Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Cold Day in the Sun
- I almost had to go to New York City tomorrow. We were asked to do a television interview, and due to various circumstances, for a brief moment it looked like none of our people in the area were going to be able to represent us. And since I wasn't about to let the opportunity go splat, I was looking up flights when I got word that the local bunch was going to be able to cover things after all. After all, every now and then, I have to remind the world that I single-handedly built the iPod loadingindustry from the ground up. That's not arrogance, it's just business. I only bring the whole thing up, though, because even though I wasn't particularly looking forward to dropping everything and heading out on a hideously overpriced last-minute flight, I really liked the idea that I was headed back to New York City. I miss the place. I miss the fact that MacWorld Expo isn't there anymore. I do believe I'll head up to the City sometime before the warm weather ends this summer, Expo or not. And for sure, I'm headed to MacWorld San Francisco in Janaury, nasty cold weather or not. Three years without visiting New York City is far too long. So is three years without attending MacWorld Expo. I'm not sure what I was thinking by letting it go that long in either case.
- I can't tell you how much fun I'm having with the new iPod Garage. I've been waiting what seems like forever to be free of the shackles of my own limited web design skills, and now that the day has finally arrived, I'm ecstatic. I think there was a point my life where turning over webmaster duties to someone else, only to have everyone universally agree that the new design was better than mine, would have struck me the wrong way. But at this point, I just take it as confirmation that I made the right decision. Anyway, the site's become a whole big production number now, with nine weekly columns written by seven different people, ten hands-on reviews published per week, and up to the minute iPod, iTunes, and music news updated ten or more times per day. If you're an iPod website, and the iPod is a music player, how can you not report that Luther Vandross died? And how can you not report on the epic worldwide impact of Live 8? Other sites will carp because every third story in our RSS feed has nothing to do with technology, but so be it. And I absolutely loved the fact that, shortly after we started reporting on Live 8 on Saturday, another iPod site threw up a token Live 8 story of their own. Leading with music industry news is a pretty big risk, but the copycatting must mean we're doing something right. Every day's like a big extravaganza over there.
- Seems like I can recall saying that I was quite sure that the pie in the sky unit sales projections being thrown around by analysts for the Mac mini were simply being made up out of thin air to support their original assertion that the thing was going to be a hit, and that eventually, the analysts would begin significantly decreasing the imaginary numbers they were throwing around, lest they get caught in the act. Well, today, one of those analysts reduced his Mac mini sales projections by almost half. Hey, it's not like I didn't tell you how this was gonna play out. Up next will be Mac mini apologists across the web trying to come up with rationalizations as to what's going on, including a whole lot of blaming Apple for not advertising the thing. Then they'll blame Circuit City for not putting up the posters right, and perhaps they'll even blame Apple for not pricing the thing correctly. Sure, these arguments are cut and pasted from the mouths of apologists who tried to explain away the Cube's failures, but it'll be the same story here. They'll blame Best Buy, they'll say Steve Jobs didn't want it to succeed, perhaps they'll even claim that the product didn't sell because a few units had some cracks in them. That was my personal favorite among the Cube excuses. Toward the end, something equally absurd will serve as the final rallying cry as to why the mini failed, and as to why it should be brought back four years from now at an even lower price. This thing has "Cube" written all over it, on all six of its faces. I really hope Steve fires the clown who talked him into this time-wasting exercise.
- Just so I don't have to end on that note, I'll share that after a good fifty listens to the whole album, my favorite track on the new Foo Fighters album just might be "Cold Day in the Sun"...which, oddly enough, is the one that the drummer sings. No, not Dave Grohl. The other drummer. Come to think of it, is there anyone in that band who doesn't playthe drums? In a past life, they could have been a marching band. Have I mentioned how much I love the fact that our iPod site has the guts to lead with an album review each Tuesday?
Man, this is some fun stuff. Sometimes I just can't believe I get to do this stuff for a living.
- I almost had to go to New York City tomorrow. We were asked to do a television interview, and due to various circumstances, for a brief moment it looked like none of our people in the area were going to be able to represent us. And since I wasn't about to let the opportunity go splat, I was looking up flights when I got word that the local bunch was going to be able to cover things after all. After all, every now and then, I have to remind the world that I single-handedly built the iPod loadingindustry from the ground up. That's not arrogance, it's just business. I only bring the whole thing up, though, because even though I wasn't particularly looking forward to dropping everything and heading out on a hideously overpriced last-minute flight, I really liked the idea that I was headed back to New York City. I miss the place. I miss the fact that MacWorld Expo isn't there anymore. I do believe I'll head up to the City sometime before the warm weather ends this summer, Expo or not. And for sure, I'm headed to MacWorld San Francisco in Janaury, nasty cold weather or not. Three years without visiting New York City is far too long. So is three years without attending MacWorld Expo. I'm not sure what I was thinking by letting it go that long in either case.
- I can't tell you how much fun I'm having with the new iPod Garage. I've been waiting what seems like forever to be free of the shackles of my own limited web design skills, and now that the day has finally arrived, I'm ecstatic. I think there was a point my life where turning over webmaster duties to someone else, only to have everyone universally agree that the new design was better than mine, would have struck me the wrong way. But at this point, I just take it as confirmation that I made the right decision. Anyway, the site's become a whole big production number now, with nine weekly columns written by seven different people, ten hands-on reviews published per week, and up to the minute iPod, iTunes, and music news updated ten or more times per day. If you're an iPod website, and the iPod is a music player, how can you not report that Luther Vandross died? And how can you not report on the epic worldwide impact of Live 8? Other sites will carp because every third story in our RSS feed has nothing to do with technology, but so be it. And I absolutely loved the fact that, shortly after we started reporting on Live 8 on Saturday, another iPod site threw up a token Live 8 story of their own. Leading with music industry news is a pretty big risk, but the copycatting must mean we're doing something right. Every day's like a big extravaganza over there.
- Seems like I can recall saying that I was quite sure that the pie in the sky unit sales projections being thrown around by analysts for the Mac mini were simply being made up out of thin air to support their original assertion that the thing was going to be a hit, and that eventually, the analysts would begin significantly decreasing the imaginary numbers they were throwing around, lest they get caught in the act. Well, today, one of those analysts reduced his Mac mini sales projections by almost half. Hey, it's not like I didn't tell you how this was gonna play out. Up next will be Mac mini apologists across the web trying to come up with rationalizations as to what's going on, including a whole lot of blaming Apple for not advertising the thing. Then they'll blame Circuit City for not putting up the posters right, and perhaps they'll even blame Apple for not pricing the thing correctly. Sure, these arguments are cut and pasted from the mouths of apologists who tried to explain away the Cube's failures, but it'll be the same story here. They'll blame Best Buy, they'll say Steve Jobs didn't want it to succeed, perhaps they'll even claim that the product didn't sell because a few units had some cracks in them. That was my personal favorite among the Cube excuses. Toward the end, something equally absurd will serve as the final rallying cry as to why the mini failed, and as to why it should be brought back four years from now at an even lower price. This thing has "Cube" written all over it, on all six of its faces. I really hope Steve fires the clown who talked him into this time-wasting exercise.
- Just so I don't have to end on that note, I'll share that after a good fifty listens to the whole album, my favorite track on the new Foo Fighters album just might be "Cold Day in the Sun"...which, oddly enough, is the one that the drummer sings. No, not Dave Grohl. The other drummer. Come to think of it, is there anyone in that band who doesn't playthe drums? In a past life, they could have been a marching band. Have I mentioned how much I love the fact that our iPod site has the guts to lead with an album review each Tuesday?
Man, this is some fun stuff. Sometimes I just can't believe I get to do this stuff for a living.
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