I’m not sure how the review ended up with a score of 72 (good). They come up with that number as a composite of various sub-scores and stuff I give them when I submit it, but my scores were pretty low. I think the text of the review makes it pretty clear that I don’t think it’s a “good” ebook reader.

“If you want a portable player primarily for media, the Zune HD trounces the iPod Touch. Music, video, and podcast offerings are similar, but the Zune has FM and HD radio, marginally better sound quality, 720p video output, the optional Zune Pass subscription service for music, and an honest-to-goodness superior interface. The software on both desktop and device is designed to be vastly better for discovering new music. If you want a pocket computer to run apps and play games, with music and video playing as a second-tier function, the incredibly robust App Store on the iPod Touch make it still the obvious choice.”

Zune Pass is magically awesome. $15 a month gets you all the music you want. Obviously it has DRM so that it expires when you stop subscribing. Otherwise you’d just subscribe for one month, download thousands of songs, and quit, laughing all the way to the bank. But for that $15 a month, you also get 10 song credits you can use to download 10 totally DRM-free songs you can keep forever. And believe me, when you can download and listen to as many tracks as you want, you’ll easily find way more than 10 songs you want to keep a month. This, combined with the software’s new Smart DJ feature, will introduce you to lots of awesome new music you don’t have and let you quickly, easily, and legally download it.

Of course, if I were buying a notebook for myself, I’d probably wait until the middle of October and get one of those really awesome new HP Envy notebooks. They’re a lot more expensive, but oh-so-awesome. (Probably. Who knows what “gotchas” they haven’t told us about yet.)

Of course, Apple announced some stuff beyond iTunes 9 and a new iPhone firmware update, like a major upgrade to the iPod nano, and new iPod touch models and pricing. There was no huge, drop-everything-and-run-down-to-the-Apple-Store announcement, but overall a decent day of releases.

(A side note: On the bus one day, I heard a group of inner city teens talk about going to the “iPod Store” downtown, referring to the San Francisco Apple Store location. That’s what Apple is to them – the iPod company. Take that to mean what you will.)

Now that I’ve had time to use this stuff and let the other announcements sink in, here are some thoughts.

The New iPod nano

This is a pretty good upgrade for an aging, some would say out-of-date product. It’s disappointing that the camera doesn’t shoot stills (even just VGA stills), and the resolution is limited compared to those cheap HD video devices out there, but who cares? It’s basically a “gimme.” The best addition is the one Apple cribbed from Zune, the FM radio. I know a lot of people say “who the hell wants to use FM radio anymore?” I’m feel that way, too. The Zune folks have excellent data on this (based on anonymous opt-in data collection from the Zune software) that something like half of Zune owners use the FM radio at least once a week. I guess this makes sense. Places like gyms will often broadcast the audio from TV sets on FM stations so you can listen while you sweat, and there are tons of people who love their talk radio. Plus the ability to see RDS data and tag a song for future download, also cribbed from Zune, is a nice little music discovery feature.

Apple even one-upped the Zune team by letting you pause radio for up to 15 minutes. That’s a good “bathroom break” buffer, and the inability to save that buffer probably steers Apple clear of any legal troubles.

iPhone 3.1 Update

A minor update if ever there was one. You can now buy ringtones from a giant ringtone store for the “breakthrough price” of $1.29. That’s right, you can now buy a lower-quality short snippet of a song to annoy everyone around you with for only 30% more than the full song! Ringtone prices are a total ripoff across the whole industry, and it sucks to see Apple encourage this bullshit with a whole ringtone store. I don’t even think this is available yet. I can’t find it on my phone nor iTunes.

3.1 also introduces Genius recommendations for Apps in the App Store. Nifty. But why is it only on the phone, and not in iTunes? I do most of my App shopping through iTunes.

iPod touch

The price drops seem to be clearly a reaction to the announced prices of the Zune HD. Apple’s dropping the 16GB model, interestingly, and selling a new 8GB model for $20 less than the 16GB Zune HD, hitting that magic $199 price point. The 32GB version drops to $299 ($10 more than the 32GB Zune HD), and a new 64GB version sits on top at $399. Yes, Microsoft, that is your cue to announce a $379 64GB Zune HD, if you were wondering.

The 32GB and 64GB models are getting the same CPU/GPU as the iPhone 3GS, which represents a nice speed bump, but it would appear that the 8GB model at that price point Apple emphasized as being so magical still uses the old platform. Lame. Also lame is that they gave the units a speaker (good for games without headphones) but no mic (bad for app developers that want to do nifty mic stuff). And they didn’t add a camera. So overall, sort of disappointing.

iPod Classic

Oh come on, Apple. You used to sell a 160GB iPod Classic, then you got rid of it. Don’t bring it back and pretend you’re giving people a capacity bump.

Next page, iTunes 9…

Here are some links to recent things I’ve done. I’ll make new posts to the blog under the Work category as new stuff appears.

• I post from time to time on PCWorld’s Geek Tech blog. There are too many entries for individual links.
• Dell Mini 10 review for PC World.
• Lenovo IdeaPad G530 review for PC World.
• ASUS N90SV-A2 review for PC World. (A trend is forming!)
• I did a few technology preview articles for the November issue of Maximum PC. None of it is online yet, but go check it out in print.
• I wrote this Apple Tablet: A Deep Dive Look Into the Likely Tech Inside for the October issue of Mac|Life.

So that’s about it for now. I’ll post individual links to other stuff as they go online. And as always, I am for hire. See this old post for details and to download my resume.

I mean, I know which console I think has the best downloadable games. I mean, I love Fat Princess and all, but I generally find a whole lot more games I like on XBLA. That’s personal preference. What can we learn about the quality of the games on these services, statistically? So I headed on over to Metacritic (a site that averages review scores for movies, TV, DVDs, and Games, in case you’re unaware) and found the top 20 games for XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare. Here’s the raw data, with analysis at the end.

Average score of top 10 games:
XBLA:     88.9
PSN:       86.6
WiiWare: 84.4

Average score of top 20 games:
XBLA:     86.7
PSN:       84.2
WiiWare: 81.9

Number of games with a score 85 or higher:
XBLA:     14
PSN:       9
WiiWare: 4

Some analysis on the next page…

I don’t always get behind those experimental flash-based “rethinking what is is to be a game” type games. This one is just too clever and fun to ignore.

Stop whatever you’re doing and go play This is the Only Level. There’s only one level! See that screenshot? That’s it. That’s the level. You press the button to open the door and go to the pipe. And then you play the same level…again. Only this time it’s different. A short phrase in the lower left gives you a clue as to how things are different, and some trial and error is involved, but that’s really what this game is about. It’s about taking a single, extremely simple level and wringing as much gameplay as possible out of it by altering the rules of the environment.

Jonathan Blow would love it.

Anyone familiar with this knows of the need for a decent lap pad/desk/stand type of thing. Something with a soft bottom to be comfortable on your legs, a hard top to keep your notebook steady and prop it up a bit, and enough thickness to keep your legs from frying thanks to the inevitable laptop heat.

I just bought a Logitech Comfort Lapdesk on Amazon, and I quite like it a lot. It’s well-made and the padding part is stiff enough to hold its shape. The flat part is hard and smooth, it stays cool, and it has no moving parts. I mean, when I was shopping around I saw bed desk thingies with moving drawers and cupholders.  Like I’m going to put a mug of coffee on a flimsy wooden desk that sits over my legs in bed. That’s going to end well.

So, thumbs-up for the Logitech Comfort Lapdesk. If you have a laptop and you don’t have something similar to this, you might want to consider it.  And no, I don’t get any money if you buy from that Amazon link or anything, so don’t feel the need to go there.