Nerd Life

So that new iPod touch that Apple presented today is pretty nifty, isn't it? And Steve's keynote was pretty entertaining too.

Yeah well... there's quite a few missing features (no it's not the Beatles) that itch me... even before I lay down the $399 I will no doubt end up spending on this (nonetheless) beautiful peace of art. And Especially:

Podcasts: yes, so it has WiFi and a browser and an online music store... but what about podcasts? You subscribe to podcast in order to get new episodes when they become available. The least I'd expect from a WiFi enabled portable podcast player is to actually get the episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed too. Not a single word about that...

...well maybe it is actually there. Maybe Steve just didn't mention it because they haven't found a way to gently rip you off with it, as they're getting ready to do with their iPhone ringtone business! Think about it: you already bought a full length song (at a fairly high price). Now Apple lets you clip out 10 seconds of that song to use as a ring tone. All you have to do is pay another $.99 for those 10 seconds you already have on your iPone! Why exactly did people applause to that?

Email: can you name one single good reason why this thing doesn't include a POP3/IMAP mail client? Does Apple's partnership with Google go so far they're going to encourage us to use Gmail instead?

And by the way, if Google rules, where's the Google maps application?

Edit: The new $20 iPod Touch upgrade finally addresses that!

Games: Steve proudly showed off the games on the new iPod nano. What about the iPod touch? Can I play all the games I purchased for my iPod "classic" on my soon to be iPod touch? Odds look pretty bad...

PDA features: This device now clearly has the capabilities of a top of the line PDA. It just lacks some software to do it right. Todo lists, anyone? Can you at least edit your calendar and contacts on the go? You couldn't do it with the previous iPods and Steve didn't mention it. It would be odd not to be able to do it, but then again, the software on this one is so trimmed down compared to the iPhone that I'm a little scared...

Edit: you can now edit calendar and contents in version 1.1.2.

Now of course, what I should really do is get an iPhone... Especially at the new $399 price! Yeah... if only they were available in Europe... (fingers crossed for Apple Expo Paris this September).

Camera: Actually, now the iPhone is just $100 more than the iPod, does it really make sense not to have a camera built into the high-end iPod? ... well, that would make it a killer blogger tool for sure. And again, the iPhone is *not* available everywhere, not even in certain regions of the US where there is no AT&T coverage...

TL;DR: when you travel from Europe to the US for several weeks, sign up foT AT&T’s prepaid phone plans and T-Mobile’s monthly WiFi plan. Then, pray for coverage!

Ok, I’m sitting in the train right now. Going from Chicago to Kansas City where I’m gonna meet Danny from the evoTeam. I’m actually writing this offline since there is no WiFi on the train. I’d almost say “of course”, but hey, this is the US! You would expect WiFi just about everywhere, wouldn’t you?

I’ve been disappointed by the internet connectivity last year in California. I am again this year in Chicago :P I mean, I stayed at the Sheraton twice, which was the official hotel for internet related conventions, and both times the connection was about the speed of ISDN. As if they had the whole hotel (‘bout 1600 rooms!!) hooked up on a single DSL connection. And you wanna know how much they charge for that? $11.95 per day!

Actually the best connection I got in Chicago was at the Red Roof Inn, which errs on the shady side of how Chicago hotels go, but it has just enough class to provide a T-Mobile hotspot. That costs $39.95 / mo and the catch is you have to call in when you want to cancel. Other than that, the speed was great and you can also use it at any other T-Mobile hotspot, including Starbucks.

Mind you, you can’t use it at Mc Donald’s which has AT&T hotspots and apparently AT&T and T-Mobile weren’t smart enough to come up with a roaming agreement. (Ok, let’s consider it to be just another good reason to stay away from Mc Donald’s :P)

Ironically, I am now a customer of AT&T too... for my mobile phone. I figured their pre-paid offer was a better deal for my 6 weeks in the US than T-Mobile’s... but wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if either of these companies offered a complete all-in-1 package to the international traveler? Pre-paid cell-phone + WiFi... how hard can that be?

Anyway, the cool thing about AT&T’s « Go Phone » offer is that if you recharge it with $100, you get to keep your number for 1 year even if you don’t use it. Very convenient when you come to the US once or twice a year and don’t want to get a new SIM card & number everytime you arrive.

Other than that, I pay $1 per day I use the phone and then 10 cents a minute. If I was roaming from my French provider I would be paying 2.50 € aminute... that’s... errr... at least 3.something dollars a minute.

Text messages (SMS) are 5 cents a piece. Even to international numbers.

The shady side of the story, of course, is coverage. I don’t know if any mobile phone carrier actually covers or roams all of the US, but I do know that this girl from Kansas, sitting next to me on the train, has had far less dropped calls than me since we left Chicago. She’s on Verizon.

The problem with Verizon though, is that it’s not GSM. So you don’t use SIM cards. You can’t use your European phone and worse... once you’re back home, you can’t check your voice mail anymore...

So there you have it: AT&T for cell, T-Mobile for Wi-Fi... Let’s see if they keep it happy all the way over to San Francisco.

Can I really end this post without a note on the iPhone? Yeah well... if I buy one here I have to sign a 24 month contract and won’t be able to use it back in France. Figured I’d just wait for the Euro version. But of course, I do hope that it will accept my AT&T SIM card when I come back! ;)

I want to recommend this post by Joel Spolski about differences in font rendering philosophy between Mac OS & Windows.

I never really understood why Apple failed to render sharp fonts on screen. Now I understand the purpose. I'm still not sure which is best though... ;)

Besides the basics, there's three simple things I'd expect from an FTP client:

1. Symetrically navigate in subfolders locally and remotely with single clicks;
2. Upload files and overwrite the server side only if the local file is newer;
3. Search the server for old files that no longer exist locally (with an option to ignore folders that contain user uploaded content).

I have never ever found a Windows tool doing all 3 ! :'(

• CuteFTP 8 Pro does #1 and that's about it (Its folder sync tools are basically a joke : it compares dates without comparing times!)
• FileZilla 2.32 does #2 but that's about it.
• My old DreamWeaver MX does #3 but is so painfully slow that it's barely bearable!

I'm so impatient to see FileZilla 3 as well as the new DreamWeaver CS3... but I fear I'm gonna be disappointed again... :-/

Maybe I should start to figure out how to run rsync on Windows right now... |-|

WOW! All this time I've been running the wrong AC3 codec on my Mac Mini!

Last week, I found one that works soooo much better! To find it, I actually had to search for "a52 codec" and not "ac3 codec". Go figure!

• Intel version (Universal)
• Original PowerPC version

It is GPL licenced and merely based on the "a52 library". But I really wonder were a52 comes from. Too late to investigate tonight though ;)

Update: a52 is now included in a codec pack called Perian and you can even get 5.1 surround sound out of it.

Update: the easiest solution now seems to just use the VLC media player and not worry about the codecs (VLC has everything it needs included).