iPod at its peak

Before Christmas, a co-worker told me he had put iPod nano’s on layway for his two kids as their big Christmas gift. But as Christmas got closer he was talking to his older son (age 15) about iPods and his son said that he would rather have a Playstation Portable (PSP) because it plays music too but also plays movies and the best video games. Upon hearing this, his younger sister (about 10) said that was what she wanted too. So the layaway order for the iPods was cancelled and the kids got PSP’s.

I think that was a really big turning point. The iPod has gone from being so cool that you have to have it, to coming up short on features. Yes, the new ones play video that you download from iTunes, but how long will people be satisfied with something that only plays music and tiny videos?

The Palm went through this. For a while it was the hot thing and every business person needed one. They “couldn’t live” without their Palms. I still feel that way about mine and for a while Palm seemed unstoppable. But then Dell and HP took huge chunks of market share by selling more advanced (and more expensive) handheld devices that were almost like tiny laptops (with Microsoft Windows and Office even). Now some people have Blackberries, some have RAZR phones with cameras. Palm has some phones and has licensed its operating system to other phone makers, but a Palm isn’t a must-have. Having a simple, fairly inexpensive device, that only stores phone numbers and your calendar seems like a waste of pocket real estate.

Take a blackberry, RAZR, or even a Palm and add a tiny 20 GB hard drive and who needs an iPod anymore? Maybe you won’t even need the hard drive, maybe you can just get songs wirelessly from music services, satellite, or even your home computer. Apple is still the top of the heap, but I see them getting left behind. The iPod has been a very successful mp3 player, but I don’t know if people will settle for mp3 players for much longer. And Apple can’t change the iPod too much without it not really being an iPod anymore.

Op amps

At first my Sony MDR-EX81 headphones didn’t seem to get that loud. I thought maybe I needed to get an amplifier. When I built my Band Aids battery pack for the iPod, there were already people putting battery packs in Altoids tins. I soon found out that some people were also building amplifiers in Altoids tins. They have a line in from the iPod and a line out to the headphones and make the sound much louder in headphones that require more oomph than the typical ear buds (or for people who just want their music really loud). Susan even told me that her nephew made some of these Altoids amplifiers. So I started researching them around the Christmas holidays.

Continue reading “Op amps”

Bad Engineering

Today I was reading articles from space.com on my Palm. One article concerned the Stardust space probe which is due to come back to Earth on January 15th carrying, what else, stardust that it has collected in space.

The mission is similar to the Genesis probe which also collected space dust and returned to earth. The idea was it would re-enter the atmosphere, deploy a parachute, and then be intercepted gently by a helicopter on the way down to avoid breaking the fragile collection plates sealed inside the probe. Well, the parachutes never deployed, the helicopters couldn’t catch it, and Genesis crashed into the ground at high speed in September 2004, ruining a $264 million science experiment.

Other than “the parachutes failed to open” I had never heard what caused the accident. But they did investigate. There were switches inside the spacecraft that would trigger the release of the parachute by detecting g-forces. At three g’s (as the spacecraft first hit the atmosphere) the switch would engage but not release the parachute until the g forces rose to 30 g’s and then came back down below 3 g’s again when it would be safe for the parachutes to deploy. But the designer at Lockheed put the gravity switch in upside down so the switch saw g’s in the wrong direction and never engaged. But they’re not complete idiots: there was a backup switch. It was upside down too. No one ever caught the mistakes. It would be like putting airbags in your headrest instead of the steering wheel.

Stardust was designed by Lockheed too. Watch out for falling spacecraft on the 15th.

FTSE4good

It’s the beginning of the year so I used this past weekend to figure out how my investments did last year and decide where to put my 2006 installment of my Roth IRA. As you will recall, last December and January I had put the 2004 and 2005 contributions into Vanguard’s Small Cap Value Index. Small Cap stocks had a pretty good run prior to that time and this past year continued to (barely) outpace the Dow and S&P 500 (though medium sized companies did better than all of them in 2005). So I was going to leave that money where it was, but thought it was time to diversify the new contribution into something else.

Continue reading “FTSE4good”

iPod Battery Replacement

I’ve had my iPod now for a little over 2 years. Under optimum conditions its battery lasted 7.8 hours. I ran that test today and came up with only 4 hours. This confirmed my thinking that the battery wasn’t lasting nearly as long as it used to (real world play time used to be about 4 hours and now it is probably 2). The battery was a huge problem with these iPods and prompted a lawsuit with a settlement that I wasn’t able to participate in since I didn’t have my original receipt.

Anyway, the battery isn’t easy to replace because it is glued in place underneath the hard drive and it isn’t easy to open the case without damaging it. Apple had a service where you could mail in the iPod and they would replace the battery for $100. I believe that price is lower now. There are also a lot of third party providers who will do the service or will sell you a battery and provide tools to pry open the iPod.

Well, it’s time. So first I went to my web page because I know it usually has ads for replacement batteries. I found L.A. Computer and iPodResQ advertised there, but I had a really hard time finding the replacement at the former (the ad says $8.95, but actually it turns out to be $12.95 plus $9.56 shipping) and the latter was $28 plus shipping.

I then went to iLounge. They reviewed two reputable replacement services that also offered do-it-yourself kits and gave both A minuses. One was Other World Computer’s system using NuPower batteries. The other service they reviewed was FastMac and their TruePower batteries which have very good instructions and offer a 2-year warranty. All of the batteries offered are 850 milliamp hours (850 mah) which is more than the original battery capacity of 630 mah. Another company offers an 1100 mah battery but it costs twice what the others do. Also, some of the places I found gave you metal screwdrivers to open the case which would probably scratch or bend the iPod.

I finally found a place that was pretty inexpensive, offered plastic tools, and had reasonable shipping rates, Battery Barn. I ordered from them tonight and will follow up with my results. I made a new webpage for other people who might be looking for a new battery:

iPod Battery Replacement