The iPod commeth!

August 31 2004

Well, I guess it wasn't the slow boat after all... my iPod arrived this morning.  Pretty impressive actually, considering that I ordered it at 10 PM on Friday night -- 83 hours to ship a customized (engraved) iPod from Shanghai to Chicago, over a weekend.  Nice job, Apple!
Not sure about that second package -- the one that says it has a delivery address of Indianapolis, Indiana.  FedEx tracking shows that it is in Indy right now, but still at the FedEx warehouse.  Hmmm. Whatever.
I am booked up with calls and meetings this morning, so it will be a while before I can play with it.  One thing I notice is that the instruction book seems to claim I must have a "high-powered" USB2.0 port -- I don't think my ThinkPad T23 has this (though my home desktop IBM PC does).  Hopefully not a real problem?

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Toys  Add/View Comments [17]

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  1. 1  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/bensblog.nsf | 8/31/2004 9:57:02 AM

    Impressive delivery and you might just get 2 yet ;O)

    Didn't realise high & low power applied to USB2.0 as well as USB1.1 not one I've come across yet. Does the iPod charge from it?

    Personally I've been looking at the Creative Zen jukebox devices but, dissappoingly, they don't seem to come with the M-port connector that would make them connect directly to my Creative PC Speakers without having to turn on the PC to play music.

  1. 2  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 8/31/2004 10:19:45 AM

    High-powered = iPod can be charged on that port

    USB 2 is necessary to sync the iPod. 1.1 is just too slow. Remember it was built for Firewire, which a) has enough power and b) is fast enough.

  1. 3  Paul Robichaux http://www.e2ksecurity.com | 8/31/2004 10:34:29 AM

    Y'know, FireWire is the *one* thing that I really wish IBM had included on the ThinkPads. I've had a 600e, a T20, a T21, a T30, and a T40, and none of them have had a FireWire port. The Adaptec FireWire/USB2 PC Card that I use instead can supposedly power bus-powered FireWire devices, but it won't charge my iPod. (I also wish that Access Connections worked properly on the T40, but hey, that's just whining...)

  1. 4  Bruce Elgort http://www.BruceElgort.com | 8/31/2004 10:43:22 AM

    Do the new iPods come with a USB cable now? The orginal ones required a separate purchase of a USB 2.0 cable kit.

  1. 5  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 8/31/2004 10:45:05 AM

    IBM had Firewire at least on the X31. But they decided to drop it when USB 2.0 came out. Digital video cameras still use Firewire as the transfer method, but you would want a Mac for that kind of application anyway.

  1. 6  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 8/31/2004 10:55:02 AM

    There is a USB cable, yes....

  1. 7  Mike Brown  | 8/31/2004 11:32:02 AM

    Yep, the previous models, which were the first to be advertised as working with USB 2.0, had no USB cable. And you couldn't just use any old USB cable either; it had to be a special Apple manufactured one. They were an extortionate 20 GBP in the UK, and in typical Apple fashion, there were none available to buy anyway. So, we had loads of UK buyers that couldn't even use their 400 GBP iPod when they first bought them!

    I'm glad Apple have learnt their lesson from that debacle, at least. I'd still feel more comfortable with Firewire for the iPod though. That's what iPods are really designed to work with.

  1. 8  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net/bensblog.nsf | 8/31/2004 11:53:54 AM

    "And you couldn't just use any old USB cable either; it had to be a special Apple manufactured one."

    Nothing like a non-Universal Serial Bus connection!

  1. 9  Henry Bestritsky  | 8/31/2004 1:08:28 PM

    You have a T23!?!

    Ed, a high powered executive like you should have the latest!

    What gives?

  1. 10  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 8/31/2004 1:12:54 PM

    I have a T23 because I am a fiscally responsible IBM manager -- until now, haven't had any particular complaint about this machine (other than the hard drive crash and short battery life). I'll upgrade when it's my turn... no sense spending shareholder money before then.

  1. 11  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 8/31/2004 1:28:38 PM

    When I went to work for LPS, they gave me a junky 760 that had no disk space at all, while the PMs who did not need the power a developer did had the latest and greatest. Turns out the disk space problem was because the hard drive had not been cleansed and reformatted and contained over .5 G of images that should not have been there. Got rid of them toot sweet.

    I was later on an internal project in Cambridge. The PM saw the 760 and laughed. This same PM called my boss and told him that if he did not give me a decent machine to develop on, I would have to be rolled off the project. Guess who then got a new machine?:-)

    My T23 I bought is just purrrrrfetc for me, except for a wierd windows (running Win2K) error which does not allow me to open "My Computer", use "Explore" or use IE (The latter is actually a blessing).

  1. 12  kj  | 8/31/2004 9:17:33 PM

    When I first plugged my iPod into the firewire card on my PC, the whole PC instantly crashed and rebooted. I was scratching my head for a while until I realised that my humble power supply could not maintain the voltage on the motherboard once the iPod started charging.

    Fingers crossed you have no problems like that one!

  1. 13  Turtle http://www.weightlessdog.com/ls2005.nsf | 9/1/2004 4:39:07 PM

    Come on, Ed... just give the IBM up, and go get an iBook or a PowerBook. I haven't touched my old Dell laptop since getting my iBook 933 -- eight hours of battery life, light weight, perfect integration with the 20Gb G3 iPod I bought last summer, and wireless as anything.

    Oh, and two "high power" USB 2.0 ports and a Firewire... $1094. They're even cheaper now. If you could just persuade Maureen that a Designer client for the Mac is a good and useful pursuit, the world would be a much nicer place.

    Turtle

  1. 14  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/1/2004 7:54:05 PM

    I don't think I would ever live it down if I actually went to a Mac as my home machine :)

  1. 15  Ben Poole http://www.benpoole.com | 9/2/2004 4:19:16 AM

    And why not?? ;o)

    BTW, your cookies still don't work (Firefox 0.9.3, WinXP)

  1. 16  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/2/2004 7:28:49 AM

    Weird, I'm running exactly same setup and it works for me. Check if you did a "remember me" on that comment if it stuck this time?

  1. 17  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 9/2/2004 9:54:07 AM

    Works for me with Win2K, FF 0.9.3