Another use for an iPod Touch.

Sounds a bit like the apple remote to me, but as the article says, the touch can also act as a keyboard (if you are prepared to get used to the thumb-tapping interface).

With companies like Meraki slowly rolling-out blanket wi-fi access (and Meraki is part-owned by google, so they’re doing this potentially to add value to the Android phone) it won’t be long before the Touch can actually be used viably as a VoIP phone.

Give it a couple more years though… we’re a good 3-years behind the tech here in OZ.

Just read an interesting article emailed by a friend; it’s in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Copyright and inclination prevent me from posting the PDF here, however.

The article was by a gent called “Michael Wolff” and the article: Generals Gadgets and Guerrillas. Not sure why they spelled it with two “r”s, I’ve always thought it was one.

Anyway…

It was a standard “People with gadgets are thieves” article, with some interesting sidelines into Google Phone territory.

I think in some ways he missed that gadgets have been around a long time, and the content companies screamed just as loudly when — for example — the VHS video machine was sold to the public, and tape-decks were out there.

Ultimately he gets the point in the end, which is that the content companies have a totally unsustainable business model and rather than fighting the gadgets, they need to embrace them as another way of getting their content out to the consumer.

The other point is that it’s mostly people who don’t have the funds to buy something that steal. 11 year olds breaking copy protection is really nothing new; I was breaking copy protection (albeit in the form of a 12 inch LP onto a tape) at that age, so was most of the western world. Course, once we had the money, we started buying our music and videos and all the rest of it, because it’s nice to have the box, the sleeve, the cover and all the extra bits that come with something bought. It’s also such a pain in the arse to hunt around for something to pinch. That’s what disposable income is for, after all!

The only issue here is that it would have been nigh impossible to measure this “illegal” activity back in the 60s, 70’s and 80’s. Now the companies can, they’re screaming like cut pigs.

I really welcome the day these monstrous organisations finally stop fighting the tar-pits they’re caught in and finally sink beneath the surface and die. It’s about time the creators of the content had some control. And that’s already begun, with some of the writers involved in the writers strike in the US going independent on Youtube and other mediums, and shows like Bablyon 5 selling straight-to-DVD shows, completely subverting the whole studio structures.

In the end, all the studios really do is transmit. Money to produce something can come from any number of avenues.

It suddenly occurs to me that Microsoft products suffer from systematic “Trying-to-be-too-many-things-to-too-many-people”. What this means is that their products, while they can do all sorts of amazing things, are either too complicated for the average Jo to understand but at the same time, set-up with the Lowest-Common-Denominator in mind, thus annoying the hell out of the more advanced user. MS Word Paperclip anyone? How about that sodding dog for searching?

In short, the designers don’t know their own audience, and so the software isn’t any good for anyone specifically. The features are vast, but you can’t get at most of them without a brick-thick book next to you, titled something along the lines of Windows functionality for people who don’t necessarily know everything about it but need to do a single simple thing. Setting up your email? A home network? Turn off those damn bubble messages that popup whenever windows has found something and wants to tell you about, like some 4 year old?*

Apple on the other hand, has designed their software with simple useability in mind. Yes, the systems restrict you to doing things in a particular way, but once you know that way, you’re fine.

Take the iPod. Yes, that old chestnut. Install iTunes, plug the iPod in and you’re off. Anycomputer (Mac or Windows [not sure about Linux to be honest]), any time.

Now take the Creative Zen that I was trying to get to work 2 years ago, brand-new, out of the box. I do hope they’ve improved their software and hardware because frankly, a system requirement that I had to search high-and-low for on the net because it wasn’t on the box is fundamentally bent-in-the-head. Turned out, the hardware required an obscure XP service pack to be installed, a version of Windows Media Player 10 and dose of good luck (and I’m not joking about that last bit) before it would even think about working with Windows and copying music. And if you had a mac, well, forget it, because it wouldn’t work.

That is why Apple carved-up the personal player market. The Zen has more features, an FM radio, good internal functionality, but if you can’t load music onto it, then it’s an expensive doorstop.

Similarly, the PC versus Mac thing. All right, PC has got the lions-share of the home and business computer market, but given the sick, sick joke that is Vista, computer manufacturers offering windows XP as an operating system and Microsoft’s forcible retirement of XP (presumably because they just can’t admit what a brick Vista actually is and there’s far too much money at stake share-wise if they do, not to mention the scalps of many on the payroll) and you’ve got what could very well be The End Of The Line.

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*Ah, you might say, what about the Interweb? To which I reply, what about it? I’ve got a PC at home which can’t see the bleeding network which is connected to said web, and you’re telling me to refer to the internet to tell me how to connect to the internet?