The European Perspective
http://www.myapplestuff.com Copyright ©2006 Chris Marshall
September Purchases
by Chris Marshall
September gave us a couple of “treats” from Apple, and big hole in my bank account!
First, we had the Labor Day updates to the Mac Mini, iMac, etc.
Second, we had the press event on the 12th September, which I would rate as 6/10. It is always subjective to rate an event, and it is even harder when a lot of your expectation is based on rumor and personal desires!
So how did these affect me? I had been waiting until the Labor Day announcement before ordering my Mac Mini, so I have gone ahead and ordered that. I went for the 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, with 2GB RAM and the 160GB Hard Drive. At the same time, I bought the Wireless Keyboard and Mighty Mouse, and then to top it off, the LaCie mini Hard Drive & Hub 300GB external Hard Drive. Disappointingly, the Mac Mini quoted a 4-6 week delivery period, which is probably a combination of three factors: a) this is the Spanish site, b) the Mac Mini is “new” and c) it qualified as a custom order with the hard drive and the RAM. Whilst on the subject of RAM, it actually only worked out marginally more expensive to buy it pre-installed from Apple than to buy it for a US site and have it shipped over. My spending continued though, with an extra 1GB RAM stick for my PowerBook (l even managed to sell the spare 512MB that it is replacing.)
Finally, it was my wife’s birthday, so I bought her a 2GB iPod Nano, along with the Nike + sports kit and armband. Of course she fell in love with the new Shuffle as soon as she saw it, so I ordered a couple of those – although they aren’t even available here in Spain until October. Then to top that off, she decided that she actually liked the idea of having a Mac of her own, so we ordered a 20” iMac 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 2GB RAM, 256MB VRAM and a 250GB Hard Drive. Those sort of made me feel left out, so I picked up a 23” Cinema HD screen off eBay!!
At the moment none of this has arrived, so I can’t comment on it, but I will next month no doubt.
Although I live in Spain I tend to look at the UK and US for eBay and on-line purchases, at least as a comparison, and I have been intrigued by a number of things this month:
eBay – although I ended up buying my screen on eBay, I nearly didn’t, as it took a long time to find one that actually came in significantly cheaper than buying a new one. For several weeks the average price, by the time you had added postage costs, was only about £20 cheaper than buying a new one, and that just didn’t seem to make sense to me. Anything second hand off eBay has a number of risks associated with it and for me ,I need a bigger saving than that. I eventually bought a 6-month-old screen for £150 less (including postage and insurance) than I would had to pay for a new one from Apple here in Spain. I had a similar experience with the iMac. Six-month-old iMacs were averaging out at £925, including postage. Now these generally included 1GB of RAM and some additional software (nearly always Boot Camp, Parrallels, etc.). As a comparison, the standard new 20” iMac Core 2 Duo costs £985, so again the £60 just wasn’t really worth it – of course, having made the decision to buy my wife a new one, we of course added some extras to the order, so maybe I should have stuck with the eBay one!!
Believe it or not there are still a few things left on my wish list, but they will have to wait – my wife has hidden my credit cards!!! Never mind, the next month or so will be taken up with playing with the new stuff J
My ’Casts
Books |
Fun |
General |
Mac |
News |
Review |
Sport |
Technical |
These are all available via the iTunes Store. Note the new name change from Apple J
Under Consideration
:MacBreak Video as I am just not getting anything that I am really that interested in watching.
: The Daily Nut. Am starting to find it all a bit irritating.
Recently Deleted (a bit of a purge this month)
:BBC Radio Newspod
Absolutely nothing wrong with this podcast, it is just that by the time it is released (early evening) I have usually reached saturation on news for the day, and have exhausted my capabilities to listen to podcasts, so it has had to go. Without doubt, when I am next traveling I will resubscribe.
:TWiT Video
Simply put, I can’t remember the last time they published anything, and I don’t recall the ones that I watched been that interesting. The content is always solid, but watching a panel talk really doesn’t carry enough interest, especially on an iPod screen.
:The Tech Night Owl LIVE
Hard decision this as I like Gene and usually enjoy the podcast when I do listen to it, but it is just too long for me. I don’t like to not listen to a podcast all the way through when I start, and I just can’t ever allocate 2 hours in one “sitting” to it.
I am not missing out totally, as I pick up a lot of Gene’s stuff through other blogs, feeds etc.
:24 Cast
With no series showing at the moment it is interesting that they have done nothing to retain their audience, so are risking people like me remembering to re subscribe again in the future.
Just Added
:Life on line with Bob Parsons
Early days yet, especially as Bob was on leave for the first couple that I listened to, but I am enjoying it.
:The Game
With the Soccer season back this is a new podcast from The Times in the UK. So far it has been really good.
Favourite ‘Casts – The Daily Breakfast
Possibly a bit of a surprise this. It certainly has been to me, as I am not a very religious person at all. I love Father Roderick’s enthusiastic voice. Again he has a good structure that he adheres to, and I really like the way he mixes religion with his technology interests. The way they are building the SQL network is intriguing and I wish them well.
European News
Paris Expo??????? This didn’t really seem to register with me. I picked one interesting bit of information from it:
- analysts from PiperJaffray polled 50 European Apple customers about their interested in an iPhone that holds 1,000 songs and found that 74 percent indicated they have a highly likelyhood of buying such a product.
Although if the rumors are true about the phone being linked to a Cingular contract are true, that will be huge disappointment! I think the US has to follow the European trend of selling handsets separately and letting people put their existing SIM cards into the phone.
I heard a couple of interesting facts this month from various podcasts:
- In the UK 70% of Internet access is now via broadband, with 43% of households having Internet access. At the same time the UK population has just passed 60m for the first time.
- I was listening to an interesting debate on piracy on the AVForums ‘cast and they made a number of interesting observations; that recently they raided 3 factories in the UK with a combined ₤9m a MONTH turnover of pirated material!; that piracy isn’t about not being able to afford the products, when you consider how much the typical pirate consumer spends on mobile phones, training shoes, etc, and about 80% of the individuals selling pirate material in the pubs and streets are part of Chinese organized crime, so by buying a cheap CD or DVD you are in all probability funding a drugs gang, or some other heavy organized crime!
It seems like the trend for iPod clothes is making a bit of a comeback. Two items caught my attention this month”
- M&S in the UK will be shipping a suit from Bagir from November onwards
- The $300 Levi iPod Jeans got a poor review from Gizmodo
Digital Media Solution
I had hoped to have the Mac Mini this month, but found enough to keep me occupied due to a slight problem I had with my Sky +. Probably because of the atmospheric pressure during the summer, the signal seems to have dropped, so I was really struggling to pick up the movie channels, but for some strange reason, if I set the movie to record, the signal was fine. As a result, I ended up recording a lot more movies than I would have normally, and this in turn led to a neat little workaround for my use of Sky + and the TVMax. Basically, I found that it is possible to playback a recorded movie from Sky + and record it onto the Mac via TVMax at the same time.
So at the moment I have I have settled on the following use of the Sky + and the TVMax:
In my experience, films fall into two categories, those that you know you want to save and watch again and those that you just want to see, but have no real desire to keep them. Of course this view can easily change once you have actually viewed them. As such, the technical restriction has forced me into a rather neat compromise J First off with any movie, I record it to the Sky+ box, regardless of if it is one that I know I want to keep or just fancy watching. When I watch it, I record it onto my Mac, and then I delete it off Sky+ and if I don’t want to keep it, I delete it off the Mac. From time to time, I free up space on the Sky+ by setting it to play a movie overnight and record it on my Mac. It is a little long winded but it is proving to be a really great workaround – I get benefits and ease of use of the Sky+ whilst at the same time getting the benefits of the TVMax/Mac in terms of storage capacity, editing facilities and multiple play back options.
I seem to have settled on an interesting ratio on the Sky+ of:
- 50% allocated to movies that I still have to watch,
- 25% allocated to TV series and programs that I want to watch at some stage, and
- 25% allocated for Work In Progress (WIP) stuff.
And Finally ………… a rant or two!
Maybe I am getting old, but this a month a couple of things have surfaced that really make me mad!!
- Podcasters that promote their Skype, IM details, etc, but then don’t accept your invitation to add them to your contact list and/or are never on line. What is the point of that?? I am getting close to implementing a “name and shame” policy for those that do this, and
- Long Email thread, when options such as pbwiki, blogsen, etc. are available. What is the point of email when IM and Wiki’s exist???? Email has it’s place sure, but there are much more efficient and rewarding ways of communicating!
About Chris Marshall
Educated in the UK and USA, I have lived and worked in the UK, USA, and Spain. I currently live in Spain in a state of semi-retirement, where I spend most of my time developing my skills on the Mac and understanding the significance and opportunities of the “Web 2.0” explosion.
I have recently started writing reviews and articles for macCompanion[1] and for The Mac ReviewCast[2].
From a “day job” perspective, I don’t really have one at the moment. I am doing some PC training and support locally and have been advising a couple of small start-up businesses. When I do work, it is a business consultant[3] with an emphasis on small and start-up businesses and mentoring individuals. I am particular keen to help US organizations establish themselves in Europe. I am also keen to develop my writing skills.
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