Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

If you’ve ever thought about getting a Pink iPhone for yourself, look no further than Colorware PC, who will let you pick out a custom paint job for your iPhone in the colors you want. For example, a classic AdSense like blue/green/white job looks like this:

The cost? Just $200 and 2-3 weeks of processing time, plus additional time to ship it there and back. Looking at their gallery of samples, the painting appears extremely high quality, precise, and on-color. They even off pantone matching for those colors you absolutely need to have. Behind the scenes, they use a custom UV resistant plastic coating they call “X2″ and (probably) paint robots to precisely paint your device.

They also can paint notebooks, macbooks, iPods, PC computers, the Sony PSP, your blackberry, an xBox or PS3, and a host of other commercial products.

I bought a pair of Shure E4c-n earphones about 6 months ago from Amazon, and I have to say they are the best I’ve ever owned. They have a 4/5 star review on Amazon with 50 reviews; their newer cousin the SE420 has similar reviews. Here’s what they look like:

The sound isolation is orders better than any other headphones I’ve tried, and the frequency response is excellent. My coworkers, two of whom bought similar or identical Shure earphones, also swear by them. You can be sitting on the worst part of the NYC subway line with them on, and not hear the pain of the wheels screeching on ill fitted metal tracks.

A reviewer on Amazon praises the sound quality better than I can:

These IEMs sound absolutely incredible. They sound is so clear and detailed that I notice new details in songs that I had listened to dozens if not hundreds of time. In a complex musical passage it is easy to follow every note of a single instrument which is not an easy feat with most headphones.

As for Customer Service, it’s the best. My earphones started wearing out in 6 months at the cord junction where it meets the plug, and they are sending me an advance replacement (against my CC) of the SE420s. When I get them I’ll send back the defectives to the Customer rep who took my warranty replacement and they’ll reverse the charge. Another customer had a similar, great experience:

As for Shure customer service–I had a suspected loose wire in one of the E3 earphones (used for 8 months) leading to dropouts when I would move my head. I got a return form off the Shure website–filled it out and sent it along with a copy of my receipt to Shure. Within 10 days, they had sent out a completely new pair at no charge.

Even Apple doesn’t offer this level of personalized customer service. I’m extremely impressed, and with their 2 year warranty, I’ll definitely buy again!

The Zune 2.0 is coming out, but with more of a whimper than a bang. The new features include new flash models, a black 80GB hard drive model, WiFi syncing, podcast and recorded TV support, according to An in-depth look at the new Zune lineup by Ars Technica. Additionally, these new features will be made available to Zune 1.0 users through a firmware update.

Is this a new product announcement or an apology?

The Zune 2 is basically what the Zune 1 should have been. Its online music store / syncing tool has been rewritten to be as easy to use as iTunes. Hopefully this new Zune will sell more than the paltry 1.2 million units its predecessor sold, but I’m not optimistic. Now that Apple has released their touch-based devices, Microsoft, and every other portable device maker not using touchscreens, is simply a loser. Why would I buy a device with a tiny screen to watch movies on when I can buy a device that removes all the clunky wheel controls and fills all the available space with a gorgeous widescreen?

Specification-wise, the new Zune and iPod touch are basically identical, but interface wise, its a completely different story.

The new Amazon Mp3 store gives you 256 Kb/s MP3 files without any DRM, for generally $8.99 an album. They are already ripping iTunes up on quality, price, and digital rights management. Expect them to continue to improve their selection (Amazon is famous for long tail) and interface, at which point no one will buy Steve Jobs’ crippled music.

Even better, Amazon’s system integrates cleanly with iTunes. You can one-click buy an album from Amazon, and their downloader will pick up the .amz file, grab your tracks, and automatically add them to your iTunes library. I’m also a big fan of the cover-flow like Album pickers they float on some of the mp3 pages:

Paul has it right when he says “Amazon MP3 is kicking ass and taking names.” You can also check out the official blog post or Techcrunch, who notes they are carrying 2,000,000 songs.

I just got home from a weekend at Cornell and promptly canceled my iPod Touch 16Gb order after checking bloglines. Apparently, there are a number of flaws with the new device which outweigh the double capacity it offers at the $399 price point, so I’m going to trade those 8GB for a phone, camera, and email.

Here’s what’s not going so hot with the iPod Touch:

Unlocking, hacking, jailbreak:

According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, “Jailbreak seems increasingly unlikely at this point.” Without the ability to run custom applications on the touch, there’s absolutely no hope for enhancements that make it as fun or useful as the iPhone. While someone may open it up for hacking in the near future, it’s not happening yet.

Shoddy UI:

Check out this photo of an iPod Touch displaying an iPhone error message. While just a graphical glitch, it doesn’t bode well for PR or the myriad other bugs that we’ll probably start to see cropping up in the Touches soon.

Shoddy manufacturing:

People have been receiving iPhone Touches without OSX installed on them, making their $399 mp3 player a brick in their pockets. Yet another bug.

Missing bazillions of iPhone features:

The list of cut features is long: edge, mail, link sharing, notes, calendar, bluetooth, volume buttons, maps, weather, stocks, a dock, or a camera. Some of these (camera, edge, mail, bluetooth, maps) are deal-breaking features.

Bad sound quality:

It’s been shown that the new 6G iPod Classics have worse sound quality than the 5G line. I don’t know if this affects the Touch or iPhone, but it’s something to keep in mind. Update: According to iFix it, the iPod Touch uses the older, superior Wolfson chipset which doesn’t suffer from this issue.

Screen quality issues:

The iPod touch’s screen has a much worse contrast ratio than the iPhone’s, as seen in this Flickr set, which means a loss of detail and negative black sections on the slightly smaller display.