Saturday InBox: Comments, Corrections, Blasts!

“The worst thing I’ve done not to my computer, but to my iPod is letting other people touch it.  I have a first generation 5GB, and people LOVE to look at it.  I keep mine in my case unless charging it, which charging it in it’s case is a BAD thing case then the battery gets hot and dies.  So some friends were looking at it and my teacher called me over in class. So I went there, just in time to look back at my naked pod going bottom first onto the thinly carpeted floor.  I sprinted back in time to pick up the iPod my self, look it over, and put it back into the case and NEVER give it back to them.  Unfortunately I’ve dropped my pod about 5-7 times, and the only damage is the button on the bottom of the case has made a dent on the bottom of the pod, nothing else.”

“Very good list and with the exception of #6, I agree 100%.

Number 6 does confuse me though… what’s wrong with plugging a modem into a phone line? My Mac’s modem is plugged into a phone line, (while connected to a broadband network)… it’s really the only way I can send and receive faxes...”

“Having a glass of water, a cup of coffee, a can of soft drink, a glass wine or a nice cold beer on the desk with your laptop. Eventually, no matter how careful you are, you will spill it all over your powerbook or ibook and you’ll kick yourself for days, cursing, fool!, mendoza! idiot!

I’ve done it, i’ve seen others do it, and some laptops don’t survive to live the tale. Put in on the floor where you can really give it a kick...”

“Poorly managed cables. Don’t string cables in front of your desk or under your feet where you might trip or get tangled. You might not hurt yourself, but you could damage your Mac, particularly if you lead your PowerBook off the edge.”

“Hiawatha Bray has been an anti-Apple FUDster for years.  I just tune him out
- he has zero credibility. This is par for the course.

The real issue is that Real wants to shove their codec down iPod user’s throats.  The thing is, the iPod is just the portable version of iTunes.  If they don’t make it work with iTunes, then I don’t care about it.

The easiest way to work with iTunes is to simply sell music as mp3’s.  If selling music was what Real really wanted to do.  But that’s not their
goal.  Forcing adoption of their proprietary encoding scheme is their goal. 

Frankly, I’m going to ignore them as I’ve never found their stuff to be any good. ”