iHome 5

I was getting a bit tired of my old alarm clock. The buzzing sound was just getting on my nerves and I wish somehow that I could wake up to music instead. Then I discovered iHome (IH5). An alarm clock/ radio that allows you to wake up to tunes from your iPod. I saw it in a copy of Wired and thought I would go hunting for one in a store nearby. A couple of weeks ago I picked one up. I wanted one to match my black Nano but all they had was white and since I didn’t want to drive up to and deal with the whole Mall experience that day I just took the white one that they had. Anyway, I got home and couldn’t wait to get this thing out of the box. The box itself was nice and the components were neatly tucked away in little compartments. The whole un-boxing experience reminded me of the first time I un-boxed my Mini (I’ve got the PPC version). Somehow it felt that I was opening an Apple product only it wasn’t. Anyway, I took it out of the box set it on the counter and found the adapter for the Nano. Its comes with an adapter for just about every iPod. Anyway, I plopped the one in for the Nano, slapped my Nano on it and thought I would test out the speakers a bit. The speakers were clear and loud… I had to turn it down for fear of disturbing my neighbor. It was on an audio setting of 14 or so and believe me it was louder than any of the other audio equipment in my house plus it has a built in sub-woofer. Adjusting the sound was easy you turned a little dial on the left of the unit much like the iPod click wheel. Setting the alarm was equally as easy once I read the manual. It was so easy I felt like an idiot reading the manual but I like to read manuals so I didn’t mind so much. The clock automatically sets itself to your local time so you don’t have to worry about that and batteries are included so you don’t have to worry if you lose power. There are only two things I don’t like about the iH5 (1) Its really bright when you plug it into and outlet so I have to keep it covered up when I sleep (which I do with all my alarm clocks since I’m sensitive to light during sleep for some reason) (2) It does not include a remote for free you have to buy that separate.

If you are interested in this products check out the review of it at iLounge. I’m quite pleased with it so far. Now instead of waking up to that constant bleep bleep bleeeeeping in my ears or some radio station that’s a bit hard to hear I can now wake up to my favorite tunes (yeah). My friends came over the other day and got a kick out of it too they thought that it was sooo cute.

My impression of the new iPods/iTunes releases…

Brighter Screen not Bigger Screen
It was September 12… I remember being at work and being a bit anxious to get home so that I could see the Apple Media event. I knew that movies would be released, I heard rumors of new iPods but I was still anxious to see it… See I’m one of those folks who is holding out for an iPod with a wider screen so I was wondering if this would be the day. I got too anxious to wait until i got home so I logged on to engadget and kept that in the background while working on my maps. I read the highlights and saw that there were newer iPods on the scene. A Nano that looked like a thinner version of the mini, New 80GB ipod w/video cheaper price… was all excited cool… I read brighter screen but was disappointed that it wasn’t a larger screen. Brighter is good I guess, then I went back to my mapping project albeit a little disappointed. I’m glad the screen is brighter, I’m glad they brought back the colors and aluminum shell, I’m glad for the new searching features but why is the screen still the same size?



iTunes 7 at Last- Coverflow Included and Movies
When I reached home the first thing I did was to fire up my computer and click software update. That brought me up to another version of Quicktime and iTunes 7. I almost fell out of my chair when I had read that coverflow was incorporated as a view and wanted to check it out for myself. A few minutes later iTunes 7 popped up, found tracks in my library with gaps and fixed em and found some album art. Not sure what happened to the album art coz I noticed that some of my older ones went missing after the upgrade. I have to say that I really like iTunes 7. The new views especially made me notice some music in my collection that I had simply forgotten was there. The coverflow view also worked for tv shows and movies so that was nice. I heard about all the movies that were available as well and that they had near DVD quality. I checked out the preview for Cars to check the quality of the new resolution and thought that it was indeed quite nice. Wish I had waited to buy Pirates of the Carribean. I bought 1 movie that I had wanted to see for sometime and the quality was really good. At full screen its as if I had popped a DVD in my computer so they weren’t kidding about the resolution. The resolution for TV shows were also better although I thought they didn’t match the resolution of movies exactly. One thing I found myself wondering about was why they did not have some sort of subscription plan for the movies. I suppose this would be a bit hard to manage for their first debut and if one was to subscribe would you “own” the movie or rent them and they expire after a while? I abandoned the thought and started to compare the price I would pay for movies if I went to my local video store. At the local video store I can purchase three previously viewed library titles for about $25 or $20 depending on if its a fairly new release or not and the deals they have going. Now I have to say that these aren’t always available right away, you have to wait for a month or so and sometimes you might get a DVD with a scratch. Anyway, this works out to $8.33 per video. Library titles at the iTunes store are $9.99 so 3 of them would work out to be $29.97. So the question to ask is how much is $5 less worth. I have to physically get in my car, stand in line, burn some gas (we know how much this cost nowadays) and there is the possibility that I will get a video that has a scratch and have to return it. So how much is this worth? I have to say that the iTunes store is looking pretty sweet for videos except that I want to support my local economy so I’ll probably purchase new releases via iTunes and library titles locally. A new release around these parts will cost me at least $19.99 compared to $14.99 on the iTunes store or $12.99 pre-ordered. For new releases you can’t beat the iTunes store at least not where I live…

In conclusion, I’m happy about the new changes in iTunes and the UI change is quite nice as well, it makes things easier to find, is more informative in general and better organized. I am a little annoyed that the high end Nano does not have video capabilities and that the new iPod with video does not have a larger screen. I do think that there is hope yet that Apple will pull out a new iPod with larger screen just in time for Christmas. Just notice a tendency for them to lower the price of a product before introducing “one more thing.” There maybe something to the fact that the iPod with video is now $249 and $349. Will we see a new iPod with larger screen for $449 sometime soon? We just might especially with the new talks of that ugly thing that Microsoft has yet to release called Zune. I like the reported features but whether it sells like hotcakes or not I still think it ugly. I do like the screen size though. Hint Hint Apple…

Now Flowing in iTunes 7

About a month ago I did a short review of 3 of the 7 apps on Apple’s upcoming Leopard’s hit list. Well, today after sitting there and following the engadget showtime coverage. My jaw dropped when I noticed that iTunes 7 have a new CoverFlow view. I was like ouch that was quick. I knew that with the core animation announcement something like this would happen and was hoping that Apple would put something like this in the next version of iTunes but I didn’t realize that they would get this in there already. As it turns out Apple bought out CoverFlow. Funny, I was just thinking last night that it would be nice to have album art for my videos and be able to move through them like I can with CoverFlow. Now I have to zap Coverflow from my list of apps.

Back from the wild

I just got back from a canoe trip in the Adirondacks. OK got back on Monday night but it took me a while to recover and now I’ve finally gotten back the sleep I missed and my muscles are all OK now. I was a bit reluctant to go having had the canoe I was in capsize the first time I went I didn’t want to do that again. A friend’s digital camera fell in the water and got ruined and I had to fork over a lot of money so on top of having to pay for the trip I had to pay a chunk to replace the camera. Anyway, I felt that I needed to get over the bad experience so I packed up my bags and went. We canoed to and camped at a place called Round Lake. Its was quite round and quite nice. I felt at times that I was in Fangorn Forest. See we camped in a nice glade of trees that kept the rain mostly off our stuff while we enjoyed beautiful views of the lake. The ground was also quite soft and spongy feeling except for my last night there. It was a great time out in the wild, enjoying nature and discovering once again how creative God is and enjoying some of the things he has made. I was also in fine company. I’ve posted up a few pictures from my camera check them out.