Nano Recall

The only Apple product I've ever owned. (It was a gift.)

Microsoft To Kill The Zune

I'm just surprised that it lasted five years.

TV Hat

It's a real thing. I guess, maybe, on a plane, it might be workable. Not entirely sure about the guy on the bike.

If You Can't Fix It, You Don't Own It

Electronics self-repair site iFixit has issued a manifesto against Apple and other manufacturers that purposely create products that thwart any repair attempts by their owners. An excerpt:

Manufacturers push new models every year with just enough style tweaks to make our last one feel obsolete. They use legal threats to keep repair manuals away from us and deploy so-called ‘security bits’ in new products to prevent us from opening our own things. They have even gone so far as patenting screw heads to keep us out of our stuff. The manufacturers tout their green credentials by citing take-back programs and recyclable materials, but that’s a a misdirection. Recycling isn’t good enough! Recycling is just efficient urban mining. Recycling destroys the captured energy invested to manufacture things, requiring even more energy to melt it down and make something new. And products made from the resulting material (particularly plastics) are substantially lower quality. We’re much better off using existing things as long as physically possible.

iFixit provides self-repair tips for the iPod, the Xbox, and numerous other digital toys.

CHINA: Suicides Plague Apple Factory

Workers at a massive Apple factory in China are killing themselves at an alarming rate. Eight employees have offed themselves since the beginning of the year. With 400,000 workers, Foxconn makes the iPhone and iPod, as well as devices for other electronics companies.

For those who believe the spate of suicides is statistically in line, given how many people work at Foxconn, consider this: the company says it has prevented a further 30 people from trying to kill themselves in the past three weeks alone. Clearly, something out of the ordinary is going on. What is happening in Shenzhen has the hallmarks of a “suicide cluster”, when the notion of suicide spreads rapidly through a group of people, often teenagers or young adults. Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits. Others have said the current generation of migrant workers, who have opted to move from other parts of China to seek their fortunes in the country’s coastal factories, are not as tough as their forbears. Usually better educated than their parents, they are prone to existential angst when confronted with seven-day weeks and 15-hour days of repetitive manufacturing. The nine Foxconn workers involved in suicide leaps this year were all aged under 25 and had worked for the company for less than six months.

The factory's workers say they aren't paid enough to purchase any of the items they manufacture.

Where The Fanboys Live

According to a survey of the 206 top metropolitan areas in the U.S., the #1 market for owning any Apple product is, surprise, the Bay Area. Fortune reports:

In a report issued Friday, Experian Simmons surveyed 206 so-called DMAs (designated market areas, or what we used to call "cities") and identified those that have the highest concentration of Apple (AAPL) users. The idea was to anticipate in what parts of the continental U.S. consumers were most likely to line up for the new iPad based on their known propensity to own or use iPods, iPhones or Macs. The result is the color coded map shown above and the list of the top 10 markets pasted below (the numbers and the commentary is Experian Simmons').

1. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA: With Silicon Valley and Apple headquarters located squarely within the market’s boundaries, it’s no surprise that the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose DMA ranks number one in the nation for owning or using one of the core Apple products. Residents here are 49% more likely than the average American to own or use an iPod, iPhone or Mac computer.
2. Boston, MA: Almost one-in-three adults in the Boston DMA (31.3%) own or use an iPod, iPhone or Mac computer making area residents 45% more likely than average to be Mac maniacs. And with 11 Apple stores located within the Boston DMA, residents never have to go far for their Apple fix.
3. San Diego, CA: San Diego-area residents are 42% more likely than the average American to be toting around an iPod, chatting on an iPhone or computing on a Mac. In fact, 31.8% of the San Diego DMA’s 2.2 million adults are admitted Mac users.

See the rest of the top ten here. NYC is #4.

Apple Buys Lala, Streaming iTunes Next?

Apple has agreed to purchase the streaming music venture Lala, bringing speculation that iTunes may add its own streaming function.

LaLa fills a big hole in Apple’s digital music strategy and could bring streaming down music from the cloud into iTunes-ready devices everywhere. Integrating Lala’s ad-free music service — which stores music collections online and sells streaming songs at a deep discount — would mark the first major step forward for iTunes since its music download store launched in 2003. Lala recently announced a deal to play free songs on Google, but Apple is reportedly particularly interested in the engineers who built Lala’s “payment and fulfillment system[, which] could save Apple millions of dollars a year,” according to a CNET source. Lala sells music fans pre-paid chunks of music credits, rather than individual songs — an approach could help iTunes cut down on its credit card transaction costs and sell songs as streams and as downloads.

Apple reports that the average iTunes customer has purchased only 22 songs. By contrast, the average Lala customer has spent $67. Unlimited iTunes music streamed to the iPod Touch and iPhone for a monthly fee is would render moot the race to increase storage capacity on the devices.

Apple Debuts iPod Nano That Shoots Video, Plays Radio, Feeds Cat

At today's product launch thingy in California, Apple debuted a new iPod Nano with tons of new features.

Apple today introduced the new iPod nan, adding a video camera, mic and speaker to the world's most popular music player. Music lovers can now shoot video wherever they are, view it on their iPod nano and use their computers to easily transfer their videos to YouTube. The new iPod nano features an ultra-thin and sleek design with a larger 2.2-inch color display and gorgeous polished aluminum and glass enclosure. iPod nano also features a built-in FM radio with live pause and iTunes® Tagging, as well as a built-in pedometer. The new iPod nano is available today in an 8GB model for $149 and a 16GB model for $179, and comes in nine brilliant colors including silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, red, and pink.

So if it shoots video, it must take pictures too, right? Apple sez that the Nano is the "most popular digital music player in the world, with over 100 million units sold." Gizmodo is covering the their conference live, if you Apple bottoms want a minute-by-minute update.

iPod Death Watch

Maybe you don't wanna know, but head over to iPod Death Watch and enter your iPod's serial number for an estimate of how many days you've got left with your digital lover. According to the site, I've got 633 days on my brand new iPod, my third, provided it doesn't meet the same fate as my first. What a racket!