Chris Till (Tumblr)
I don’t get why people have to get so technical with these things. It’s great that they came up with a downloadable preference pane for OSX but why didn’t they just turn the volume off before they shut their machine down? I think I’ll stick with the volume option and wait for this very minor feature to be added in Leopard.
Microsoft Office beating things like YouOS (which I just heard about and really like), and the Nintendo Wii.
This is BS. I mean is it just me or did they just take the last office and just confuse people by completely changing the interface (a la IE 7). Not only this but they add a “better” format that the current mac version can’t open. Microsoft have been apparently handing out laptops as bribes to popular bloggers. Looks like they may be in the pocket of PC Magazine too. Either that or these people don’t get it in a major way.
Simply put, there are items on that list that deserve to be higher than they are.
Obviously there have been many different blog posts and articles on more well known sites speculating about what Steve will unveil on Jan 9th at Macworld. The one I want to talk about really does sound so likely that I had to post it. In fact, it’s got me excited but also speculating myself. It’s more than likely that it’s been engineered to produce traffic for the site. It is also easy to be sceptical about the fact that many things in the list are either expected or rumoured, and therefore easy to predict things that are believable.
Here’s their list:
Steve’s One More Thing…
New iPod is released. 3.5 Inch screen, Bluetooth. NOT a touch-screen. Controlled through invisible “touchstrip” on the top side of the iPod that corresponds to symbols that appear on the upper portion of the iPod screen. 30GB $300, 80GB $400
THERE IS NO “IPHONE” at this event.
Ok so that’s supposedly what will happen. As we all know Apple doesn’t like to spoil a good surprise so I have to say this is probably just fairly clever guesswork. I’m not going to dismiss it totally because it does seem very faesable to me that this will be along similar lines to what will happen at macworld.
Obviously these guys don’t think the Apple phone (almost said iPhone) will make an appearance at Macworld. They essentially say that they don’t think there is a phone or phones in the works if they don’t appear at Macworld. I wouldn’t say that. I believe that Apple are working on a phone but they either need more time to finish up the project or they want
What is for certain is that we will see leopard and iTV make their debuts. It’s also well noted that Apple will never pass up the opportunity to excite everyone with that “one more thing” this year just as any other before it.
Via digg – direct link to story.
I have recieved my Wii and now have a sore arm from all the baseball and tennis swinging, not to mention all the motions involved in super monkey ball mini games. Anyway, aside from that the console is everything I expected and more. I really like the size of it, the ability to have the wii remotes and nunchucks sitting on the couch and just being able to turn the console on and play without having to go over to it, unless you don’t want to play the game that’s already in the drive. I’m not saying I’m so lazy I can’t get up and turn something on because you have to expend energy while playing anyway. It’s just nice to not have to pull the console forward and make sure the controller cables will reach and just be able to get right into the game. It’s the same when turning off the machine which is equally nice.
Strangely even though I have Zelda and love it, I’ve hardly played it in comparison with the amount of time I’ve spent in wii sports. I sort of know that would be the case but the depth of the game is still surprising for something that is thought of by many as essentially a trainging game for “non-gamers”. The accuracy of the wii remote is astounding. In baseball when you’re batting you can move the remote slightly when waiting for the pitch just like in real life. Just moving a bat around isn’t that fun but it just makes the experience so much more engrossing than previous games in which you get a motion sensitive add on, usually golf games. Those games I wouldn’t play firstly because I don’t like golf enough, and secondly, it’s too complicated to be bothered with.
The speakers in the wii remotes are great too. You can adjust the volume of them which is nice if you’re playing at night and you don’t want to make a noise. Also, even though the noise them make is primitive, that doesn’t matter much because it still draws you into the game even more. From sword swipes in Zelda to the noises in the menu of super monkey ball when you move through items, it’s a great addition to the remotes.
There are so many upsides to the wii which cause me to encourage anyone to buy one. However, you may have noticed I havn’t mentioned anything about wiiconnect 24 and the download store etc. There’s a reason for that.
Like I said, the wii is a great console, but unluckily there seems to be a problem cropping up on some wii’s where when you first go to connect to wi-fi, you connect successfully and download a system update. This seems to go fine but then you can’t connect to the wi-fi again whatever you do with the settings. The wii will find the network ok but when you try to test the connection you will get the error code 110213 which essentially means, don’t bother trying to use this wii online again. Clearly I’m not that happy about this but right now there isn’t much you can do with the wii online anyway, except the weather channel or download columns (which I was planning to do as my parents were huge columns fans back when we had a mega drive), but it can wait. The wii browser beta is coming out friday so I’ll miss that but I’m hopeful I’ll get my wii fixed / replaced by Nintendo before online play starts and hopefuly in time to catch Zelda occarina of time when it hits the virtual console.
I would say don’t be put off by this problem because it’s rare and even if it does mess up, you’ve still got zelda and wii sports to play while you’re waiting for a fix, which isn’t exactly that bad I’m sure you’ll agree.
I just wanted to go over one more thing. I love how people say the wii is just a party console and not a serious contender. I also love seing Sony say that it’s just a gimmick and people will also buy a PS3. Now I agree completely that on the HD graphics and raw power side of things the wii isn’t a contender. People may very well buy a PS3 as well but to be honest I’d rather have a 360 based on the current lineup of games (gears of war) and the price. However, I don’t agree that it’s simply a gimmick and a party console. I guess they must have missed Zelda or metroid prime 3. Then theres probably the best driving game on any console right now, excite truck, super mario galaxy and splinter cell. These games don’t really belong to the party game genre as far as I’m concerned. They do have wii sports, wii play, mario party, warioware smooth moves and super monkey ball for that genre though which shows that they can cater to everyone, something the PS3 doesn’t do.
The possibility of Final Fantasy on the wii (one of the only games I would consider buying a PS3 for) just makes me stick with my choice even more firmly. Sony lose my respect for firstly releasing blu-ray in the firstplace and starting another avoidable format war. Then including the technology in every single console, leaving every PS3 owner stuffed if blu-ray goes on to lose to HD DVD which I hope it does for a variety of reasons, mainly price and difficulty of manufacture. Plus of course the name which people who know dvd will have no idea what it is, unlike HD DVD which has dvd in the name. I suppose I may end up with a PS3 at some point in the future, partly based on the fact that even with a blu-ray drive it is going to be about the same price as a PS2 at launch (the core version) plus hopefully wll have a price drop, but also based on whether or not the main series of final fantasy comes to wii or not, and whether or not there are enough other good games to tempt me to purchase one.
Digg has undergone some overnight improvements and it’s looking pretty nice. I’m not sure if this is officially digg V4 or not but that’s not that important. They’ve added a whole load of new stuff. Navigation is the real main change as well as the addition of three categories. News and Video are now seperate, and along with these two, podcasts now have a section and are diggable by show and by episode which is great.
I sort of miss the left side navigation and the fixed width style but other than that it’s looking cool. One final thing though. I feel like the swarm and stack buttons are a little harder to find now and I don’t really get having a list of the most popular stories in a side panel. I thought you can get them up when you want them anyway?
Cool new things you can do in the video and podcast sections include watching videos in a HUD inside digg. This only works however with sites that allow this function, aka: youtube and the other big video sites like google video. With podcasts you can stream them too in the page but they work in a different way. When I tried to do it for diggnation it played in a quicktime window in an ajax section of the page, not a popup with the rest of the page fading out to black as with the video section.
So overall I like it. I also like that Jinx have updated their site with an easier to find digg store with some new shirts, hats and hoodies. They’ve also updated the revision 3 store into one big store rather than separate stores for diggnation, ctrl alt chicken, system and the others.
Go and check it out for yourself: digg.com
Because the latest rumour to hit the digg homepage states a much higher price, up to $599 and $649 for the 4GB and 8GB models respectively. Kevin Rose previously stated that they would be launched for $249 and $449 for the respective versions. Sorry Apple but if it does cost this much which could be possible for an unlocked version, I’m probably not buying. I have to say the chance of Apple selling the thing unlocked for you to put your own sim in is looking unlikely. This is a real shame because no one else really does this and it would definitely be a big money spinner for Apple.
The problem is, this method only really works when the phone is affordable to buy unlocked. If these prices are true, the only real option for Apple would be to shove it on most likely Cingular in the US on a contract. Who would carry it in the UK though? That’s an interesting question because I can’t think of any network that stands out as the obvious choice. It could even do a Zune and not release here which may be a big mistake.
The whole problem with the mobile phone industry is the complexity of the packages. I don’t use my phone enough to justify a contract, nor do I want to be tied down to a year or two year contract. The iPhone would do nothing to rhemedy this issue.
So is it going to be worthit? Well, seing as Apple still havn’t commented on it, who knows. There may not even be one but on the other hand it seems certain now from the reports of asian hardware makers being hired to make them. So asuming that they are making them, the advantages of these over other phones will be Apple’s design skill coming to the table and guarunteed seamless integration with Mac OS X (iPhoto, iCal, Contacts synching etc). I almost forgot iTunes.
So the phone will be cool, whether I’m interested or not will entirely depend on the price. I suppose when you think about the features they are lumping into the phone (supposedly), you end up with a figure around £250 – £300 which is almost double in dollars, but everything is cheaper over there so don’t sweat it too much. I mean I paid £200 for my O2 X 3 (made by Benq Siemens) which has a few hundred mb’s of memory, 1.3 megapixel cam, no mac support except with a card reader (pretty lame). The prices have clearly come down since then but the phone will still be essentially an iPod nano with phone features. So if you take the iPod nano price for 4GB (£140) and add maybe £110 to that for the rest of the features, you probably end up with something plausable as a price. £250 isn’t cheap, certainly not in the US but it seems like a fair price to me seing as we generally get ripped off over here.
Although saying that Apple are making a huge profit on each of the nano’s. I think it’s about 40% profit on each one. Ok so that means they probably could shave off a little more off the price if they want to sell more of these things, which of course they want to do. I think £250 is a fairly attractive price point but of course that’s only the 4GB. By my poor calculations, the 8GB would end up closer to £300, maybe even up to £325 – £350 due to adding more features to that version than simply more storage. This is how much I would guess for both but I’m no phone expert. The phone components could end up being double the cost of the ipod nano type parts, plus more besides to boost the price up.
Personally I’m more excited about the iPod video everyone has been mentioning for ages, plus I’d like to know what’s up with my MacBook’s battery which isn’t working right now which is rendering my laptop a desktop. I don’t mind too much because I don’t take it out the house much. I’m more worried about whether this will turn into another huge battery recall as with the sony catastrophe.
I guess it’s only 3 weeks or so until we find out what the deal is and I can stop speculating about both highly rumoured products.
Nintendo have recently been sued for an old patent by Interlink Electronics, a company that seems to specialise among other things in OEM remote controls. I honestly can’t see how the Wii Remote infringes what they do. The Wii Remote is a games controller, regardless of the fact that it has the word remote in the name. That’s all there is to it as far as I know. Unless someone invents a hack for the device, it’s not going to be controlling things in the same way as the interlink devices. Therefore I think that they have no business suing Nintendo.
I think that Interlink are just trying to take money off Nintendo and rain on their parade after a successful Wii launch (except the shortages in Europe which I’ll discuss later). They are only attracting bad press to themselves by going after Nintendo, and I doubt even if they win the case will it help their future in any way. This whole episode reminds me of what Creative did by suing Apple over the iPod interface infringing the zen interface. I don’t know when the Creative patent was filed in relation to the release of the first iPod to use that menu system so for all I know Creative could have copied the iPod in the first place and filed the patent in an attempt to take some cash off Apple in a settlement. Who knows.
What I do know is that in the world of business companies have to be ruthless in order to stay ahead. I just wish this wasn’t the case and we saw instead of underhand tactics and the suing culture these days, a war of prices and customer satisfaction percentages.
The answer to this question is almost certainly no in most cases. Often cars are the best option for when you need to carry people and things around. Then there is also the problem for people who live out in rural areas where the battery life of a segway and it’s range on one charge just aren’t feasable for daily living.
So with that said, is there a place for these more friendly forms of transportation? Of course. There are plenty of advantages to these bikes / scooters for people who live within a short distance of a town or city centre. They also serve a use even if you would just like a mode of transport to go biking or having some fun with at forest off road trails. The segway XT is designed especially for this purpose, as are many motor equipped mountain bikes.
I also think these modes of transport will suit people who currently use bus services to get from A to B in their town / city. If you live within a mile or so of your work for example this would be a great solution to many people, eliminating various car ownership costs, not to mention lower the chance of being caught in traffic jams.
Obviously the cost is a great advantage but another advantage for me personally in the bike is that there’s no lessons required to use it as long as you know how to ride a bike, plus unlike a segway, the costs are significantly less and you’re far more likely to go unnoticed. As much as I like segways, it’s hardly true of a two wheeled scooter which you lean around to steer.
While many people will say it doesn’t eliminate the problem to the environment due to the fact that it uses electricity, which is produced mostly by burning fossil fuels and therefore still adding to the problem. However, although this is true, unlike greenhouse gas emissions which can’t ever be a good thing, electricity will be generated in environmentally friendly ways in the future more so than at present which is a great thing. I welcome wholehearedly the building of more off-shore wind farms and of course solar power, not to mention water. I see both these sources as being a great opportunity for everyone to save generate their own power in the years to come. I hope we will start to see more rooftop mounted wind turbines and solar panels as time goes on.
So essentially what I’m saying is that I think bikes, segways and especially electric motor assisted bikes are among the many solutions that will be the future of personal transportation. Well, at least until something else gets invented.
I have to say I didn’t know james Kim before news broke that he and his family had gone missing. However, as soon as the news started to appear on diggnation and on digg.com, I learned he was a close friend of Kevin Rose who used to work alongside him in The Screen Savers of Tech TV. I looked him up and found out more about him and his role at CNET which I’ve never paid much attention to in the past which was a mistake. I watched episodes of the Crave video podcast in which he is extremely entertaining along with Veronica Belmont who he also worked with on the MP3 Insider podcast.
There are pictures I saw of James with his family around the web after their disappearance which show him to be a caring husband and father. All these factors made me keep track of every development.
In the end it wasn’t to be and James Kim died I think 5 days after leaving his family in their car to look for help. His family were rescued in good condition a couple of days before James was found. His efforts have been described as superhuman which I can only agree with when you consider how far he walked and the conditions in which he walked.
I just wish things could have gone differently. Either not have used the remote road, or at least James not leaving his family. Then again we know this now, James didn’t and he believed the best method was to leave his wife and children and look for help himself.
I have watched every video on the CNET TV tribute to him. I wish I had discovered James and his humor long before now, and I along with a huge number of others am going to miss watching him in The Crave and his first look product reviews.
I know it’s possible someone photoshopped this image based on what Kevin Rose gave away about the phone on the latest episode of diggnation. However, It’s hard to not believe it when you see how cool this product can look. It simply looks like a nano with a slide out keyboard. With the keyboard hidden it’s probably not going to be easy to distinguish between the two products, except I’m not sure how small it is, and of course the two phone buttons above the click wheel. I hope it is as small as a nano, but it’s hard to see how they can make something that small into a slider and still fit everything in. Especially when you consider that this thing will have all the functionality of a nano packaged with two batteries, possibly a camera and of course all the functionality of a mobile.
How cool is this thing. The whole design looks so futuristic and stylish. The blue fuel is an interesting concept that probably wouldn’t see the light of day but as a style statement it would be nice to keep it in there even if it was purely decoration. The screen also looks really nice. It looks like there is hardly any bezel on it. From the picture it looks like there might be one about 3mm thick which is nothing.
via engadget.