Honey, I Shrunk My iPod (and the price tag)

April 21, 2001. I bought my first portable MP3 player, a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. It was only slightly more bulky than a typical portable CD player, and had 6GB of storage space. The total cost including tax worked out to $93.86/GB.

6GB seemed like a lot of space, but as I ripped my music library to my computer over the next while I found I had close to 18GB of music. So, I took my library of 192kbps MP3s and had them batch re-compressed to 64kpbs WMA files. Cutting it down to ⅓ the size let it fit my Jukebox just perfectly. But let me tell you, even with Windows Media Audio files having better quality than MP3 at low bit rates, I could still clearly notice the difference in audio quality but I just lived with it. Until...

iThink iWant an iPad

Well, it happened. Earlier this week, Apple unveiled the second-generation iPad. When I first watched the presentation of the original iPad a year ago, I thought I'd like to have one, but that the best move for me would be to hold off and wait for the next one. Although I love technology, I'm not always an early adopter when it comes to buying it. Most game consoles I've bought have been purchased a couple years after it was released. And yes, I did get my iPhone only a couple weeks after it was available, but that was technically the second model of the device (although to be fair, I think I would have bought the first one right away had it been made available in Canada. I've never been as blown away by any product presentation as when the iPhone was announced).

Ping-B-Gone

Hip hip hooray! A new version of iTunes, 10.1, was released today. For me, the most exciting change is the ability to completely disable Ping. What is Ping? According to Apple, “Follow your favourite artists and friends to discover the music they're talking about, listening to, and downloading.” They're billing it as a social network centered around music. I personally had no interest in it when Apple announced it. Primarily because, like I just said, it's social networking. I have no interest in pretty much anything related to social networking.