iDeas

I like the new iTunes- which Apple announced today and is already sitting on my machines. It fixes a couple of old problems like listening to albums without gaps between tracks. Some concept albums and many mix albums play smoothly now. But the best piece is the new shiny eye candy for riffling through CD covers in a juke-box style. It much more fun to spin through cover art on a laptop, select tracks to play and then to beam them direct to a hi-fi. rashbre central has worked that way for a couple of years for casual listening. I'm not sure why Bjork and Moby seem to come up on unassigned covers though.

The related iPod updates are presumably the pre-Christmas versions with better video resolution ad the new tiny wearable nano, which has the same form factor as the iPod radio.

I'm undecided about the iTV. Its a slim enough box to integrate with a TV system, but I can' think why they wouldn't also include a DVD player/recorder on it. DVD players are about £35 in Tescos, so a simple reader or even better a reader/writer would be more useful. I know it then starts to sound like a mac mini, but I suppose a mac mini that doesnt need a normal keyboard and screen may also be an interesting direction to take the technology. I expect Apple has a pricepoint in mind so that may rule out some of these ideas.

But later - maybe a 12cm square, 4 cm high box, connected to television, with HDTV, internet/broadband, hard disk storage, TV recording, cut to DVD/CD, wifi, mp3 playback and it starts to get interesting. I suppose that will be release 2.

Anyway thats enough geekiness for one evening - Long Good Friday is on...I think I'll watch a few gangsters blowing each other up.