I have tasted the forbidden fruit...

I bought an Apple product yesterday. My first ever. I'll give you all one guess what it is. Yep, given the slurry of press, and it's recent release it is probably completely obvious that I bought an iPod nano. Technically, I had purchased a iPod mini about two weeks ago, but I returned it (heh, less than 30 days. Yes!) and got the nano instead.

I was already in awe over the great interface that the iPod mini had, not to mention the functionality of having a 4GB hard drive that easily fit into my pocket. Now, I have all that plus a color screen (woot!), nearly 200% better battery life (double woot!), and it's ridiculously (shiny)tiny. I've been showing it off a bit (too much) at work, and nearly everyone who's seen/touched it has said that they want one, and several have vowed to get one soon.

This is the flash based MP3 player that the market has needed for quite some time. I'm sure the shuffle has it's place among some, but the nano has all of the shuffle's flash based goodness, plus a very usable screen. To give it some perspective the screen is almost identical in size/resolution to my cell phone's.

It's funny. The thing that finally caused me to cave and get an MP3 player, was in fact the driving factor into getting an iPod based player. Podcasting. If you haven't already fallen into this rabbit hole, I strongly suggest that you jump. Head first. Now!

Seriously, my drive time has moved away from meaningless banter between the gaggle of morning show radio program hosts, and to a system where I am delivered fresh content of my choice (how novel?!?) during my commute. No longer need I listen to theories on why Brad and Jennifer are calling it quits, instead I can learn about AJAX, new topics in Java, the skills of a successful manager, new gadgets that are just hitting the market, etc etc etc (the list goes on for quite some time).

In addition to all of this, there are quite a few Christian podcasts out there. So far, I'm not terribly impressed with any of them, but there is one, Dev4Gamers, that has been interesting occasionally. It's billed as "Devotions for Gamers," but I don't really see how it has anything to do with gaming. Ultimately, it's a very nice, short devotional that I typically listen to as I'm getting to the freeway. It just tends to remind me to focus my day on God, instead of myself, which I so often need reminding of.

To wrap this all up, I just want to add that I haven't "drank the Koolaid" just yet on the Apple products, although the Mac mini has caught my eye a couple of times. Only time will tell.

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