Linkstew

My initial reaction to the Game Boy Advance SP questioned how comfortable it would be, but now that I've read first impressions and seen all these pictures (including disassembly), I admit I'm warming up to the idea of getting one. I think I'd still like to play with one for a couple of hours before I commit, but both of those articles claim that it's still comfortable to play. We'll see.

I wish that the "Game Boy Advance Crash Test" (wherein they apparently set a GBASP on fire) this article referenced hadn't been pulled, but hopefully it'll be put back up soon.

So Nintendo's releasing a smaller, backlit Game Boy Advance SP (Super Portable?). The one thing I like about this is that it now has a backlight, so I can finally make the decision between buying an official Nintendo product and modifying my original Game Boy Advance with an Afterburner.

The problem is, I don't know if I like the rest of the GBASP's form factor: It looks like my hands would be even more cramped holding that thing, and it looks like the shoulder buttons (which already destroy my hands when I have to use them a lot (*cough* Metroid Fusion *cough*)) are even less ergonomically sound in their placement. And why do I care if it folds up? I don't play my GBA on the road: just in bed. And even if I do play on the road, my existing GBA slips easily into my pocket.

I think the GameCube Game Boy Advance Player might be a better solution for my "play at home on an easy to see screen" needs (because then not only would it be a nice big bright screen, but I could probably use a comfy GCN controller, to boot), but I want to play in bed, too! Why can't Nintendo just release a GBA in the current form factor with the backlight? Blah.

And man, the MacWorld keynote is today, too? With all the rumors that have been flying around about that thing (There's no one place I could easily link, and by the time you read this, things will probably have been announced, so just go check apple.com and/or the webcast of Jobs' speech), I have no idea what to expect. But between Nintendo talking and Apple talking, I'm going to have a lot of reading to do once I wake up.

As I walked around the train tonight, I noticed someone playing a Sega Game Gear. I did a double take, and discreetly stood behind him and watched for a few minutes and got nostalgic.

And you know, the Game Gear's graphics are still on par with what the Game Boy Advance just achieved. Ah well, I got to enjoy the Game Gear in its day and now I get to enjoy my smaller and less battery hungry Game Boy Advance.

I wonder if Sega has a Hall of Failed Game Consoles next to their Hall of Insanely Great Video Games?

I tend to make one trip to the music store about once a month, and on that trip, I'll buy 4-8 CDs. And then I'll rip them, and then I'll listen to the whole glob of them on shuffle, and then one of two things will happen. I will either put two of the albums on my rio, and neglect the rest of them for evermore, or I will be too tired of disc shuffling and file organizing to feel anything like preparing a new playlist and neglect all of the music I just bought.

An iPod would solve all of this, and buying music wouldn't be such a stupid thing for me to do.

What motivates this post? I bought music today. The winners include:

• The Incredible Moses Leroy - Electric Pocket Radio
• Aphex Twin - Drukqs
• Enigma - Enigma 3/ Le Roi Est Mort, VIVE Le Roi!
• Moxy Fruvous - Bargainville
• Barenaked Ladies - Rock Spectacle

There's five hours of music here. To narrow it down to fit on my Rio I'd have to pick about 1/4 of the music, and I'd just do it at random... Bah, I need an iPod.

And if you're wondering why I'm only now realizing how much my Rio doesn't meet my needs, it's because before the iPod, no other mp3 player met my needs, either. The iPod is the first device to meet my storage/size ratio desires, even if the price is a little off.

But. Size, Price, Performance. Pick any two.

Today, Apple introduced the iPod. Let's get the problems I have with the iPod out of the way first:

1. Apple over-hyped it as being a "revolutionary digital device," but it's just an mp3 player. Admittedly, it's a damn good mp3 player, but it's just an mp3 player all the same.
2. The name "iPod" is a lot stupid.
3. It doesn't have the ability to record audio.
4. It doesn't ship for 3-4 weeks.
5. And it's going to set me back $400.

Yeah, I'm already sold on this as being a replacement for my aging Rio 500. What does the iPod do above and beyond my Rio?

1. Well, it's got something like 40 times the storage of my Rio (80 if you don't count the external memory I added).
2. It has a built in battery, so I'll stop blowing money on AAs.
3. It automatically syncs with iTunes. I update the 128 megs in my Rio something like once a month, just because it's such a pain (USB is ass slow, and picking out 128 megs of mp3s from my many many gigs usually takes me about an hour). Not only would iPod mean more music for me, but it would mean more regularly updated music for me.
4. It's got a much bigger screen with a better and more featureful interface.
5. All that, and it's only about .5 an inch bigger taller than my Rio, .03 of an inch thicker, and .07 of an inch narrower.
6. The iTunes 2 icon is incredibly subtle and cool.
7. And in all honesty, it's Apple.

The only reason I didn't order an iPod today is because it doesn't ship for 3-4 weeks, and I suppose that delay gives me plenty of time to decide how important audio recording really is to me. For just playing music as I walk between classes, etc, the iPod wins hands down.

And to make matters worse, last week Apple feature bumped the PowerBook G4 and the iBook. The machines were so updated, in fact, that if these revisions had been available a month ago, I would have probably bought one instead of getting my PowerBook fixed. In fact, if I hadn't had to pay $800 to get my PowerBook fixed a month ago, I'd be seriously considering buying one of these machines right now. But, that $800 investment I made in my PowerBook G3 means that I'm going to force myself to wait at least one more revision before I actually upgrade.

So, what's so great about these revisions? Well, the iBook is not only up to 600 mhz, but it also finally features a 100 mhz bus! But that's nothing compared to what they did to the TiBook... Well, let's look at the $2999 model. Above and beyond the previous top of the line the 500 mhz TiBook, the system comes with a 133mhz system bus, a 667 mhz processor, a larger battery, a better power supply, a better graphics card, more video memory, way more system memory, gigabit ethernet, and a bigger hard drive. The only, and I repeat only thing that I can't get in that system is a combo DVD/CDRW drive, and that's something that I expect the next revision to have. But that $2999 TiBook is quite a powerful machine at quite a good price. And the TiBook now offers enough of an upgrade over my Pismo that I'd be willing to give up my dual batteries for the increased power.

So. No laptop upgrade. I'd love to upgrade, but I'm exercising will power here, and forcing myself to hold out for the next revision. But! I'm 90% sure I'll be getting an iPod once they ship. And conveniently, I'll probably be able to sell my Rio 500 to subsidize the purchase. =)

Or hm, maybe I should wait for the first iPod revision... Ah, decisions!

Hey, Nintendo agrees with me -- "Size Does Matter." To understand where this is coming from, you could read all my old ramblings about the size of the Xbox, or just look at this picture of an Xbox next to a Gamecube.

These images came from this article and this article at Planet Gamecube -- if you're interested in more Gamecube coverage, they're worth checking out.

Browsing around today, I came across an italian mac website with pictures comparing the size of the new iBook to the size of the old iBook and to the size of the TiBook. It also has pictures of how Mac OS X might look on each of those machines.

MacNN also posted pictures of the new iBook compared to several older machines. The most interesting thing about these pictures is that the new iBook is still as thick as my PowerBook, though it has a much smaller footprint.

Sheesh, I talk enough about size that I might as well make a whole category for it... Well, since it doesn't hurt anything... Done =)

Back when the Xbox was first revealed, no dimensions were distributed, so I made some educated guesses about how big the system would be: About four inches tall, and about a foot in each direction.

Well, The Magicbox has some comparison shots up showing that it's actually bigger still than I estimated... And I thought I was erring on the side of too big! Since the magicbox lacks any way to link directly to a story, here are links to a top view, a 3/4 view, a side view, and a controller view of the Dreamcast, the Xbox, and the PS2. The PS2 is a full foot wide, making the Xbox about 14 inches across, while it's between 10 and 12 inches deep, and it's just about 4 inches tall. (The PS2, for references, is 12 inches wide, 7 inches deep, and a little less than 3 inches tall).

Then we pull in my comparisons of the Game Boy, the Gamecube, and the Apple PowerMac G4 Cube, which I did here, and we see that while the Gamecube is probably about as tall, if not taller, than the Xbox, you could fit AT LEAST four Gamecubes on top of the Xbox. More if you started cutting your Gamecubes into pieces.

Apparenly, Even the Japanese were laughing at how huge the Xbox is. And remember, folks -- those vents on top of the Xbox aren't just for looks. No stacking stuff on top of it, or you'll have some singed silicon smelling up the place!

I noticed it at The GIA but apparently other sites also reported on these leaked pictures of the Xbox. First, have I mentioned recently how much the name of the machine pisses me off? Well I hate it, but apparently nothing's gonna change their mind, ever.

So let's look at those pictures at the GIA, shall we? First we see a shot of the thing from an interesting angle, but frankly, I think it makes the xbox look fat. Scrolling down to the bottom and skipping the controller for now, we see a picture of the Xbox's ass, and it gave me just the thing I needed to figure out just how fat it's ass was. See that ethernet port? Built in measuring device! It tells me that the Xbox is going to be apprimately a foot wide (and have a square foot print (hahah... pardon the pun), based on the perspective shot), and about four inches tall. Now, let's compare my estimate to a couple of the other big players. First, compared to the GameCube, the Xbox is more than twice as wide and twice as deep, and about a third of an inch shorter. Compared to the Dreamcast, the Xbox is about 4 1/2 inches wider and deeper, and about an inch taller. And I can't find the dimensions of the PS2, but it's a big ass machine, too. The point is, the Xbox and PS2 are big machines that are going to sit around, unlike the N64, Dreamcast, GameCube, etc, that I will actually carry around with me. Portable versus ridiculous.

Now, on to the controller. First, much as The GIA says, it looks like GameCube controller meets Dreamcast controller. Which makes me wish that Nintendo hadn't released their controller so soon. However, a closer look shows the Xbox controller wasting a lot of space, unlike the lean mean GameCube controller. Xbox may have copied the layout of the GameCube's buttons, sticks and pads, but the Xbox didn't pick up on all the details of the GameCube controller. First, the Xbox conotroller has yet another orientation for the A B X Y buttons, just to further confuse matters. Now Nintendo, Microsoft and Sega all put their buttons facing different directions. Xbox didn't pick up on making a bigger cental button and making all of the buttons identifiable by touch, however, which is probably the best thing about the GameCube controller. Also, the controller kind of looks big and klunky. Oh well, it's one of those things I'll have to hold to assess.

But I really don't hate the Xbox, just the name. If it weren't for the name, I'd be much more positive about this thing. It's just that the name pisses me off to no end.

Would you look at that, they both start with a G. So, out of curiousity, I compared the size of the G4 Cube and the Gamecube, and what I found kind of surprised me.

When I first saw the Gamecube, I mentally classified it as being "about the same size as the G4 Cube". However, that is not, in fact, the case. It's clear (the base of the G4 cube, that is) that the top of the Gamecube is just a little small than the G4 Cube, but when you compare the height, that's where you see the real difference.

I do like how nintendo was careful not to compare the height of the Gamecube to the height of the N64. And while they might claim that the Gamecube is small, I'm pretty sure that the Dreamcast is actually smaller, though the the Gamecube controllers are definately smaller and better than those of the Dreamcast. However, I'm not going to make a mockup of the sizes of those, because someone made this quicktime movie comparing the sizes of the dreamcast, the gamecube, and the monstrous ps2 that I found a link to from IGN but I lost the exact link. Poke around over there if you're interested in who made it.