My thoughts: Fuck. I hope this is another hoax. They are referencing the Apple website. Probably not a hoax. Fuck. Some kids just lost their daddy.

All in the space of a moment.

Fuckadee.

Today I was going to start blogging again on Down Under Geek.

I’ve been learning all about WordPress Multi Sites for a month or so in my spare time, tried a couple of test installations. WordPress MU sites allow you to run squillions of sites off one WP install. So when it comes time to upgrade something, you only do it once for all sites, not over and over again which was shitting me before.

So for the last few days I’ve been copying over the old DUG site to the new WP MU site and fiddling about with the settings. To blow smoke up my own ass I was impressed with a few of the predictions and thoughts. You can read them if you want. So I was keen to write more stuff down and get on with it, get it set up on my iPad and other places so I could blog from wherever. I twittered with Daniel from Mars Edit (Red Sweater) about his awesome app and the Mac App Store, possible future updates, iOS versions and updating.

I was almost good to go. Then the notification popped up.

To relaunch a tech opinion blog on such a sad day felt odd. Would it feel/seem opportunistic? Every many and his blog would be writing many inane pieces bemoaning the loss of their great leader. I mean no disrespect, but so few do it respectfully. I even saw smh.com.au doing a “live blog” of the news. Whores.

But no one reads this blog – it’s barely existed over the years since the domain was registered in a fit of inspiration one night. I would feel stranger to me to not say something, put some thoughts down, if only for me to read and look back on years later.

So today, I took my 2 year old daughter out to lunch with her mum, picked up the car from the dodgy auto mechanic who said we could drive our suv in NSW instead of Victoria from now on, came home, finished fiddling with WordPress, and started writing.

Although his kids will no doubt inherit a Fairly Large Trust, there is a 13 year old girl who lost her daddy tonight. And that sucks.

Just shows that comparing basic specs and pricing is no match for comparing the experience of a device.

iPhone, Droid, Nexus One, and Eris capacitive touch screens compared | 9 to 5 Mac.

DIY Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Not overly impressed so far.? ?

The tracking of the cursor is nice – nothing wrong there.? ?

The cord is definitely long enough – much more manageable around my laptop. I mentioned previously that it had been reported as being too short but I think the length is fine.? ?

Not real happy with the nipple / track ball. Unless you drag more or less straight down and up, it misses your scrolling. I tend to drag top right to bottom left a bit – just the way I hold the mouse. So I find myself having to concentrate on scrolling. I suppose over time I will adjust.

The scrolling feels a bit rougher / jerkier than usual on XP. I look forward to testing it again on my iBook once its delivered.

The “squeeze buttons” on the side work well enough. On XP they default to “Back” which is good enough. Doesn’t seem to be any software or drivers to let you program it to do anything else. The feel like they are in a funny place too – I keep having to reposition my fingers to use them.

The look of the Apple mouse has been described as either “clean, beautiful, stylish” or “bar of soap” – which I am pretty sure is not a term of endearment. It does look nice and clean – but I think it loses some functionality to style. That’s why we have ergonomic mice – they are easier to use.

Insert whiney comment here about lack of bluetooth option Well everyone else complains about the no bluetooth option – I might as well. It is a bit surprising. Well not really – I am sure there is a Bluetooth option not too far away and we will all buy new mice again.

Bastards. Clever – but bastards. No one will point this out in a few months when Apple announce another massive profit for the quarter. Slowing iPod sales were balanced by everyone buying not one mouse – but two !!

Overall – it feels a bit rushed. I know Apple wanted to release this with Tiger and there were some delays. To get it running on Tiger you must have either 10.2 or use the included software CD. That just seems strange – to have something as “basic” as a mouse needing a OS upgrade.

I’d give it 6/10. For $79 there are much better corded mice out there.

http://www.apple.com/au/mightymouse/

The new Mighty Mouse (love the name) appears to look like a standard Apple Mouse with a small nipple on it. However that “nipple” is in fact a mini track ball that lets the user scroll vertically, horizontally – in fact 360 degrees.

Instead of a distinctive left and right mouse button, the front of the mouse looks solid. However it can detect if the left or right side of the mouse is being pressed.

The Mighty Mouse has a tiny tail. As usual for Apple – Mighty Mouse has a fairly short USB cord. But with Apple only just recently adding Bluetooth (and wireless) to all of its iBooks and Mac Mini’s – wouldn’t it make sense to have a Bluetooth mouse? I guess that’s next month.

Reviews of the mouse have been a bit mixed. I have yet to try one but many reports are saying its a little awkward to use – you must lift your left finger to use the right click. The “Bar Of Soap” look and feel might seem nice – but using it is just not as nice as an “ergonomic” mouse.

Video iPod Interface ?

However I am wondering if the Mighty Mouse is a sign of a new interface for the rumoured 5th Generation of iPods?

Steve Jobs (the person who only recently said you only need one button on a mouse) has said he isn’t convinced people will want to watch videos on a small screen like the iPod. I agree – it needs to be a bigger screen. Not something as big as the Sony PSP as that would sacrifice convenience. A landscape screen for watching videos would make sense.

Moving to a larger screen and keeping the same form factor obviously means a redesign of the touch wheel. The current touch wheel is slightly bigger than the actual screen. Some have even speculated it might be a touch screen interface. That would be nice – perhaps even a segue for an Apple based PDA returning to the market?

But wouldn’t this new “nipple” trackball also be great for a minimal interface when coupled with a couple of buttons? You could have a decent size screen on the current iPod if you just get ride of the scroll wheel. Mighty Mouses’ trackball might be the key.

http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/ http://www.apple.com/au/podcasting/

In one small product point release, they seem to have gone from one piece of the podcasting puzzle, to the only game in town.

Sensible, grown men, have been bending over backwards to reconfigure RSS feeds that worked perfectly fine only a few weeks ago. Podcasters have stopped calling for people to vote for them on Podcast Alley. Almost instantly the only ladder that mattered was the iTunes ranking.

http://podcastalley.com/index.php

After encouraging listeners to download the podcasts using tools like iPodder Lemon and iPodderX – almost within a week the call went out to switch to the iTunes feed. Please. For the sake of the children !!!!

http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php http://ipodderx.com/

All this fuss over something that has generally been received by existing podcasters, as a bit of a muffed launch. I doubt there is anyone who thinks Apple got it right when they released 4.9. It just reeks of a rushed job. Unusual for them really.

No doubt iTunes 5.0 when its released (probably to coincide with 5th Generation iPods – RSN) there will be fixes and within 12 months all will be well and dandy. All will be forgiven.

I tried iTunes 4.9 when it first came out. Unfortunately I was one of the many burnt badly by trying the shiny new toy when millions were also trying at the same time. My experience was a pretty crap one – slow responses, missing links etc. I know most of these things have been fixed, but I still like my iPodder Lemon software.

Maybe iTunes 5.0 will have me dancing a different tune?

iTunes 4.9 would be the first iTunes to incorperate Podcasting subscriptions.

It was – A Big Deal. Steve told us it was so.

So why 4.9? Why a simply point release? So close to 5.0 you might have thought an improvement this big might warrant a major update in the naming?

Did Apple know that 4.9 was really a “rough and ready” version that would cause the problems it has?

Is there a 5.0 version around the corner to coincide with fifth generation ipods?

Perhaps 5G iPods have some new shiny features that can only be accessed by iTunes 5.0?

Videos??FM Radio??Recorder?

hmmmmmm….

However. There are some features I would like to see added to a podcasting client if anyone is listening:

1. Go Faster: Make it so I can increase the speed of playback. You adjust to listen just as well. I can do it in Windows Media Player, Quicktime – why can’t I do it in iTunes?

2. Chapters: I love podsafe music, mashups, werid-ass interviews. But sometimes I don’t care eouugh and I just want to skip ahead to the next bit. Let me do a “chapter skip” like I can on a DVD. I couldn’t that hard to press a button on your podcast software to mark a new chapter as you are recording. I’ve heard that in advance itune feeds you can have bookmarks. Haven’t looked at that yet so it might be the same thing.

3. Bit Torrent: Do I have to explain?

4. Links: I know I can get links “on the show notes”. Well doesn’t that defeat the purpose of RSS?? I subscribed to something so I don’t have to visit the site – now I have to visit the site… Even a simple link in iTunes somewhere so I can easilly get to the site without looking it up.

See – I don’t ask for much…

At first it seemed like a huge rumour that “leaked” a few days before the conference to generate some hype for it. Certainly no one was talking about it before CNet leaked the story, but for the next 3-4 days that’s all everyone talked about.

I was so intrigued about it happening I wandered into my office about 4am (keynote started at 3am local time here) to see if it was true. It was.

Overall I think it will be a great thing for Apple to do. Finally OSX will compete on level playing field with Windows machines. Yes Apple is a hardware company first – they make their money on selling boxes rather than copies of OSX (although the paid upgrade cycle doesn’t seem to hurt them).

But now they can sell the magic of OSX and the whole Apple experience without the burden of having to prove that a 1.5Ghz PPC is the same as a 2.5 Pentium 4.

In a one on one duel between Windows XP and Apple OSX – Windows is in all sorts of trouble.