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Mossberg tests the iPod Shuffle and predicts “the iPod juggernaut will roll on”: (Okay, this is my last, last Apple post.) My friend Jeff Jarvis, with whom I agree regarding the absurdity of Apple suing bloggers (I will contribute to the legal defense fund and applaud the EFF for defending those sued by Apple.), asks if the iPod is “jumping the shark?” with the iPod Shuffle. Obviously, I disagree, as I’ve tried to argue at length, judging any model of the iPod on some feature like “play order” totally misses the secret sauce of Apples success.

I “get” the iPod Shuffle as a “add-on” product that I and others will use when working out (when I don’t use the screen or scroll wheel, anyway).

Walter Mossberg, Wall Street Journal personal technology writer, who has actually tested the iPod Shuffle for several days (rather than speculate like Jeff and me), lauds the quality and pricing (subscription required) of the product while pointing out its obvioius feature limitations. He says, “in my tests, it fulfilled — and even exceeded — Apple’s claims for convenience, battery life and song capacity. Sound quality is so good you can barely believe the music is coming from something so small.”

Despite its lack of some of the features iPod users love, Mossberg’s bottomline is:

Still, this is a good product that will enlarge the iPod’s appeal, especially with kids, people on low budgets, or people who work out. I imagine some existing iPod owners will also buy Shuffles as sort of add-on players. And the iPod juggernaut will roll on.

Apple sucks: Okay, all day long I’ve been displaying my macophilia. On the other hand, I’m a “member-in-waiting” of Media Bloggers Association which today announced the launch of a legal defense project, in response to the kind of idiocy Apple displayed in suing a blogger last week.

Robert Scoble compares the Mac mini with a computer from WalMart and, well, appears to miss the whole point of the product.

Apples and oranges: I think I just saw a post where Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble actually attempts to compare the Mac Mini with this computer you can purchase at Walmart for less than $500. His point: with the Walmart computer, you get lots of stuff you don’t get with a Mac Mini.

Huh?

Surely Robert, whose insights are typically keen, doesn’t think a MacMini customer will be comparing those two products. The MacMini is not a product for someone who wants to purchase a computer “system” from WalMart, rather it is for someone who has a Windows machine sitting on their desk, but who really wants a Mac.

Programming note: And with this post, I have concluded my annual celebration of iPiphany and will move on with my life. No more Apple-related blogging for a while, I hope.

iPod Shuffle: Are people passing out in the aisles at Macworld? The iPod Shuffle, the long-rumored “flash” iPod. “Smaller than most packs of gum.” Works like a USB flash drive: 1GB for $149, 512MB for $99. No screen. Can also be used for flash key drive. Starts shipping today. (The question at my house will be: Can it survive a trip through the washing machine and dryer?)

Update: iPod Lounge side-by-side-by-side photo of the iPod, iPod mini and iPod Shuffle.

Santa Steve delivers: The MacMini. No link now, but I’m sure you’ll find it momentarily at www.apple.com/macmini.

From MacNN:

Apple introduces Mac mini. New member of Mac family Slot-load Combo optical drive. Play DVDs, burn CDs. Queit. Tiny, FireWire, ethernet, USB 2.o, both DVI/VGA output. Very tine. Height is half the size of an iPod mini. BYODKM. Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, Mouse. Firs tone is $499: 1.25GHz 256MB/40GB More memory and larger hard drive for $599. Will ship on January 22. Ships in a box smaller than the regular iPod box.

It sounds so much better than that clunky-looking hoax photo. It’s not yet up at the Apple store. It will be interesting to see how many sell in the next few hours. I’ll be bold and predict a few gazillion.

Update: The “original” Mac mini. (via: hivelogic.com.)

MacWorld keynote live blogging: All are updating about every five minutes with, roughly the same information:

MacMerc

Engadget
MacNN
MacRumors (hard for me to access)

iPiphany day: Another reason it’s nice to be a member of the mac orthodox church. You get to celebrate a second Christmas in early January. Or, as I like to call it, iPiphany day, when the wise men from Cupertino unveil this year’s frankincense and myrrh. For weeks, the mac orthodox kids have been looking in closets and attics and shaking the packages sitting under the tree, trying to figure what’s inside. Watch out kids: If you do that, Santa may try to roast your chestnuts on an open fire. Have we been naughty or nice? Will we get our wishes granted? Will those dreams of a white (headless) iPiphany day come true? Nestle down, kids.

Update: Without webcast this year, here’s bullet-point streaming from MacNN. Favorite news for me, so far: iChat videoconferencing with up to 10 people, simultaneously.

How to instantly discover if the Nashville Library has a book you find at Amazon.com (A service the library may not know it provides): The following incredible tool may have been around a while, but since I first ran across it a few days ago, I’ve been asking, “How th’ heck did I miss that?”

Jon Udell has created a “bookmarklet” (here’s my lame definition of a “bookmarklet” - a utility triggered by clicking on a bookmark/favorite link in your browser’s tool bar) that allows you to, when you’re viewing an Amazon.com book page, to click and launch a look-up in your library’s online catalog. (Libraries use difference services to web-enable their catalogs. Udell provides a means to look up your library here.) After you find your library listing on the directory page, you simply drag its link to your browser’s bookmark/favorite tool bar.

For example, for the Nashville Public Library, drag the following link to your toolbar: book-lookup. Then, when you’re viewing an Amazon.com book product page, just click on that bookmark, and, like magic, a window will launch that will reveal whether or not the book (w/ that ISBN) is in the library’s collection and, in the case of the Nashville Library, the book’s status.

After seeing this, I think Jon Udell is worthy of one of those MacArthur “genius awards” or something.

(via: 43 folders whose comments on this related post is a discussion of creating an RSS feed hack that would alert the user of their library books requested, overdue, etc.)

A new term for the desire not to call a blog a blog - Feavering: The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz discovered that blog is a bad word when he read in Editor & Publisher that the executive editor of Washingpost.com, Doug Feaver, said, “we’re going to have to call them something else,” as “blogs” carries “baggage” with some newspaper editors.

Where does one start? With what it reveals when one is more concerned about editors’ feelings than with readers’ understanding? No. That’s too obvioius.

So I’ll just mention how arrogant it appears when folks from the old world show up on the shores of a new -osphere and immediately begin to place a value-judgement on the language and culture of the aboriginals. Sort of like missionaries intent on converting the savages. Feaver (isn’t there some baggage with a name that sounds like an illness?) and news editors can call them anything they want. But let me mix a few metaphors and say, simply, the blog was let out of the barn too long ago for any of you guys to do something about any “baggage” the term may carry. Give up, people. By the way, neither can you turn back the clock and rename e-mail, IM, or the web. And while I’m thinking about it, doesn’t that .com at the end of WashingtonPost.com sound sorta, you know, baggaged by the whole dot-com thing?

(via: Jeff Jarvis at buzzmachine.com)