BindApple

All those who know me can acknowledge one fact - I would gladly dress in pink instead of installing iTunes, and pink is (very!!) far from being my favorite color. No matter how much I hate using rough language, some things need to be said(or written), and today the time has come to put forward one statement that may upset some of you: iTunes sucks!

Wait, don't go, I am not one of those simply throwing the rumor/curse, and then dodging the incoming tomatoes/eggs/curses/whatever may come. I said that iTunes sucks, and I also have a few solid reasons to support my words. Probably at least a dozen reasons can be put forward before claiming that iTunes sucks, but I will only give you five. If I miss something really important, feel free to throw some tomatoes at me, and then drop a comment, but before that, here's my top 5 reasons for iTunes suckage...

1. Incredibly high memory usage - and there's no excuse for that. The main reason that I use Pidgin instead of Yahoo! Messenger is the incredible amount of memory taken up by the messenger app from Yahoo!, and that's also the major reason for not using iTunes - there are plenty of better programs who eat less memory. A few times less!

2. No plugins - do I have to add anything here? I guess not...

3. No support for additional music formats - I said it before a few times, and I will say it again - I am 100% against online music purchases, as long as we're not talking about the real thing - the audio CD/DVD. The price is almost the same, but the quality is in a whole different league. Usually, I grab my CDs as FLAC, and so iTunes would be completely useless to me. I know I am not the only one doing this, so...

4. When talking about huge music libraries, iTunes can't handle them! As I said above, I am one of those in the "losless league," but I know some guys having huge music collections - think about two rooms full of CDs, audio tapes and vinyls, and over 300 GB of MP3 files ripped off that collection. This is a "no go" for iTunes, from what these guys are saying, and I have to believe them.

5. The interface and the library manager are both way below one's expectations. Only thinking about iTunes trying to reorganize my files without asking makes me turn red-green-blue, and finally black, with a strong desire to smash it... lucky iTunes, can't be actually smashed, unless I burn the setup package to a CD/DVD, then smash the poor disk...

Other than the above, probably you'll find some more things to add, but I'll stop here. As I was saying earlier, just throw your tomato or rotten egg, then tell me why are you running iTunes on your computer...or why you don't!

If you're here, probably you're an Apple fan...or not. That doesn't really matter to me, or to the purpose of this article. After all, both the iPhone and Nokia's N-Gage are both great (more than just) phones, but I won't get into the "which one is better" tornado. Speaking about raw numbers, Nokia should win, since it has more alternatives to the iPhone than any other mobile manufacturer, if I think well, but the reality seems to be a bit different...

Leaving aside the features, design, and battery life wars, there's the market share war, and this is the most important part of it all, along with the customer satisfaction rate, since a higher customer satisfaction rate will lead to a higher market share, too, in time. After all, there's no glory to be had with a great device that doesn't sell as it should, right? These being said, let's see how's the Apple vs Nokia war looking from this point of view, shall we?

According to J.D. Power's satisfaction ranks, Apple ranked first in the US, with a score of 778 out of 800, well above Research in Motion's 703 for its BlackBerry phones, and way ahead of the industry average of 681.

Even more, those who got into this study claimed that Apple's strength and Internet access as the primary reasons for picking up the iPhone, followed as email capabilities, design, Bluetooth support and keyboard layouts(this is only available for other smartphones, if you ask me...).

Although still behind Nokia in terms of market share, Apple is slowly gaining ground, and while it managed to surpass RIM's BlackBerry, the one who really lost ground because of this move was Nokia. From a comfortable 51.4 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, Nokia went all the way down to 38.9 percent in the wake of iPhone 3G's launch, and I think this should say it all.

Any thoughts? Speaking for myself, I think Apple can really take on Nokia in a few years, especially if the next-gen iPhone will learn from the mistakes of the past.

Just like countless other earthlings, I have some MP3 player. If I think well, there are three categories of music lovers - those that have a player already, those that have more than just one, and those who will get their first portable media player, sooner or later. Sure, some mobile phones can easily replace the MP3 player as we know it, but I think that a dedicated device always does a better job than an all-in-one mumbo-jumbo. Anyway, this is not about the players themselves, but about the cases. "What about the cases?," you may ask.

The answer is a bit complicated, so let me explain... I usually enjoy flowers when I see some nice images with them, but I am not crazy about having them in my room or - even worse - on my desk. On the other side, a "FlowerVest" case for the iPod sounds great - and it also looks great, as you can see in the image above!

Agent 18 is one of the many iPod cases manufacturers out there, and they have just come up with two new iPod Nano 4G cases, namely the FlowerVest I mentioned above, and the(less attractive and original, if you ask me) ClearShield.

The Nano ClearShield retails at $24.95, and has a simple snap on/off design, offering access to all connectors and the Hold switch, being made of clear polycarbonate. This cover also includes Headphone Cord Wrap for easy wire management, but that doesn't make it look less expensive to me...

...but at least I have the Nano FlowerVest to please my eyes with its nice flower design, although pink/light pink or yellow/white aren't exactly my favorite color combinations. Other than the soft silicon flowered protection for your Nano's body, you get clear hard lens protection for your screen, access to all connectors, as well as the Cord Wrap included, all for the same price as the ClearShield.

If you got a Nano 4G and it doesn't have any special protection yet, these are the new iPod Nano 4G cases I wanted to tell you about today. I hope you'll like at least one of them, and - if you decide to purchase one - make good use of it!

A few years ago, around year 2001, if I recall it well, I had a computer with 128 MB of memory. Everything was great, only that, one fine evening, my computer suddenly frozen. Although that was a Windows machine, it was extremely reliable, and I saw more times snow in July than that old computer freeze...except that evening I just mentioned. When I tried to restart the machine - surprise - no response! My memory died on me, and I had no warranty for that one, so I had to purchase a new memory module. Buying another 128 MB module really hurt my budget back then, and I find it really funny now to talk about MacBook memory upgrades...up to 6 GB!

Yup, you read that right - we're talking about a family of memory upgrades for existing and previous generation MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks that can bring your MacBook memory up to 6 GB, and we're not only talking about 6 GB of memory - this is DDR3 memory!

If we consider the fact that DDR3 memory prices are dropping, and grabbing such memory kits from Apple solution providers instead of Apple can save a lot of money, here's what you can get from Other World Computing for your 2008 "Unibody" MacBook 13" and MacBook Pro 15" model:

- 2GB DDR3 Memory Upgrade Module - $65.99
- 4GB DDR3 Upgrade Kit (matched pair of 2GB memory modules) - $129.99
- 4GB DDR3 Memory Upgrade Module - $699.99
- 6GB DDR3 Memory Upgrade Kit - $749.99 (2GB + 4GB modules)

At last, owners of the 2007 "Santa Rosa" model and later (pre-Late 2008 "Unibody") MacBook 13", Macbook Pro 15", and MacBook Pro 17" models can take full advantage of the next deals:

- 2GB DDR2 Memory Upgrade Module - $29.99
- 4GB DDR2 Upgrade Kit (matched pair of 2GB memory modules) - $59.00
- 4GB DDR2 Memory Upgrade Module - $449.99
- 6GB DDR2 Memory Upgrade Kit - $479.95 (2GB + 4GB modules)

Eh, where are those days when 1 GB of memory was like dreaming about cruisin' through the Milky Way? Well, those days are dead and gone, but I can't say I regret that. Who would regret them, after all? 4 GB of memory for only $59? Awesome!

Hmm... it seems the global economic cooldown(some may even call it "freeze") starts to affect Apple, too, although most analysts are expecting that demand for their products won't drop anytime soon. I won't get into details, but everything seems to be great for Apple when looking at those numbers (sales, market share, revenue), apart from a few facts, as you can find out below...

First of all, one sign of "recession" at Apple, if I can put it this way, is lack of innovation. No, I am not talking about the latest iPods or Macs, I am talking about the upcoming ones. What about them? Well, Apple says that its "holiday line-up is set," so there's no room for rumors here. All hardware updates for 2008 have been made, see you next year for some fresh Apples. This Christmas, you won't have any brand new, shiny ones, as you probably expected, but that's life, after all - you can't always get what you want.

Second and last in today's not-so-good Apple news, it seems plans for a whole new triple-decker retail store in New York City have been cancelled by Steve Jobs himself. Back in 2006, Apple signed a 15 year lease for 21-25 West 34th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and previous reports shown that Apple was to build a huge retail store across from the Empire State Building.

Now, it seems the space mentioned above will be put up for sublease, but no confirmation from Apple is available yet. All they said was that "no announcement about that location" has been made. Well, that's what they usually do, keeping things hidden...