I had decided to volunteer to review the Audioengine AW1 Wireless Adapter for switchingtomac.com forums. Therefore, this review encompasses using a Mac with this product, and PC was not tested. In short, this device is meant as a means to wirelessly transfer your music from your PC or nearly any device, such as iPod and Game Consoles, to speakers or a Stereo receiver (through RCA inputs).

First, I must admit, I am not a huge audio guy with stereo surround sound or even a really nice stereo system. I do have a Sony 5 CD changer, but could not get the wireless devices to work with that Sony unit and speakers. I don’t believe this device is exactly meant to work with these types of “bookshelf” components, but I tried. It works mainly with stereo receivers, subwoofers, and powered speakers. However, I was able to get the wireless devices to work with my GE speakers that were connected to my PC. I disconnected the speakers from the PC and set them up next to a power source and connected the wireless receiver device to the speakers and connected the sender device to my Apple MacBook.

Once I was able to successfully connect all the devices to speakers, the rest was incredibly easy. For Mac OS X Leopard, you will need to change the sound settings found in “System Preferences/Sound” and change from Internal Speakers (for MacBook) to Audioengine AW1 for output source. In my case, I was roughly 20-25 feet away from the wireless receiver device to give you an indication of space from MacBook to wireless receiver. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back after waiting for the iPhone to come to Canada, I finally broke down and got a 16GB iPod Touch, you can read about it here. A few of my reasons for getting the iPod Touch or should I say justifying the purchase as opposed to waiting on the iPhone went something like this and not necessarily in order of importance:

• I need to own one so I can support my Clients with iPhones and/or an iPod Touch.
• The iPod Touch is more compact.
• The Touch has more physical memory.
• The iPod Touch is less expensive by about $100.
• Last but not least, using a separate phone gave me the ability to use an inexpensive phone for times when an expensive iPhone could be subject to an increased risk of becoming damaged, as in doing laborious work or sports.

All of this all still holds true…

Unfortunately an iPod Touch is still not an iPhone, a device that does it all or at least most of it! The phone part being the major component in the equation. Other key benefits of the iPhone over the iPod Touch are:

• Bluetooth.
• Camera.
• Speaker/Mic.
• Stronger Battery.

Some things that can get overlooked are included accessories. An iPod Touch comes with the bare minimum, a USB cable and a pair of headphones where as the iPhone includes a USB Power adapter (a must have for a phone) as well as a Docking station and of course the Headphones with built in Microphone. The Docking Station and Power Adapter retail for around $60 narrowing the gap in the price difference significantly! Read the rest of this entry »

Enough is enough! I just can’t wait forever for an iPhone to finally come to Canada… So I guess the iPod Touch is the next best thing and since an iPhone only comes in a maximum size of 8GB it only makes sense to one up it by getting the 16GB iPod Touch. Take that iPhone!!

Where I live in Canada there are a lot of electronics stores competing with each other and because I also live very close to the border the US pricing seems to be bringing down the cost even more. All things considering with the January Software Upgrade of $19.99 I was able to get an iPod Touch 16GB for $379 without the upgrade bringing the total to $399 with the purchased Software Upgrade for the 5 new Applications. So the same as the US Price and about $20 less then the actual Canadian price.

First impressions… Amazing screen, very bright excellent color. The OS Interface is like nothing else, it almost makes me think Apple sent someone in a time machine to the future to make this product, I can’t help playing with it even if I have no reason at all to be on it, I just have to pick it up and navigate all around! Read the rest of this entry »

As expected, Apple announced a bunch of new iPods today and since everyone has an opinion… here is mine: I think Apple really did the right thing here! There has been allot of speculation, hard drive or flash drive, touch screen or click wheel, classic iPod interface or new iPhone one and each has their own advantages and disadvantages. So instead of fully committing to one or the other Apple just you all of them and now you get to decide which iPod is right for you or maybe you need multiple iPods for whatever your requirements are??

Lets take a look at the current iPods/iPhones in Apple’s lineup

iPod Shuffle

• Same price of $79 with 1GB of storage.
• Colors: Silver, light Blue, Teal, Green and Red.

iPod Nano

• Much smaller.
• More colors: Silver, light Blue, Teal, Green and Red.
• All metal construction.
• Bright 320×240 QVGA 2″ screen.
• New interface with Cover Flow.
• Comes with 3 games.
• 4GB/$149
• 8GB/$199.
• 24 hour audio and 5 hour video playback.

iPod Classic

• Similar as the previous iPod Video but now thinner and with more storage.
• 80GB/$249
• 160/$349.
• 40 hours of music and 7 hours of video playback.

iPod Touch Screen

• Styled after the iPhone in Appearance, OS and operation but without the phone.
• Thinner than the iPhone at only 8mm.
• 3.5″ diagonal Wide-screen.
• 802.11b/g WiFi.
• 22 hours audio and 5 hours video playback.
• 8GB/$299
• 16GB/$399.
• Ships Worldwide this month. Yeah!

iPhone

• The iPhone has remained the same but Apple has dropped the price on both iPhones and is discontinuing the 4GB model to focus on the more popular 8GB iPhone.
• 4GB model is now $299 while supplies last.
• 8GB model now $399, down $200.

So no more complaining, there are lots of iPods too choose form and if you can’t get an iPhone where you live now you can get the next best thing, an iPod Touch.

Want one? You can get one here for USA and here for Canada…

DigiTimes is now saying Wintek, a Taiwan-based company will be the supplier of the upcoming iPod touch screen panel similar to the one used in the popular Apple iPhone. Wintek has declined any comment due to customer confidentiality but supplier sources upstream from Wintek have confirmed this statement.

Estimated iPod touch screen panel shipping date from Wintek is expected in the second half of 2007 according to sources.

It is also expected to see a similar iPhone type OS X on the to-be-releases iPod, Steve Jobs stated during a town hall meeting with Apple Employees that his Mac OS X division has been working not only with the iPhone interface but also the iPod interface. The question remains, will this new OS X based touch screen iPod share similar features with the iPhone?

OS X Based iPods
Analyst Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster believes OS X is coming to the iPod. That’s no surprise, I’m no analyst, back in January I said basically the same thing and I would bet huge amounts of money - OK all I got is a few bucks but I would bet it all that the next major rev of the iPod will be very iPhone-sih in design and interface but rather with a mucho bigger hard drive then the 8GB iPhone. It only makes for Apple to take all the R&D that Apple spent on the iPhone and incorporate it into the iPod! When is the only question… Maybe this year, for-sure before MacWorld 2008.

iPhone Nano
JP Morgan analysts speculate that Apple will follow up the iPhone with a cheaper under $300 Nano based iPhone with less features than the current iPhone model (Not everyone has $599 sitting around right!) Kevin Chang a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan said “We believe that iPod Nano will be converted into a phone because it’s probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod Nano,”

Ultra-Thin-Light Mac Notebook
Trusted sources from MacScoop are scheduled to release possibly this year the smallest, thinnest, lightest Notebook ever that will redefine the standard for ultra-portable computers. It is expected to have a 12 inch screen and be between 0.6 an 0.7 inches thick with a total weight of less than 3 pounds. The only question is will ti have an optical drive? Maybe, Apple’s current MacBook Pros have 0.37 inch optical drives in them. Panasonic also announced earlier this year they have a 0.27 inch 0.218 pound optical drive so ultra-thin-light Mac Notebooks with optical drives are a possibility.

Now that’s an iPod! Pick your 24 Carot Gold iPod up at amosu starting from only £299.00

When you make the switch to a Mac (or even buy an iPod), a nice little bonus you get inside the package is a couple of white Apple logo stickers.

Did you stick them on anything? Did your dog eat them? Did you even know you had them?

As you can see in the photo here, I stuck one on my car. This picture was taken about 15 minutes after I got home from the dealership with the new car….yeah, I’m that big of a fan that I stuck a sticker on my new car just minutes after buying it.

Tell us what you did with your stickers and post your photo in the forums!

My wife and I decided this year to give each other Apple’s newest version of the iPod Shuffle for valentines this year.

She got the pink one and I got the green one:

We both already had iPod’s (her: 8gb Nano me: 30gb video) but these were too cool to not get for each other instead of flowers or chocolates. Did you get your sweetheart anything Apple related for Valentine’s this year?

Lifehacker.com has a download link that would be of interest to switchers out there called iPodDisk.

Say you have a PC and an iPod and you’ve just ordered your shiny new Mac. You need to get your music off your PC (or your iPod) and onto the new Mac. One way (of many we’ll cover here in future articles) is to use iPodDisk to connect your iPod to the new Mac and be able to copy down all your music to your Mac and add it to your new, Mac based iTunes library. The nice thing about this particular app is that it keeps your iPod read-only so you shouldn’t have to worry about losing everything if you follow the instructions.

The comments on the original Lifehacker post have some other apps that have more features than this if you are more daring.