It's been a hodgepodge of a week in technology. This week has covered interesting new cellphones being released, claims about a creating a widespread technology, significant improvements in car efficiency, and Microsoft's response to Apple's iTunes/iPod release last week.
HTC has been a big name place in the cell phone market for many years now. They've become well known for releasing stylish, functional, and typically cutting edge cell phones. In an effort to combat the newly arrive
Verizon announced this week that the RIM BlackBerry Storm would be available for purchase in the very near future. This device is actually so new that it doesn't even appear on the RIM website yet, but that hasn't stopped a plethora of information from leaking out so far: internal promo video, box art, talking points. Needless to say, it's a pretty safe bet that this intriguing new touch screen powered BlackBerry should be making a large splash for Verizon customers before the Christmas season arrives. Speaking of BlackBerries...
While the economy was plummeting into despair this week, one of John McCain's close staffers told reporters that the admittedly technologically inept republican presidential nominee was partially responsible for the creation of today's BlackBerry device. This argument is suspect at best considering the logic goes like this: John McCain has been involved in regulating and deregulating the telecommunication industry over the past 20 years, and therefore through this regulatory activity he is apparently therefore partially responsible for the creation for the BlackBerry device. It has since been announced by a different staffer that this was nothing more than a "a boneheaded joke by a staffer."
This week GM finally announced the long awaited Chevy Volt. This is the much discussed electric/hybrid vehicle that GM has been hard at work on for several years. Unfortunately this vehicle won't be available to consumers until
Last week we covered Apple's release of the new iPods and the matching update to the iTunes desktop music software. Microsoft released updated firmware for their Zune devices and an update to the matching Zune desktop music software last week as well, but it typical fashion this was overshadowed by the less than worthwhile Apple-related news stories. Microsoft's update to the desktop software contained a similar feature to Apple's "genius" related
This week was unfortunately or luckily
(depending on your opinion) dominated by Apple's special media event. Like
every single other Apple-related event it was over-hyped and unrealistically
inflated across virtually ever technology news outlet for this entire week (the
past several weeks really). In case you missed this special event, you can
still watch the entire video streaming on demand via
Apple's press event website. For the really technological-oriented geeks
out there you can read the "liveblogs" provided by Gizmodo and Engadget
from this special event. So was the hype deserved? Did Apple (claim) to
reinvent the wheel yet again? No, not so much.
The iPod Nano received a slightly more drastic
hardware update at this special event. If you compare the 3G
(3rd generation) iPod Nano with the 4G
(4th generation) music player you will notice the drastic change in
styling. Engadget
and Gizmodo again
have initial hands on reviews of the updated hardware. Apple has included a
significantly larger screen on the 4G Nano as well as including the motion
sensing hardware that automatically orients the screen accordingly if you
rotate the music player to the side. In the comparison images mentioned above
it's also easy to see that Apple has included a plethora of color options in
this generation of players which should please virtually any potential buyer. As several websites have
astutely pointed out, Apple's choice of colors is far from original though.
Apple also released an incremental revision to the
iPod Touch with a match software update, a new form factor for the iPod Nano,
and a relatively minor revision of the iTunes desktop music application. The
iPod Touch received a slightly modified aluminum rear casing and it managed to
shave a few additional millimeters off its already svelte self. Initial hands
on reviews of the so-called 2G (2nd generation) iPod Touch can be found at Engadget
and Gizmodo.
These topical changes accompany a
slight update to the music players firmware (from version 2.0.2 to version
2.1.0). This software update was necessary to accommodate the changes that
Apple made to the iTunes desktop music application. The most important change
in this release was the addition of a so-called "genius" feature
which allows an individual to find music artists that are similar to the
artists they are currently interested in. The theory on Apple's part, of
course, is that once the individual is "assisted" with finding these
new musical artists the individual when then most certainly quickly purchase
those songs using Apple's own iTunes Music Store. So while this seemingly
altruistic feature may seem appealing to users on the face of things, in
reality it's just another way for Apple to try and get you to buy more of their
DRM-laden music.
It's important to note that many users are reporting problems with Apple's newly released iTunes v8.0 desktop music application. Many users are reporting significant slowness, software freezing, confusing error messages, or even in many cases people are seeing the infamous blue screen of death (BSoD). Humorously enough, Apple is also have compatibility issues with it's own AirTunes hardware which you think would have been checked inside the company before the iTunes v8.0 update went out to consumers. Based on some in depth investigation by a journalist at ZDNet it appears much of this instability is due to a widely know bad cd/dvd writing driver. Of course this begs the question "why did Apple release this iTunes update with a driver that is known to have significant stability issues", but that question hasn't been answered yet.
By the by, besides Apple's typically over-hyped fanfare little else of major significance happened this week. As a positive side note, as least we weren't all consumed by a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider on Wednesday morning when they finally began testing. Some of the first images of what the scientists have seen are already available.
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