Name That iTune

iTunesThe current generation of iPods can be had with a hard drive as big as 40 Gigabytes, and the iPod Photo can be had in a 60 Gigabyte model. If you don’t limit yourself to the storage available in a portable digital music player, you can have an exponentially more capacious warehouse for all of your MP3s on your computer’s hard disk — a desktop computer with a 250 Gigabyte internal drive is not uncommon these days. That’s a lot of music. So it occurred to me this morning, when the chorus of some half-remembered song popped into my head inexplicably and then haunted me all the way to the office, that iTunes and iPods — or whatever substitutes you care to name — still don’t allow you to find that one song that goes something like “Doo de dum de doo…” You know the one I’m talkin’ about?

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Picture Imperfect

iPod PhotoWhether or not I really have a use for an iPod Photo or not is unclear to me, but seeing how I’m in the market for a new one of these things, there’s a decent chance I’ll own one by the end of the year. However, I still have a quibble: I like the fact that Apple is continuing to expand the feature set of its increasingly important digital device, but I’m frustrated by the company’s apparent unwillingness to just go the whole way — how much longer must we wait before Apple just makes the iPod what it so obviously is: a true multimedia portable digital assistant? Most of the groundwork for this is there; all that’s missing is a touch screen screen. With these photo features, the iPod Photo amounts to one big tease. Anyway, all I know is the U2-edition iPod is really dumb.

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When Losers Win

Red SoxTo be sure, the Red Sox absolutely, a hundred and ten percent, for sure deserved to win their first World Series in forever last night — it was probably the most well-earned championship we’ll see this decade, if you forget the inconvenient fact that they got into the post-season by virtue of the wild card. Personally, as a fan of the Yankees, it was a weird experience to see them do so well, being so accustomed to wishing ever more bad luck on them. I’ve never bought the image of the team as a gang of ‘lovable losers,’ something they’ve been cultivating with almost obsessive care. This year’s team, in fact, has struck me as having more than its fair share of assholes. Still, I was rooting for them all the way.

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