Well, I fought it as long as I could. I was first exposed to Apple via an Apple ][ back in grade school (yes, I lived in a good neighborhood and we had computers in school during the stone age. I won't apologize for that, but it does explain why I am such a geek.) They moved us up to the Apple ][e in middle school. Since I was a small child, I have been in constant battle against the forces of Mac Nation that were trying to suck me in.

I began to abandon the fight when I made my iPod purchase. It was the beginning of the end. Once I conceded that fight, it was only a matter of time before I broke down.

Yesterday, I bought my first Mac. I'm entering the world slowly... I started with the MacBook (not the pro, and not the desktop). It's sort of a baby step into the world of the crazed zealots. It's sort of like buying a Prius to park next to my Hummer in the garage. I'll use it sparingly at first because it makes me feel sort of wimpy, but I'll get a lot of winks from the hot, pierced, tattooed, chick at the Starbucks when sees me with it.

I will admit, however, that so far I'm digging it. I find the lack of a right click and only having one solid button under the touchpad to be slightly annoying. I keep wanting to pull up the sub-menu. It does, however, boot fast and install applications faster. I find it fascinating that most of the applications I download and install are only a couple of dozen MBs in size. I'm now questioning why every Windows app requires so much hard drive space.

Anyway... If you're looking for me, I'll be hiding out in the darkest recesses of Mac Nation.

Apple today rolled out their new AppleTV appliance. It’s essentially the Microsoft Media Center PC without the PC – allowing you to beam all of your saved media from your PC to your TV. So that’s good, right?

I’m not so sure. It looks like Apple, in an effort to keep Jobs’ promise of sub-$300, has placed only a 40GB hard drive in the device. They say that will hold up to 50 hours of TV. I’m not so sure. Even the latest iteration of the video iPod comes with an 80GB hard drive.

I can’t imagine needing to carry twice as much content in my pocket as I have for my home entertainment. It seems a little underpowered for a home media device. You can argue that I connect to a PC to get more storage (I assume it will allow that), but that just puts me back in the Media Center mode. If I wanted to network my TV and my PC, I can do that. I’d rather not. I’d rather have space enough on my Apple TV.

The other concern I have is their storage assumptions. If you’re maintaining 50 hours on 40 GB, you are almost certainly not talking HD. HD takes up a lot of space compared to the Apple standard resolution of 320 x 240. I have converted a lot of my movies to mp4 at that resolution and I’m pushing anywhere between 600MB and a Gigabyte for a two hour movie. Storing at HD resolution, that 40 GB will likely yield about 25 hours.

It’s a neat idea, but I’ll wait until generation 2.0 or 3.0 when the hard drive space keeps up with media improvements.

I have had a 5g iPod for about 5 months now, and I have noticed an odd tendency that leads me to believe something is seriously flawed in their shuffle function. I have dumped and completely reloaded my iPod on about three different occasions, and noticed the same behavior with all three sets of music.

The behavior is this. For whatever reason, when I choose “Shuffle Songs” from the main menu, the same track will almost always appear within the first 10 percent of shuffled songs.

If I had a relatively small number of tracks on the device, I’d dismiss it. However, in all three loads, I had north of 3,000 songs. In almost every shuffle, the song appears within the first 30 songs. On only a couple of occasions have I seen it shuffle outside that, but it’s always within the first 20%.

In the case of my current song selections, that track is Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride. On the last load it was Teen Angst by Cracker. On the first go around it was I’m Money by Zebrahead.

I mentioned this to Mrs. Quip and she immediately said, “Forever Blue by Chris Isaak.” I took that as an indication that she had noticed the same behavior.

All of this leads me to conclude that Apple has an odd fluke in their randomizer that causes it to prioritize the same song every time you shuffle. I now refer to that song as the Ghost in the iPod. What’s your ghost?

With all the problems facing the US today, and Russia wishing to join the World Trade Organization, clearly the most pressing issue before our government is the illegal download site AllOfMP3.com. That’s the word from ArsTechnica today. They’ve got a good write-up on the comments and complaints by our Trade Representative on the subject.

It strikes me as odd that the music industry hasn’t figured something out, yet. If AllOfMP3.com is offering songs for download (granted illegally); charging based on the length of the song (longer songs cost a few pennies more); and is currently the number one music download site in the world; why haven’t they realized how many more units they could move by charging less?

The music industry is so greedy that they set an arbitrary price of $1 per song, which makes downloads just about as expensive as the CDs that they been price-gouging on for years (despite the fact that unlike CDs, music downloads have zero distribution cost, zero packaging cost, and zero mark-up for record store middle men).

AllOfMP3.com, at 15 to 20 cents per song is kicking the shit out of Apple who is charging 99 cents. If you really want to put them out of business, work out an arrangement with iTunes and cut your price.

You will, based on AllOfMP3′s traffic and sales, move an assload more units, at no additional cost, and not have to worry about others.

The problem is marketing people.

Marketing people like to figure out the maximum amount that someone might possibly be expected to pay, so they can maximize profit. It’s not a function of costs and a “reasonable” profit. It’s a question of how much are your costs, and how much more can you possibly sell for. Unlike most other industries, however, the music industry has an effective monopoly.

The record (quaint little old pieces of vinyl that you may be too young to remember) companies have been in collusion on CD prices, and now are in collusion on Mp3 prices. It may be one of the few remaining industries where the government still turns a blind eye to predatory anti-consumer behavior. Why? Simply because the entertainment lobby throws around a lot of money and the geeks in Congress want to appear cool by having their pictures taken with celebs.

Honestly, AllOfMP3.com should be teaching the music industry the way to run their business. Instead, the greedy bastards in the music industry will continue to use their lapdogs in the federal government to do their bidding to guarantee obscene profits.

There has been a lot of chatter on the tech blogs about Apple’s decision to begin suing everyone who uses a variation of the word “pod” in their product name – alleging this may confuse consumers who will think the products are produced by Apple.

At the heart of the chatter is a lawsuit filed by Apple against a start-up company called Podcast Ready that allows you to control subscriptions to podcasts and sync them with mp3 players (not just iPods). My guess is that’s the problem. Apple doesn’t want any competition for the mp3 player market (especially since their sales are falling) .

The talk on the vines about the lawsuit has made me think about the other products I use or have explored using that contain the word pod.

PeaPod by Giant – This grocery delivery service from Giant Supermarkets is definitely in danger of consumer confusion. When I think of buying groceries, I usually buy apples, and Apple makes the iPod, so clearly PeaPod is a delivery service that works with my iPod, right? WTF will I do if they change the name to something less vegetable friendly?

PODS: Portable On Demand Storage - Mrs. Quip and I looked at PODS when I was moving from DC to Albuquerque a few years ago. This is another company ripe for a lawsuit. If anything says customer confusion better than the strange meeting ground of moving services and electronic music, I don’t know what it would be. Quick, Steve! Sue!

A Pea In The Pod Maternity – This one should be pretty self evident. Shops that sell maternity clothes are definitely in trouble Since about half of the US population born in the 70s was conceived to Led Zepplin’s Kashmir, and you listen to music on an iPod, it’s easy to see how you would get fuqing, its possible outcome (kidlings) and the iPod confused. Apple needs to take action fast on this one, too.

I could go on, but you get the point. This is one of the dumber lawsuits I’ve ever seen, and really should send a message to all those “Apple-is-Cool-and-Nonconfromist-but-Microsoft-is-an-Evil-and-Vile-Corporate-Vampire”. The fact is, Apple is just as soulless and loathsome as any other company.