Infuriating good headphones.

No, this is not another rant on my Windows eXPerience. This time I'll share you my thoughts on the iPod ear buds that came with the iPod 5.5G and what I did about them.

I've been an iPod user since March 2002. My first iPod had a 5GB hard-drive and a physical scroll-wheel. Sometimes when I feel nostalgic I long for the feel of control that was communicated by that wheel. This one I replaced because I had way more music on my PowerBook than would fit on my iPod. My second iPod I bought in August 2004. It was the 40GB that preceded the iPod Photo. I replaced that one in September 2006 because the hard-drive broke down. In its turn I got a 5.5G 80GB black iPod.

All my iPod-using time I've been using the standard issue ear buds that came with the iPods. I even managed to keep hold of that piece of foam to put over the speaker end that goes into your ear. I never got a knot in my cable and I never had ear phone wires break down on me. And before the iPod I had a variety of Discmen and Walkmen, whose standard issue ear buds or phones I used without problems over the past twenty-odd years.

And then, without warning, in the winter of 2007, the ear buds of my new iPod 5.5G failed me. There was a bad connection in one of the wires. So off I went to my local store to get me a nice new pair. Somehow the sales-guy convinced me to spend &eur; 100,- on a set of ear buds that I could not even test. I got the Bose In-Ear Headphones, and the first thing I did when I turned them on was to go to the equalizer settings and reach for the bass reducer setting. I've since then turned off all equalizer settings and now I enjoy my .mp3's in a clarity and nuance that I never could have imagined. This is way better an improvement than to encode all your CD's at twice the bitrate. There is so much detail exposed to me that was previously not presented to me with the default iPod head phones that the difference is almost unbelievably big. I've since then tried the Sennheiser CX300 but for me they didn't even come close to the music I get from my Bose headphones.

However, these headphones from Bose are also very awkward, infuriatingly so. First of all, the cord is very stiff, almost impossibly stiff when compared to the Sennheiser, Sony and Apple headphones I've used in the past. But more importantly, the in ear part of the ear bud is a silicon tip which separates much to easily from the ear bud. They get dislodge in the most awkward places, and they tend to blend-in with their surroundings much to well. And because I can't order a spare set, I have to search very well to be able to get my music in high quality with my Bose ear buds. I've lost them on the street while cycling, lost them under my desk three times at work, lost them in the car, lost them on the street while walking, lost them at the beach, lost them at home several times, lost them to the vacuum cleaner, and the list goes on and on. There is not a week going by where I do not have to search for my ear bud tips. And if the sound wasn't as good as it is I would have switched head phones a long time ago. In fact, the main reason for me to buy the Sennheiser CX300's was because of the dislodging issue.

So, until I stumble upon a good pair of headphones, I'll just search and listen to my good but infuriating headphones,

Zaaf

Why Won't Windows Do What It's Told?

My eight-year-old has a friend over for the weekend. He couldn't make it to my son's birthday so since he's here, he brought a gift. It is a PC-CDrom of a Harry Potter game. My son was very disappointed because it said PC and not Mac, so he was sure that it would not run.
Last night it was my task to make it work on my Mac Pro. And since I have Parallels Desktop I surmised that it wouldn't be a problem. However, the game ran so slow that it almost did not work at all. And it lacked sound. This was a big bummer, because it contains lots of spoken clues. So I finally broke down and installed Boot Camp and Windows XP Pro.

What a horrible eXPerience that install was. It reminded me of the MS-DOS 5.0 install. A blue, character-based user interface with a yellow progress bar telling me almost nothing. Then I had to choose the partition. All partitions, even those of my Time Machine RAID drive where presented as options. The only thing distinguishing them was their size, measured in mega bytes. And since all partitions are in gigabytes, it was hard to find. I picked the right one, but during the whole install-process I was haunted by that horrible feeling that I had wiped out my precious Mac partition.

When all was installed, I immediately removed all network access by disabling my active ethernet interface. This seems to work because IE could not connect to Microsoft's home-page. However, when installing the game and after several reboots, it came up with the announcement bubble that it had found new updates and if I would like to reboot now or later. Since I was busy trying out the game, I told it to not bother me and remind me later. When playing the game it went back to my desktop and bug me about the update. The bad thing about it was that I could not get back to the game afterwards. I had to restart the game every five minutes. Who at microsoft thought it to be a good idea that later is 5 minutes and not after I am ready with whatever it is I'm doing at the moment. And who thought that you could connect to the internet even when the ethernet to use is disabled. How safe am I from infection when I cannot disable my network?

Oh, and Apple provides drivers for everything and they work just fine. I have the Apple bluetooth mouse and after pairing it it worked. But after every reboot I have to pair it again. Why won't it remember that this is my mouse?

Let's hope that Vista is better, because Windows is bugging me on all kinds of levels.

Zaaf

MacBook Air, is it here to stay?

The MacBook Air by Apple is a nice piece of engineering. In the Macworld 2008 Keynote, Steve Jobs went into detail on what was needed to make it so thin. Leave out an optical drive, flatten the battery, use an iPod hard-drive and shrink the connector-board of the cpu. This last bit concerns me a bit. The CEO and Chairman of Intel, Paul Otellini came on stage telling that it was a big headache for them to make it so small, that it took them over half a year, but that they're pleased with the outcome. If it took them so long to make it, will they put in that same effort when the MacBook Air is due for a cpu upgrade? Or, given the worse than expected results of Intel in 2007, will Intel forgo on the needed R&D?

My prediction is that the MacBook Air will receive fewer cpu upgrades than the other Apple computers. And that it will be taken out of production within two years.

Zaaf

Let's a go!

Just arrived. Mario gokart

Strange Tracks

Just walked along the beach today and I came across these tracks. As Mr. Vimes would say: "it's probably a wading bird."

The Mob Stories (2)

Back in July 2007, I posted a short blurb on The Mob Stories. Now they've got a few new songs out, which rock. Although they don't, because they funk. Only that's not a real verb, so they rock funk. My favorite is Big Dick which is quite catchy and almost incomprehensible.

Give 'm a listen,

Zaaf

Another Proud Parenting Moment

I just had proud parenting moment, this time it was with my four year old girl. She was playing with k*nex when I decided to play some music. On a whim I selected Strawinsky's Firebird. After the first few bars she asked if that was that "red bird". Because she heard it before, but that was two months earlier. So she recognized the music and had the association to bird correct; "Fire" had become "Red", but still an impressive feat of recognition. She makes me so proud :-)

Zaaf