Jason O’Grady’s Blog

While the iPod Shuffle is great (I will be buying one soon) I think that Apple should have made it with an LCD display since other flash players have them. One good example is the Teac MP 200 which is available in the EU (not sure about the US). This Teac player has a beautiful “full graphic Organic LED / Panel 128 x 64 dots Featuring 4 line / 2 color OLED display” in a (almost)similar compact design and it looks great.

With the display you can see the currently playing artist and song as well as search for any song stored on the player. If Teac (and many others) can then why can’t Apple make a flash player with a built-in display even if the display is less than 4 lines and only 1 color?

Of course, this first version of the iPod Shuffle will be popular but I think that consumers will want a second version of the iPod Shuffle with a display, if Apple wants to keep selling them for more than two years. I really hope to see the next version of the iPod Shuffle with some sort of a display.

I currently own an iPod mini and will still buy the iPod Shuffle so i can use it for working out and sports. Speaking of which, I wish Apple would release an iPod mini with a color display, I think that it would be easy on the eyes, but that’s probably too much wishing at once, huh? (Submitted to the PowerPage anonymously.)

Sorry kids, park’s closed. Moose outside should’ve told ya.

PowerPage.org — Gizmodo has a story about one of the first efforts to install the new Mac mini in a car. (Am I the only one that wants to call it the iMac mini?) You know that it’s only a matter of time before the mini shows up on MTV’s Pimp My Ride.

The commodity nature of the Mac mini may be just what automotive hackers need to come up with a unified set of sensors, software, and hardware to turn road rockets into dork dragsters. - Gizmodo

The Mac mini seems like a natural for automotive applications but c4r h4×0rz should watch out for a few things: the mini’s massive AC adapter, sealed enclosure and fines for removing airbags to make room for LCDs - a no no in the U.S. kids.

What do you have in mind for your Mac mini?

Forbes’ Lisa DiCarlo wrote an interesting piece about Apple’s new strategy for 2005 to litigate its best customers. Specifically, she delves into Apple’s suit against ThinkSecret.com.

Make no mistake, there’s a good chance that the source of ThinkSecret’s story about plans for a $500 Mac and new business software did break whatever legal agreement not to divulge the information that they had agreed to with Apple. And, one must assume it is at least partly true, or Apple wouldn’t bother suing.

But, this sort of stuff happens all the time in the tech industry. Sources leak details of forthcoming products to reporters whose motivation is to get credit for an exclusive story. Here’s the difference with Apple: most of its secret product news is not published first by national, mainstream media, but by Apple advocates. These people are customers, fans and Apple-lovers.

This community gives Apple untold free–and mostly positive–publicity and buzz about upcoming products and strategies. They salivate over every upgrade. This is a pre-iPod gang–people who supported Apple before the second coming of Steve Jobs in 1997. Consider that it was Apple enthusiasts who helped drive the market for the iPod after its 2001 release, despite a widely held perception that the $399 price tag was too high.

And, the leak certainly hasn’t hurt the company’s stock price. Since news of the cheap Macs hit on Dec. 28, two investment banks have issued bullish reports on the developments and Apple’s shares have risen 33 cents, to $64.55.

In one fell swoop, Apple has managed to alienate a large portion of their customers while giving away Steve’s big Macworld surprise at the same time. I think that Apple needs to re-focus on the important things: building high-quality products and increasing market share.

My five-month-old PowerBook G4 15-inch 1.5GHz is a total piece. The hinges is creaking worse than that old door sound effect from Hallowe’en and I am getting a little tired of it. Each time I open or close my PowerBook the right hinge releases an awful “snap” sound and I am certain that either it or the screen is broken. Each time I open and close my PowerBook I am reminded of the innumerable hinge problems that Apple has with almost every model.

In fact, hinge problems are so rampant with PowerBooks that an entire cottage industry has cropped up to fix it. Apple should bundle a tube of AIGlide from RadTech.us with every PowerBook that they sell.

My current PowerBook hinge situation is at the point of being embarrassing when I’m in a meeting or if someone else asks to use my PowerBook. “Ewwww, What’s That?” they ask when they open my PowerBook… I tell them that it’s a design flaw that manifests itself in most PowerBooks over time and that mine is less than six months old. They’re even more shocked when I tell them that I baby my PowerBooks and always have them in several layers of protection, etc.

Note to Apple: Please fix the hinges in the upcoming PowerBook G5 or WE WON’T BUY THEM. I won’t be buying the first generation PBG5 until I find out the deal with the hinges and recommend that you do the same. And since Apple doesn’t give review hardware to Web journalists they can continue to cosy up to WSJ, BusinessWeek and rumor-mongerer Forbes and hope that they’ll give it their stamp of approval.

If the PowerBook G5 turns out to be a US$3000 power-hungry, furnace with hinges that suck, Do us all a favor Apple and keep it in the labs. We won’t get fooled again.

How are your hinges? Any issues with the quality of Apple’s PowerBooks these days?

TIP #1
Forevergeek.com has a useful guide on speeding up Firefox for broadband users. basically after getting to the hidden config settings you set the browser to request more data that it usually does.

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!

TIP #2
Turn on inline autocomplete in Firefox:

1. Enter about:config in the URL field
2. Right-click on the page and create a new Boolean value
3. Enter browser.urlbar.autoFill as the preference name (note, case-sensitive: ‘F’, not ‘f’)
4. Set the value to true

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Thank you for your patience!
Jason