MiguelitoNet

I started a short reply to a comment on the blog entry at Robert Scoble’s site I referred to in my last entry.. after it grew in length, I decided to cut and paste it here as well.

Re: Post by Adam Lasnik

==
– Aesthetics… my goodness, why is this so important? Maybe it’s a teen thing and I’m just
feeling like an old fogey now, but I couldn’t care less how my music player looks or how ‘cool’
it seems or how stylish it is. Does it play my music? Does it sound decent? Is it reasonably
easy to use? Great. Then it just comes down to cost, plus a few other issues like reliability
and so on.
==

You know, I used to think the exact same thing. I just couldn’t understand why Mac lovers were so loyal to Apple…

…and I really couldn’t understand why apple put so much into the look of their hardware. About 6 months ago, I finally decided to buy my first Mac. I’d been drawn over by OSX and it’s seamless integration with X11 apps. As a Unix sysadmin, I used to use linux on a PC laptop, but found that too many new ones would use chipsets that weren’t supported as well, and I also like the iMovie/iDVD stuff that came in OSX, so I bought a 17″ powerbook.

Ever since then, I get it… I understand why people are so loyal to Apple and why Apple puts the time and effort into the aesthetics. Hell, just the power adapter for the pb is nice… compact, has retractable prongs that the cord wraps around, and is changeable from plugging directly into the wall (with retractable plugs) to a longer 3-pronged cord for more reach. Since I bought the pb, I’ve bought a 40gig iPod along with an iTrip.. was going to buy an MP3-cd player for my car.. now I don’t want to. I’ve also purchases an iSight, and more apple accessories.. and they’re all far more usable and elegant then any PC equipment I’ve owned.

Don’t label me as some mac fanatic either. I still own several PCs.. my server at home is running linux, and I have an opteron based box for linux work and for games; windows is relegated to a game platform for me.. that’s all it’s good for IMO, I wouldn’t even have it for games if I weren’t such a junkie when it comes to the latest games. But I do all my interactive work on my mac, along with tons of remote work on unix boxes (linux, HP-UX, solaris, etc) seamlessly.

Oh, and before I bought the iPod, I’ve owned the following mp3 players: Rio. Rio 64meg (the translucent blue one), Rio 500, a 20gig Nomad, and an NEXii. None of them had near the ease of use, nor features that are on the iPod (the nomad came close but the UI sucked). I never used any of the others 1/2 as much as I use the iPod. I came close with the NEXii, but getting songs onto it was so time consuming compared to the iPod. I really only used the nomad once, on a road trip to/from San Francisco (I live in San Diego) after that, the bulky UI and poor batter life made me just set it aside.

Oops.. almost forgot, I also have 2 Audiotrons, which are mp3 (and wma, but I don’t use that) players. But they’re home units and not portable. For that matter, the tivos play mp3s too, but I don’t use that feature either.

Update (2/1): I find it odd that I posted this comment on Scoble’s site days ago, but it doesn’t show up if you pull up the comments. Hmm…

Posted in: Comments on other blog entries by Miguelito /