iPod

It takes a village: Group bug-swatting for the iPhone

The Web is filled with folks coming up with makeshift solutions from paper clips to cutting plastic away from headphones for some of the issues I've written about here.

For example, my friend Patrick, otherwise known as "he who waited hours in the iPhone line with me," agreed with my observations about previous generation iPod accessories that, on first glance, don't work with the iPhone. (He also had to wait three days in limbo for his iPhone to activate after being ported from Nextel while his wife's phone worked instantly, but that's another story … Read more

iHeard it not: Non-Apple iPhone headphones don't work with the iPhone

Being brave, I finally took my iPhone to the gym to listen to it while I worked out. No fear of dropping it could stop me now. Usually, I have an 8-gig iPod Nano with me. For a workout, I don't usually use the headphones that come with the iPod, since they: (1) fall out of my ears; (2) don't have enough bass to motivate me to run/erg/push that extra mile out; and, (3) let's face it: the standard-issue iPod earphone sound quality, well, just sucks.

To alleviate this unfortunate state of affairs, instead of … Read more

iHoot: Our iPhones expose a Camera Roll bug

Inexplicably, three of my friends and I ended up at the Fisherman's Wharf Hooters in San Francisco last week after we got our iPhones.

We actually went there for the food--no, really. We wanted buffalo wings, and where else to go but Hooters? Anyway, the usual siren-like charm of the waitresses went unnoticed by us. From my understanding of how it works at Hooters, usually the customers fawn over the waitresses, who are the objects of desire. Well, this day it was the complete opposite, since the ogled became the oglers as soon as we whipped out our objects … Read more

Fool me once

New York magazine's John Heilemann's magnum opus on Steve Jobs is the kind of turgid, operatic flight of fancy technology and business coverage could really do without.

He saunters out onstage...

Which is to say he walked out onstage.

Well into his forties, Jobs appeared to have pulled off some kind of unholy Dorian Gray maneuver.

Huh? Here's a picture of Jobs in 1998 when he was 43.

Now, the Macalope doesn't know about you, but if Jobs traded his soul for eternal youth, he must have gotten it back for breach of contract.

The senescence … Read more

Zune's not a failure. Yet

The conventional wisdom: Microsoft's effort to compete against the iPod juggernaut has failed. Early reviews of the Zune were scathing. Sales have been slow, coming in at less than 10% of hard-drive-based players, and less than 3% of the overall portable music player market. The executive who oversaw the launch of the product has left the company. What's to argue about?

The conventional wisdom is wrong.

To understand why, look at the Xbox business. From any normal company's perspective, the Xbox has been a resounding failure, costing Microsoft somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion.

But consider … Read more