Year: 2004

Commons Early Day Motion about iPod batteries. What?!

Notwithstanding the fact that iPod batteries do not, as a rule, pack in within 18 months (as widely, but inaccurately, claimed); neglecting to note that the out-of-warranty battery replacement cost is £79, fitted by Apple; ignoring the observation that this is, in fact, a fairly reasonable charge for one of the more expensive components; notwithstanding all of that – what the heck is this doing in the Commons? Haven’t they got better things to do with their time?

At least Lindsay Hoyle (Lab, Chorley) isn’t wasting valuable parliamentary endeavour checking facts, I suppose.

[Update: it’s worth noting a couple of amendments (1, 2), which significantly alter the tone of the original motion.]

Today, I bought a diary.

For those who don’t know me – or those who are as knackered and, thus, slow-witted as myself right now – I shall take this slowly:

For the last few years, I’ve used a variety of digital diary-type things, including a range of desktop applications on my Mac, most recently iCal. My workplaces have usually provided Outlook, but in my humble it’s quite the worst example of unusable software yet developed. How people can run their lives with it, I’ve simply no idea.

I’ve also tried using my iPod and mobile phone as diaries, and while I can get around the inability to enter data directly (Post-It notes are wonderful things), the access speed is simply rubbish. No, through it all, the master copy of what I’m doing has been in my head, and the backup of things like birthdays and anniversaries – not that I’m remotely good at doing anything about such things – is in my Newton.

Ah, the Newton again. The original handheld ‘PDA,’ and still – still, dammit – the best. Unfortunately, mine is heading rapidly towards its seventh birthday, and while it still works, I no longer feel entirely happy entrusting it with the running of my life. Indeed, I’ve not been carrying it around daily since I started cycling again.

Hence the problem. I need a calendar application. I need rapid-access. I need small size and light weight. I no longer need a contact book – my mobile phone iSyncs nicely with my Mac, which in turn syncs with my Newton and hence is now the master copy. But I do need a calendar.

So I popped into Smith’s and bought a diary. It’s very small, week-to-a-view, and I already hate the inability to back it up. But it might, just might, irritate me less than a Palm thingy or an Ericssony P810. And it certainly cost less.

I’ve been merrily humming Take Me Out since new Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand appeared on Jules’ BBC2 show last November, and have been dimly aware of the rave reviews in NME, and their appearance high on the ‘new acts for 2004’ lists from the BBC and NME. The single was out this week; this morning they were at no. 2 in the CD:UK chart. Roll on the Coca-Cola official UK chart tomorrow.

I think this is the first time I’ve bought a single on the week of release.

[update: 3 in the official chart. Hardly shabby.]

Apple will doubtless sell a boatload of the iPod mini, despite it being only $50 cheaper than the 15Gb version – it’s so darned cute. And they’ve ticked all but one of my ‘things I’d really like iMovie to do’ boxes, the most important being ‘rethink the way clips are trimmed and do it better,’ which will make a huge difference to the scope of project it’s sane to do before falling back to Final Cut Pro. Very impressive. Then there’s Xgrid, not mentioned in Jobs’ presentation but the sort of thing that makes the ex-supercomputer researcher in me perk up and take notice. I’ll be interested to see where that goes.

Only a few disappointments: no word on the iTunes Music Store for the world beyond the US, bah! No hardware updates beyond the (much-anticipated) Xserve G5 machines, which is a bit of a pity since I’m in the market for a laptop in the near future.

But most bitterly: Douglas Adams isn’t around to play with GarageBand. Until people get their mitts on it, it’s rather hard to tell, but it looks like it’s around the iMovie sort of level, possibly a bit more advanced – so, complex enough to do real work with without losing approachable simplicity. Limited, sure, but Apple’s genius with the iLife applications was to realise that, sometimes, if you get the balance right, ‘limited’ is enough.

One thing, though: what’s with the neither Aqua nor Metal ‘dark metallic but not quite Final Cut Pro’ interface stylee? Did we really need a fourth ‘standard’ Mac OS X GUI? Harrumph.

[update:] Everybody’s favourite shareware author, Brent Simmons, is clearly excited about GarageBand. ‘I’ve waited 20 years for this,’ he says. John Gruber, meanwhile, points out that it exemplifies exactly what Apple is all about.

[update 2:] Er… they don’t call it the ‘iPod mini’ for nothing. Want to see it alongside an Ericsson T68i? Try here, here, and here. That’s tiny.