What’s in the box

The package is pretty much run of the mill for mid to high end electronics. Yes this is a review of the actual product, but I feel the packaging plays an important role in the sale and perception of the product. Maybe Bose’s stand is that packaging is irrelevant because it’s the overarching quality of the product that counts. All I’m saying is it that with a product that costs $350 the packaging could and probably should be of Apple caliber.

Alright, back from my little aside there in the box you’ll get:

• The headphones (of course)
• Two 5ft long 3.5 mil jack cables
• Wall charger
• Two rechargeable batteries
• 3.5 mil to 1/4 inch jack adapter (pretty sure of this)
• Carrying case with room for the charger, batteries, etc
• Airplane jack

My thoughts

Unlike all the other Bose headphones, these are actually on-ear, which sit on, which some of you may like, but personally I prefer around-ear. Actually when I got these I was suprised at how small they were, as I thought they were around-ear like my Tri Ports. Just something to consider when buying.

Also like my Tri Ports, the padded parts of the headphones have seem to worn down a lot (about 1/2 the puffiness that they used to have).

If you’ve never had or used noise cancelling headphones before, you might want to try a friends or test them out somehow, because they can be a bit hard to get used to. Unless you’ve become accustomed to them, your ears might sting. All I can say is it takes time to adjust, and make sure that the headphones are on correctly and completely cover your ears.

For $350 these headphones are extremely pricey. Are they worth the high price tag? I don’t really think so. In terms of noise cancellation, yeah these are pretty much top of the line. But simply enough, around-ear headphones cancel noise automatically just through the fact you have a wall around your ear. So comparing the reduction of the Tri Ports to the QuietComfort 3, the QC3 wins, but not by as much as you’d think.

In my opinion, the Tri Port headphones are a much better buy, but if you really think noise-cancelling is the only way to go, the QuietComfort 3′s are definitely a solid option.

Additional info

The 5ft cables have headphone jacks on either end, but one end is a 2.5 mil which you probably wont see on too many other headphones, so you probably wont be using these cables for anything else.

The second battery came in a padded yellow envelope.

iPod Nano
The 4th generation iPod Nano has been redesigned, confirming leaked photos from a few days ago. The design rewinds back to the days of the second gen. Nano, sporting the same tall, slender look that originally defined the Nano line. I’m glad it’s back, because MP3 players shouldn’t look like roadkill (G3 Nano).

As far as technical improvements go, the big one here is the addition of an accelerometer.

The accelerometer comes to iPod nano. Give it a shake to shuffle your music. Turn it sideways to view Cover Flow.

The new Nano comes in 9 vibrant colors: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, black, and of course the classic silver. There are two models of G4 Nano — the 8GB for $150, and the 16GB for $200.

iPod Touch
The new iPod Touch has had been slightly changed, featuring a tweaked design similar to that of the iPhone 3G (the curved back). The metal backings’ sheen is still there and additionally, the price has been dropped 70 big ones to $229. Touch now supports Genius playlist creation (keep reading).
iPod Shuffle
The iPod shuffle has gone through a very minor update. The  design and technical specifications remain unchanged, but the shuffle now sports all the colors of the G2 Nano’s colors. Makes sense considering that the shuffle is a miniaturized G2 Nano.
iTunes
iTunes has undergone a version upgrade – to 8.0. Apple claimed that 8.0 would include enough features to deserve th 8.0 title. I’d say it does — aside from grid view and the new visualizer (seen above) there are 2 main brand spankin’ new features that are pretty cool:

• Genius Playlists: Select a song and hit the Genius button. Genius creates a playlist containing songs that match traits of the song picked.
• Genius Sidebar: Essentially just an advanced MiniStore. iTunes remembers every time you play a song. Sidebar simply takes that information and recommends songs based on your It only recommends music from the iTunes Store.

On a side note, Apple updated all the new earbuds (new as in released in the last generation of iPods) to include their own subwoofer and 2 tweeters (in layman’s terms: more speakers) which produce superior sound quality. These could be out already (included with the new Nano), but they are not available as a standalone product from the Apple store as of now.

What do you guys think of the new Nano’s look? Are iTunes’ new features just a bunch of

Just a week or two ago, Kevin Rose left us with details concerning Apple’s huge renovation of its music branch. Last night pictures emerged on macnn of a real live 4th gen nano in its box. What we see in the pictures is akin to what we saw back the day, but is also in some pretty neat and new hard plastic packaging (as opposed to the classic many boxes-in-one design). Another photo emerged on Engadget too, except this one was a blatant fake – a poorly made Photo”chop”:

[Macnn and Engadget]

Firefox may have found a warm fuzzy spot in many web-savvy users’ hearts, but I’m completely blown away by the new browser Google Chrome. Google Chrome was pretty much unknown to the public until yesterday, when details emerged on Blogoscoped.

Google has apparently sent out comic books in the mail. The 38-page teaser illustrated by Scott McCloud demonstrates everything Chrome is about. The main concept is to be extremely simple, which is pretty much Google’s overall philosophy. The other concept is that web applications can be launched from desktop bookmarks in standalone windows. Google has coined this feature “Google Gears.”

Today the Chrome beta came out and you can download it yourself to try it out. I’m actually writing this post in Chrome.

So far only one word comes to my mind when I think of Google Chrome: amazing. The interface is beautifully simple. What are your thoughts, a potential Firefox killer?

Two weeks ago we saw a Youtube video of HTC’s “Dream” – the first phone to run on Google’s Android platform. As the presumed release date draws near (sometime in the next month or two), we’re bound to be seeing more leaked images before an official press release. Anyway, here are some pretty high quality (in comparison to the Youtube video) spy photos of it. At least for a little while anyway, this thing will only be a dream in my Google-loving head.

[Engadget]

Down at NVISION (nVidia’s computer graphics event), the Mythbusters revealed a 1100-barreled paintball gun that painted a pretty good picture of the Mona Lisa – in less than a second. In the demonstration, a first paintball gun is used to draw a smiley face, but at a very slow rate (this one only has one barrel). The second, 1100 barreled gun paints a much more complex picture, much, much faster. In the spirit of NVISION, the purpose of this project was to illustrate the difference in power of single core and multi core GPUs.

The Mythbusters have a knack for permanently engraving things in my brain with outlandish demonstrations, but this one is truly spectacular.

[Giz]

While we probably won’t see consumer hologram projection units anytime soon, this little iPhone app will generate a fake one for you. The app assumes a 35-45 degree viewing angle, and then calculates how to change the angle of the character based on the iPhone’s built in accelerometer. iHologram essentially warps the picture, an anamorphic picture but in real time. The app is currently in development and will be released for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Anamorphosis in Hans Holbeins “The Ambassador”:

[David Oreilly via Pocket Lint]

Kevin Rose, the mastermind behind the social bookmarking and news site Digg, has just announced to the internet that in roughly a month (give or take a week) the iPod Nano line will be redesigned. The new (4th generation) iPod Nano will revert back to the 2nd generation iPod Nano’s rough shape, but with a gently curved profile. The screen will also be in widescreen format, but positioned vertically.

Also, since the iPhone has seen a large price drop from the original to the 3G upgrade, its iPod cousins will follow suit with a significant price drop.

Beyond the minor cosmetic changes to the iPod touch, iTunes is moving up to 8.0. The upgrade is tagged as significant enough to deserve the “8.0″ grade.

An Apple fanboy somewhere just wet his pants.

Here’s Kevin’s video:

[Kevin Rose]

Art Lebedev, the studio that brought the rich and famous the Optimus Maximus Keyboard, has introduced its latest computer peripheral. The Folderix uses sturdy aluminum construction for the casing – after all, what else can you expect from a company that made a $1900 keyboard? The Folderix comes in 3 colors, yellow, purple, and blue. Aside from a laser-etched logo and 4GB of storage, that’s pretty much it for this little device.

You can get your hands on the Folderix starting today, for $55. It is a bit pricey for what you can potentially get, but Art Lebedev has been known to make high quality products – this should last you quite a while.

[Electronista]

(For those that don’t know, Twitter is a microblogging platform where users share the little things that are going on in their lives.)

The robot is essentially a talking “head” – a cardboard box stuffed with a microcontroller and LEDs. Fed through a USB port, the robot recieves twitter updates from a Java application. The application also sends the Ganzbot facial expressions as it figures out how to “pronounce” words.

Here are some videos of the Ganzbot in action:

Really cool! I would most definitely invest $25 in these things, they are a huge upgrade in USB slot fillers.

[Mozmonkey]