d chalmers

Adrian (and others): this might have been posted already, but you can click the icon at the left of the address bar to highlight the URL with one click. Whee.

Do the shuffle!
Yeah! Yeah!
Do the shuffle!

The big thing I miss about the B&W iPods (as others have pointed out) is the completely lag-free interface. The big color screens are nice, but pushing all those pixels makes the thing run at, oh, 5-10fps if you use it while you're playing something. (The scrolling of song titles on the "Now Playing..." screen used to be a lot smoother, too.) If you look at the tech specs for the iPod family over its evolution, if I recall, the processors have actually been getting *slower* over time—that's one of the reasons you can get 2.5x as much battery life with twice as big a backlit color screen, a bigger HD, etc.

Myself, I would have preferred they kept around an old-style, B&W click-wheel iPod with TV out through the headphone jack; I hardly ever watch videos on the iPod's screen. (Also, why not a Front Row-style interface for when you plug into a TV via a dock? That'd be waaay more handy than the Apple TV for 90% of Apple's customers.)

I have high hopes that the next iteration of the iPod will return to a silky-smooth, responsive (and 3D-ified!) interface, a la the iPhone (which is purportedly absolutely lagless, sez Andy Ihnatko). The current crop is a definite step back from the responsiveness of the older iPods.

28 - "bloody murder" over the DS Lite? What kind of gamers do you hang out with? Every DS owner I know is just waiting to drop 130 bills on that bizzle when it comes out. The Japanese market also seemed to like it pretty well.

The lesson from Apple and the DS Lite is, if you can make a product that makes everything else on the market (including your last gen) look like chintzy crap, you're going to move a lot of units. But as many others have pointed out above, that is just practicing good design and constantly rethinking and expanding your product, not a sinister plot.

It kind of reminds me of the extreme programming/web 2.0 mantra: "release early, release often". Put out a product that beats everything else (by whatever metric you feel is important), and then constantly improve it. (It's that second part that's key.)

And to #27, maybe you should invest in a $20 replacement battery. They're dead-easy to switch out on the 4Gs, and you'll get more battery life than you ever did on your old battery. (I traded out the battery on my 2G 20GB and got 15hrs+, twice the original battery life.)

Impressive, Marc! An admirable use of not only a non-newsworthy news item, but an applaudable (and traffic-boosting!) out-of-context quote. Engadget is just a printing press away from being the MSM. I hope you got a gold star on your cubicle for this post.

iTunes can be scripted (with COM I believe?) so theoretically you could write scripts to trigger iTunes events from LIRC. Unless it works differently than I imagine (I'm a Mac user).

Speaking of Mac users, I'd looove to see a how-to on building an all-USB version of this. I've been wanting to turn my old G4 tower into a Front Row box for a long time. Would that be difficult?

I've always thought that the DS would be pretty much the perfect platform for point-and-click adventure games. Bravo to Touch Detective, I look forward to its English translation.

Now, let's see LucasArts port their back catalogue to the DS! Monkey Island, Full Throttle, the Dig, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max (oh God, Sam & Max...). They would make a *mint*. (Hey, a man can dream, can't he?)

I use the Bluetake BT500 (they just released an updated version, according to your front page). Been using it for about 2 years now, ever since I got my 15" PowerBook, and it works great. It's very small, but I actually like that a lot (even though my hands are huuge).

I remember my hand cramping up pretty well after a couple hours of World of Warcraft, but anything that reminds you to stop playing WoW is good in my book :) Also, it ate AAAs like a damn beeyatch, so I stopped using it for everyday desktop use and only use it when I'm travelling now. (And the iScroll2 plugin for OSX makes having an external mouse almost irrelevant for anything except gaming. Trackpad scrolling? Right-clicking? Yes pleease...) It looks like the new version is rechargable, which would make it just about perfect. Oh, and the white rubber coating the bottom gets kinda grungy. But that's all.

Anyway, it's a great, extremely portable little sucka. I'd recommend it. I'll probably buy the updated version, actually, I hate using too many disposable batteries.

A mousepad from IBM.

In other news, Ted Stevens babbled furiously at his cereal before rubbing both hands furiously over his bald spot and putting his tie on upside-down.

I'm telling you, this guy is *senile*. He doesn't remember which way he voted on any given bill last week. He can barely tell the difference between the Senate floor and the giant elephant in Moulin Rouge. If you learn one thing living in Alaska it's that *Ted Stevens is an evil, stupid old bastard*. Expect neither coherency nor rudimentary motor skills in any of his actions.