iPod not hard to use, but article hard to stomach

Here's what I'm thinking on this fine Monday morning:

One little detail: Kudos to the folks who thought they could slap together a supercomputer in the University of San Francisco gymnasium this past weekend by having volunteers bring in their own PC's and then daisy-chaining them all together. It was an admirable goal, to say the least. But am I surprised that they failed? No, not at all. Clearly, they were at least partially inspired by Virginia Tech's successful construction of a supercomputer last year using only off-the-shelf computers, but the San Francisco folks apparently missed one little detail: Virginia Tech used Macs. It's not the only reason that VTech succeeded and USF didn't, as there were clearly other factors involved (such as the fact that USF was using borrowed, used computers). But if Apple really wanted to drive home the point, they'd send a team out to USF to hook up with the organizers of the original event, put out the call for Bay Area Mac users to bring their Macs to that exact same gymnasium, and when it succeeded, make a huge deal out of it. But somehow, I don't think it'll happen.

iPod not hard to use, but article hard to stomach: In what just might be the most bizarre article written in iPod history, this one manages to label the iPod as "hard to use" right in its title. Of course, most of the article is about companies offering to rip iPod users' entire CD collections to AAC for a fee, and doesn't even try to make a case for anything about the iPod being "hard," but I suppose that doesn't matter. What I think the article signifies is that the iPod has become such a wide-ranging cultural phenomenon that so many journalists from so many walks of life are attempting to cover it, that some of them just have no idea what they're writing about. Oh well, makes my job easier. I actually have an iPod. The person who wrote that article clearly doesn't.

When were we talking about cars, again? Showing that you never quite know who's reading, or perhaps merely proving the tendency for nearly any discussion board to stray wildly off topic, the logs show that my recent article about the rise and fall (and fall and fall) of Gateway somehow managed to become fodder for discussion on the official Audi discussion board. What's ironic (beyond the fact that an automobile forum was so concerned about computer retail stores) is that the only criticism they made about my article was that it talked too much about Apple. I guess it's okay for them to talk about Gateway on an Audi site, but it's inappropriate for me to discuss Apple on an Apple-themed site. Oh well, just goes to show what a tangled web the web is.

MUG meeting today: In case you missed it, the April meeting of the billpalmer.net online Mac User Group is this evening (via iChat/AIM), and if you're not already a member, it's not too late to sign up. Just head on over to the MUG page and it'll take you a good four seconds to join. You can check out tonight's official agenda here.

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