Apple's new "Hi-Fi" speakers for iPod misses the boat.

Today, Apple announced the iPod Hi-Fi speaker system for your iPod.

Essentially, it is an iPod dock with speakers for $350. Big whoop. There are already docks with speakers. Where they went wrong (in my opinion) is that they didn't build
Airport Express functionality into it. Not full Airport functionality, but wireless connectivity and AirTunes. Airtunes allows you to send music from your computer to the device over your home network

Sure, you can plug an Airport Express into it, but one of the "selling points" that Apple has on their
web site is

"No need to find a place to hide an unsightly power brick, as iPod Hi-Fi houses all power components internally."

That is defeated by needing to plug it into an Airport Express.

My suggestion would be (Apple, are you listening?), if you aren't going to include Airport connectivity and Airtunes by default, offer a second unit with it built in.

I don't mind the extra cost. The Airport Express is $129. Apple could probably build in the functionality and only charge an extra $100 for it. The $29 discount would make sense because you wouldn't need to include the ethernet port, printer sharing or base station functionality. But even if they charged the full $129 extra, it would be better to have the whole thing as 1 unit.

Poker tip for playing multiple tables at once online.

I heard this tip on a podcast. Don't remember which one. Maybe Ante Up.

I play on an Macintosh Laptop and even with a resolution of 1440x900 I can't see 2 entire tables at one time. I have to have each table overlap the other.

Using Mac OS X's Expose feature is a great workaround. Hitting F10 shrinks everything down and displays every window for the current application clearly. I can then watch all the games at the same time, and click into the one that requires my attention.

As a test, I opened 4 games on Full Tilt. Here are 2 screen shots. The first is the normal view. The second is the reduced screen from Expose that I watch. (NOTE. The screens are clear as a bell. The screenshots are a little less so, because of JPG compression.)

Click on the images to see the full sized screens.





It's Here!!!

Yes, the new MacBook Pro actually arrived a day ahead of schedule. I was a bit busy this weekend, so I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time on it, but my initial impression is "Damn this is nice!"

Universal Binary applications run really fast. Older PowerPC binaries running under Rosetta don't suck. For the most part they are the same speed that they were on my old Powerbook, and I look forward to the updates that will bring them up to "Zippy" status.

I posted some more specific observations in this thread on the Your Mac Life forums.

Congrats to Maren & Jonathan...

My cousin Maren Levine married Jonthan Hefler this past weekend. We are all excited. The family really likes Jonathan, but don't tell him I said so.

New computer really almost here....

I hadn't reported it, but Apple changed their minds, and moved my shipping date to March 18.

However, today I got notification that it's already shipped, and is due to arrive 2/24. Already an indicator of the speed I can expect from the new computer. Happy

New computer not almost here....

Well, good news and bad news... E-mail from Apple...

We have upgraded your MacBook Pro from a 1.83GHz processor to a 2.0GHz processor at no additional cost! We anticipate shipping your upgraded order by February 28, 2006.



So I have a bit longer to wait. I am happy about the speed bump, though and would take that deal any day.

New computer almost here...

I ordered a new MacBook Pro when they were announced at the Macworld Expo last month. Thanks to this handy little widget, I can see that it is scheduled to ship tomorrow. Woo hoo!!!

And, hubba hubba! They've decided to ship it with a faster processor than was originally promised. Happy Valentines day!!!

I placed 3rd out of 1502 in an online tournament.

This Pokerroom.com tournament was a "Lucky Dollar". That means it was only a $1 entry fee, and it was a turbo, where the blind levels increased every 3 minutes. That pretty much makes it a free-for-all where you just have to get lucky. Still, luck or not, I think 3rd place is a pretty good place to be.

Superbowl Ads

Who needs to watch the game, when you can watch all the ads right here...

Yet another site update...

Yup. I am still at it. I reordered some of the pages so they wouldn't be embedded within the about me section, and I added my friend, Dan Rosenbaum, to my links page.