Remember when widget commonly meant a generic product and NOT a small piece of software?  What are econ teachers using now instead?
I also kind of miss when you would play music to death and you could see the physical effects/degredation.  That DK tape with the worn off letters and the snaggly bit near “Holiday in Cambodia.”  While this is silly from a preservation standpoint, I kind of miss seeing the physical effects of loving music so much.  The Smiths section of my hard drive will never outwardly show more wear than the other parts.

A few years ago, I had this killer simple ap that, with one click, downloaded an mp3 currently streaming over networked itunes.  It didn’t record it, you didn’t have to listen to the whole song, and it didn’t work with any other program.  ONE CLICK.

It had a cd with a little blue note in it as its icon.  As I recall it was called audi-something.  Like audion or Audio Hijack.  But I cannot find it and it was many computers ago.  Does anyone know it or anything like it?

Even I am sick of talk about the iPhone.  iDon’t care anymore.  Too much hype for a product that can only be used by a proprietary service plan.  iBored.

I hate cleaning my house and find a host of excuses to avoid it.  Today?  You Tube films of Apple Shareholder meetings.  If only there was an iTimeMachine so I could go back in iTime and iSeduce 1983 Steve Jobs.  In fact, with hipster trends, I think 1983 Steve would be quite the ladies’ man.
We’ll forget that I was 4 at the time this was made.

whoa. iphone.

also, even more disturbing, is steve wearing A DIFFERENT SHIRT?

That shirt looks brown.  Steve don’t play that.  What is going on?

So a little over a year and a half after I bought my ipod, and 3 replacements later, the last replacement I got, and the least used (a few times) has died and will not be replaced due to the year long warranty being up.  Not only is the ipod breaking thing stupid, the fact that the warranty does not restart when you get a COMPLETELY different ipod is ridiculous.

I have a nano I got for free which I will continue using, however at this point I am saying I will not buy another ipod.  I don’t know that there are a lot of other options, but the idea that I can’t trust the ipod to work for more than a few months of LIGHT use is unacceptable.  The fact that my ipod worked fine until I used it with the new version of iTunes also has me suspect, since others have had a problem with this, and Apple is completely ignoring it.

I just think I shouldn’t have to pay twice as much for an item in order to get an actual warranty (applecare).

Here’s my Jobs Special event play by play commentary.

HOLY SHIT! Steve is wearing a different shirt! WTF?! I like it, but is this some sort of midlife crisis?

ecosystem around the ipod? steve you are such a hippie.

okay I’ll admit it. When I saw the pink nano I looked at my black nano a little cruelly. “Why can’t YOU be pink?” my dirty look said. That being said I don’t get the nano. It is pretty much useless. I never wanted one and I got one for free and now that I have it, I still don’t understand its purpose. If I ran, I could understand it, but other than working out, who wants a less capable ipod? I also find its headphone plug in the bottom totally annoying.

Of course the new search with letters feature is AWESOME. I have always hated the completely stupid alpha only ipod interface. Yay. And more games–also yay. This is not true of the games which are 5G ipod compatible, but seriously why has there not been more game development on the ipod?
I think it’s interesting that Apple is leaving the iWhite lucite phase and going back to PowerBook aluminum in the ipods/shuffles. Apparently with the PB phaseout Apple’s getting nostalgic for metal.

iPod/iTunes integration updates=good, and FINALLY you can sync more than one machine! I am super excited to try that out, but iTunes’ weirdness with multiple libraries still bugs me.

Awwww Steve thinks iTunes’ music rights are broad. How cute.

How is being able to connect your computer to your tv new?

The thing I hate about Apple releases is that they inadvertently make you feel bad about the Apple products you currently own, since almost none of them are available for previous releases. It’s like an anorexic attending a fashion show….you get very excited but then realize you are inferior.

I have a dirty computer.  Dirty dirty.  I mean, I have had it for less than a year and the keyboard letters have worn off from use, so I pretty much use it all the time under all circumstances.  However, a friend told me to try the “Magic Eraser” to clean it.

And holy moly did it work.  I even bought the generic dollar store kind and yet still, it’s all sparkly! I had a dingy wrist rest from my dirty dirty palms resting on them.  Not anymore.  Now it’s all as white as an Apple store.  Yippee!  I don’t know what’s in this thing, but it’s fantastic!

No shocker here.  My ipod died.  After six whole months–a new record of length for ipods sent into battle with me.  I believe it was my 3rd ipod?  I bought my first March of 2005.  It is even inscribed with the words of Steve.  “Better to be a pirate than to join the navy.”  Previously I had Nietzsche’s “Only sick music makes money today.”  I generally like to attach a quotation that says something pro-file sharing.  So if anyone can think of anything cool for the new one, let me know.

Come on now, Apple.  Seriously, six months is the best an ipod can do?  Although I do want a http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=E2DBC1A0&nclm=iPod“>black one.  Gah!  Why when Apple’s faults are clearest do I still ogle their store with lust.

Why can’t I quit you, Apple?

first, my favorite new word of the day, found while searching the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Electric Boogalo.

Volvelles
Diagrams with movable discs, circles, or pointers bearing graduated or figured information that are rotated for the purpose of determining scientific, astrological, or other measurements.
I want to start a Strokes-like girl band called that. I think Vovelles sounds dirrrrrty, library of congress.

Also there’s a lot of hubbub about how people are falling out of love with apple. See here and here, and here and here. Main reasons include:

• apple uses sweatshops
• Ubuntu is cool
• apple computers break a lot

Okay I don’t like sweatshops, but I am guessing most computers are using some form of illegal labor. So I am not even touching that. The Ubuntu is cool point seems more to me like “Now that everyone knows about my favorite band, I have to pick a newer, more obscure favorite band to be cool!”

But that last one….

First, I don’t think many people are leaving. And even the people who are leaving are either:

1. first time buyers who had a lot of issues with Mac hardware and said “Fuck it!”

or

2. Long time mac-lovers who still froth at the mouth about new releases.

Group one was fickle anyway, so I am not all that worried about them. Group two will eventually come back around anyway, so again, no worries.

But I feel their crap hardware pain. I now have my ibook G4 back. It has been in for service 3 times. It now has a new:

1. screen
2. screen casing
3. hard drive
4. keyboard
5. optical drive
6. processor

That’s pretty much a whole new computer. Within 18 months of owning it. That’s ridiculous. And with the next day air for three shipments, how is Apple making any money on me?

Basically I think Apple products are the good kind of communism–limited options, but they are really awesome options. Free healthcare, though there might be waiting times. And only one person to deal with, tho that may be good and bad.

Everytime I send my Mac in, I think “okay next time I am getting a PC.” But then they fix everything for free in a timely manner and I forget. Maybe it’s more like a boyfriend who beats me. He don’t mean it! He always buys me jewelry after the fight!

But the OS is what keeps me. If I could buy a PC laptop with Mac OS pre-installed, well then Macs would have a real run for the money. But until then, I think I will stick with Uncle Steve. And tell the KGB if you start saying anti-Apple things!

Basically, if we debate about the loss of Apple customers, and there are a million articles about it, it’s still a cult people. The kool-aid has not gone sour.

Wanting, needing, waiting
For you to justify my love

Hoping, praying
For you to justify my love

Yearning, burning
For you to justify my love

What are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do?

I’m open and ready
For you to justify my love
~Madonna, “Justify My Love”

Everyone who knows me knows I am a very, very committed Mac user. I did start out a Mac user, because when I was 4 or 5 Apples were what my local library had. And in the 2nd grade I got a scholarship to LOGO programming camp. After I got a Commodore 64 though, I never really went back to Mac products. I was a staunch PC user in the days of pre-OS 9. Bleh. Nothing worked on a Mac. I wanted to move things back and forth on disks. Macs sucked at that. Sucked hard. I used computers for game playing. Macs were kinda awful at that too. Where’s the command line? I don’t want these pictures! Macs were expensive, and I couldn’t even convince my parents to get me a cheapass PC.
Then a virus killed my PC. And I went to an unapologetic all-Mac campus and the alma mater of Steve Jobs. Even if I wanted my PC in the dorms, I got no support from IT and I had to use Macs in the labs and on all assignments. And that forced sitdown in front of Macs (as well as a free laptop) converted me slowly but surely.

My first Mac was a 1400cs which my school allowed me to use for free for a year. I wrote my thesis on that, and experienced my first earthquake with it in my lap. Then I went back in time, and got a 540c Blackbird which I bought on ebay. I sort of got screwed on this deal as it died pretty quickly. I acquired an SE Classic which I intended to make into an aquarium but couldn’t bear taking apart and killing. Then my friend Brett sold me his old G3 Tower, I believe, for a dinner at Denny’s. When I left Portland in 2003 I sold it on ebay and got screwed on that deal because the monitor broke in delivery and the dude I sold it to blamed me.

Having learned that perhaps ebay and Macs and I do not mix, I bought a refurb G3 12″ ibook 800 from Smalldog.com, whom I love. It was pretty awesome all around and I had zero complaints. Until it started being seriously buggy. I took it into an Apple Store and the “genius” ridiculed me for having such an “old” computer, and kept basically blaming the problems on its age and my faults. Then it died in his hands and I took part in the great Apple logic board recall.

And here is where my Apple issues began.

That ibook got flown around here and there about a million times. It came back to my house, still broken, got sent back to Apple, sent back to me, still broken, sent back to Apple and then LOST in the mail. Bully for me, Apple sent me a new 12″ ibook G4 1.2 Ghz. I was pretty much enraptured, since I had been meaning to buy a new ibook anyways. Lalala everything’s fine for a while.

Then I bought an ipod photo. I bought it in March of 2005. In the 15 months I have owned it, I have gotten TWO replacement ipods since the first 2 died within my first year of warranty. The sad ipod face at first amused me, but now is just a recurrent annoyance.  I am basically at the point where I expect my ipod to die every 5 months or so.
So back to my G4. My screen died, I sent it in. It came back with a gap between the screen and the frame which got bigger and bigger until somehow the screen and HD died. I was afraid Apple would not repair this since it looked like I dropped it. But they did. And I got my mac back in record time. I was all about to espouse love for my new computer (basically) which I got back a little over a week ago. But then I put in a cd. And it wouldn’t come out. And anytime I put my mac to sleep and close the lid, it shuts off. So I am sending it in again.

Generally I find the Applecare people treat me like an idiot, but today I got a very nice guy, who, seeing all the work I have had done, was a tad flabergasted by my recurring willingness to buy mac. Which I do have. I mean this is starting to grate on me, but the service is actually so much less headache than I would be having with a PC. But it does leave me wondering why in the hell I am still so in love with Apple. Why do I fall asleep every night under the watchful eyes of Steve Jobs?

So Apple, please justify my love. And how could you do that? By giving me a free MacBook Pro Black for my trouble. My love can be bought!

*title credits to Kurt