Sachin Agarwal: July 2004

Saturday night Dan, Adam and I had our housewarming party. The theme was the Olympics. We had a great turnout. Lots of people dressed up for the various events.

We had a giant Olympic flag outside our house, an ice luge to take shots, and other cool drinking games.

Check out the pictures

Since all eyes are on the iPod, here's some more interesting news:

Here's a cool article in Wired about the birth of the iPod and how it was created. Steve had a lot to do with this product. I like how prototypes of the iPod were in giant boxes with the controls in different places, so you could use it, but you had no idea what it would look like.

Thousands of people line dup in Japan to buy a Mini iPod. No, I wasn't in line with them.

Creative Labs has released a new 20GB mp3 player to take on the iPod. $270 for 20gb. Except it's 70% bigger by volume, and 25% heavier. Also, their claim of 10,000 songs is based on 64kbits/second WMA. who the fuck uses that? Good luck guys.

And since Real Player can't compete with the iPod, they are designing software to play real player files on an iPod

I find that people don't correctly value certain things. Obviously valuing things varies from person to person, but some stuff is just kind of rediculous.

Previously I mentioned how I hate when people say "I won't buy a car that takes premium gas." Let's see now: 20 cents per gallon extra, 10 gallons per week, 50 weeks per year. That's $100 more per year. Peanuts compared to the cost of a car.

And the same goes for gas mileage in cars. Sure, a car like a hybrid that gets double what I get is kinda interesting. But a car that gets 10 or 20% more mileage than my car? Again, that's peanuts. I wouldn't base my car purchasing decision (when spending 20, 30, 40k) on an extra 100 or 200 per year!

Several times people have asked me "how much does it cost to fill up your tank?" What kind of question is that? It costs me $7 because I have a 3 gallon tank. hah. How about asking the right question: how many miles per gallon?

Also, recently there has been lots of talk about perks at work and what people are getting from their companies. People are raving about free cell phones, free food, and free gym memberships. Come on people. Each of these things is worth 1 hour of work. These companies work you 50, 60, 70 hours per week. It does not add up.

I got my Airport Express today. That thing is fucking rad. It's the smallest base I've ever seen, with no wires at all.

The main feature of this is I can now play music on my stereo from my computer over our wireless network. It's exactly what I wanted: I control my music from my laptop using my iTunes, yet it plays on my stereo.

That thing was so freagin easy to setup. The Setup Assistant is amazing. option: new network or join existing? become client or extend range? Select existing network. AND THAT'S IT. IT JUST WORKS. It is soooo worth the extra money over those shitty linksys bases.

Plus all Airport products support WDS which means they can extend the range of other WDS bases. Very cool stuff. I bet I could setup a home netowrk with 3 bases, one network, all extending the range of the other, within 3 minutes START TO FINISH.

If you need a wireless base, buy one of these!

iPods are everywhere! In New York, we saw tons of riding the subway or walking around with iPods. Jason was raving about how great the iPod is, and Sam was saying how much she loves hers.

It's one of the most important things I own (with my cell phone and digital camera). Having all your music with you everywhere is awesome. And Apple just released the 4th version which is smaller, has a longer battery, and other cool features.

Here's a story about how Duke is giving all incoming freshman an iPod! It comes preloaded with orientation materials and the fight song. It can be used throughout the year for class materials.

I think a great extension on this (which I'm sure Apple has planned) is to enable people to have their entire home folder on their iPod. This is already possible with some hacks, but Apple can make it mainstream. So basically every student has their home folder with them, they plug into any computer and it boots into their system. Unplug it and move on. It took Stanford over a year to setup a system for students to login all over campus. This is a much cleaner solution.

Here's an article about how copy protected audio CDs have to change their strategy because currently they can't be played on iPods, which is what everyone owns. First of all, fuck copy protected CDs, but if we have to have them, at least now they will use a standard that works with iPods.

Every week I'm going to post what new music I am listening to.

The last couple of months I have been listening to a lot of new music that Evan and Patrick introduced me to, as well as stuff I found on the iTunes music store. This includes:

The Flaming Lips
The Shins
Modest Mouse
Death Cab
Bishop Allen
Air
The Get Up Kids
The Postal Service
Pinback
New Pornographers
Brand New

I am also hoping to listen to a completely new artist each week. So if you have any recommendations, post them here!

I was in New York for five days on vacation with Nikhil and Joe. It was awesome. New York is my favorite city in the world. I really hope I get the chance to live there one day.

Click here for pictures

Highlights:
Seeing friends from college
Jason's warehouse with no power
The food. Marumi sushi, Peter Luger's steak, Junior's cheesecake, New York pizza
The beer
Ground Zero, WTC
Stock Exchange (but no tours since 9/11)
Apple Store and Prada store in SoHo
Nikhil and I (with luggage) squeeze through the subway door designed to only let one person through
the awesome subway system

Low light:
Empre State Building. That place is a fucking tourist trap beyond any other I have ever seen. Stay away!

WWDC 2004: Pictures from the conference at the Moscone Center. Also, Jimmy Eat World played on Thursday night at the Apple developers beer bash! We had no idea who was playing until about 6pm when I heard them practicing! They even gave a shout out to Apple for making the computers they use to edit and create all their CDs.

Thunderhill: Yet another great track day. Cool cars, FOUR Miatas, and my cousin with his A6 2.7 turbo.

House BBQ: Our first house bbq in the back patio with our housemates. Somehow Mattius convinced me that having hard alcohol after beer was the correct order. The next day sucked.

Here's a very cool Apple marketing video all about iTunes, the iPod, and other music related work we do.

This week is the Apple developer's conference at the Moscone Center. Steve gave a great keynote which included product updates and other cool stuff.

The Moscone Center has GIANT apples on the outside. And the inside has giant banners with the lines "This should keep Redmond busy" "Redmond, start your photocopiers" "Introducing Longhorn" "Redmond, we have a problem"

Apple released a new 30" display. One of my co-workers has 2 of them, side by side. Awesome. Apple announced the next OS version, Tiger. They are delivering on some features that are promised for Longhorn in 2006 or 2007 or .....

Tiger (which will SHIP early 2005) has some cool technologies included integrated search for your files, a new Safari, a new iChat, and much more. I'm very excited about integrated syncing. Right now iSync syncs my address book, calendar, bookmarks between my computers, phone, ipod, etc. Now it seems this is extending to email, preferences, and other people can write plugins to extend this. So if someone wants to keep something else in sync (files, pictures, songs, etc etc) you can write a piece of code and do that.

Dell announced a program today where you can trade in your ipod and get a Dell DJ for $99. That's just fucking hilarious. If you already own an iPod, the best (and most expensive) mp3 player out there, why would you trade it in for something shittier? I mean they might get new customers who can't afford an iPod, but they are going after switchers? Once you go Apple, you never go back. Plus the iPod is worth more than that on ebay! Good luck Dell.

Sony released a new portable music player today that looks good. Smaller, lighter, cheaper than the ipod. Wow. could be some stiff competition. Oh wait, it doesn't play mp3s. How long will it take to convert my 10,000 songs? Haha, fuck that. Good luck Sony.