Dude--these things have been around a while. A long time ago, far, far away, to be exact:

http://roguepilot.tripod.com/in.gif

hehe

You guys actually TALK on your iPhone?

Not really a fail. If you're being attacked by a marauding horde of giant foam-headed foes, you can always fall back on lethal force. With heads that size, it's a sniper's wet dream.

I suppose for this to work, have to expose the girls MIDI section... (sorry--terrible pun)

I guess they don't do COVER tunes?

I wonder if they are touch sensitive?

Glad he didn't use WEIGHTED action...

(oh, I should stop now...)

I don't need that fancy schmancy setup as long as my wife eats those lentils...that shit would wake up Michael Jackson--without the nose.

I think I'm in love...

The iPhone (firmware 2.0 and up) supports a variety of corporate enterprise WiFi protocols (PEAP/LEAP, etc.). Not so much with the Pre.

Palm needs to get it shit together before they start making the "more useful" argument.

You're absolutely right, "why not the LS2LS7?"--for smaller, targeted backups of things you want to take off-line (like old projects you may need to keep in perpetuity), a BluRay backup makes total sense.

But, for massive total backup needs for large tomes of data, optical isn't so practical--at least not to me.

Perhaps I colored my point of view with too broad of a brush.

My Mac Pro Wishlist:

-Blu-Ray option for data AND video authoring/playback. The new iLife *SHOULD* introduce this as well as the pro apps!
-Built-in eSATA ports--with all that data, it's gotta shuttle faster.
-RAID card STANDARD--but not $800. Maybe using something like the Drobo data protection technology, eh?
-More support for 3rd party video card options (not just special bullshit lock-ins on a limited models)


BLU-RAY BACKUPS?


A couple of people said "Blu-Ray" for backups. But I'm thinking: Blu-Ray is awesome but as backup? Who the hell has time to back up to optical with *REAL* data (measured in TB)? Maybe for occasional backups of smaller data sets but...

Logic: A DVD burner takes a pretty long time to burn a DVD-R to capacity. Sure--you can get faster burners up to 18 to 24x speeds. However, burn speeds for RELIABLE burns to optical media should be done slower--depending on the quality of the media--and the cheap stuff requires slower burns.

So for a dual layer BluRay burner, that's up to 50GB--about 10x DVD capacity. This is cool. But you're buying the cheaper media to save money and burning at a lower data rate still faster than DVD but that's 45-60 minutes of burn time (or twice that for the dual layer) PLUS verify time. That's at 4x--probably too fast to be consistently reliable on BluRay so to be safe, let's say 2x is the norm. That's 120 minutes for 2x for 25GB or 240 minutes for 50GB. Not really saving that much time--not cool.

However, Blu-Ray discs blanks for 50GB DL @ 6x are still about $30/each. The cheapest I've seen BR blanks are 2x 25GB single-layer discs for about $3 each. But I'm not going to buy the cheapest for my backups. DVD-R media 4.7GB is about $0.38 each on the cheap or $0.50/ea for better quality. So the price per GB is still about half for DVD--not saving money. Again, not cool.

It's not really saving money OR time. Unless you're compiling off-site backups or you require long-term storage, it's cheaper AND faster to just get a Drobo or NAS solution and backup incrementally. Over time, you'll easily spend ~$1000 (the cost of a Drobo stuffed with 4x 1.5 TB drives).

Just to create ONE backup set of around 4,000 GB (~4TB)--what a graphic artist, video editor or audio engineer might easily have on his Mac Pro, you will need 160x 25GB BluRay discs at $5 each ($800). That's just ONE backup plus the incremental changes over the next few months. That's the price of a dynamically protected RAID setup like a Drobo or a RAID5 NAS box which provides quick transfers, low cost per GB, and time-saving incremental backup abilities. Optical back-up does not.

I know--for some people, Optical is their preferred backup solution and there are great arguments for it.

BUT there's nothing convenient about having to constantly buy media and wait an 1-4 hours for the burn to finish EACH time you backup or write to capacity for ONE disc--and you want to write carefully and to capacity otherwise you might make very expensive coaster sets or waste the benefit of having 25GB capacity.

The only widely usable reason to included Blu-Ray is when you can author your own BluRay movies with iDVD or DVD Studio Pro. Playback of BDV? The MPAA is probably scared shitless and licensing royalties to Sony are out of sight--probably the big bag of hurt Steve mentioned. Trouble is, the former feature requires the latter.

I wonder if it runs on cat juice? And says, "Hey, Willie! HA!"