apologies to the shuffle

[penmanila]

folks--here's a preview of my column in the star tomorrow, in which i make certain dismissive remarks about the shuffle, which i had yet to see when i wrote this. before you shuffle fans wring my neck, let me say that--having met a real shuffle last saturday--i will issue a suitably contrite apology next week, praising the shuffle's design, etc.

cheers
butch dalisay

OK, folks, it’s tech week this week, so if you’re looking for poetry, love (of animate objects), or Sixties music, you might want to flip the page or stretch your legs. Excuse me if I wax hyperbolic about some things with some very strange names like “Razr” and “Treo,” and don’t blame me if you emerge as terminally afflicted as I am.
I’d been putting off this piece for a while, but every now and then I get this itch to touch something virginally smooth and satiny—no, not human skin, silly, I’m talking about anodized aluminum, the kind that seems to be all the rage these days in geek design. I’m probably in this mood because I was in the computer mall just an hour ago to pick up some blank CDs and I happened to stop before a window display of new cellphones, and stumbled on the Motorola Razr (that’s right, they dropped the “o” to make it even sleeker), and instantly I felt the old viral surge welling in my corpuscles, rising up my noodly legs to my deoxygenated brain. It was an object of beauty, a veritable Venus of digital delights. The only thing that prevented me from grabbing it off the rack was the fear of prison and a woefully inconvenient case of penury.
(For those of you new to me and my technomania, I’m the guy who once flew down to Palawan with a bunch of friends, joined them on the van to the white-sand beach, then promptly looked for and found the one cabana with an outlet for his laptop, with which he spent the whole waterless afternoon.)
I thought I’d bled the technolust out of my system late last year when I successfully resisted upgrading (defined as “replacing with something marginally more useful and invariably more expensive”) my laptop and my cellphone. I’d succumbed to upgrading my digital camera, from the old 2.1-megapixel Canon Ixus V to a svelter 4-megapixel Casio Exilim EZ-40, reasoning that my work as an occasional journalist and full-time voyeur demanded sharper pictures. But I was still happy and content with my 12” Apple PowerBook G4—now a venerable two years old, an aeon in technological time—and with my Sony Ericsson T610, a true techie phone, light in pocket weight and heavy on features.
Well, you know how the story goes. Digital gadget designers don’t fill needs, they make them. They make you wonder how you ever lived without Device X containing Feature Y and requiring Accessory Z (which costs nearly half as much as Device X, but without which Device X is positively ugly and useless).
And so, last January 12, in concert with about a hundred other local Apple Macintosh freaks and many thousands more of the Mac faithful around the planet, I underwent the annual, mid-January ritual of staying up from 2 to 4 in the morning to listen to our guru, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, deliver his keynote address at the MacWorld convention in San Francisco, where it was still 9 in the morning of the previous day. A few lucky bums from our Philippine Macintosh Users Group (www.philmug.ph) were there to ooh and aah in person.
In what will surely be one of the greatest regrets of my life, I remembered my day job and passed up an invitation to attend the keynote as the Philippine media representative, something akin to foregoing an audience with the Pope. The big difference is, the Pope basically says the same nice things every time he emerges from the Vatican balcony to wave his hand; Steve Jobs says something different at every MacWorld, along the lines of “Oh—and one more thing—here’s the new iMac!” It was this trademark “and one more thing” that we were all glued to our computers for, savoring fantasies of a new G5 PowerBook (there goes my budget for a second-hand car) or that fabled mythical beast, the iPhone (“Can we just fix the roof next year, honey? I’ll get you some pails for the leaks!”). This year, in a move that can only be described as perverse torture, Jobs decided to scrap the live webcast of his speech, so we were reduced to depending on the frenetically garbled feeds of our reporters in the keynote hall—just like fight fans following the 1951 Joe Louis vs. Rocky Marciano match on the crackly radio—picked up and picked upon in various chat groups online.
So what was there to ooh and aah about? As some of you would have heard of by now, the marvels of the hour were two new Apple products—the $499 Mac mini, a full-powered G4 computer smaller than your standard car radio (and that will, indeed, occupy that slot in many upcoming car designs as an all-around media center); and the $99 iPod Shuffle, an even more anorexic version of the famous iPod. (Visit www.apple.com for the full specs.)
And what’s my expert opinion? As I told one eager geek-in-the-making the next day, I have yet to see the Mac mini and the Shuffle, but I have no doubt they'll sell like crazy. That's not just a Mac fanatic talking. Apple is getting much more market-savvy; it knows that the iPod is leading the charge, and they're going to win over people who've bought iPods and have been wondering what the rest of the Mac mystique is all about.
Will I buy one? Maybe in about six months' time, when I’ve saved up enough—not just for the mini, but also for the nice flat screen it deserves (you have to provide your own screen and keyboard, although the one with your newish PC should do). In the meanwhile, I'm very happy with my all-in-one eMac, which is actually the best Mac bargain you can get, even better than the iMac, bang for the buck.
I'm not so sure about the Shuffle. Sure, it's an Apple, which means it’s been well thought out and well made, but it's more of a novelty item; for half the money, I can stuff my Treo smartphone's SD card with more music, and have one less thing to carry. I'd still go with a regular iPod for serious music listening.
And what’s a Treo smartphone? Oh, didn’t I tell you about the time I was walking around Virra Mall, idly checking out the optical mice and the computer bags?... It’s a great phone and PDA, this Treo 600, but I can’t wait until the Treo 650 comes to town, which is just about… now.

[CooLes]

Excellent read sir Butch. Can't wait to show it to the wifey :lol:

[cyberprince]

Thanks for the preview Sir Butch. I was disappointed because I dind't get to talk to you in person during last Saturday's meeting.

Regarding the article I can definitely relate. I get the same feeling everytime I open up my copy of M-PH.

[Edited on 1-31-2005 by cyberprince]

[jayveef]

butch, you are my idol

[jobm]

very smooth! thanks for sharing this in advance!