nan | 楠木

The 2.0 software upgrade for the iPod Touch finally unleashes the mobile computing potential in this great piece of hardware.

With native support for Chinese locales (and great pinyin as well as handwriting input systems), the mail app finally can correctly render Gmail in Chinese.

The App store is nothing short of a box full of candies, and it will only get better. WordPress, Last.FM, and tons of games are just a tip of the iceberg, and this platform will grow to some serious size very soon.

Of course, the hacking community hasn’t been idling about either – 2.0 has already been pwned, both on Mac and Windows, and the new “Installer” Cydia looks equally powerful, though I’ve not really played around with it. I did install Quake for iPhone, and while the game was not fun to play due to the lack of a good input system (I wasn’t able to find strafe, which is a killer…), it definitely does give any iPod Touch owner a lot of bragging rights.

So, with 2.0 up and running, Touch is now a serious piece of mobile computing hardware. The iPod part seems to be less and less important – I use it much more to browse and play games rather than listen to music nowadays…

Last time it crashed on me… Let’s see how it goes this time!

Whatever complaints I have at Apple’s lack of transparency, I generally loved their products’ user experience. Not so with the iPod Shuffle I bought last Sunday.

Perhaps it was a mistake for me to buy another iPod anyway, but I thought I really needed a Shuffle for occasions like going to the gym – it could never be a main mp3 player, but it would be an useful complement. And I wanted to encourage my gym going behavior, so I bought one. And it’s not so expensive anyway.

Anyway, I bought one at Plaza Indonesia, one of the bigger malls here in Jakarta. I go back to the hotel, hook it up with the computer, and eagerly prepare for a gym session. Then I end up wasting a good hour trying to get songs onto the device – iTunes repeatedly displayed an error saying it could not locate the device.

Frustrated, and cursing my bad luck at getting a faulty device, I go back to the mall and asked for a replacement. Which I soon got. I tested the new device at the mall, and though I could download songs onto the device using the Autofill function, the speed was far from optimal. I couldn’t believe that Apple could launch such a slow device, but that was what I thought at the time – that this device was just so slow.

So today when I wanted to add some more songs, I came across the same error. Then I did a quick google (or yahoo, actually), which to my surprise instantly took me to the Apple support forum where literally many many other users were encountering the exact same problem! And there I found many innovative(!) solutions offered by frustrated users like unplugging your USB mouse after you drag songs onto your iPod… The problem seems to be with Apple’s USB drivers.

Anyhow, I solved the issue with one of the solutions offered, which was to scan the system for hardware changes (in Device Manager, Control Panel) after making a sync command in iTunes… Can’t believe how people can figure out such unorthodox solutions… At least my Shuffle is up to speed now, and I’m once again a happy consumer.

A few implications that I’d like to draw from this experience:

1. Apple is probably one of the few companies who can genuinely launch a faulty product and get away with it – their users are frustrated at first but would stop at nothing to overcome the issues (and be happy Apple consumers). The passion of those fans (I don’t consider myself one…) is amazing.

2. I should always google for an answer before doing something… I’m sure my first Shuffle was just fine, but I wasted a few hours getting the replacement.

Engadget links to an interesting article (cover story) of this issue’s Business Week, which is essentially a behind-the-scenes look into Lenovo’s new high-end ultraportable, the Thinkpad X300.

The article itself is a good read, and features one of the most funny lines I’ve seen in a while, with Lenovo SVP Peter Hortensius screaming “it fits! it fits!” after putting the X300 through the ultimate test: does it fit into a Manila Envelope*?

* All rights reserved, Apple 2008