Disaster averted
Jeter's Name Won't Go on Boston Arena:
"We determined that Derek Jeter Center is an obscene and vulgar use of the English language in Boston," [FleetCenter president and CEO Richard] Krezwick joked.
« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »
Jeter's Name Won't Go on Boston Arena:
"We determined that Derek Jeter Center is an obscene and vulgar use of the English language in Boston," [FleetCenter president and CEO Richard] Krezwick joked.
So Delta Air Lines is running these new TV ads with Donovan as the soundtrack.
I friggin' hate Donovan.
The song is "Happiness Runs," off of "Barabajagal."
It makes me never want to fly Delta again.
I can't explain why Donovan rubs me the wrong way. I guess as an 80's punker, I just have a natural aversion to hippies -- it's a cats and dogs sort of thing. But there's somthing specific about Donovan -- maybe it's his syrupy-sweet brand of psychedelic pop -- that just makes me want to tear his lungs out every time I hear it.
Except for Season of the Witch. That was an okay song.
So. Any commercial soundtracks irritating you lately?
Netflix's Friends feature is a pretty nifty way of keeping track of what your friends like to watch. I already have a couple of folks on the list, but if you are using Netflix and you haven't already invited me to be on your friends list, I'd love to be. Just use the Friends page to invite me...send an e-mail to flargh (at) mac (dot) com.
I musta woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
It's a pet peeve of mine when Mac and Linux users call Microsoft "Micro$oft" or "MicroSloth" and refer to PCs as "PeeCees." (Likewise to Window users who call Macs "Macintrash.") They think it's very clever, of course. I don't. I just think it's elementary school jackassery.
The same goes for the pet phrases Mac-Macs have been coming up with to describe Apple CEO Steve Jobs. His Steveness. Steve-o. Steveroonie. Sir Jobs. The Steve. The Stevemeister. King Jobs. It's every bit as grating and irritating as that copy machine guy that Rob Schneider used to play on Saturday Night Live years ago. I have no idea what causes people to do it, but for the love of God, I wish they would just STOP.
Now that I've had a few days to think about it, I just wanted to pass on my thoughts about Hunter S. Thompson, following his unfortunate suicide.
I was sixteen years old and it was my junior year at Manter Hall, a small private high school that was the prep school of last resort for many of its students. I'd ended up there after I'd dropped out of Stoughton High School.
Stoughton High was an industrial wasteland of a school, a nazi bratwurst factory of the most mediocre order populated by impotent, second-rate bureaucrats. The way that I dropped out speaks volumes of their incompetence: I stopped going shortly after the academic year started. It was a full trimester before the school's guidance department bothered to call my mother -- a single parent -- at work to find out why I wasn't coming to school. She left before I did, and I'd simply wait for them to call to ask why I wasn't in school that day. Then I'd have the rest of the day to watch TV, play games on my computer, or get stoned or drunk with my other slacker friends who were skipping school that day.
Manter Hall was a different story, though. The school was tiny -- my graduating class, if I remember correctly, was only a couple dozen kids. And the curriculum was focused on core competencies. But English was, without question, a special point of pride for the administration -- enough so that they published their own vocabulary book series called Wordly Wise.
I had a great English teacher in Mr. Gannon. He was one of the few teachers I had who truly inspired me, and it was at Manter Hall that I began to realize that I really wanted to do something involving writing. In retrospect, i'm not surprised. The few teachers that I ever really connected with, were either English teachers or I connected with because of reading.
One day in study hall I noticed my friend Paul was trying really hard not to laugh out loud, and I noticed he was thumbing through a blue-covered paperback. When I asked him about it he said, "Dude, you have to check this out. This guy is so out of his mind."
I picked it up and began to read.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"
That book -- Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas -- changed my life. While I already had an inkling that I wanted to write, I knew after I read that book that I absolutely had to write. It wasn't because I wanted to write like Hunter S. Thompson did -- not that anyone can, or will again. It was because I recognized the craft, and I identified with the creative impulse to make it.
I expect anyone that follows their bliss has a similar perception-altering experience: That moment where you realize, either in the act of creating or experiencing what someone else has created, that this thing is yours. That it calls to you. That it touches you on a profound level. It's transcendental.
Hunter S. Thompson was surely no role model, nor was he a model of professional journalism. He was a flawed figure -- a victim of his own demons as much as anything else. Angry, eccentric, often incoherent and rambling. He was, however, an absolutely brilliant writer -- and to lose him diminishes us all, just a little bit.
Several months ago I bought on eBay an eMate 300. I got it for a steal from a family that didn't need it anymore (they were kind enough to throw in a StyleWriter inkjet printer too). I'm just getting around to playing with it now, and I have to say that it's pretty darn neat.
If you're unfamiliar with the eMate, it was one of Apple's final experiments at PDA technology. It's a Newton MessagePad, essentially, but instead of the slate form factor, the eMate is a complete clamshell-style computer. It has a flip-up LCD panel -- monochrome, of course -- that backlights with a rather radioactive green glow. The device's form factor is thoroughly alien-looking -- rounded, organic, and a dark green color, like pond algae. It looks a bit like a first-generation PowerBook that was left out in the sun for too long and melted. But the eMate has a few design elements that were clearly echoed a few years later when Apple built the first iBook. A handle, for example, to let you carry it around without needing to put in a carrying bag first.
Newton OS has long been dead, and Newton hardware development is similarly deceased -- Apple walked away from the technology once it was clear that Palm was -- however briefly as it turns out -- going to dominate the PDA market. Yet the Newton scene is still quite active, as I've discovered -- I've already joined a listserv and turned up several really useful sites to help me get the most out of this little computer. I've learned that I can install a wireless networking card, for example. And I've also found a source for "recelling" the eMate's battery, which will come in handy as it's no longer holding a charge.
People scoff at Newton users -- they're too hardcore even for many notoriously evangelical Mac users to really understand or appreciate -- but what I've discovered is that they're really, really nice folks who share a common love for a neat piece of hardware.
As it turns out, my packrattish behavior when it comes to Macintosh hardware has finally come in handy. Getting the Newton to install software or synchronize data with a computer running Mac OS X isn't impossible but it is a pain in the ass; it's greatly simplified if you have a Mac with a serial port. As it turns out, I do -- a Power Mac G3 that's still running Mac OS 9.2. So I can install Newton connectivity software on the Mac and trade files with my eMate without too much of a hassle.
As a true-blue PowerBook user and someone who already owns a Palm-based PDA, I admit that I don't have a lot of practical application for my little eMate. So once I get my eMate's battery recelled, I might hand it off to one of the kids to use as a portable computer.
This isn't my first run-in with a Newton, by the way. I'm an OMP (Original MessagePad) owner as well. I still have it around here somewhere. I think it's keeping my PowerBook 540c company in a storage box.
With Sony's PSP set to debut in North America in about a month, some reporters are trying to pit it against Apple's iPod in some imaginary battle for the hearts and minds of consumers. It's foolish and rather shortsighted, I believe, and not really understanding what the PSP does and does not do.
The PSP's primary role for the first few million people who buy it will be as a handheld gaming system. It will also make a decent way to watch movies portably. But it's going to take a while for that to catch on. And it's certainly not without its drawbacks -- the screen is quite small. And sure, it has everything you need to play music on it, assuming you don't mind the limited capacity afforded by the Memory Stick Pro Duo flash storage. The big media the PSP uses -- the UMD discs that store games and movies -- is read-only.
Edit: Remy points out that the PSP will mount the Memory Stick card on any Mac or PC like a mass storage device, so you can just click and drag music and other files to the card straight from your desktop.
Which means you're limited in how much you can store to the capacity of your Memory Stick Duo card. Sure, you can get a Pro Duo card in capacities up to 1GB, but that's way, way short of the storage capacity of an iPod mini, or even a Network Walkman, if you're some sort of Sony loyalist.
I'm disappointed to see the 2004-2005 season for the NHL get cancelled today, though it's been an inevitability for a while. But I don't feel bad for either the owners or the players -- in fact, I think a salary cap is a damn good idea. As far as I'm concerned, it's made pro football better all around, and it's made it more important to get the right team in place under the right management and coaching than it does to get the right superstars to play for you -- I'd say our own New England Patriots are a shining example of this practice put to good use.
What turns my stomach is how badly this has affected the poor working class guys and gals who depend on this and other events to put food on the table. I'm talking about the concession stand workers and security guards. I'm talking about the maintenance crews. I'm talking about the bar owners and waitrons who work in places near the venues where these games are played. They're getting screwed because the players and owners can't decide how to split up their millions. Some of the people that work at the actual venues are losing health insurance, pensions and other benefits over this. Let's hope the NHL can sort their shit out for 2006.
I'm totally fed up with the NHL in general. Pro hockey isn't the working-class game that even I remember it being when I was a kid. It costs at least $50 a seat just for a part-way decent spot at the FleetCenter to see these guys play a stinkin' game we can watch at home for free. Between tickets, concessions and transportation, taking my wife and kids to see a Bruins game would run me at least $300, and that's not even counting souvenirs. $300. That's food on the table for almost two weeks in my house.
Meantime, you can go to Providence to see the AHL Providence Bruins play Friday night when they take on the Albany River Rats. Best seats in the house will set you back $22 each. Nosebleed seats will set you back $16 a pop. And the family-friendly section goes for $18 each. Now *that's* a bit more accessible to everyday people. Still not as cheap as a Sunday matinee, I'll admit, but a hell of a lot better than blowing half the monthly grocery budget on a night at the Venue Soon To Be Formerly Known As The FleetCenter.
...well, skate, just to butcher a metaphor, has finally dropped.
IANAL is an old acronym that first gained relevance on the Usenet. It's a disclaimer that's short for "I Am Not A Lawyer," and it was used to preface any posting that contained legalese advice or an observation about a legal issue made by someone outside the legal profession.
It has, unfortunately, largely fallen into disuse -- especially as evidenced, it seems, by the comments that are made by people who read articles related to Apple's recent legal machinations. Since December, the company has subpoenaed or threatened to subpoena several news sites that spilled the beans on its future product plans, including the Mac mini (which turned out to be true) and an as-yet unrevealed product referred to as "Asteroid," that apparently connects musical instruments to the Mac. Or brews espresso. Or changes the oil in your car.
Anyway, the long and short of is that any article that references this -- or any other major legal maneuver from Apple, Microsoft and other companies -- seems to engender a lot of very well-meant but totally unqualified opinion from people who are interested in such things.
I just wish they'd all remember the basic IANAL principle -- not only to temper other people's reactions to what they write, but perhaps to give themselves a gentle reminder that they're wading into deep water that may not be the best suited for their swimming skills.
...master of none, as the saying goes. To listen to a lot of people with an opinion of music download services, it's like the old 80's sci-fi flick "Highlander:" There Can Be Only One. Winner, that is. Either iTunes will continue to dominate, or Napster or another service will eventually top Apple. I see it very differently.
Right now I have accounts on three music download services I use regularly: iTunes Music Store, Beatport, and Audio Lunchbox. All three of them cater to very different clientele.
iTunes is great for commercial releases. There's a regular supply of free music you can experiment with, a huge back-catalog of stuff, and an astounding depth and breadth of music. It's simple to use, it's easy, and it works. Home run, Apple. Sure, the music is encrypted using DRM, and I can only take on the road with me if I have an iPod -- or if I'm willing to jump through silly hoops like burning it to disc and then re-ripping the burned tracks back to MP3 or unencrypted AAC.
That's one spot where Beatport and Audio Lunchbox have Apple beat -- neither of these services use DRM. That means that neither that has major label support, but because of their focuses, that's not an impediment. And they've cleverly gone with Web-based interfaces, so there's no client software you need to use to download and buy stuff. That also means multi-platform support, even for Lunix weenies.
Beatport is all electronic and dance music. That's a pretty specific niche. But that's just it -- it's a niche. As broad as iTunes' catalog is, it isn't all encompassing. Beatport has a mind-bending array of trance, electronica, breaks, progressive house, drum & bass, and other stuff that may not mean too much to you unless you're into dance music. But it's a bit like going into the city and finding that little store on the corner that has crates and crates of white-label 12-inch vinyl stacked to the ceiling. The only people in there usually don't rise until the afternoon because they've been spinning records until four the previous morning at a club someplace. Beatport isn't cheap, compared to iTunes -- tracks usually cost a buck and a half, two bucks -- but it's stuff you won't find anywhere else. And the cost of amassing this catalog on vinyl would break you in no time. It's a great value.
The other service I use, Audio Lunchbox, is all independent music. They've built an impressively diverse catalog -- everything from hardcore punk to Native American, folk music to world music. While iTunes is a bit like wandering in to a Virgin Megastore, Audio Lunchbox is more like going to an indie record store -- you won't find a lot of the stuff you'll get elsewhere, but you will find a lot of great music that will make the search rewarding. Another cool thing about Audio Lunchbox is that they sell their stuff in either MP3 or Ogg Vorbis -- again, good for the Linux weenies out there.
Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a report that contends that, overall, coffee chain Starbucks has actually fostered the growth of independent coffee shops, rather than driven them out of business (though they note that there are a few specific examples of the opposite, as well). Likewise, I don't see iTunes or Napster or MSN Music or any other "major label" music service as a threat to music distribution, and I don't see them as the one answer all customers are looking for.
As long as services like AudioLunchbox, Beatport and others can build sustainable business models by catering to clientele that aren't being served by these other online "superstores," it helps to improve choice and drive further adoption of digital music. And that's good for everyone.
To Napster CEO Chris Gorog it's stupid to buy an iPod and download your songs for a buck a pop when you can rent them for $15 a month instead. By that same math, it's stupid for me to buy furniture or appliances when I can just go to Rent-A-Center and furnish my home for a low monthly rate that I'll spend the rest of my life paying off. That works for people of limited income and poor credit, but it's a fool's game. In the long run, you end up spending a lot more with a lot less return.
After I finally got VPC 7 all set up on my Mac last night, I actually signed up for a Napster account -- it's free for two weeks, so I figured what the hell. I have to admit that it has some nice features, like the ability to stream complete songs and Napster Radio, which lets you play entire lists of related music and build your own. That's nifty. The interface isn't as clean as iTunes but it doesn't suck outright either. They certainly have something.
I've spent most of the afternoon and part of the evening messing around with my G5 -- I'm preparing a few reviews for a column that's due Monday and need to grab some screenshots, fact-check myself and do a few other things.
I took the opportunity to run some much-needed maintenance and updating, which went well -- at least until it came time to install Virtual PC 7, which I'd gotten when it first came out. I'd installed it on my PowerBook G4 but had since deleted it in a fit of pique after realizing just how wretched it still is to run an emulated Windows PC on the Macintosh.
I figured that things would at least be better with the G5 -- after all, it's 1GHz faster, has two and a half times the memory and a much faster bus architecture. And it is.
But there's one problem: Windows XP still sucks.
Doesn't this suck.
...that Satan walks among us and is probably employed as a television executive.
Herb and Wanita Young just don't when to shut the hell up.
This is the couple that sued a pair of teenagers because the wife had an anxiety attack after the girls left her cookies on her doorstep. The girls unquestionably used pretty poor judgment to ring people's doorbells at 10PM at night and the girls' parents seemed content to acknowledge that. They offered to pick up the $900 in hospital bills that Wanita Young incurred having her "anxiety" treated the next day.
So an apology and a check wasn't good enough, apparently: The Youngs were out for blood. Well, they won their case, and the victory sat like ashes in their mouth, I'm sure. All the judge gave them was an award for the $900 in medical bills that they would have gotten if they'd just exercised an ounce of common sense and come to an agreement with the parents of the two girls to begin with.
Now that the case has been publicized nationally, the Youngs have been subject to threats. That's pretty lousy. But let's face it: They brought it on themselves. It's clear that they're still clueless, too.
"... they could have prevented it from happening if they had just shut their mouths when they came out of (small claims) court. Now they are caught in something they can't control," said Herb Young.
"Caught in something they can't control" is an interesting turn of phrase, given that Young is the one who had a restraining order placed against him after he allegedly made harassing phone calls to one of the parents. And considering that the Youngs are the ones who are getting hate-mail, nasty phone calls and death threats, I'd say they're the ones who are caught in something they can't control.
For the girls' part, they've gotten financial support from a local radio station -- enough to cover their legal expenses. And they've even had a cookie named in their honor.
Today is Bonnie's birthday. We both turned 35 this year (well, for me, technically, it was last year, since I was born in the middle of December). She doesn't handle birthdays very well -- gets depressed easily, and this year is no exception. It's funny how things change as you get older and birthdays go from something to be celebrated and rejoiced over to something that you really don't want to see happen and certainly don't look forward to.
She got some nice gifts from the kids and me, though, and our friend Lori was kind enough to bake Bonnie a cake -- Lori does it from scratch, so it's extra-special. She also got a number of cards from relatives. Hopefully she'll make a happy day out of it, because the rest of us are trying to.
I love it when Apple fixes stuff that I didn't know was broken. Mac OS X v10.3.8 among other things "Addresses an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.7 in which iChat, Mail, or other network-based applications could take a long time to open."
I had this very problem when I was traveling in San Francisco in January -- it freaked me out. Mail took a long time to open. Haven't seen the problem since then, but I'm still glad to see Apple on it.
NetFlix did a cool thing recently when it allowed account holders to create multiple queues for each member of their family. The way it works is this: You set up new user accounts for each person who you want to share your subscription. Then you assign each person the number of DVDs you want them to be able to take out.
I've set up an account for Bonnie. We have a standard account that lets us have up to three DVDs out at a time. I've configured it so that I can pull one from my queue and she can pull two from her queue. She has a lot of series and stuff for the kids, so I weighted it in her favor.
This works out really well, because as it stands I have more than thirty movies I'd like to watch. Inevitably, she'll find a new obscure anime or a music video compilation, and she'll pop it to the top of the queue. That isn't fair to me, but now she has her own queue, and I have mine. I've got stuff that's been on there for six months or more that I haven't been able to see, because this keeps happening.
It'd be even better for occasional use if there was some way to tell it that certain queues should only pull every other time or every third time, but that's a minor quibble. The big problem I discovered after setting up Bonnie's account is that there is absolutely no way to transfer queued titles from one account to the other. In our case, that was a big problem, as she had over fifty titles of her own in the queue. She had to manually re-add them to her new queue and then delete them from mine. Seems like a grand waste of time -- even if they'd limited it to a "one-shot" deal where you could only transfer titles between queues when you first set up the secondary account(s), that would have helped.
My favorite Super Bowl ad this year had to be Ameriquest's ad entitled "Surprise Dinner." I hear AmeriQuest has gotten some complaints from animal rights activists who say that cruelty to animals -- even in jest -- is inappropriate, but the slogan at the end of the ad seals it for me, and it's clear that anyone who's complaining just Doesn't Get It.
Bonnie's favorite is Bud Light's Manny the Fighting Cockatoo ad entitled "Lady."
Gee, both of our ads feature animals. Coincidence? Not if you believe FedEx's message this year.
"A minute seems like a long time when you're doing jumping jacks in a skirt."
I'm proud of the New England Patriots for pulling home their third Super Bowl victory in four years. A few points to note:
Bill Belichick is a class act from start to finish, and the team he's put together is a reflection of that. They're all understated, humble, and seem like genuinely nice guys. It's a totally refreshing change of pace from a lot of pro American sports, where it seems like it's a lot more about personality and publicity than it is about sportsmanship and playing the game well.
Both teams played sloppy in the first half and made a lot of mistakes. From this perspective, it wasn't my favorite Super Bowl ever.
McNabb basically just phoned in the last three or four minutes of that game. I don't know where his head was, but it sure as hell wasn't in Alltel stadium. It's pretty sad -- if he'd played his cards differently, I really think the Eagles could have easily dragged that game out to overtime and had a chance to win it outright.
New England once again proved that Adam Vinatieri is an absolutely necessary component of that team's ability to win a Super Bowl. They should build a shrine to that man's leg.
I have a confession to make. Ever since I got Roxio's Popcorn software, I've been ripping and burning DVDs like crazy. Not duplicating unprotected movies I've created using iDVD (all one of them). My collection of commercial DVDs.
I'm not supposed to do that. I read the warnings that always pop up when I stick a disc in our DVD players about unauthorized copying. I know I'm doing something bad, as far as the MPAA is concerned. But I think I have a valid excuse: I have three kids. See, I've largely spent my time with Popcorn duplicating discs I already own, legitimately. Stuff I've bought at Best Buy and Suncoast over the years.
Popcorn doesn't let you do it on your own. To that end, you need another utility like Mac the Ripper, that defeats the copy protection on the disc. That software lets you copy the disc part and parcel to your hard drive. Then you can drag and drop the resulting folder into Popcorn, and burn a copy that looks almost as good as the original (as good if you have a dual-layer burner, which I do not). But on a regular, non HDTV set like mine, I have trouble telling the difference between the original and the burned version -- Popcorn's video compression is that good, and the audio is pristinely duplicated.
My kids are tough on just about everything they own. Their clothes routinely get ripped or stained beyond redemption. They have more broken toys than intact ones. They've shred the living room furniture to pieces (okay, Max the cat has helped there too). And they've certainly run us ragged over the years. DVDs are no exception. And DVDs are delicate. Their surfaces can be scratched so easily, even by casual handling from the jewel case to the DVD player's tray. Get a kid who prefers to just stack DVDs up on flat surfaces instead of putting them away, and you can almost be guaranteed you'll get a gouge that won't be playable the next time it's inserted in the player.
So I've taken to copying the DVDs, and making the kids use the copies instead of the originals. This way, if that one gets screwed up, I'm not out $20 or $30. I'm only out the time and cost of materials to make a new disc. And at this rate, that's a lot less than what I'd pay for another copy of the disc.
Do I feel guilty? Not really. I've already bought and paid for the disc. I've given the copyright holders and the retailers all the money they've asked for. I *should* be able to make a copy for my own personal use and protection. Putting unreasonable blocks in my way to prevent me from doing so is just silly. I make copies of software I buy too -- have ever since the floppy disk days -- and put the originals in safe locations where I can retrieve them if need be. Well, I can usually retrieve them. But that's my poor organizational skills talking, and that's a different diatribe for a different day.
There's one other practical use I've found for Mac the Ripper: Usually when I go on the road I like to take a couple of movies with me on my PowerBook, since I rarely like the mediocre and inevitably sanitized in-flight entertainment available today, and usually have at least a night or two when I don't have plans and just want to chill out my hotel room. I've also used Mac the Ripper to rip the movies I own onto my PowerBook's hard drive, so I don't have to go through the trouble and discomfort of having to bring my DVDs with me. It also saves on battery life on the plane, since it takes less juice to spin up a hard disk and buffer info from it than it does an optical drive.
I admit that I totally procrastinated on it, but I finally gave Robert his computer back. It was ready weeks, if not months ago, but I held off until the boy had straightened up his room to my satisfaction. And that took some doing. Having said that, this is the computer's last hurrah, I think.
Robert's Mac is an old Sawtooth-era Power Mac G4/400MHz system that I feel like I've had forever. Robert uses it to play some older games that are still a lot of fun for him, run emulators, and surf the Web (mainly to play the occasional Shockwave game or visit Web sites he uses). It runs well -- is rock-solid and incredibly reliable. I've found absolutely no fault with it ever since it came to our house many years ago.
Over the years I've bumped up that venerable machine with an AirPort card, Radeon 8500 graphics card, new Western Digital 40GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM running the latest update of Mac OS X v10.3.7. When the olde and crufty Panasonic 17-inch CRT that was connected to the Sawtooth finally gave up the ghost last year, I replaced it with a ProView 14-inch LCD panel I got at BestBuy.com for a hundred-something bucks. It's a little scrungy -- 1024 x 768 resolution and an HD-15 analog connector, so it's a bit fuzzy, but Robert's not complaining, and it looks rather nice on the desk in the boys' room -- takes up a lot less space than the behemoth Panasonic display did.
I had thought about dropping in a 1GHz processor upgrade and a DVD-R drive for a long time, as the Sawtooth getting a bit long in its sawteeth. But with Macworld Expo SF come and gone, I certainly don't see the sense of upgrading it any further, unless a CPU upgrade drops off a truck somewhere. For $700 I can replace the Sawtooth with a loaded Mac mini running more than three times as fast.
For a very long time it's been a crapshoot as to whether it's worth upgrading a Mac or just replacing it with Apple's latest and greatest machine. A lot of it has to do with whether you've got a system that can be reasonably upgraded, or whether it's just too much of a PITA and unreasonable expense to do in the first place. I've read and contemplated the argument that it's just cheaper to pick up a basic eMac than it is to do any of that -- you net a machine that will serve you well for a few years. This is why I always get Power Macs if I can help it, though -- you get the most mileage out of them, because they've got the most replaceable and upgradeable architecture.
This debate certainly hasn't stopped companies like ATI, Sonnet, NewerTech, PowerLogix, Giga Designs and others from offering upgrades for Power Macs in the past, and there's a ready stock of off-the-shelf parts like RAM DIMMs and ATA hard drives you can buy anywhere, to upgrade storage and memory capabilities. Likewise with broken keyboards and mice and so on. So upgrading Macs is definitely a viable cottage industry.
I've gone back and forth on the upgrade vs. replace debate a number of times over the years, and as demonstrated by what I've just told you the upgrades I've done, I usually fall into the camp that says it's worth applying some modest capital -- at least if the return on investment is worth it. But with the Mac mini now available, I can safely say this is the first time it's ever been a total no-brainer to just dump an old system or find a good home for it and move on to something better.
I'm not saying the Mac mini is without fault. For $500 as a base price, you're getting a Mac of modest means. Gamers complain that the Radeon 9200 graphics chip is kinda pokey and that the 32MB VRAM isn't enough. The stock RAM -- 256MB -- is definitely inadequate for day to day tasks. And you have to pay $100 to add wireless networking and peripheral support. Plus some more if you want to burn DVDs. If you max out the 1.25GHz Mac mini with Apple's parts, you're spending almost $1,100. That seems pretty exorbitant, if for no other reason than Apple's cost for storage and memory is really unreasonable -- even with a recent price-cut on RAM.
For me, a well-equipped Mac mini is closer to $675. That gets you a 1.25GHz system with 512MB RAM, wireless networking and Bluetooth, 40GB of internal storage and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive. That seems like a competent little desktop machine that would last quite a while in my home.
My cat loves cheese.
He's finicky about it -- he doesn't love all cheese. He won't eat a monterey jack, for example, and really doesn't care for swiss. He takes absolutely no notice of a parmesan or romano. But cut up a hunk of nice sharp cheddar and he'll get right in your face, little nose a-twitchin'.
It's odd. I've never known a cat who likes cheese. I guess it's not all that unusual for cats to take to dairy products like milk or cream, though I never make it a habit to offer it to them, but cheese seems more like a dog treat than a cat treat.
But Max has proven to be an unusual cat.
So if you get out a block of cheese that he likes and begin to cut a few pieces, Max will come running right up to you, eyes wide, ears perked and nose sniffing, and he'll stare expectantly until you give him a bit.
Max doesn't overindulge in cheese, either. Usually a couple of slivers are enough to satiate him. Then he'll wander off and do something else. Or just sit there, and ignore any other offerings you make to him.
...it's ever crossed your mind to wonder what it's like to be the cat's food bowl, this should give you an idea.
Sony has also revealed its launch line-up for the North American launch of the PSP -- 24 titles all told. While there are a lot of Sony titles, it's interesting to note that the PSP will also have very strong third-party support as well. EA is this single biggest third-party publisher (of course), with a half-dozen titles of their own, and Activision, Eidos, Ubsoft and others are also represented. Sony noted in that press release that almost another two dozen titles are already in the pipe.
That's a good sign that there's strong third party support for this system right off the bat -- better than can be said for Nintendo's DS, as Dan points out, which will have a scant 13 or so games specifically made for it in circulation by the time the PSP hits U.S. store shelves.
Dan brought up another good point as well -- unlike the DS's iPod-like sealed battery design, you can just pop out the battery on the PSP and put another one in. And can higher-capacity third-party battery packs be far behind?
Nintendo's had a good run. They've been king of the handheld gaming console market since 1989. Looks like it's Sony's turn. It's feeling like 1996 all over again.
So Sony has taken the wraps off its plans to release the PSP (PlayStation Portable) in the States -- it'll drop on March 24 for about $250, which nets you a "value pack" filled with goodness that you'll end up using.
I must say that I'm anxious to get my hands on one. I have been waiting with baited anticipation since I first saw one under glass at E3 in 2004. I'm not the biggest handheld gaming fan in the universe -- I've only a passing interest in the Game Boy Advance and don't use my own Tapwave Zodiac as much for games as I do for organization and the normal things you use a PDA for. There's just something about the PSP that seems incredibly appealing, though.
Part of it is the machine's versatility. It's already got Wi-Fi built-in. And it's got a lot more storage capability through its UMD media than the average PDA; support for Sony's Memory Stick Duo format should make it easy to store and transfer files as well. The thing supports H.264/AVC video, and the first million that ship in the U.S. will include a special UMD version of Spider-Man 2, that's kinda cool.
Sure, battery life sucks, but there's always something -- give them a year or two and I'm sure that Sony will release a PSP Advance or something similar that addresses some of the early issues.
So, now I gotta figure out if there's a way I can write off the PSP as a professional expense, being a game reviewer and all.