Martha on iPods

Chances are that if you're reading this, you have an iPod or another portable audio player. Be sure to observer proper listening etiquette. In this month's WIRED magazine, WIRED staff interview Martha Stewart to find out 'how to make everything better'. For her home music setup, Martha suggests putting an iPod connected to wireless speakers in each room of the house, a simple and unobtrusive way to get the job done. She does have mixed feelings about digital media players, and when she was speaking the subject of blackberries and digital communication, she said the following:

[Martha] It's horrible. You can not forget human communication. When the Walkman first came out, I called it the Rudeman: Everybody who's listening to those is rude to me. I think part of the reason I got divorced was because of the Rudeman. [WIRED] Really? [Martha] Oh, yeah. I'd be in the garden, weeding and chatting away and no answer! ...

For more, check out WIRED's 'How to...' feature starting on page 101 in the August 2007 issue. On the cover, you'll see a photo of Ms. Stewart baking a Wii cake. FYI, the recipe is on page 119 but isn't attributed to her.

At the time of the post, I couldn't find a link to the article.

Not so sure about the iPhone anymore

While the PC and Mac guys depicted in Apple's television commercials are caricatures of America's desktop dichotomy, the stereotype that Windows is for work and Mac [is for fun stuff] seems poised to strengthen when we look at Windows Mobile 6 and the upcoming slimmed down OS X for iPhone. This is at least in part because they inherit the best from their parents with Windows Mobile 6 expressing a stronger synergy with Microsoft Exchange and Office and Apple with iTunes, Mail, Calendar, Address Book, etc.

While Apple's iPod has been long-capable of running more powerful applications than music playback, they have focused on what what's essential to an MP3 player, even deferring video playback until being able to offer an unprecedented experience (i.e. being able to download network TV shows via iTunes). They've done a great job resisting convergence for the sake of convergence. Microsoft had to learn the hard way since bringing the Windows 95 experience to the your hand in the form of Windows CE 1.0. Since then, they've gotten rid of the keyboard, redesigned the interface, gotten rid of the touch screen [(in the successful 'Standard' edition)], then brought the keyboard back, taking years to gain a market dominant position over Palm. Getting the right balance has not been easy. This is certainly proof that convergence is not wrong, but takes serious innovation. Palm Pilot's "we don't need color" approach and Steve Jobs' assertion that "video is a passive experience" are clearly no longer relevant considering Apple's Widescreen iPod of an iPhone and that the last monochrome Palm handheld was a discount stocking stuffer several holiday seasons ago.

Windows Mobile 6 stands to be both a winner and a loser in the mobile phone market with its three evolved brands, Standard, Classic and Professional (formerly Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Phone Editions). It may lose some of its niche consumer market to iPhone but also reclaim territory previous lost to RIM's Blackberry. RIM started for push-based email where email is sent directly to a Blackberry without the user having to actively check their email. This was achieved through integration with Microsoft's own Exchange email servers. Microsoft's come a long way, finally beating Palm in terms of shipped devices. Growing on the success of the slimmed down Smartphone Edition that ran on cheaper hardware (sans touchscreen), Microsoft is building into version 5 robust Office document editing features previously only available on more expensive Pocket PC and Phone Editions. Cooler computing-intensive (power-hungry) features like opening up a Unix terminal or controlling a Windows desktop with the Terminal Services Client in VGA resolution are still restricted to what is now called Windows Mobile Professional.

At the cost of a larger touch-screen interface and expensive graphics accelerators found on Windows Mobile Pro, Windows Mobile Standard Edition seems to have matured very nicely from an initially dumbed-down version of Windows Mobile developed for mobile phones to really fleshing out to meet the needs of business users and improving security and manageability. Both the new iPhone and Windows Mobile will have a richer browsing and [Exchange-less push-based] email experience than their competitors. Both purport to suport the dynamic content manipulation via AJAX in web-pages. However, it is exactly the ways in which iPhone is so much like Windows Mobile Standard Edition that I'm becoming more wary of it.

These two devices buck the overambitious, all-in-one convergence that had Windows Mobile Professional over-promising and under-delivering. They intend to reinvent the phone by stripping out what was non-essential and perfecting what remained. While Apple's device has seemingly limitless potential and you could argue that it is comparable to a PDA, Apple's closed-system nature restricts third-party developers from making software for the iPhone. This essentially reinforces the concept that the device is less of a converged computing platform than a ... "revolutionary phone, breakthrough internet device, and widescreen iPod".

The iPhone is by far the more ambitious of the two devices because it also promises the best music and video experience. While it's easy enough to throw away (recycle/reuse) both my cell phone and my clearly obsoleted Pocket PC, asking someone to give up their 30GB video-enabled iPod may not be so simple. Of course, we haven't seen the whole story from Apple and maybe there will be a terminal app hiding somewhere on the iPhone enough to convince me to leave behind most of my media content. There it could have been a deliberate decision by Apple to delay third party software development in the beginning to have more control over a very critical stage of the iPhone product line.

References: Windows Mobile Standard Video Demo, Download Squad

Last updated: 1/9/2023 7:56 PM EST (fix broken images)

Congratulations on finding a 1st gen iPod nano

I've given up on the chances that I'll find my iPod. Today (rather yesterday), my new one arrived. Incidentally, I'll have 3 pairs of earphones and 3 sync cables. One pair of earphones from the original, one replacement due to rattling, one from the new one. Then, there's the replacement USB cable to replace the original that I lost, the extra one I bought just in case, and the new one.

Ironically, whoever found my iPod will have no sync cable or earphones. Unless that person is me.

Not desperate enough

I have been without my iPod for a while and it's taking it's toll. This is not to say my iPod experience is flawless (need better headphones). I'm thinking of getting a shuffle to avoid cleaning my room as there's a small chance it could be somewhere there. Oh, and it also doesn't help that I rely on it to motivate my jogging.

BONUS: Zune is virtually a Windows CE powered portable media center edition that doesn't support Vongo : /

Don't judge

While waiting for the bus the other day, I noticed a man wearing his iPod headphones oddly. They didn't protrude properly from his ears. It turns out that he had them switched--the left channel was playing in his right ear and vice-versa. I tried this and found it to enhance the volume of the sound.

Too bad they don't stay in my ears either way. My right-ear is not receptive to earbuds.