The new iPod shuffle by Apple.

The new shuffle now features the ability to talk to you as well, which is a clever/necessary/gimmicky (take your pick) way to offset the fact it has pretty much no interface. I’d be interested to see how well this works, or if it’s just annoying. The new shuffle now comes in silver or black aluminum.

From what it appears, you must use the earbuds that come with it, because the controls are on the earbud cord itself. I’m not sure what I think of this. Lots of people have a very personal relationship with their earbuds, and I think it’s key to allow people to use earbuds of their own choosing. I’ve got to give credit to Apple, though – when they do something so bold as to force you to use their own earbuds exclusively, they at least give you a compelling reason why you should. It doesn't hurt that forcing the use of the iconic white earbuds is a marketing coup for Apple as well.

There is an ironic thing about the direction Apple is going with some of their UI, though...they are eliminating buttons, but adding all sorts of clicking schemes to offset the lack of buttons. Short click, long click, double click, click and keep holding...is that really better than just having a couple more buttons? It’s funny to me, because the reason Jobs & Company always said they wanted the one button mouse is because two buttons confused the user...they never knew when to use which button. Well, at least in that case they could see the options...if you don’t read the manual (and who does), I’m sure lots of people will not even realize what various types of clicks this new controller has, because they will assume it has only one button, when in reality, it has multiple buttons, depending on how you click it.

I thought this new iPod thimble was pretty cool, and then, when I told my wife “Hey, Apple announced a new iPod Shuffle like the one you have, except this one is even smaller.” She responded immediately with a simple “Why?”

I still haven’t come up with an answer to her...

[code lang="applescript"]
set userHome to (text of word -1 of (path to home folder as text))

display dialog userHome
[/code]

This has worked well for me to be able to purge the script's property settings whenever the script gets passed on to someone else (otherwise it seems to keep the property assignments on the new computer as well. Also, it's set up just in case I ever need to fork code for a particular user if their computer setup happens to have something that just won't work with the way the rest of the other computers are set up (hopefully that will not be necessary, but you just never know).

edit:
Well as usual, there's an easier way:

[code lang="applescript"]
set userHome to (short user name of (system info))

display dialog userHome
[/code]

However, one thing I am very unhappy about is slow but steady slide toward "the new Apple way" - and making iTunes more of a proprietary experience, instead of an open experience with the iTunes store as an added value. This is especially apparent in how iTunes 7 handles Audio books.

Apple has done a good thing by separating out Music, Audio Books, Movies, TV Shows, and Podcasts into their own separate areas. However, Apple alone has decided what goes in each of the new "categories". They make up their own rules, instead of allowing us to decide which files show up where. For instance, by default, my large collection of audio books are now split up between the Audiobooks tab and the music tab. I have a lot of older audio books that are still .mp3 files - Apple decides that only files with an extension of .M4B (a bookmarkable AAC format, the same they use for their own store) should count as audio books.

Doug's Applescripts has a handy script that will take the files that aren't showing up in the audiobooks tab, covert them to .M4B files and remove and re-add them to your iTunes library, which will then show up in the proper tab.

However, I would much prefer a way to choose where my Audio Books show up (that is the point of the Genre tag, after all), than by forcing me to convert all of my files to a different format.

He decided to buy a 12" Powerbook after using mine a few times. He has various Macs he uses for his business - 2 G4 towers, 2 Wallstreet Powerbooks, and a Bondi blue iMac. He's resisted upgrading for understandable reasons:

• he knows OS 9 (and has few problems with it, at least in his perception)
• he uses two large format inkjet printers with various papers, and has all the needed settings figured out (which took a while to get straight)
• the Point-of-purchase software he uses to manage the business stopped development at OS 9. The software does everything he needs, and he is not interested in spending the time and effort to migrate to a new system

The funny part is that now that he has made the upgrade, he has ended up with a newer version than me! Tiger came with his new computer, and I'm still using Panther.

He's starting to get it. It's neat to see. On the phone today he asked me if Dashboard was new to Tiger. I told him it was and he replied "it's pretty neat." I knew it would be perfect for him to check stock prices whenever my grandfather called to ask how his stocks were doing. He's already using it for that, after only three days.

Pretty cool.