcast. Is there that large a group of people who do?)
iPod Radio Remote – WHATEVER

LAME! Give me my Mac mini TiVo killer, dammit!

LAME!!!

(As an Apple shareholder, I encourage everyone reading this blog to run out and buy these fantastic new Apple products! Well, what are you waiting for? Your iPod compels you!)