I had often wondered what kind of hardware was behind Flickr. In a post on the Flickr Blog about some hard drive failures, Stewart shares a fun hardware fact.
Fun fact: we have more than 200 harddrives in production in Flickr. Crazy! And 200 GB of RAM.
… and I thought I was hardcore with my 280GIG of hard drive space and 1GIG of RAM. (Well, I did a year ago)
I just wanted to make a short post here celebrating the fact that Ocell.Blog has surpassed 10,000 hits since I added the hit counter. (My computers are not counted in the statistics) I’ve been blown away by a recent increase in traffic, and I’d like to thank everyone for stopping by. I’d especially like to thank any regular readers I may have picked up, and I promise I will be able to post on a more regular basis soon.
Thanks again everyone!
I’ve finally got my iPod decked out with all of the proper equipment. The main component of this iPod setup is the Belkin iPod Auto Kit. This is a charger that plugs into the dock connector at the bottom of the iPod (pictured right), and it also provides a 3.5mm stereo audio output on the power plug. I have a 4-port cigarette lighter hub wired behind my dash, all hooked to a switch at the back of my center console. I’ve got an audio cable running from the Belkin charger up to the auxilary input of my car’s CD Player. So when I plug my iPod into the Belkin cable, it is supplied with power, as well as patched into my car’s audio system.
I also just got a DLO Leather case for my iPod, which I’m loving so far. The belt clip on the case fits perfectly in my Body Glove cell phone mount I have on my dash next to my CD Player. All in all, I think I’ve got a pretty slick iPod car mount setup.
I have to admit, the iPod delivers some pretty substancial base. My 2 12″ subs have never hit as hard as they do with the iPod supplying the source audio. However, while the lowest lows are exaggerated, the mid lows and mids sound like they’re cut dramatically. It’s not horrible sounding, but hopefully some time in the near future I’ll upgrade my head-unit (my Aiwa is nearly 5 years old now) with something that gives me more power over the EQ.
This is an update to my previous post about USB not working between my iPod photo and my Powerbook G4.
I went to my local Apple Store and took my iPod and Powerbook up to the Genius Bar (after a 2 hour wait, mind you) and had the resident expert take a look at my situation. He was able to get my iPod to sync with a PowerMac tower through USB, but he couldn’t get it to work on my Powerbook. He tried with a Firewire cable and it worked instantly. He asked me to get a new iPod Firewire cable from the rack, and after checking it out of inventory he gave it to me. Excellent customer service, and I am very happy that my problem is solved.
However, I still think there must be a problem between the USB chipset in the Powerbook and the new iPods, as I know I’m not the only person who’s had this issue. Hopefully if there is indeed a problem Apple will address it publicly instead of relying on users to use up their one complimentary customer service call to get a Firewire cable sent to them.
I picked up a new 30gig iPod photo from CompUSA last weekend. I wanted to grab the 40gig with dock and firewire cable, but they were fresh out of stock, and since I was doing an extended warranty replacement of my Rio Karma (I miss it dearly! More on that later) I was restricted to choose from CompUSA’s stock. As you may know, the new iPod photos, in a cost-cutting move by Apple, only include a USB cable and no longer come with a firewire cable. I had read angry posts from Apple users, but I felt like there was no reason to really get worked up about it because Macs have USB 2.0 and there would be little difference for the user. Looks like I underestimated things.
My music library is on my Windows XP machine, so when I unpacked my iPod I set it up with Windows. Everything went smoothly and my music was loaded onto it through USB in no time. Now, I also want my iCal and Contacts information on my iPod using iSync, so I took my Windows formatted iPod over to my Powerbook and plugged it into the USB port. “Do Not Disconnect” started flashing on the screen of the iPod, but nothing happened on the Powerbook. I have mass storage enabled on the iPod, so if anything it should have showed up as a removable drive on my desktop. However, nothing happened. I launched iTunes but it froze. I was unable to Force-Quit iTunes, and even trying to reboot the computer kept prompting me to Force-Quit the frozen application. I was forced to hard-reset my laptop by holding down the power button.
I figured maybe the iPod hadn’t been formatted correctly on my Windows machine. Once my Powerbook was back up I plugged in the iPod and launched the iPod Updater application, the program that updates firmware and formats the hard drive of the iPod. The icon for iPod Updater bounced up in down in my dock for a couple of minutes, then stopped, and nothing ever launched. iPod Updater was frozen just like iTunes was earlier. Again, I hard-reset my Powerbook.
I started doing some investigation and after a few days I found some posts on the Apple Discussion Boards where other users are having the exact same problem. New iPod photos are not being recognized by Mac computers. It turns out that these users have no problem getting their iPods to work with a Firewire cable, but the USB cable will never work. Of course I can’t easily try this because I don’t have any Firewire iPod cables laying around. I suspect neither would other first-time iPod buyers.
So from what I’ve gathered, Apple is selling iPods that will work with Windows computers out of the box, but to work with a Mac computer a $30 cable must be purchased additionally. What an excellent way to alienate the people who’ve made the largest investment in your company (not only buying an iPod, but also buying your computers!). The box of the iPod also makes no mention of this problem, as it states that Mac computers require Firewire OR USB 2.0 to sync with the iPod. This tells me that this wasn’t planned by Apple, but it’s still a pretty huge problem, and I don’t see how it could have gotten out the door.
How should Apple solve this? First of all, they need to find a way to provide free Firewire cables to all recent iPod purchasers. A firmware update will not solve this issue because anyone trying to use their iPod with a Mac is unable to apply said Firmware update. Secondly, any future iPods sold should either have this problem fixed in the unit, or a Firewire cable should be included in the box with explicit explanation of the issue in the documentation.
This is a pretty gross oversight on the part of Apple, and from what I can tell this is not an isolated incident. I will be heading to my local Apple store (I’m lucky enough to have one close by) to see if I can get a Firewire cable or replacement iPod. Hopefully Apple will find a solution that will take care of it’s customers in the near future. The last thing I ever expected was to see Apple shipping a product that didn’t work with it’s own computers out of the box. If you have any experiences with this issue, whether your new iPod photo works with your Mac or not through USB, please post a comment including any actions you had to take to get it to work.
