In defense of CmdrTaco, the first generation iPod was a piece of crap. It was expensive, only had 5 GB of storage space, required a FireWire port, and only had software available for the Mac.

'Only' 5Gb? Unheard of in a portable player at that time. There's a reason they advertised 5,000 songs in your pocket - it's because at the time no-one was doing anything close. Most things were either CD player-sized Nomads at 20Gb or 128Mb 5-songs-at-64kbps Flash players like the 32Mb Diamond Rios.

Required a Firewire port and 'only' for the Mac? Yes, because they literally couldn't make them fast enough and sold each and every one of 'em that rolled out of the manufacturing plant. It also acted as a gateway drug that helped Mac sales along their merry way.

They were flying off the shelves long before gen 3. Indeed, I remember the gen 2 (with the daft Quicktime Player-alike buttons, now that really was a mistake) being ubiquitous at the time.

Cheers,
Ian

It's essentially an ATI. It's actually an ArcadeVGA, which is a Radeon with custom firmware.

Interesting link - thanks. Will see if it works on the Hanterax 24" I've got (MTC9000 I think).

Cheers,
Ian

Apparently I only have 1082 days left to figure out the modelines on my MAME box's original arcade monitor. Given that I have already prevaricated for around 700 days, this is not good news to me...

Cheers,
Ian

Limits to its free service, not to Spotify in general. I've been a paying subscriber for a while and it's fine.

Must admit though that I cancelled my subscription last week. Wasn't anything wrong with the service, which is a good one, was simply that I found I wasn't using it nearly as much as I thought I might.

Cheers,
Ian

Yep, it is. Exactly how officially however...

allstepisodes.com

Cheers,
Ian

So how many people check email on a daily basis? And why isn't that front page news?

There was a time when that was front page news, yes. I remember getting email for the first time ('89, so it had already been going for what - 20 years?) and being astounded. Then discovered newsgroups, saw the web get built etc..

All this stuff was news, but it's happened. The Facebook thing is new, so it's news today.

Cheers,
Ian

To answer my own question: yes, there is..

Cheers,
Ian

Is there any way to stop the tabs in the tab bar from animating and sliding around? Prefer the old way if possible.

Cheers,
Ian

You do know Apple have been going a lot longer than 97, right? The first time I came across 'application' being used was on the Mac platform, then it spread to most GUI platforms shortly afterwards (GEM, Windows).

There may or may not have been an earlier use, but that actually is the first time I came across it. I'd be interested to see if there's any use of it which predates the 80s, because until then I'd heard things referred to has as 'programs' or 'systems' but never 'applications'. It honestly doesn't strike me as likely that Apple invented it, but I never came across it anywhere else and if someone knows otherwise I'd genuinely like to hear.

Cheers,
Ian

"You don't really think that the car manufacturer actually pays anything like those prices, do you? "

Not in the slightest, no. They're likely paying less than the 50p I could buy it at myself at an electronics store. Yet they charge me hundreds extra for something that was commodity back in the 80s when I was learning how to code.

In-car tech is a serious, serious rip-off.

Cheers,
Ian

There was a poll some time ago, must admit can't remember if slashdot or reddit, about the most overpriced piece of technology you use.

My answer would be car-related. From the ludicrous stereo to the 50p light snesing diode that seems to translate to hundreds of pounds when translated into the phrase "automatic headlights", in-car tech is ripe for commoditisation. An open platform will do wonders for this, even if 'open' isn't the libre definition but simply a published API.

Cheers,

Ian

"Which is why they'd probably never go for it. A business model that is incompatible with DRM? Are you mad!?!?!?

There's this tinsy little online place does it somewhere. Err...ah yes, iTunes Music Store. That's the one. DRM free and iTunes has an option to transcode to a lower bit rate when transferring to an iPod.

Cheers,
Ian

Interesting. So this is false then?
Mac Rumors: Lion Core2Duo Minimum.

Cheers,
Ian

True, but I like what I'm hearing about Lion and if I want it I may have to upgrade to get it.

That's fine though - just means it's the start of another five year cycle. There's no desperate rush for these things.

Cheers,
Ian

"For example Patti Hauseman stuck with her five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning before she bought a new computer for Christmas"

Yep. I have a five year-old Mac Mini which I upgraded the CPU in (1.5 CoreSolo->2Ghz Core2Duo), a three-year old MacBook Pro, my wife has a five year-old MacBook (the original one). They are all doing fine for the moment, though ominously it looks like Lion is 64-bit only and so the original 32-bit MacBook will have to go.

This isn't a Mac-only thing either. I'm sure someone would be able to point me at their five year-old PC laptop and say pretty much the same thing - basically unless you're doing really demanding tasks or gaming, anything from the last five years is fine.

I have two applications where I wish I had slightly more modern hardware - Logic 9 (music production) stutters at times when I use a lot of audio effect plug-ins, and I wouldn't mind more than 4Gb so that I could run virtual machines a bit more smoothly. That's it - my day-to-day existence is more than catered for with this hardware, indeed it's pretty much overkill.

Cheers,
Ian