Veerle's blog

End of Summer yesterday but not according to the weather gods. In other words such a beautiful day for a visit to the “City of Light”. We arrived at noon after a 3 hour drive from our hometown. It’s amazing that we survived Place de la Porte De Maillot and Place de l’Etoile. Driving there is a bit like in the Far West, a place where there aren’t any rules anymore and it is everybody for themselves. The weapon of choice is the hooter and you got to have eyes everywhere. A bit of a nightmare if you haven’t got a clue where to go… Luckily our kamikaze driver Kenneth did! :-D

We safely made it and after parking the car we took a little walk on Avenue des Champs-Elys�es and ate a pizza on a sunny terrace there. After lunch we took the metro to get to the Apple Expo. It was two years ago since we last visited the expo and a lot of things have changed since then. The first thing we’ve noticed are all the billboards with iPod Nano ads, which was clearly the main focus for this Apple Expo.

So now that we are on the subject of the nano, what can I say other then OMG! The pictures don’t do justice, this thing is unbelievable. It is so small and light you barely notice that you hold it in your hand. It has a gorgeous little screen that is very bright and looks very good even in a bright lighted expo hall. The click wheel is so easy to use and the interface feels very Mac OS X like. The attention to detail in the interface is striking. A bold move from Apple to kill the Mini but this iPod nano is so much cooler and I think it will be the best selling iPod to date. I’m sold and will order one soon.

Also a change from 2 years ago are all those accessories for the iPod. A very big piece of the expo floor is filled with those. There are so many of them so let’s focus on 2 of them that I think are pretty cool. The first one is from Altec Lansing and called “inMotion iM7” The inMotion iM7 is an audio system for the iPod. What’s really cool about this is that it is compatible with every iPod, even the new nano and the iPod Shuffle. It is a bit like a ghetto-blaster for the iPod that sounds incredibly well. It’s heavy but you’ll love the sound. Perfect for the backyard or at the beach. The iPod charges while you listen. It costs 249 Euro. A sound system that doesn’t look bad next to an Apple Cinema Display is the Altec Lansing FX6021. It is a 3-piece system for the music, gaming, or home theater enthusiast. It has a crystal clear sound with the right amount of bass.

The second one is also an audio system from Bose called “SoundDock”. This is not meant to be a portable music solution but intended for home or office use. The iPod also charges as it plays. The edge appears smooth and well finished and the overall construction quality is high. I’m not 100% sure but I think it is not as compatible as the inMotion iM7 (mentioned above). There is no noticeable sound distortion or crackling at full volume but you have to keep in mind that this isn’t a replacement for a set of Bang & Olufsen speakers for example. It sounds very good for what it is intended for, namely playing MP3/ACC files. The inMotion iM7 above comes very close in matching the Bose sound. If you’re looking for a good looking sound system for the iPod you can’t go wrong with the SoundDock. Quality comes at a price like always so it costs 379 Euro.

One of the coolest solutions to get your iPod sound into your car is sadly forbidden by law, so you can’t buy it anywhere (not in Belgium or France). I’m talking about the little transmitters that broadcast on a certain frequency like 87.1 FM for example. Next step is to tune your car stereo on that frequency and voilà you’ve got your iPod Music in the car. There are several of those like ExtremeMac and their Airplay iPod FM Transmitter for iPod and iPod mini and even a transmitter for the iPod Shuffle. The solution of Griffin Technology is called “iTrip”. It works with iPod Photo, iPod mini, iPod U2 Special Edition, 4th Generation iPod with Click Wheel and 3rd Generation iPod with touch wheel and buttons.

We also learned that an Apple Supercomputer is coming to Europe. In October a sort of test cluster will be installed involving both Xserve servers and Xserve RAID arrays. If the project is successful the total network could be several thousand Xserves and several hundred Xserve RAID arrays.

We also saw the new Microsoft Xbox 360 and to be honest I must say that I’m not that impressed with the design of this new gaming device. Yes it is better looking then its predecessor but still. There was a demo running on two Apple Cinema displays and one Plasma screen and the rendering was stunning. But after a bit of snooping around that demo was not directly rendered from the Xbox 360 but from a HP machine probably pre-recorded. So hard to get an opinion of the true quality of the device. The machine is launched in November and no real world demo you gotta wonder why.

As I told you in the previous post, the headquarters of Apple Europe have been moved to London and are now located above the Apple Store in London. We had a chat with a contact of mine from Apple Belgium before we left. He said that Apple is doing great and that there is definitely a serious growth in sales (35% !) over the entire hardware product line. This growth is not (like a lot of people assume) purely due to the popular iPod. So it’s not one product in particular it’s more then that, the entire Apple product line is doing well. Great news if you ask me :-)

The photo report is now online too.

BTW: Quark is using their new logo on the expo too :o)