Gadgets Blog » iPod

It’s a bit odd to write about today’s gadget, a device that triggered a cultural revolution around the time I was born. Portable music may have been a 20th-century invention, but the advent of the MP3 and the iPod has spectacularly transformed how we think about music here in the 21st century. The idea of carrying a tape, or even a CD, around just to get our music fix seems archaic. I could listen to my iPod for 31 straight days and not hear the same song twice.

In an era before this technology, Sony’s compact device transformed the world, laying to rest the 8-track cassette and rendering the vinyl record a collector’s item. The Walkman was released in 1979, and as the design became more portable and sleek, sales continued to climb. Sony sold a staggering 220 million cassette tapes around the world in the three decades following its release.

But on Friday of last week, the last Walkman on Japanese soil rolled off the production line, bringing an end to its 30-year run. The advent of compact discs stole a considerable portion of the Walkman’s market share, leading to the updated Discman. According to Sony, there remains a strong market for the Walkman in other places in the world, but Japan’s rapid adoption of other technology has, sadly, rendered the tape deck obsolete.

In Apple’s staggering line-up of products, gadget after gadget has seemingly entered the public consciousness. Since the introduction of the iPod, Apple has built a 21st century empire based around a strong brand image. Their products are innovative and simple to use, appealing to users across all demographics. The iPhone, iPad, and their new line of laptop computers have made them a relevant company after languishing in Microsoft’s shadow throughout the 1990s. Earlier this week, in addition to updates to their flagship products, Apple unveiled a new vision for a product that has been less than stellar: Apple TV.

Its not that this is a particularly new concept, or one that Apple hasn’t made an attempt at before. Apple TV originally was a little-known product offered up by the company, a small box plugged directly into your television. The device could access a video store and the internet through a simple connection, enabling you to stream videos to your big screen. While the idea sounds great on paper, slow connection speeds and poor availability doomed the project in the early days. It enjoyed a small following, but nothing compared to other mainstays of their company.

The new Apple TV looks to fix a number of these flaws. In what seems an attempt to recreate the success of the iTunes Music Store with videos, the new device features a wide array of videos available for streaming. There is a bit of a catch, however. First of all, the user is only able to “rent” the videos, meaning that instead of downloading them to a permanent library, you’re forced to stream them off the internet instead. For users wanting a handy collection, the new Apple TV doesn’t seem to be the right choice. Surely there’s a better way to implement this television and video-watching from the Internet idea.

In the world of fitness, many companies are going to great lengths to bring technology to the person who desires to be in peak shape. While shoe companies such as Nike and Adidas have utilized this as a marketing strategy throughout the last decade, the future really has provided a whole news means to interact with customers, and that most certainly includes
technology integration. One of the most impressive examples of this line of thinking is the fantastic Nike+ system. Combining computer chips located in running shoes with Apple’s software intended for serious runners, Nike has effectively brought serious distance running to a crowd that ordinarlly wouldn’t partake in such things. This leads us to introduce two of the best fitness related websites on the Internet, the running community of Running2Win and the helpful technology of Gmaps-Pedometer.

Aerobic exercise is beneficial in numerous ways, but these two specific communities are tailored towards the world of distance running. Unlike other sources of exercise, distance running offers both a lifestyle alternative to that in the norm as well as a way to partake in activities that dramatically reduce the amount of body fat present on one’s body. Distance runnning exercises a limited number of muscles, but the benefits are vast. Cardiovascular training improves circulation and heart health, and the benefits to your respiratory system can been seen within a short period of time.

Any serious piece of computing is a serious investment, which is why such a strong market for gadget-protectors exists.I personally have my MacBook fitted with a plastic casing to protect it from scratches. My iPod, however, has a far more personalized case. My friend Jessy, for my birthday several years ago, knit me a multi-colored pouch that has kept the iPod safe from harm for quite some time now.

While not everyone has the patience or skill required for a personalized gift of that caliber, the company GelaSkins has upped the ante for protective gear, allowing the customer to select from a wide variety of artwork, or to submit their own photo for use.

The process of selecting a case at the GelaSkins website is straightforward and shows off the remarkable variety in store. First, you can browse through pre-existing artwork, finding cases specifically made and designed for your sought piece of hardware. Laptops, phones, and cameras are all included, and it’s a breeze to hunt something down, even for some obscure gadgets.

Sony revolutionized the world of portable music with the introduction of the Walkman. These days though, the electronics giant has been relegated to the back-seat in the market they once helped define. With MP3 players like the Zune and iPod making up the vast majority of the market, Sony has needed other ways to stay relevant in the playing field. Luckily for us though, the company still turns out some great gadgets, like today’s Cool Item on a Budget, the Sony MHC-EC79i BoomBox. Priced at around $120, this stereo packs a lot of punch in a small package, making it great for the bedroom or office.

First and foremost, the marketing guys over at Sony need to do something about their product names. The “MHC-EC79i” is no exception, either. With its seemingly random alpha-numerical title, it’s not likely to bolster any sort of recognition like competitior products such as the iHome. Yet by the same token, this makes our gadget an excellent buy for the consumer, as we don’t have to pay premium for brand recognition. The stereo comes in a compact shape, featuring a CD player as well as a dock that works with any Apple iPod products. Unfortunately the same dock only works with Apple products, so if you have a different brand of MP3 player (including even a Sony player), you’re out of luck.

Despite these limitations, the sound quality on the stereo is quite high. With two plastic cabinets, the acoustics aren’t anything a serious audiophile would appreciate, but the balance of bass, mids, and treble make for a solid player for casual use. What’s more, the issues with the iPod dock can easily be skipped over via the axillary port on the back of the unit, meaning you can play music off of any device with an 1/8 – inch jack on it. This is great flexibility for such a small unit, and allows the stereo to play music from computers, MP3 players, and most cell phones.

Few companies boast the sheer brand recognition held by Apple. The electronics industry has turned Steve Jobs and friends into media darlings, with ridiculous amounts of speculation and anticipation pertaining to every gadget the company produces. While the iPod may be the industry standard for MP3 players, it’s by no means the only unit on the market worth exploring. If you’re unable to throw down for the Apple brand name, you’re in luck: a wide assortment of gadgets are perfectly capable of storing your tunes.

Take, for example, our Gadget of the Week, the Sony X Series Walkman MP3 player. In a different day and age, the name Walkman was synonymous with portable music, and Sony has wisely kept the name attached to a series of functional and sleek MP3 players. Averaging $100 less than their Apple counterparts, the X series comes packaged with premium noise-canceling headphones and a gift card redeemable for 100 free downloads via Sony music.

The beauty of a the X Series comes in device flexibility. Instead of putting up with the oft-frustrating iTunes platform for syncing and loading music, the X Series can function like an external hard drive, enabling you to drag and drop songs off of your computer and onto the player. This is great for syncing on the go and for keeping your player’s song collection up to date with your computer. The X Series comes with some great touchscreen technology, with an interface that is responsive and functional. If the touchscreen isn’t your thing, Sony wisely included additional functionality in a series of buttons along the bottom edge of the screen. This is especially useful when switching between audio and video playback.

It’s perhaps the greatest battle of them all: Mac vs. PC. With so many people weighing in on each side, I hardly doubt my opinion will change anyone’s mind, but this week’s Gadget of the Week allows me to give my own personal testimonial, demonstrating both the positives and negatives of a PC-to-Mac transfer. This week, we’ll take a closer look at the Macbook Pro, one of the most prevalent gadgets in the world of electronics, and hopefully you’ll come to understand whether or not it’s for you.

As a dedicated PC user, it took a while to get used to the Mac interface, so let me first describe the experience that Snow Leopard offers the user. Instead of a start menu, arranged in the lower right like with all Windows machines, the Mac operates out of the “dock” system, which provides a toolbar at the base of the computer screen. Built-into this toolbar are a host of Mac programs, including heavily used programs like iTunes to the relatively less involved Time Machine. The Mac pre-installed programs offer a host of features intended to give you an intuitive user experience. Some, however, are better than others. It took a downloadable update to prevent iTunes from having brief skips during song playback, and the arrangement of photos in iPhoto doesn’t translate into an intuitive filing system for other use, but the features that come on such programs will be exciting and fun to play around with.

Seeing as I used my PC version of Microsoft Office quite heavily, I decided to see how the Mac version of these Microsoft programs translated into a PC-dominated computer world. The results took some getting used to, but for the most part, both versions of Office are workable and the files can easily be shared, so long as you remember to save in the correct format. The major annoyance comes in the lack of similar toolbar structure between versions. While editing a cell in Excel for the Mac, for example, the formula does not appear at the top of the screen, making it sometimes difficult to know exactly what edits are being made to the numbers. While this takes some getting used to, the program functions much the same, although some features in the PC version, such as statistical analysis, are not available in their Mac counterparts.

There are some great benefits to switching over, however. The battery life in a normal charging of the Mac far exceeds my PC counterpart. Whereas I often felt that my PC laptop was bound to my desk, my Macbook Pro is capable of following me for a shift at work followed by a trip to class, all in one charge. This creates for an addicting relationship between my computer and myself, a relationship that expands to other parts of the device. The intuitive mouse pad on the Macbook Pro makes it all-but-impossible to switch back to a normal PC mouse system, making for great usage of the control scheme.

I’ll confess that I recently converted from the world of PCs. Perhaps I was drawn in by the shiny aluminum bodies the new MacBook computer possesses, or perhaps it was due to chronic frustration caused by Windows Vista on my old HP laptop. Regardless, I’ve been immensely satisfied with my MacBook Pro, although a few things do still bother me about the Apple brand as a whole.

Apple users, the sort with iPhone, iPod, MacBook, and additional Apple paraphernalia, can be bothersome to me at times. While yes, Apple makes some great electronics, the level of devotion to the brand can be a bit absurd. Nonetheless, Apple promises to give people something new to get excited over, as they announced a January 27 event to roll out their newest foray into the electronics market.

Inviting people to “Come see our latest creation,” the company has (wisely) left the exact content of the unveiling up in the air, leaving many people to speculate on what it will be. In all likelihood, the product will be Apple’s much-speculated upon tablet, as sources have told the Wall Street Journal that the new product is intended to ship in March. That makes it fairly certain that Apple will be showing it off starting on the 27th, unless they have something truly remarkable up their sleeves, which would be exciting in its own right.

With such an important company preparing to launch a tablet based computer, a look at what exactly such a unit would entail can give us a bit of a sneak preview of such a hypothetical Apple Tablet. First and foremost, the tablet would operated with touch screen type interface. The iPod Touch has been a tremendous success for the company, and its possible that this tablet would feature at least a portion of its menu arrangements in a similar style to the Touch and its cousin, the iPhone. The idea of a computer that is operated without a mouse is exciting, and the fact that this technology is now being adapted to larger units means some great new technology is in the future.

There are some questions that need to be asked about the tablet, however. First of all, price is a huge concern. Before its untimely demise, the CrunchPad was rumored to go on sale for around $400. The Apple Tablet has been speculated as high as $1000, which in some ways is unsurprising, given that this is an Apple product. The unit would likely have the same great wireless capability as Apple laptops, making connecting to and surfing the Internet a breeze.

However, what sort of operating system can we expect with the unit? Will it run Snow Leopard, or a more application based operating system similar to the iPhone? These types of specifications will likely be answered when the gadget is unveiled, but issues over what types of programs will be able to run on the computer will be a concern for most users.

The main question I have for the future of tablet computers is where they fit into the computing world as a whole. Will a tablet be able to have all the functionality of a normal laptop? This seems very unlikely, and let alone the fact that for effective word processing, an external keyboard would likely be needed. If the primary capabilities of the unit are Internet use, then why pay so much money for such a gadget? The flexibility the unit will have, as well as the fragility of the tablet design, is concerning for such an item. Nonetheless, it will be exciting to see Apple’s product when they (hopefully) unveil it. I’m just not sure if its something I’ll be adding to my wish list anytime soon.