Clutch

I'll never forget the first time the batteries in my Rumble Pak died. I was playing Starfox 64 when it happened--just after one of the boss battles, in fact--after the ridiculously long but oh-so-satisfying rumbly death sequence, the next level started up and the game suddenly felt boring compared to what I'd played before. I didn't know what the difference was at first--I'd played through the campaign a few times already, and I hadn't yet worn it out--but when I realized it was the lack of a rumble, I thought I was mistaken. I thought the dead battery had to have been just one more thing, that something else had to have changed as well, but I finally came to understand that the Rumble Pak actually was worth all Nintendo's hype. I think this choice to leave out force feedback will really hurt Sony.

Umm... am I the only person a little bit perturbed by the Mighty Mouse supplanting the standard mouse? I mean, the Mighty Mouse is only the most disappointing and least functional Mac product in my memory. *sigh* Yet another dilution of the product to woo PC users... I still remember the good old days, back when my cinema display could power on my PowerMac and when my iPod supported fast data transfers. Christ, how long do you think it'll be before Jobs decides what will REALLY sway PC users is vulnerability to spyware? Of course, if that happened, the "feature" would at least get a groovy name, like "iSpy" or "spyPod".

I like the feature, mostly for use in navigating my music library in iTunes, but it's also very useful if you're in, say, an airport for a few minutes, and just want to check the news. It's much more convenient to use the scrolling trackpad than is getting out the trusty old bluetooth mouse, and you don't have to find a flat surface on which to use it.

The one big thing that this article and all the comments have neglected to mention is that podcasts have proliferated mostly because the cost of entry into the medium--equipment, bandwidth and time all being considered--is minimal. To produce a podcast, all one truly needs is a decent microphone, a copy of Audacity, somewhere to host the feed, and maybe an hour or two, depending on how long and how complex the show format is. Compare that to what a vodcast requires: a decent video camera, a copy of (insert video editing program here), a not-insubstantial amount of bandwidth, and a great deal more time than an hour to edit it. Don't get me wrong: I think vodcasts are going to flourish with the backing of the iPod. What I just can't believe, however, is that it will spark the same kind of revolution that podcasting was and, arguably, still is.