Later this afternoon, 1PM PDT, Bono and The Edge will join Apple’s Steve Jobs to make some form of announcement. It might be that the iTunes Music Store is
opening in more countries or it might be that Apple is releasing a special, limited, U2-branded iPod. This iPod,
according to Forbes, will be black and will come preloaded with U2’s
new album and some of
their back catalog.
I am embarrassed to admit it but I am actually eagerly awaiting this announcement. Partly this is due to the childish, groupie realization that my favorite band and I have something in common: a liking for the Apple iPod and Mac OS X. It’ll give us something to talk about when I stalk them next Spring. Also I am curious if this new iPod will be worth buying. I wouldn’t mind getting an expensive Christmas present for myself and there’s talk the next iPods will be 60GBs and will sport color screens. Unfortunately, these fourth-generation models
might not show up till 2005. If the U2 iPods are simply 20GB, black ones I’ll sadly have to pass. (And watch, they won’t even be
really black, they’ll just be
Colorware black.)
Big surprise, some fans are cynically saying how U2 have
sold out by allying themselves to Apple. This seems a tad disingenuous, since U2 have never been all that pure when it comes to endorsements, tie-ins, and sponsorships. Also, if they were going to sell out, wouldn’t they have joined up with something
big, like Anheuser Busch or McDonald’s or Haliburton? I don’t think that pejorative applies when
you make more money than the company with which you sign. Then again, bigger surprise, it looks like the whole uproar might be
blown out of proportion. Thought so.
Anyway, see you at the
Apple Store later today. …Maybe.
[12:30 PM] Update: The official announcement has not yet been made but
the details have already been released. The
U2 iPod will be 20GBs and is priced at $349. The colors are black and red and, in a nice touch, the band’s signatures are engraved on the back. The
60GB color-screen iPod I was hoping for was also announced, priced at $599. A 40GB model is also for sale, at a hundred dollars less. Shipment for the fourth-generation iPods is 1 to 2 weeks; shipment for the U2 iPod is 3 weeks. My credit card is crying to be let out.
[2:25 PM] Update update: no, I’m not getting a U2 iPod. I’m underwhelmed by the look of it. That’s why simply hanging on to
this image should save me around four hundred bucks (including extended warranty and tax). The iPod Photo however looks like it might be a very nice birthday/Christmas present to myself. I was going to rag on the $150 dollar
Digital Box Set of 400 U2 songs too, but a look at my U2 handmade playlist (which contains every album and studio recording sans
UABRS) only has 199 songs! I wonder what all the rest are. Maybe “unreleased” might really mean unreleased! (And another thing, I guess the event times got mixed up. Apparently today’s announcement was at 10 AM PDT, 1 PM EDT.)
Soon it will be over. No more hourly polls, no more yard signs, no more evening phone calls. The election will be over and, inshallah, the showing will be decisive enough to curtail most of the inevitable contested vote counts. But before we line up at our precinct centers on Tuesday, I wanted to share one final election ad.
What’s scarier than continual VBS exploits? How about these unnerving and spooky links, culled from the archives…
I was caught up in the excitement on Tuesday and impulsively ordered one of the new iPod Photos. Remarkably — especially compared to the wait for my G5 — my iPod Photo showed up just three days later. In fact, it came faster than the Apple Care package I also ordered! Here’s the fun.
I don’t know how true this is, but I heard the bulge in President Bush’s jacket is actually his “Mission Accomplished” flight suit codpiece. It’s worn improperly, obviously, but it’s because Mr Bush has been insisting on dressing himself, “like a big boy”, these last couple months. Speaking of the debates, is the presidential election in two weeks to vote someone in or vote someone out? Maybe I’m confusing it with too much reality TV. Speaking of TV, I heard the final episode of Lost involves the castaways reaching the other side of their island, where they find a man in a white suit and his assistant, a plane-obsessed little person. And, finally, I’ve heard it is still not safe to come back to this website — but for completely different reasons than last week’s.
I had the pleasure of seeing The Detroit Symphony Orchestra perform Howard Shore‘s The Lord of the Rings Symphony on Saturday. It was a special one-night-only peformance, conducted by Markus Huber, with the Ford Motor Company Chorus and the Christ Church Grosse Pointe Choir of Boys and Girls. Guest soloist was Susan Egan, handling the elven songs; a young boy sang “In Dreams” but I did not catch his name.
Coincidental with my having the week off, I’ve been noticing bizarre behavior in regards to my site. Since I’m using a Mac I didn’t encounter anything outright, but my browser was downloading little “2DimensionOfExploitsEnc.php” files. Most often these text files would be blank, but occasionally I’d see some text. Yesterday I discovered an IFRAME was being added to my site, redirecting people to newiframe.biz. Today, I was seeing redirects to a site called Lahrah’s World, at elleseebee.com. Wanting to avoid any IFRAME trouble, I removed my Shoutbox and my online poll; but I restored them by the end of the day.
