This overpricing of hardware, is known as the Apple Tax. Apple tries to make it impossible to install their OS (OSX) onto other vendor’s hardware. But there are groups that are working on hacking the software to work on any hardware. These computers are called Hackintoshes. The first main stream hackintosh device, was the Dell Mini 9, which I know friends have successfully installed Mac OSX on. Since then a number of netbooks have been hacked to run Mac OSX. In my research for this post, I found an impressively detailed compatibility chart for hackintoshs. With this number of netbooks being able to run Mac OSX, the question has to be asked, how does the Macbook shape up to other laptops. Below is a table comparing the Macbook to one of the more expensive netbooks in the compatibility charts.

Name	ASUS EEE PC 1000HA	Apple MacBook
Price	£250	£800
Processor	Intel® Atom™ N270, 1.6GHz	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz
Hard Drive	160GB	250GB
RAM	1GB DDR2 SO-DIMM	2GB DDR3 SDRAM
Screen	13.3-inch – 1280 x 800 pixels	10.1-inch – 1024 x 800 pixels
WIFI	b/g/n	a/b/g/n
Network	10/100 Ethernet	10/100/1000 Ethernet
Bluetooth	Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR	Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
USB	£250	£800
Mouse	Multi-Touch trackpad	Multi-Touch trackpad
Optical Drive	None	DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW
SD Card Reader	Yes	No
Audio	Head Phone & Mic-in	Single input/output jack
WebCam	1.3* megapixel	1.3* megapixel
Colours	White, Black, Pink, Blue	White
Weight	1.27Kg	2.13 kg

Admittedly this is a bit like comparing apples to oranges (mind the pun) as the speed of the Macbook is far in a way better than the netbook, but as for features, I think the 1000HA stands up pretty well. For many the £550 difference, could be a months rent and for me, it is a large percentage of my monthly wage. I think personally that I may end up getting a Macbook Pro, but I am not sure that I could talk others into doing the same.

What is the reason for this? People complain that they don’t want to carry around lots of devices with them. How lazy are these people? Music players like the iPod Nano or creative zen series fit easily in a jacket pocket with a phone. It is not like anyone carries a brief case anymore, all most people have to carry these days, is phone,wallet and keys. You can’t carry a music player to? Personally, I have a Nokia phone, iPod touch and a Casio camera, which is how I like it. Each device is amazing what it does by itself, I can’t see how putting these devices together would give me any gain what so ever. But with all these devices coming together, the standalone devices may stop being sold. There is already talk about getting rid of the iPod Classic. Well I tell these device makers, I am not buying your toaster phone!

Bluetooth The recent updated added Bluetooth A2PD support. However it doesn’t give support for any other uses of bluetooth. For example the iPod can not to be paired with bluetooth headsets. This is seems like an odd move as the same update added a voice memo app to the home screen. Not allowing audio input seems like a move to stop Skype app from users from using a bluetooth headset and help the sells of the iPhone. The bluetooth can only be used with stereo headphones, it can not be used to send pictures, audio files or anything. The bluetooth connection not even be used to send and recieve contact information. I hope that this will be fixed in later updates.
Fix coverflow This is something that has been broken since version one of the iPod touch/iPhone. If your viewing music and turn the device to it’s side then, it shows the album art in coverflow view. This is very nice and very easy was of finding music, however turn the device while browsering either podcasts or audiobooks, then the current podcast/audiobook is shown surrounded with all the music cover art. It should really show the other podcasts/audiobooks so that they are be browsed this like. This may seem like a small thing, but it hasn’t been fixed in all the updates to the device. Other libraries such as TV shows and movies can not be viewed in coverflow.
Battery indercator Something that was added to the new iPhone update and not the iPod OS 3.0 update was the battery indercator. This seems like such a small thing not to include, but on a portable device, battery life is all important. Not including this is just lazyness on apple’s part.
Remote speakers One of the little known features of iTunes is the ability to add remote speakers is called airtunes. AirTunes takes the music from the iTunes library on your computer and sends it wirelessly to any stereo or speakers in your home. At the moment is only used in Airport Express and Apple TV, but this functionally could be extremely useful in an iPod. If added, you could listen to your music library streamed to your device, while around the home. As many people have more music on their PC when on the iPod itself. This is the reason why this hasn’t been implemented, as it would MIGHT drop the sales of a 32GB version of the iPod touch. I still think apple should add this in, as promotes the airtunes feature which many people do not even know about.
iPod gestures One of the problems with the iPod (and iPhone) is that as a media device, they are not user friendly. For the most part, most iPod/MP3 players are used on the way to work/school or in the gym. At both of these times, your hands are busy, driving, holding things or handling machines. The device needs at least one hand and eyes contact to even change tracks, as the device most be unlocked using the screen, unlike other music plays with buttons. The perfect way of fixing this would to add gestures. Pictured right, the user wouldn’t even need to look at the device.
Alert clock One of the thing that really holds the iPod touch from being a good alarm clock is the fact that songs can not be used in built-in alarm clock. I can not explain why this is, the Ipod touch and iPhone both have a loud speaker that could be used for this. The options that are given are a limited selection of what sound like default text tones from a 1998 nokia phone. As applications can not be set to run in the background, this can only be fixed by apple.

What would you add in if you had the chance? Leave your comments below.

It was only months later until I back into the service, because when watching Jonathan Ross show, Stephen Fry was a guest on the show and both of them were talking about having twitter accounts. I thought that if Stephen Fry was on the service, he might have something interesting to say, so I might as well give it a go. How wrong could I be, the other day, he posted before and after pictures of his haircut. I mean come on, how vain can a person be to post that. It turns out that they are a number of so call famous people on twitter. All of them seem to think that everyone is interesting is every little fact of they lives.

So back to the question in hand, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing is my answer. I think that is everything wrong with the internet, as it is short form content (as there is a limit of 140 characters) for those that have a very short attendation spans. It allows people to be extremely vain and talk about the stupid manusha of they lives. The worse example of twitter is the story of the man who twittered the results of a trail before the judge read out the judgement, which has caused a mistrial. The only use of have got from it has been a couple of links to interesting projects or videos. They are other services for this, such as delicious and Digg that are much better for social bookmarking.

If you interesting in following me, I am @thespacedmonkey. It automatically imports the posts for this blog and I do, from time to time post interesting links up there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother..

	BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ The BBC puts all their original content from TV and radio from the last 7 days on the Iplayer. A copy can be downloaded to your PC and kept for 30 days. There is also a web based version that uses flash, like youtube that can be streamed online and can be viewed full screen. It doesn’t only work in your browser, but also works on the IPhone/Ipod Touch, Wii and Media Center/XBOX 360. There are some really good shows on the iplayer, like Mock the week and Nevermind the Buzzcocks. This is an amazing service, easy to use, quick and lots of great content.
	ITV Catchup http://www.itv.com/catchup/ ITV were extremely slow about getting around to putting their content online unlike the other channels. The most important thing to note about ITV’s service is that it requires the installation of Microsoft’s Flash like plug-in called SilverLight. The biggest problem with this service is that there is nothing good on ITV, so there is nothing to watch.
	Channel 4 http://www.channel4.com/watch_online/ Channel 4′s is very impressive offering, as it includes many of the American shows it has the rights to in the UK. My personal favorite is My Name is Earl. The range of content is impressive. Viewing the content requires Windows Media player 11 and a large download of DRM codex. This means that you must be viewed on a Genuine version of Windows XP or higher, meaning I can watch anything on my Macbook.
	Channel 5 http://demand.five.tv/Home.aspx Channel 5 seems pretty good as well, it uses Flash and includes American content like my beloved House and Home and away. The only problem that it requires you to create a user.

These are just all the web based video that is just coming out the UK, there are lots of other services from America, many of which can not be accessed from the UK. There is one site, revision3, is a completely internet based Television network. It is mostly geek shows but there is really entertaining stuff on there like Diggnation, The totally rad show and Tekvilla.

With all those options, you now have no reason not to be glued to your Computer’s screen.

Normally I don’t write posts on my web site personal site about computers, I have another blog called ComputingCorner for that but this time, I don’t feel like I can help myself. For Christmas I was lucky enough to get myself a brand new Macbook and I most admit that I love this thing. As a person that does computing and a little web designing this thing is prefect. It really has changed my life at University to have a working laptop in my lectures. The only thing that I have not enjoyed about this wonderful computer is the number of people that talk to me about it. I can’t seem to get it out of my bag without someone wanting to explain why their laptop is better. I am really am sick of it. The number of people that talk rubbish about Apple’s computers, is amazing. Some of these people have shocked me with what they think you can’t do or just sillyness. For example, you guy told me that you can not print on a Mac. I am sorry but WHAT! I have installed three printers on my macbook and have not had a single problem with any of them. In fact it was easier than installing a print on Windows. I have also heard that Macs are really slow, which is the stupidest thing I have ever heard as my macbook boots and runs faster than most high end Windows laptops.

Now you may as, oh, look just another Apple fanboy saying how much he loves his laptop. I have talked before about how much I hate the Iphone. I really hate Apple most of the time, the way that everything is closed off or locked down. But as computer makers, they can not be faulted. It just seems like the people who design Mac PCs use a computer and know what users what. They was things to work seemlessly together and not to have muck around to get things to work. For example, in the built in email client, Mail, when I installed my Gmail account to try it out, all I had to do was put in my email address and password then pessed enter. The settings for popular email services were already saved into the program. Whereas outlook, I still have to enter in the addresses of the servers.

Lots of people talk about the fact that there are no games for Mac’s which isn’t true as games like Gears of War and UT3 coming and there is also Halo. I don’t play PC games anymore anyway anyway, I have an Xbox 360.

To some up, I love my Macbook, but that doesn’t make me a fanboy. I just like having a well design, well thought out computer to use.

In case you didn’t heard, Apple’s much fated touch screen mobile phone the Iphone has finally hit the UK. It has only been a matter of days and I am already sick of the thing. The amount of press coverage this stupid little device has got makes me want to be ill. It seems to turn everyone from the press to the nerds into small children, who want to play with a new shiny toy. I can’t believe how much people are talking about this one thing. Has a fan of new and technology news particularly, the coverage of this small device has blown me away. The best example of this is BBC news website, which is one of the most trusted news web sites in the world, wrote a review. I asked you, how on earth is a review of a phone, news? I try and keep up to date with all the new stuff happening in the world of tech, but the news is all about the iphone. I used to really used to enjoy listening to tech podcasts like Buzz out loud and TWIT but it is nothing but pointless detail about this stupid phone and it is making my life a living hell.

Now you may think that I am just not a fan of Apple, which simply is not true. I can’t wait for Christmas, where I am hoping to find a have a brand new Macbook under the Christmas tree. I am sick of the Apple fan boys, that seem to think that every product that comes out of the Steve Jobs machine is amazing and every product that Apple makes, is going to change the world. It is not like this device, say helps save lives or anything, it is just a MP3 phone. All the Iphone does it disconnect us more from the real world by making it easier to access the internet on the bus.

I have used an Iphone for a while, when I was in Boston on holiday for a week, I went into the Mac store there and had a play with one for a while. I must admit, the thing did impressed me. I played around the picture pinch interface and viewed spacedmonkey on the web browser and was impressed. But after about 10 minutes of playing with the thing, I was already bored. I know that if I had one, I would love the thing and spend all my time, checking facebook on it or hacking it to run Pac-man. I also know that spend for to much time in front of computer screens as it is. I think we should all really think about what is going on with the world and think if we really want to spend more time on our computers by making them smaller and putting them in our pockets.

How they do it ( quote from LibriVox site)

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (through a podcast, catalog, and bit torrents). We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project, and we operate almost exclusively through Internet communications. We have a flat structure, designed to let people do just what they want to do, but we do have several slightly different types of volunteers:

The site only reads only out of copyright books, from sources like gutenberg, so while looking at the titles on offer, remember there will be no Harry Potter or da vinci code. There are still lots of really cool titles, including some of my personal which are

• The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The site has a wonderful catalog system that allows for easy searching, so you can find something that takes your interest. There site also has a Podcast, which is updates weekly, of little shorts and poems. This is a nice site, made by people that give up there time to help others enjoy literature.

Now that everyone seems to have got an IPOD or other mp3 player these days and this is a wonderful idea for helping people access classic stories/novels.

I am sure that many of you are starting to think about Christmas, as the adverts seemed to have already started on TV. Many of you will be thinking about getting yourself a nice shinny new 5.5G IPOD that were released a month or two ago. But have you heard about the Red IPOD Nano?

Choose the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition and Apple will give $10 of its purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

The IPOD is the same price as the other IPODs, at time of writing, £129, from the Apple store. I mean, if you are going to be treating yourself to an IPOD this christmas, you might as well, cut into Apple’s profit to help a good cause. There is more info of the Apple website.

What is the effect of MTV on music promotion and music artist representation?

With the inception of MTV in 1977 as small TV network, it has now grown into a multi-national, multi-billion pound global machine. The effect of the creation of MTV on television, the music industry and the world, is a reflects of active audience of the teenager music fan of the early 80s. At the beginning, many artists used the new music platform to promote their music on an international level and continue to this day. This new platform allowed music artists to promote on a mass scale that made never been seen before. But unlike before the artist would judged on the mainly on the musicality of their song (even though this it is still a factor) or the style of the artist playing live but on the visual shown in their music video. Marketing the video became key because videos were the main focus of MTV because it was easy to show them and quickly becoming a leading source of new music. My hypotheses is that given though MTV has done much good to the music industry as a whole, it?s net effects has been a negative one. In this essay I will descise the negative effect on audiences and artists.

For many artists, the video is, is the only time that most of the audience see the face of person singing the song. Leonard J. Beer is the editor in chief of Hits Magazine, said that, “You can make a star overnight if they make the right video, and if the right magic happens.”( source)

With the idea of an uses and gratifications effects model ?U & G theorists argue that people’s needs influence how they use and respond to a medium (source). The is an audience is in control and choose a media that they feel like compliant their mood. This is a powerful audience and in control that will not just sit down and watch whatever is on. In the case of MTV that if image is something that his audience likes with, agrees or wish they were. This audience in control of their viewing and the new waves of technology and more channels that appeal to every single possible music taste.

The channel MTV switched it?s focus and stopped playing music in the mid 90s (source) to instead air non-music programming like the real world. The role of giving playing music videos to the masses to it?s sister channels such as (in the UK) MTV Hits, MTV2, MTV Base and MTV Dance. Each sister channel heading having it?s own style, iconography, remit and genre of music that appealed to it?s own audience. This divide in programming, denotes the tread of the spit in viewer. MTV decided to narrowcast to audiences and which further dividing music fans.

When researching, I interviewed a 18 year old male (subject A), who didn?t believe that rap music could be shown on the same channel as other types of music. He can be quoted saying, ?Rappers are seen as in it for the money, power and the women. Whereas rock bands and stuff is more about the emotions? This shows that representation the two groups of musicians from different genres having been completely different and that is average viewer is aware of this divide. I found out when interviewing subject A that he picking up on the use of the artist?s image and use generic signifiers like the artist wearing lots of gold. He was very aware of the idea of creating an image and it?s important in music promotion. ?MTV is powerful, lots of times, the first time I heard of an artist in their video.? He denotes that one of his only sources of new music played on MTV.

Whereas interviewing a music fan who was a teenager before MTV (subject B), there was a different reaction. He said ?we would just sit around and listen to music for fun. Sometime we would go out to the gigs but mostly, we would just listen to whatever was on the radio?. This interview highlights important changes in music production. MTV and the modem world as breed music fans that I extremely aware of artist representation. This may explain the raise of the IPod Video sales (source), giving the audience that ability access to their music videos anywhere they are. Also increasingly narrowcasted channels from MTV (and others), which appear directly to specific target audience.

Other primary research, of watching other people watch MTV showed that interest is lost quickly for music channels that do not show exactly what the viewer wants. Viewers are likely to change channels compared to those listening to music to those how I observed listening to the radio. This denotes that those watching MTV are becoming much more picking about what they are watching comparied to those listening to music on the radio. Weather MTV has made this divide in genre or is reflecting a tend in both society and the viewing patterns, my research didn?t give an answer.

Taking an example day in the scheduling of MTV2 and study tends showed interesting resultt. Music videos seem to show in predictable patterns, denoting that the channel uses predefined play lists. Even shows that premoted to be, request shows, seem to show much the same as the playlisted shows. This shows that MTV is very power in what the audience sees, because it chooses what is and is not shown. If MTV so decided not to show a single than it can crush a band?s promotion before it. As main source for promoting where people find new bands and music, this means the audience will never hear about the artist.

To be a success artists must create a song that is MTV compatible. My content analysis showed that, as a tend Songs that are longer than 3 minutes 40 seconds don?t get played. Songs with rude language, all the language is removed and the mouth is blurred out. When research on the internet, I found that many big artists have music videos had banned, such as ?the streets? video for the single ‘Blinded By The Lights’ (source) . Other songs have been gained poor sales from lack of MTV promotion.

My study of play list patterns showed that MTV are really controls what music people see on their music channels, with it being one the main sources new of music for many and choosing what is and what does not appear on music play lists. If MTV decides not to show an artist, it may not get played and sales might not reach the levels that they really should. Radio is still powerful, because it is easy to access to radio and the sales of of IPODs/MP3 players going up. There is little demand for live music, an example of this is the BBC?s live music ?top of the pops? being cancelled after 40 years. Matt cox on the BBC website said ?only 1/2 an hour a week, no competition for MTV? (source).

My focus groups show that audiences are now effected greatly but the image that the video represents. Comparing two songs by the same band under a different name showed that the focus group was effected by the first song which was played with the video and seemed uninterested in the song played and simply talked over it. My focus group showed that watching music video is entertain and there is now a firm link in between audio and visual input of music. What MTV has done for music is relate sound and vision so closely, I band or group can have little musicality but still become big but image alone. An example of this is the success of the crazy frog brand, that replied completely on image.

The power of MTV is dying, with creating a world that buys singles and watches music video is dying out. With the rise of the internet and on demand devices such as SKY+ and the IPOD, many people are deciding not to sit thought adverts on MTV. Originally MTV boasted single and album sales but with the ability to download only some songs from an album on the internet. Since it?s inspection, MTV as piored the music video and created a image aware music industry. The length of popular singles has been shorten to be more compitable with a easily bored audience. Narrowcasting has given audiences access to different styles of music and most tastes are meet with a channel designed that audience.