Discovery Show: iPod

Back to the history to review the birth and revaluation growth of Apple's iPod, it is a really extraordinary and existing story of Apple and Steve Jobs in the recent history. iPod is just a device MP3 like, but Steve grabbed the opportunity and brought Apple back from its status edging to close to today's strong company with lines of great products.

I switched to Apple computer, just at home, about one year ago. I had so many trouble to manage my Windows and spent hours to reinstall my Windows numerical times. Finally my only options is to re-image my windows back in case of intolerance slow or crash. My mac life has been so smooth and I have really enjoy my work and web browsing after work. My family members are all very happy with this change.

This show is from a Chinese blog, which is very popular one on Mac issues and news. The show actually is from Discovery Show with Chinese subtitles. The show is also available from youku.com, a Chinese youtube web site. From there you can also see some other related Apple shows.


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

The story is about iPod. You can easily relate it to Apple other products such as iPhone, Apple TV and recent Mac Mini with unlimited OS X server. Apple is very intelligent to find its way to broad its market and to fight against Microsoft.

New Airport Extreme Station

Actually before Apple released the new Airport Extreme Station (AES) last week, I got an Airport Extreme Station (AES) last month on September 5, 2009. I replaced it with my LinkSys router which is a nice model with VPN feature. The main reason I wanted the switch is that AES has a USB port to support USB devices, in addition to its wireless WiFi feature. I prefer to have AES to connect to my external HD from there as my Time Machine backup. This would separate my iMac from the backup HD and make my Mac system much safe. With this USB port, I'll be able to add a USB hub to connect multiple USB devices to my local home network.

Last week, Apple had several great new products released, and AES was one of them. According to the new model's specifications, the new AES has fast performance in dual 2.4GHz and 5.4GHz bands with 25 percent faster than the previous generation AES, the one I got just one month ago(actually it is close 2 month time). Last night, I suddenly realized that it was close the end of October and my AES was in September. In theory, it is one month time, or I could say I got it "last month". Then I decided to try an exchange, heading to the local Apple Retail Store at the Market Mall.

The store staff told me initially: "we do product exchange normally within two weeks. For your case of one month's time, I have to ask my manager".

"Please let me do the update. You know, this is the case that Apple updated the product just last week. The new one has much better performance than this one. I really appreciate if you could exchange my to the new model."

Soon he returned from the back. "OK. You are lucky. My manager said that it is OK to exchange the product". he told me.

"Oh, that's great", I was exited even though I was expecting that I may get through. He took the product and asked me to grad one from the shelf. "I just grab one?", I was hesitated.

"Yes, go to take any one".

Within seconds, I got a new AES box. He gave me a receipt as my exchange paper copy. My face filled with big happy smile and then went back to check other new Mac products.

Magic mouse is so nice and beautiful! I tried it to scroll with fingers. It feels responsive. I really enjoy it. The MacBook is also a very nice product. iMac 27" looks great. I played some shows from iTunes and Quick Time Player. The screen is awesome! Compared to my current 24" iMac I got last March (in 2008), this one has all the double features: dual core CP, 4GB Memery, and 1TB HD, as well as better ATI graphics, wireless keyboard and Magic mouse, and 27" 16x9 wide screen, the price is cut from $23,00 to $17,99! That's my next thing I'll get soon.

iMovie 8.0.5 Update

New update is available today: iMovie 8.0.5 update. Based on an article by Roughly Drafted Magazine, here is an abstract of the update:

Apple has created a new video format called iFrame for use by camcorders, allowing optimized import into iMovie for editing.

...javascript:void(0)

By floating the new iFrame format using the same standard MPEG-4 H.264 video, Apple hopes to simplify the import process for consumers, making it easier and faster to ingest camcorder video for editing.

Here is the space comparison:

Commad: df -lak	Used(Kilobytes in 1024-blocks)
Before	...3,860
After	...4,408
Difference (A-B)	548