If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.

iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with "interoperable" music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy

Turns out it needs a driver on Macs, and unfortunately the driver on the Disc doesn't work in 10.3 or 10.4. I searched around for updated drivers, but couldn't find anything. I almost went for the return, but decided to look into it more closely.

Turns out there's a little Genesys bridge in the cable, but they don't supply drivers that I could find on their website. After digging around online for a while looking for anything related to Genesys and Mac OS X, I found the updated 2.3 version of the driver that works with 10.4. Here's a copy in case any googlers are looking for it. GeneIOUSBIDE 2.3

This allows the cable to function as you would expect. Jumper the drive as a master, plug it into power and into your USB port an it mounts as one would expect. Benchmarking the drive turning in a pretty anemic 7MB/Sec, vs my older USB drive case that turns in 10MB/sec. That same case also has firewire, and clocks in 30MB/sec over that interface.

So the cost of convenience in this case is a pretty hefty loss in speed. Worth it in many cases depending on how much information you have to transfer.

Some people report speeds in the 20MB/sec range on cables of this sort, but this one is obviously not capable of that. But I still consider it a good buy for $21.

Update: Found it! Here's the real linkage.

MacBook Pro:

Bigger Brighter Screen - Always welcome.

ExpressCard - this looks like a big plus, but people with legacy PCMCIA cards are going to bummed.

No Firewire 800 - Yikes!

Faster - Real world speed is probably not going to be anywhere near 4x as fast, but it's going to be a huge leap from the G4 powerbooks.

Trackpad - Looks like they're using the trackpad from the 17“ powerbook on this guy. I don't like the wider trackpad myself, but I guess it keeps with the aspect ratio of the display better.

New Power Adapter - This is a big step forward. No more broken power adapter tips!

Built in iSight - Not sure how good the quality is, but this is a cool feature.

Remote - Another nice addition, especially if the remote will work with Keynote or Powerpoint. I can definitely see some 3rd party applications for remote controlling.

Video Card - 256MB of video ram in a laptop is a dream. This should really make dealing with pro apps a lot better.

The MacBook seems like a stopgap intel powerbook aimed mostly at mobile power users. I think there's a case change coming that will include a smaller replacement for the 12” and a revised 15“ and 17” at that time. That's my only explanation for why they wouldn't release a 12“ and 17” at the same time. Oh, and MacBook is a stupid name. I can't believe Apple's marketing group couldn't come up with something better. Was this a decision on the part of his Steveness?

Intel iMac:
Not a lot of new features here except for the new intel chips and new video chipset. I guess I'm surprised by how little performance has improved with the new chips. One has to wonder how the Intel Core Dual fares against a Dual Core G5. To be sure, the new iMac will be a lot faster than the G5 iMac, but most of that difference seems to come from the dual core more than the speed of the intel chip itself.

Given that observation, one has to wonder if the reason the G5 desktops haven't been replaced is because the Quad G5 currently smokes a dual Core Dual (say that 3 times fast) system, heat be damned.

Going forward, a lot is going to depend on how well applications take advantage of dual processors, and threading in general. Also, a lot of vendors are going to have to get their applications ported over to universal binaries to see those excellent speed benefits.

Over-all, it's a decent, if small start. I'm looking forward to seeing revised desktop machines this summer.

Use this to easily filter email for specific purposes like paying bills, or to track down who's selling your e-mail address to spammers.

Apple's constant stonewalling of customers has been a frustration of mine for quite some time. In the past, Apple could safely deny issues because customers had no real way of getting a hold of one another. Apple would call it a few isolated instances, blow it off, and for the most part get away with it. There were lawsuits, but they were few and far between, and usually were brought years after the original issue surfaced.

Well, no more. The power of blogs, which Apple really really hates, has connected their dissatisfied customers and those customers are making Apple listen. Now we have a class action suit because Apple didn't think it was a big deal, and refused to listen to customers who obviously thought it was a big deal. Walt freakin' Mossberg thought it was a big deal, but Apple still stonewalled.

Some may say a class action lawsuit is only going to benefit the lawyers, not the customers with scratched nanos. That may be the case in the short term, but in the long term, Apple is finally learning that they need to listen to their customer's problems and react to them in a way that makes the customer feel heard and respected instead of minimizing their issues and dismissing them as crazy.

Tired of keeping my nano in a ziplock bag to prevent scratches, I did what any sane person would, I went to China. Well... figuratively speaking anyway.

On ebay, a search for “nano skin” will yield a great number of Chinese sellers who are already shipping cases for under $10.

I got mine in last week and it's a good quality product and came with a screen protector. If you're tired of waiting, I would definitely recommend checking these guys out.

Uncle Walt is keeping it real this week and calling Apple to task. He puts it about as succinctly as possible:

I have never tested or owned any portable electronic device that picked up as many scratches as quickly as the iPod nano.

Werd.

Walt thinks Apple should include a case with each nano and research a tougher plastic for future use. As has been pointed out before, this isn't rocket science. Cell phone manufacturers figured out the right plastics years ago. I haven't had a scratch on the screen of any cell phone I've owned for at least 5 years.

Apple claims the nano is no more susceptible to scratches than previous iPods. I say, who cares? The previous iPods collected scratches far more than they should have as well. Previous ipods should not be the golden standard here. Cellphones should be.

I suspect that Apple is probably already investigating using different plastics, and will silently roll a revised nano into the supply chain once they've got it hammered out. If they were to publicly admit an issue, it would mean a whole lot of exchanges they don't want to do. From a business perspective, I understand the stance they're taking, but as a customer, I along with pretty much every other nano owner can plainly see the emperor has no clothes.

Currently my nano lives in a ziplock bag while I await my $10 silicon nano case from Hong Kong.

Of course, few companies in America are designing and manufacturing these cases, and most of the time you can find a better deal for the same thing. That's true here as well. Once again, Cooldrives provides the goods. The $110 price difference will buy you a 320GB drive with rebates if you're savvy.

From Think Secret:

Sources have informed Think Secret that Mac mini box labels will continue to list the older specifications with no indication of whether the newer or older systems are contained within. The motivation behind this is to help clear current inventory without lowering prices. Essentially, customers are promised that the Mac mini they purchase will have specifications “at least” equal to the label, but that their system may exceed those. Customers who purchase a new Mac mini to find they ended up with the older configuration will not be able to return the system in the hopes of getting the newer configuration without paying a restocking fee.

Looks like a good way to manage inventory without running some stores dry while waiting for the new product.

I currently keep the contents of ~/Library/Application \Support/NetNewsWire on my USB thumbdrive. It does slow things down a little bit, but nothing major, and it allows me to keep everything current.

Creating an alias to the file is not enough. NNW will just crash on startup. Instead, create a symbolic link from the command line. Here's the instructions.

1. Copy your netnewswire application support folder from your home folder's library folder to your external storage of choice.

2. Open up terminal and input the following

ln -s /Volumes/USBdrive/NetNewsWire/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/NetNewsWire

That's it. For each additional machine you want to use this folder on, just delete the existing NetNewsWire folder from application support and do step number 2 again. Happy feedreading.

Update:

In theory, one could just write up a little Applescript to rsync the files to a USB drive and not have to worry about the linking, but it would be much more elegant if Brent would implement syncing to disk. Is no one asking for this?

He pulls few punches in calling out Microsoft's leadership issues, and there's been a massive reaction by other softies who anonymously contribute comments in support of his views.

It's a powerful example of how employees are banding together anonymously to make the company better against the fumbling of middle management. Obviously, Mini-MS has hit a nerve, and one wonders how Steve Ballmer is going to react.

Considering that there is a talent exodus from Microsoft at the moment, they should probably pay close attention. The way I see it, this is one of your employees conducting employee engagement and satisfaction research for free. And while it's in public, and is potentially a black eye, it's also the only way employees can be certain there won't be repercussions for their dissent.

With unions quickly becoming a thing of the past, I find it amazing that anonymous blogging can at least provide on-the-ground reporting of conditions to prospective new hires, who can come into interviews ready to ask pointed questions about the future of the company. It also provides shareholders an insider look at how the business is run that they could never achieve otherwise. It circumvents the fantasy world that management and PR people would create about the company.

Of course, this could definitely be a double edged sword. It would be easy to get into libelous territory, and one has to be very careful about making statements that a court could construe as willfully damaging the company with lies. But this is always an issue when you have a great many unhappy employees.

I'd love to see more blogs like this pop up, and hope that MS learns from what Mini-Microsoft has to offer.

Looks like Matthew Peterson had the screen on his nano crack while in the watch pocket of his pants emulating his Steveness. He claims not to know how it broke, and that there was no impact great enough to cause the damage. He also goes on for many a paragraph framing his tale of woe. Apple told him the damage wouldn't be covered by warranty, he's convinced it's a design flaw and now he's looking for compadres.

In my stint as a Mac Genius, I can tell you I saw my fair share of cracked LCDs. Even the 60gb fat ipods can crack if the top is torqued in the opposite direction of the bottom (one hand on top, one on bottom and twist). LCD screens are pretty fragile in general, especially to flexing.

Seems to me there was a little too much flexing going on in that watch pocket. Screen protection aside, it's just hard keeping something that thin from flexing. I personally wouldn't recommend keeping a nano in that pocket without making absolutely sure it's not getting scissored between your hip and leg when sitting down. Is this a design flaw? I would say no. There are trade offs here between toughness and size.

I understand Matthew's frustration, but I don't think Apple is at fault here. I'd like to see better pictures of the screen. There does appear to be a white line over the blacked out section of the screen that could indicate an impact.

Maybe Ars Technica can sacrifice another ipod to science and test the torsional breaking point of the screen.

Update: Looks like he's already been beat up pretty badly, and the consensus seems to indicate a break from flexing, although Matt doesn't seem to find that acceptable. Shrug.

Update 9/28/05:
Looks like there was really an issue. Schiller copped to it. Kudos to Matthew for braving a lot of doubtful people (myself included) and getting a response from Apple. I'd like to see what exactly the issue was posted somewhere. Was it an assembly problem, or a defect in the LCDs? It would be good to know.

My one bitch is that they reverted back to the polished plastic front and polished metal back. Why do they still do this? I know it's pretty, but only for about the four seconds it actually takes you to get it out of the box. Then it's covered in ugly fingerprints. The other problem with high polish surfaces is they scratch if you breath on them wrong. Today I had a paperback book on top of my nano in the passenger seat while driving home. The paper scratched the front plastic. Read that again. The paper. Yeah.

In time's interview with Jonathan Ive about the nano, he gushed about how small the joining seams were. With that much attention to painstaking detail, why does it still get out the door with those surfaces? Brush the metal on the back and ease up a bit on the polish on the front, or choose a less scratchable plastic.

Now sure, you can get a case to protect it, but what's the point of having a beautiful design if you immediately have to stuff it in an ugly rubber sleeve?

And believe me I would throw it in a case just to protect it, but the nano tubes won't be available for 4-6 weeks. And because of the information embargo surrounding new releases, other case makers will be further out than that.

I guess in the mean time I'll be carrying it around in a silk purse blessed by soft handed monks, praying I incur no further injury to its delicate surface.

Sure seems like someone is asleep at the wheel over there. How many black eyes does it take before you start throwing some money at the QA team? The stock is at record levels Apple, start spending some money on better people and a QA methodology that works.