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APPLE'S LATEST ISN'T A MACINTOSH

It's been a long time since Apple Computer introduced the Newton PDA, a non-Macintosh consumer electronic product. The Newton spawned the idea as well as the industry of small hand-held electronic organizers. But the Newton was way ahead of its time and met with an early demise basically because there was no proven market for PDAs at the time and its handwriting recognition didn't work. Granted, Apple has learned some valuable lessons when it comes to bringing innovative products to the marketplace. Still, I can't help but muse over the demise of the G4 Cube. The Cube was innovative but its built-in limitation of not being expandable brought it to an early grave. Now there's iPod, Apple's newest gizmo. And although it makes its debut in an already existing market that's chocked full of MP3 players, the iPod does have Apple's innovation and it works great so I believe this one may a chance.

The iPod is a 6.5 ounce portable MP3 player that introduces many features not found in other players. But first and foremost, it looks great. Apple's formula of applying simplistic beauty to complex devices is a successful one. Just looking and holding an iPod makes you want to own it. The iPod follows in the tradition of the milky white iBooks and the stainless sheen of the Titanium G4 PowerBooks. The iPod's clean lines form a simple rectangular shape with rounded corners. Sporting a simple round control panel comprised of five buttons and a jog wheel, it's placed in such a way that you can control and navigate everything with one hand. Tap the Menu button and the backlit screen displays a hierarchal list that lets you quickly navigate down to the music selection you desire.

Start by choosing Artist, Song or Playlist. Artist displays an alphabetical list of artist names, select a name and continue alphabetically through their songs. Song displays an alphabetical list of song titles. Playlist takes you to collections of songs you have assembled together and named such as Roadtrip, Opera, Party Tunes, etc. Whatever method you select, you can locate any song in seconds.

Apple has decided to store everything on a miniature hard drive that holds 5 gigabytes of entertainment. That translates to around a thousand songs recorded at a CD quality sampling rate. Its rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery operates for 10 hours of continuos music. iPod's other innovation is that it's the first to use Firewire to transfer music which means you can download an entire album in around ten seconds. Anyone using a painfully slower USB MP3 player will truly appreciate this feature. And the batteries recharge through the Firewire connection at the same time it's transferring. Finally, Apple has made its iPod aware of Apple's iTunes 2.0 application due for release in November. When you attach the iPod, the Macintosh will automatically detect and launch the iTunes program. The new Auto-Sync feature automatically downloads all your iTunes lists and songs into the iPod. If you add, delete or rearrange anything in iTunes, the iPod will know about it and match its contents to the computer's. And it all happens by just plugging the iPod into the computer. This is one nice MP3 player.

The iPod sells for $399.

www.apple.com

Backup or die

It's not "if" your hard drive will fail, it's "when." Sooner or later, you will experience the joys of a crashing hard drive and if you don't have it backed up, the tears will begin to flow. But baking up just your data isn't going to save you the untold hours of pain and suffering you will endure trying to put back everything else you've acquired over time such as downloads, updated drivers, Register entries and other subtleties that make everything work. Probably the best way to back up everything is with a cloning backup product like Symantec's Norton Ghost 2002. The new 2002 version adds improved performance including Windows XP support. 2002 also lets you backup and span over multiple recordable CDs. Ghost Explorer lets you easily restore individual files or entire directories without having to overwrite your entire hard drive. Plus the first backup disk is bootable in case you can't start up from the crashed hard disk. Ghost 2002 sells for $69.95 and works with a minimally equipped PC.

www.ghost.com