The iPod viewed the same as steroids for runners
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Not Cool, That's Weird..., contests, iPod
This may come as a shock to some of you, but I am not a competitive runner. I’m more of a rhythmic gymnast. So it was news to me to find that a Wisconsin marathon runner was disqualified for listening to her iPod while competing in the Lakefront Marathon last weekend. Apparently by turning on her iPod, 27 year-old Jennifer Goebel violated a USA Track and Field rule which bans electronic devices of any kind during races.
Above: A woman I THINK is Jennifer Goebel.
While listening to music can get you pumped up during exercise, I thought this was a little odd, as if you look at the over 400 photos from the race, you will notice that virtually everyone in the race has an iPod (or to be fair, possibly a Zune with iPod earbuds). But as it turns out, the “no iPod rule” was repealed in 2008, and the ban on iPods now applies only to really good runners who have a chance at actually winning prizes from racing. Jennifer was a little put off by the decision, but has agreed to pay back her $500 prize.
“If they’re going to disqualify me for having an iPod they should disqualify everyone who had one,” she said. “I wasn’t listening to it earlier in the race. I wasn’t going to put the music on unless I thought I needed it. If you’re bored, it pumps you up a little bit. Sometimes, on a long training run, I’ll bring it along for the last half hour. When I run marathons sometimes I carry it and never put it on. It’s just a little ridiculous. I went there to have a fun race with my friends.”
Well Jenifer, it doesn’t sound like this race is for people looking to have fun. In fact, Jennifer didn’t actually win the race. She was beaten by Cassie Peller, a 23-year-old student. However the racing Nazis officials disqualified her for taking steroids accepting a bottle of water from a friend outside of the designated watering stations, thus making Goebel the winner. So it looks like now the crown of winner and the cursed $500 check will be passed down to Corina Canitz, a 42-year-old mother of four who won the race the last 2 years running (pun intended). And if she tests positive for steroids, I can only assume I am next in line, although I pretty much always have my iPhone on me, so odds are I will have to pass the trophy on as well.
By the way, Miss Goebel has an open invite to appear as our Mac Chick of the Month.
[via JS Online]
Apple’s most ironically named event, ever
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Cynicism, That's Weird..., Updates, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle
Well, Apple’s “It’s only Rock ‘n Roll, but I like it” event has come to a close, and it had virtually nothing to do with Rock ‘n Roll, or even music in general. Sure, just about every announcement made today had something to do with the iPod, iPhone, or iTunes, yet it was all about apps, video cameras, price drops, and pedometers.
So, what did Apple announce? Well, new iPod touches with more capacity, faster processors (presumably matching the iPhone 3G S) and bigger storage (even bigger than the iPhone). New iPod nanos – also with video cameras – as well as a built-in pedometer for workouts and an FM radio (what? No AM!?!?!) The shuffle got no love, but did receive a price drop, so maybe someone will buy it now.
But the big news is iTunes 9, which got a major revamp to accommodate music apps. Yes, new Genius features for recommending apps you might like based on your buying preferences, new iPhone/iPod touch application managing from within iTunes, and new application ranking charts to make developers happier. Top it all off with the new iPhone/iPod touch OS 3.1, and you have a music-less announcement rivaling a Mac Pro unveiling. Even the much rumored Beatles announcement was a no-show. Sure, Apple announced they would now offer LP bundles for some albums which will tack on music videos and photos to Album purchases, but since iTunes pretty much single-handedly killed the album format, this two-minute announcement hardly warranted taking over the event poster.
All in all it was a pretty decent (albeit expected) series of nice hardware updates, and a nice update to iTunes (that should have come 2 years ago).
One more thing
But of course to any true Apple fan, the fact that we got to see Steve Jobs back on stage and standing on his own power was the biggest thrill of the afternoon (although I would have personally preferred to see him walk through some sort of hoop or something to prove there were no wires controlling him).
PowerBook takes a “Major League” hit
Filed under: Apple Bashing, Apple Fanboyism, Hand of God, Ouch!, That's Weird...
I’m the furthest thing you’ll find from a baseball fan, so the idea of being a photographer sent to cover all the “action” of a Pittsburgh Pirates game is scary enough, but check out the carnage that befalls this poor man’s PowerBook during an 8th inning foul ball. (Be sure to check out the chick with the iPhone at the end - priceless).
More pics after the jump.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…!Is the “free re-download to iPhone” gravy train over?
Filed under: Rampant Speculation, Rumors, That's Weird..., iPhone
While beta testing the iPhone’s 3.0 software, Michael over at iAPPetite noticed that Apple seems to not be as generous with its bandwidth as it was with the version 2 software.
Currently, when you delete an app from your iPhone, and then find you’d like to have it back while you’re out and about, you can redownload it to your iPhone again for free - no computer required. However, when trying this with the new firmware, Michael got the following message:
“You’ve already purchased this. You can redownload it for free on your computer, or tap Buy to buy it again.
We’ll have to wait until the offical release to see if this new “feature” makes the cut to the iPhone 3 firmware, but it looks like Apple (or more likely AT&T) is trying to trim their iPhone-related bandwidth needs. Somehow I feel like those “direct to iPhone movie downloads” are going to be a Wi-Fi only deal.
[via iAPPetite]
WTF? Palm Pre syncs with iTunes? Let the countdown to the next iTunes update begin!
Faithful Macenstein reader Jimmy Schapira did what I did not have the time (or quite frankly, the interest) in doing today – he actually followed Engadget’s live Palm Pre event at D7. And good thing he did. First, we learned that the Walt Mossberg-hosted event was for some reason hosted in barber chairs.
But secondly, and almost as important, is that apparently through some sort of evil, blasphemous hackery, Palm has found a way to get iTunes to sync music and video from iTunes to the Pre. On a Mac, no less!
As you might expect, the media needs to be DRM-free, but nowadays just about any music you buy from iTunes WILL be DRM-free. Of course, we fully expect an iTunes update citing “bug fixes” to be released soon after the Pre goes on sale, but this is still actually pretty big news. Now, ordinarily I would say that we should all run out and sell our Apple stock, but coincidentally on the day of Palm’s big coming out party comes rumors that Steve Jobs showed up at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters today, doing one-armed pushups with 2 female interns on his back. So I am predicting a 4% jump in AAPL tomorrow despite this iPhone-killing announcement.
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