…of iPhone hype stories this past week, Steve Jobs is quoted as calling “the human finger the most sophisticated navigation device known to mankind.” I’m sure the Babeland ladies would agree.

A British real-estate development firm is offering newly-built, tiny, one-bedroom condos (known there as “flats”), under the trademark “iPads.”

The beloved laptop upon which I’ve written the past year’s worth of these site entries is now superseded by a newer model. That’s OK; I still care for the one I’ve got.

Forbes reports Apple Computer’s contacting the major record companies about selling music videos through iTunes, to be played on computers and/or a future video iPod. Sony’s PlayStation Portable game machine can already be easily used to play motion-picture content.

Don’t think of this as the Forbes writer does, as a way for the deservedly-beseiged music giants to make another buck. Think of it as a way for indie videomakers to make a buck, at last.

During the dot-dom madness days, a lot of fly-by-nite outfits popped up (including several in Seattle) making and/or distributing short online video productions in many genres–sketch and standup comedy, animation, documentary, alternative news, erotica, and even video art. Most of the nonporn efforts failed financially. (The ad-supported, big-money-backed iFilm is the chief surviving exception.)

But, following on Apple’s embracing of audio podcasters, iTunes could provide a simple, open-to-all-comers pay-per-view system. (And because it’s Apple, it wouldn’t be annoyingly Windows-only, like so many subscription net-Video systems out there.)

Of course, having a workable business model doesn’t mean indie short-video makers will have an easy path to profitability. Cheaper means of production since the ’90s have led to an explosion of indie feature-film making, resulting in a glut of unviewable semipro movies.

But freed from the need to keep a compelling story going for more than an hour, these nascent artistes with their digi-camcorders could learn their craft while getting audience feedback. Film/video is a complex collection of skills, best learned via the high-concept, immediate-impact form of the short.

In the ’90s, several instructors and advisors told young filmmakers to skip shorts and start directly in feature projects. Chief among their reasons: There was no market for live-action shorts, but features could be hawked at Sundance and other festivals, or at least sold on video from your own website. For a middle-class kid looking at a lifetime of credit-card servitude just to break into his/her chosen craft, it was an easy idea to accept.

We’ve all seen, or scrupulously avoided, the results: Innumerable, interminable exercises in “hip” violence and relationship whining, with bad acting and terrible audio.

With shorts, these kids can say what they really need to say and then stop. Like I’m doing now.

Starting next year, Apple Computer will shift to Intel processors. Sites that specialize in Mac coverage will have much, much more to say about this than I. But for now, consider these points:

• Apple’s move away from IBM’s PowerPC chips further reduces Big Blue’s involvement in the personal computer biz, which it once dominated. It previously sold off its own PC operations to a Chinese company.
• Wired suspects the real reason for the switch might be Apple honcho Steve Jobs’s increasing involvement within/sucking up to the Hollywood media conglomerates. Intel, you see, has been developing anti-copying schemes that would reside directly on the CPU chip. They’d prevent home users from doing anything to music and movie files that the media giants don’t want done.
• If Apple hardware will now have “Intel Inside,” does that mean Mac OS X will be runnable on other companies’ hardware? And if so, will there even continue to be Apple hardware?
• Apple claims it’s got developer tools that’ll make the transition really easy for software creators, and that even unadapted applications will run swiftly and bug-free on the new machines. I’ll believe it when I see it.
• Does this mean the beginning of the end of Apple’s whole “Think Different” corporate identity?

I took a piece of my condo-sale proceeds (otherwise tightly secured away to stave off the credit card companies) and got me a new iBook G4 with the new Mac OS X “Tiger” operating system. I only had to wait in line 45 minutes at the Apple Store on a cloudy Friday evening to get it, plus some extra RAM.

This marks only the third time in 23 years of computer purchasing that I’d bought an all-new machine, at its regular retail price, from a brick-and-mortar retail outlet.

The first time was for a Radio Shack TRS-80, of which I have little more to say at this time.

I will, though, tell of the first Mac I bought, at the U Book Store back when its computer department was hidden away in the Alumni Association’s building. It was the Mac 512 (the second Macintosh model, after the original Mac 128), purchased in mid-1995 at the end of its product “life.” Instead of MC/Visa, I bought it under in-store credit “contract terms.” I couldn’t actually bring it home for two days after I bought it, because, the salesperson told me, they needed to properly “break in” the machine by leaving it powered up that long on the premises before they could entrust it to me, or me to it.

This time, I looked around, decided what to get, told the first clerk I saw what I wanted, waited at the Genius Bar for five minutes, was greeted by another clerk with my purchase in a handy carry-out-strapped box, paid my money, and strutted out humming April Stevens’s “Teach Me Tiger” and the Mills Brothers’ “Tiger Rag” (but not “Eye of the Tiger”).

I’d pondered getting a Mac mini instead, but I’d have had to also get an external monitor, and those (at least the good ones of those) ain’t cheap. Besides, I’m sorta used to the wireless/cord-optional life by now.

Compared to its three-and-a-half-year-old predecessor, my new iBook has twice the official processor speed. But between the improved G4 chip architecture and the new OS version, it actually runs several times faster on most CPU-intensive tasks. (I’d previously considered replacing the shareware outlining program I’d been using, just because it took up to two minutes to save files. Now, that task’s accomplished in seconds.)

I’ve yet to explore most of Tiger’s new features, other than the improved search box in the Finder that can track down anything I’ve ever saved by content (not just title). That’s partly because of time constraints; I’ve gotten a gig proofreading a new book about Tiger.

Other things I’ve acquired for my new place include a Caller ID box (how’d I even manage to live previously without this godsend for the home-office worker?) and a laundry hamper with wheels (an absolute must for anyone whose residence and washing machine are an elevator ride apart).

…involuntary “Internet fast” for yr. intrepid web-editor today and part of yesterday.

At exactly 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, my hard drive froze. It wouldn’t restart; all I got was the gray screen of suspended animation, Mac OS X’s counterpart to Windows’s blue screen of death. I was able to boot up from the external hard drive, but the internal drive didn’t even appear. None of the diagnostic applications to which I had access could fix it—Disc First Aid just gave up, and Norton Utilities crashed.

Bright n’ early Thursday morning, a friend came over to lend me his expertise and his copy of DiscWarrior. That program churned and stalled for nine hours without rebuilding my corrupted directory structure.

What I was able to do was get online while booting up form the external drive. I downloaded an OS upgrade, which enabled my external drive to perform a basic boot-time rebuilding on my internal drive, making it visible again. Two restarts later, I was booting from the internal drive again.

I’ve been able to make a complete backup. And I’ve obviously been able to get online and post this. It’s still running slowly (my friend suspects the OS is struggling to find dats within a still-corrupt directory structure).

This is the first time anything like this has happened to me under OS X. Under the old Mac OS, this sort of thing happened enough times a year that I could remember what to do about it.

As for why it happened, I’ve two theories:

• I’ve been running my iBook with dangerously little free hard-drive space. OS X uses virtual memory, particularly when accessing web sites that use Flash animation.
• OS X update 10.3.5 may be unstable. Stick to 10.3.4.

A KIND READER thought some of the rest of you, particularly out-O-towners, might enjoy this P-I piece about the Mac programmers at Microsoft.

FORBES HAS A NICE laudatory piece on the 20th anniversary of the original Macintosh.

(You mean you aren’t bored with these yet?): Just spent the last day and a half doing two complete computer backups: A “soft” backup to the external hard drive, and a “hard” backup to 60 CD-Rs. This was all in prep for upgrading to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. So far, the new-‘n’-improved operating system runs significantly faster. I’ve faced only a couple of little glitches thus far, attributable to the new OS not automatically reading my old email preferences and other such trifles.

I sent my iBook with the bad hard drive but the good screen, along with my other iBook with the good hard drive but the bad screen, at 5 p.m. Tuesday to The Seattle Mac Store. At 10:30 a.m. Wednesday they called with the good news: They’d successfully created a Frankenmac out of my workable parts.

Of course, I was then up to 4 a.m. reloading all the documents, preferences, etc. from my backup hard drive. Then I’ll get to do even more backing up and reconfiguring once OS X 10.3 shows up.

My hard drive’s dying today. Further updates might be sporadic. Keep watching this space. (And keep watching the skies.)

APPLE COMPUTER’S second company-owned store in the region opened last weekend in Seattle’s rapidly upscaling University Village shopping center.

As was the case with Apple’s Bellevue Square opening earlier this year, a line snaked out over the mall grounds on opening night. By the time the first customers were let in at six, guys (and it was almost all guys) at the end of the line would have more than an hour’s wait.

The new Apple Store, built from scratch on the onetime site of an A&P supermarket (remember those, anyone?), is much bigger than the Bellevue store, which had to be squeezed into an ex-Hallmark shop site. Thus, it more fully expresses the company’s aim of providing a real-world equivalent to the Mac OS’s clean, uncluttered, dignified aesthetic of cyberspace.

Live entertainment was provided on Friday by a subset of the UW Marching Band (above), and on Saturday with a 15-minute free set by Euro power-poppers the Raveonettes (below).

(Incidentally, the Apple Store’s free Wi-Fi signal reaches next door to the Ram sports bar, but just barely.)

Meanwhile, other businesses in the neighborhood have gotten into the cyber-craze, as seen in this exploitation of an already-tired Internet catch phrase.

I could add that I walked from the Village uphill to the University District late Saturday night, past the Greek Row where rowdy frat boys rioted after midnight. I left before that happened, but could sense a tension in the air, an angry and ornery sound of “fun” emanating from many of the fraternities and rental houses on the first Saturday night of the school year.

PERSONAL UPDATE #1: In an it-could-only-happen-to-me occurance, I was finally replacing the busted screen on my own laptop last night when I pushed my chair back too far, struck a small table, and sent my new laptop to the floor—busting the screen. (Fortunately, I had a spare screen on hand, the one I was going to have put into my old laptop.)

PERSONAL UPDATE #2: Medically, I still don’t know exactly what happened to me two weeks ago. Two hours at the doc’s office got me only the info that I had an undefinedly “abnormal” EKG. More tests shall occur later this month.

I hope to all known deities it’s not cardiac-esque. My principal death nightmare has always involved (1) having a heart attack, (2) writhing on a sidewalk, and (3) dozens of passersby simply standing around and laughing.

After a second, even longer (ten days) bout of computerlessness, a new Mac arrived via express this morning. I’ve just spent the past 12 hours migrating data and reconfiguring everything.

I could still use some help in retrieving files from my now-totaled old laptop. If any of you have a recent-vintage Mac monitor and would lemme come over & use it for a half hour, lemme know.

Otherwise, MISCmedia is back in biz and will soon be posting some of the texts and pix we’ve generated in the past week and a half.

PS: You’re all still most welcome to donate to the MISCmedia Replacement Computer Fund (non-tax-deductible), via the link near the top-right corner of this page.