The following article appeared in last week's eWeek. I thought some
folks might be interested in it.
THE iPOD IS MORE THAN JUST A MUSIC BOX
Peter Coffee: Convergence Points (eWeek, April 22, 2002, p. 66)
Wouldn't it be ironic if the processor became a peripheral to the
storage device, instead of the other way around? I asked that question
at the end of this column eight months ago, and users of Apple's iPod
are busily turning that conjecture into fact. Refuting many critics,
the iPod is turning out to be much more than an overpriced, overdesigned
MP3 music player.With its face IEEE 1394 bandwith (FireWire to Apple
loyalists), the iPod's 5GB hard disk (now also offered in a 10GB
edition) is more than theoretically usable as a portable boot device. As
in days of your, when PC users carried personal boot disks, an iPod
owner can feel truly at home on any modern Macintosh.
At $399, the smaller iPod makes any laptop computer look like an
expensive way to carry a personal data repository with a customized
digitial desktop: In many environments, a handful of shared macs could
meet the needs of many users. (And since the debut of the 10GB iPod at
$499, brand-new 5 GB units are selling on eBay for an
even-more-affordable $280.)
Even when not plugged in to a "mother ship" Mac, the iPod does more than
play music. With Apple's latest software, it also takes on contact
management duties. Third-party hackers are doing still more;
PersonaPodX, a $25 shareware utility, combines contact management with
alarm clock, notepad and multimedia preview capabilities. PodNews, a
free download, pulls headlines from selected news sites; included source
code lets you tailor your selections.
Apple has often been on the trailing edge of aftermarket enhancements to
its hardware. When GCC first improved the original Mac with an internal
hard disk, an Apple engineer is supposed to have said, "Impossible. We
made sure you couldn't do that."
In the same vein, Apple presumes to tell iPod users that they can't move
music from their iPods back to their own (or anyone else's) Macintosh.
Mac users who've discovered the Unix-style Terminal utility is OS X beg
to differ; they'll do as they please with the bits on their disks.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I always wanted to be a procrastinator.
I just never got around to it.
A Message from Patrick Jendraszak
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