I’m not sure what’s more annoying, the color choices of the new iPod Shuffle or the annoying way Apple waits until everyone buys one kind of something before they give you any sort of choice. Are there really that many people with that much expendable income going, “Ooooh, new shiny thing!” and buying said shiny the moment it hits the shelves? How many teenagers got a plain shuffle for Christmas and are looking to their birthday for a NEW one in color? It can’t be worth it to tease like this constantly. Can it?
In other tech news…something called Vista(?) became available today. If you’re anything like us, you’ll think about it only when you’re ready to buy a new computer. The last time I ran out and bought a new OS from Microsoft was Windows 3.0 and I can’t tell you what a freaking nightmare THAT was.
I’m not all that excited about Office 07 either. What more can it do? I’ve not seen anything all that exciting in Office since 97.
“Are there really that many people with that much expendable income going, “Ooooh, new shiny thing!” and buying said shiny the moment it hits the shelves?”
Well, yes.
The other day I saw a young man in Target who had his shuffle all bejeweled up as part of his bling. (I am using that term deliberately.)
It is a fashion statement as well as a music player.
(I like my green Mini, BTW.)
The new Office UI is good (if confusingly different from the old one).
The spent a lot of time, effort, and money studying use patterns to put the most commonly used things right in the taskbars, and the most commonly used of the most commonly used in the main one.
Compelling for the home user that just occasionally works on a document or two and already owns a previous version? Naw, unless you need to edit and transfer current-version docs with someone else.