tardis

I have a collection of Apple Watches, one from 1999, one from 2010 and one from 2016.

Strictly speaking, the first two belong to my wife and the third is mine. The first was a birthday present. It is of course an analogue watch, and was only ever on sale in Japan, available in 5 colours to match the iMac G3. Next was an iPod Nano 6G Product RED with matching red wristband, purchased from the Cupertino Apple Store. My own is a Nike Run version. 

All three still work .....

I think DED should tell us more about the Magic "potion of Apple Park" .....

I have heard so many commentators repeating the story that "iTunes is Rubbish", but never understood what was so wrong. I understand that Apple added functionality along the way, although as William Gallagher says, iTunes with Music, Videos and podcasts "in 2005 ... worked out well ... for all of us", and as late as 2012, "each element that was added to iTunes was good". The story suggests that things all went wrong when, in 2015, they added Apple Music. My recollection is somewhat different. The story that "iTunes is Rubbish" became almost an accepted fact among tech journalists in the period after the iPhone became popular, and in all of the cases I have found that were actually documented, the reason was slow speed and other software failures on the Windows version. Now that most journalists use Mac laptops, you don't see so many "iTunes is Rubbish" stories. Coincidence?

Shouldn't we expect, if not an apology, at least a disclaimer, from all of those "experts" and bloggers who claimed that "market share" was the only metric that mattered?

What a load of rubbish! Sure, Apple does a great job of engineering audio devices that work well in difficult circumstances, and the HomePod devotes impressive technology to the task of providing a voice-controlled interface to internet-connected devices. Good quality music reproduction is a welcome by-product, but it's not automatically "an audiophile's ideal speaker".

 Matt Hines is correct to say that speaker location can affect performance. But "causing some resonant frequencies to become inconsistently louder", "sudden, violent variations in frequency levels" and "bass might disappear"? Really, Mr. Hines? I challenge you to prove in a blind listening test that "adjusting the listening position even an inch will have a very material impact on the arrival time of the audio to your ear"?

 If your ear can hear that difference, I will gladly eat it.