Well I’m wondering, or maybe I’m pondering over a few things currently that I should let out or something along those lines, so here it it, or more exactly, here they are!
I’m starting to get annoyed by the Get A Mac commercials, this is sounding really picky and silly and childish but I think they’re really going in the wrong direction now! At the start, yes, they were pretty good at telling us all, and especially the unenlightened ones among us how good Macs are with the no viruses concept and the great instant compatibility and so on and so forth. BUT, as I just said they are heading the wrong way. I mean this in that although they originally intended to show off how great they are, they are now almost doing the opposite and digging a hole that will they are slowly jumping in to. By this, I am referring to the fact that they now state that Macs are computers for the home, creative stuff and untimately a kid’s computer, and PCs are for work, and anything important and business like! This is clearly not the case. Macs should in fact be used in the home, and at work. They are probably in fact better than PC’s in working in business based environments. They are highly compatible in most environments, they have a nack of just not getting viruses which can be a large problem in corporations large and small. They also tend to just work and dont get bogged down with innumberable amounts of crap. Therefore they should be utilised more on a work basis. Apple is kind of denying itself to this market by saying these things in the advert, for those who take it seriously though. They are a good idea overall and thus I think that they should continue, just be more subtle in their approach and dont close off any large potential markets…
Another thing that I though I should mention seeing as it is a fairly large topic in the whole tech world at the moment is AppleTV. So soon after its recent release it has been cracked/modded/whatever else you call it! This in itself is a great thing. Originally with the AppleTV, I was not going to purchase one. A few reasons really were to account for this. Firstly its lack of support for older TV’s with no DVI/HDMI or component input annoyed me, mainly because the TV that I use doesn’t have them on it, even though its like only 4 years old, actually maybe that IS why! Also the use of component input is such an American concept. Yeah TV’s here probably have it, but it just strikes me as an American idea invented because S-video or the standard AV cables weren’t good enough, when in fact they clearly weren’t! But still the use of 3 or is it 4 cables to carry the signals is a bit OTT when HDMI does it cleanly in one! The other reason which was hindering me from buying one (that is if my TV was good enough) was the lack of support for other formats. I like to watch TV normally, explore the likes of great shows such as ER, Skins and House currently. What do I do when I miss them? I get them from BitTorrent. Now, how many TV shows on BT have you seen in .mov format? Answer: none. Although this is the case with the iPod too, I can understand that as it is hardware related. In this case though, multiple format support should be included as default just so it would work a lot nicer with various downloaded videos (what iTunes doesn’t want you to really do though). Luckily though, this problem has been duly solved through the use of the Perian codec/package, and so this problem has essentialy been removed. The small hard disk could also pose a potential problem, or falling point for it too, as it will fill up easily being a media centre type gizmo. Apple assures us though that this will not be the case easily as we can only sync our music libraries and photos to it. This clearly has no chance of reaching the capacity soon…. NOT. If you have a fair amount of photos and enough music to fill up a new iPod, 30gb ish, then the 35gb given to you is not going to go terribly far! Thus the available hard drive upgrades being seen are a great and needed idea. One last downside is that Apple expects you to stream your videos to watch them across the house. This is alright for some if you have just upgraded to the latest and best wireless router, namely the new Airport. But not all of us have and thus the cost of an AppleTV, a compatible TV and a new Airport will be fairly steep to most of us and thus make the AppleTV a remarkably expensive and nische adventure. The idea of streaming video will certainly have some flaws, in that it will screw up your bandwidth… but maybe ‘draft n’ is much ‘wider’, that remains to be seen in my case… Altogether, its a great idea, and as shown over the last few days its presence on the market will iron out its flaws. Imgaine what it will be like in a month or so, they may even have the usb port working!
Last thing and on a lighter note. Shure, the nice audio company replaced my previously amazing E2c’s with newer and actually surprisingly small, lightweight and more immense E3c’s. so I am a happy bunny!
Good point about the Mac v. PC adverts and Mac mis-selling itself now, or at least missing the point that it is the better choice for smart business as well as home, fun, etc. I hadn’t thought of it that way and your post makes me realize that it’s absolutely true. Write on!