Cult of iPod

Book Description

Wired news editor Leander Kahney follows up his bestselling The Cult of Mac with The Cult of iPod, a comprehensive look at how Apple's hit iPod is changing music, culture, and listening behavior. The Cult of iPod includes the exclusive back story of the iPod's development; looks at the many ways iPod's users pay homage to their devices; and investigates the quirkier aspects of iPod culture, such as iPod-jacking (strangers plugging into each other's iPods to discover new music), as well as the growing legions of MP3Js (regular folks who use their iPods to become DJs). Four-color throughout.

Customer Reviews:

An eye-opening look at how the iPod itself has changed the nature of music........2007-01-07

Fans of the CULT OF MAC book will find equally absorbing Leander Kahney's new look at how the iPod is revolutionizing all kinds of information. A history of the iPod's development and marketing is accompanied by colorful cultural insights and examples of iPod's vast changes to music culture and file sharing. Any interested in making, marketing or listening to music must consider THE CULT OF IPOD: it's an eye-opening look at how the iPod itself has changed the nature of music.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

A fascinating look at the Apple's current signature product.......2006-12-13

This book takes a unique look at Apple's signature product and how it has changed the way people listen to music. The book is divided into two sections.

The first section consists of the first three chapters. The iPod is introduced, and its basic functions and history explained. The rest of the book is the second part. It covers a large number of iPod topics at random. Material covered includes homemade iPod ads, the custom iPods of some celebrities, iPod DJs, and products that have been invented as a result of the iPod's existence. Stylistically, the book is designed to resemble the iPod. For example, the cover resembles the front of an iPod, and the table of contents looks like an iTunes library list. In spite of being 160 pages long, you can read the book in less than two hours due to the large number of colorful photos present.

The book is more about the cultural impact of the iPod than its inner mechanics. It is not one of those "Missing Manuals" you often see. There is a fascinating exploded view of the iPod internals on pages 36 and 37, but more interesting - at least to me - was the discussion on iPod jacking starting on page 103. There are also stories about people using their iPods to block out the rest of the world, people using the white ear buds to show they are part of the "iPod group", and alternatively, people who use ordinary earphones to hide the fact that they are using an iPod who are trying to assert that they do not follow the crowd.

There are humorous stories about the perils of being an iPod-using Microsoft employee, and serious ones such as the one about posters that mimic iPod ads but are actually protesting the Iraq war. There really is something here for everyone. Don't let its "coffee table book" look fool you - there really is some deep and thoughtful material here.

Suitable scrapbook of print bites & eye-candy.......2006-11-04

As a new user (I know, years behind the curve) of an I-Pod and an instructor at a technical university, this book interested me doubly. I wanted to learn about the making of this product, its design and marketing, and how the aura of cool was generated triumphantly around this, say, and not the Rio. I referred my students to this book as an example of how to analyze the cultural impacts of a specific technological product. The table of contents mimics the readout on the I-Pod screen, and the contents themselves combine snippets of print, often in sidebar or columnal formats, as played against graphics--the visual and the textual jostle for attention, fittingly, in this book about not only the nuts-and-bolts of the machine, but how it looks: surely one of the key features that led this handsome player to succeed while other clunkier models had failed to gain massive sales.

At times, this volume's layout can be like reading Wired Magazine: a bit overwhelming when you simply want to look up a short entry. Like Wired, it's a bit pricy for what's actually compiled as text within as opposed to the attention-getting graphics. Kahney, a reporter for Wired News, reports here as a suitable follow-up to "The Cult of Mac," according to the back blurb (made to imitate in its copy and layout the I-Pod's own iconography). As a non-Mac user, it's intriguing to get a vivid if not too detailed glimpse into how the other 20% lives with their Cupertino- designed accoutrements.

This book admittedly does feel cobbled together as an assembly of bite-sized features and eye-candy pictorials, familiar to any reader of Wired. Yet, I suppose the author knows his audience. If the likely reader of this book is as curious about not the how-to of the I-Pod but the why, then this book begins to provide suggestions. Not for the newbie needing advice on its mimimalistically presented operation, but for the adept wishing to delight in its Zen-like presence. It's for a crowd who I presume is as enamored with the appearance of a product as well as the function of a product-- and this expresses Apple's cachét within the computer realm neatly. Therefore, it's an appropriate combination for the eyes that accompanies the soundtrack of one's life for each user's ears.

A suitable print companion would be Dylan Jones' "IPod, Therefore I Am" published also in 2005: this in Nick Hornsby "High Fidelity"-fashion conveys Jones' packing of his 40Gb jukebox with the best of his many records, and how our consumption of music has been affected by its portability. Malcolm McLaren back around 1982 predicted that music would become less important for younger generations but more disposable and therefore sought after as a cheap commodity. (This observation quoted in another fine 2005 study, Simon Reynolds' "Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984.") This separation of the medium from the message, so to speak, reflects, perhaps, two decades later, the ubiquity of the device and the detachment of the record sleeve, the tape, the disc, from the music itself in digitized bytes and invisible shapes.

So, how does Leander Kahney succeed? Theorists and then journalists will no doubt follow the first reports on the I-Pod's arrival, as did Theodore Roscek and Stewart Brand and James Fallows and Tracy Kidder twenty-odd years ago in the wake of the first Apples and PCs. This larger-format but only 150 pp. entry, then, reminds me of two decades ago, when non-techies began raving about their PCs and how such devices would liberate us from drudgery and bring about unity. It's a primer to a phenomenon. Utopian, perhaps, in some of its claims, but this is probably the earliest entry in what will be a short shelf of studies of the impact of the shift from what's been labelled a move from broad- to narrow- to pod-casting, as the websites that supplanted networks in turn are superseded by programming tailored not to but by the individual. Kahney concludes that it's not technology but our culture that makes us antisocial, and that the I-Pod is not to be blamed. In fact, as podcasting and the sharing of playlists shows, it may in fact simply be the latest and far more easy-to-use evolved version of the mix-cassette tapes that were once lovingly made and exchanged as tokens of friendship and shared admiration those couple of decades ago.

An interesting read on a cultural phenom........2006-07-07

I recently purchased an ipod and before I received it, I wanted to read up on it. I was looking more for a how-to book, which this isn't. This book instead is a very interesting read on the beginning of the ipod to the impact on society the ipod has had. The book is well written, with interesting facts and great color photos. I would highly recommend this book to any ipod owner or future owner. I did not buy this book, rather I rented it from the public library.

An artifact of its own subject.......2006-04-03

I had checked out Mr. Kahney's book hoping to find some objective insight into what has become the news media's technological darling. But objectivity is nullified when a disclaimer such as the following appears on the publication page: "Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion and **to the benefit of the trademark owner**, with no intention of infringement of the trademark" (emphasis added). This lack of objectivity is further evidenced by the last line of the first paragraph: "Inside Apple's little white box is magic, pure magic, in the guise of music." To paraphrase The Lovin' Spoonful, if you believe in magic then this book's for you.

As such, the book does provide some insight into the iPod phenomenon. The chapters read as newspaper or magazine articles but they are interspersed among countless lightweight stories that seem like print versions of TV news features about the eponymous subject (iPods: They're Hot!). The articles, such as they are, are actually quite good but, again, objectivity is suspect throughout.

For those interested in the iPod for any reason, this book can operate as a launch pad for more indepth study. But it cannot be used a sole source. It will become less useful over time as more objective books and articles are published. Eventually, it will just be another artifact of the early years of the iPod.

Average customer rating:

Excellent insider book
A book for everyone!
A great tale of our Mac Lifestyle.
Mac lovers unite!
A great book for a Macintosh lover

The Cult of Mac (Paperback edition)
Leander Kahney
Manufacturer: No Starch Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

MacOS | Operating Systems | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1593271220

Book Description

No product on the planet enjoys the devotion of a Macintosh computer. Famously dedicated to their machines, many Mac fans eat, sleep and breathe Macintosh. In The Cult of Mac, Wired News managing editor Leander Kahney takes an in-depth look at Mac users and their unique, creative, and often very funny culture. From people who get Mac tattoos and haircuts, to those who furnish their apartments out of empty Mac boxes, the book details Mac fandom in all of its forms. This paperback edition includes an all-new chapter about the iPod, updates throughout, and new photos that reflect current Apple technology.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent insider book.......2007-03-29

This was a great book about the people that make up the Mac cultsa round the world.

A book for everyone!.......2007-03-24

The Cult of Mac
By Leander Kahney
Publisher: No Starch Press
Price: 39.95 US
ISBN: 1886411832

I was delighted when I was given a copy of this book to read and review. Not only is it about something I LOVE..... it is written so that even my parents would understand my passion. A lovely coffee-table book, this 260+ page book is a visual treat, with many pictures of our beloved machines, and the fans who buy them. You won't find a detailed look into Apple, Inc. This is about us, the users. The chapters are focused on specific traits, or habits of the Macintosh community. And while we all KNOW why we love our Macs, this book will help others learn, and perhaps make the switch.

There are also many little known factoids, and a full chapter devoted to the Japanese obsession for Macintosh computers. Many will remember, and perhaps still have, the holiday ornament that looks like an all-in-one classic. Fans have made replicas out of cardboard and paper for decades. Some even use the packing boxes as furniture.

One of the things about this book that readers may like, is that the chapters can be read in any sequence. The topics are as individual as our users, and no strict order is required. Read about what interests you. There are references enough to follow on your own, so if you are interested in digging deeper, you can.

While some of the material is obviously dated already, this is not about the latest and greatest, but about the phenomenon of the Apple user. One word that stands out in many of the chapters is "community". The author stresses many times how incredibly loyal Macintosh fans are, in spite of the wide range of users. From tattooed bikers, to captains of industry, no barrier is too high, or wide, or deep to make any appreciable separation between Macheads.

Not to sound trite, but this is a "must have" kind of book. And it looks great with any décor.........

A great tale of our Mac Lifestyle........2007-02-24

When your family asks you why you have a Mac, this book
explains it for you. We are unique in our view of life. The fact that
our cult is different is just fine with us. The text covers the roots
of the Mac experience, the skin ink, the haircuts, the car art, the
mods we have done, the inspirations we share with the creators
within Apple. We offer up our ideas for the next big thing freely,
hoping to become some small part of the process by posting on
discussion boards and rumor sites for those already at Apple
to notice.
But, this book goes even further. It recalls how every person who
buys a Mac, receives so much more than just a machine to do a
particular task. They receive a new pathway into a future. One
where some will find joy in the special thought that went into the
packaging the Mac was shipped in. We will throw a party for the
unwrapping of that new Mac and then take photos to share with
friends who were absent that day. Others will save the packaging
for later or build something out of the box. Get enough Apple
boxes together and build a sofa. Get a few older Macs together
and build a bar, a network, and a piece of art.
If you as I have bought Macs since the 80's, this book is a joyous
ride back. If you are new to the Apple clan, read about where we
have been. The inspirations that Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and
Guy Kawasaki brought into the business world. Of the developers
and suppliers who have created all of those little gizmos thingies
for the Macs, the Power Macs, for the ibooks, the PowerBooks, the
MacBooks, the minis, for the ipods, and for our lives. And mainly,
this book is for the users. For those of us within "The Cult of Mac"
and of how we relish life.

Mac lovers unite!.......2007-02-12

The Cult of Mac.

For the true Mac lover. Possibly the largest computing subculture on this planet. This book is about everything Mac in a fashion sense. The first coffee table book for Mac that I can think of.

There is nothing technical about this book. It's solely about the Mac life style. Shave a Mac apple into the back of your head. It's alright here. The Mac. It's not just the worlds best computer it's also an art form. Not using that iMac any more no problem, remove the hardware and convert it into a fish tank. Buy the clothing. Use the Apple Lisa as bookends. This book is filled with ideas of what to do with that old Mac that you don't use and it's too beautiful or there's too much of a emotinal attachment to send it to the recycling plant. Revel in your own personal Mac-dom. Think different

A great book for a Macintosh lover.......2006-12-16

This is a great cofee-table book for the Mac obsessed, or even those just interested in one of the great design icons of our time. As the member of an Apple Mac User Group, I can testify to the partisanship that can take over once you start using an Apple computer, but I've yet to participate in the depths of obsession documented so colorfully here. There isn't a lot in this book on the history of Apple, which has been done over by many other books anyway, instead it's a well-illustrated look at what the Mac has meant to its users. My favorite section was on the Japanese who continue to hang on to their original Macs long after the average user has replaced theirs several time over, updating and customising their machines in elaborate and imaginative ways.

Book Description

BradyGames Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Official Strategy Guide features a step-by-step walkthrough for every mission enhanced with level maps. Intelligence data includes armament and information on the alien races that work with you and against you. Extensive multiplayer section includes maps for each level and tips to bring you out on top. Cheat codes and much more!

Customer Reviews:

Accurate, well written and practical.......2002-03-03

I'm no gaming wizard. I just like to have fun so guides are essential to me. This one is tops. Easy to read, easy to relate to where you are in the game; clear, concise, and accurate. Easy to use. Worth every penny.

Great Walkthroughs.......2000-10-11

This is a great guide if you want nothing left to do by yourself. It provides great walkthroughs and maps of levels and also special item locations. Get this if you are stuck on a level or if you want a step by step guide to each level. Do not get this if you would prefer to leave some of the levels to yourself.

Book Description

You?ve tackled the basics. You can blend textures and manipulate vertex buffers with the best of them. So what now? "Advanced Animation with DirectX" will show you how to move beyond the basics and into the amazing world of advanced animation techniques. Get ready to jump right in, because this book starts off with a bang. There is no time wasted on basic concepts that you?ve already mastered. Instead, you'll learn the techniques you need to create seamless timing, skeletal animations, and cloth simulations. Don't let the pros have all the fun! With "Advanced Animation with DirectX" by your side, you'll learn how to use cutting-edge animation techniques, from real-time cloth simulations and lip-synced facial animation to animated textures and a physics-based rag-doll animation system. If you're bored with the basics and ready to get down to the nitty-gritty of truly spectacular animation with DirectX, you've come to the right place.

Customer Reviews:

Nice to start whit animation.......2007-05-04

I buy this book because I can not find another book whit animation on direct x, but you need install the direct x sdk 9 to run the examples, and a good video card, if you not, show you many error of memory, in some cases this book are helpfully if you not have any idea how to made an animation or cloth simulation, I recommend this book for a start into direct animation, the book only help you to take a path to start into game develop, because are very hard to find a book how to show you made animations, there is many things and ideas you can save from this book to use like a guide for a start.

Not a great book.......2005-10-19

I would only suggest this book if you have a lot of patience and determination to make sense of the authors code. The source code has bugs, and many many memory leaks. It isn't even formatted correctly. In order to make sense of it, I had to tab and format it correctly. Not fun. There are much easier ways to do animation than what the book describes. If you really want to know how X files work then get this book, otherwise skip it.

Outdated.......2005-01-21

There are new helper functions in the D3DX library that eliminates parsing X files manually. Parsing X files is not really related to the book's topic, and yet you are forced to learn it because it's used throughout the book. Even worse is the fact that the code for parsing X files, which the book's examples are tightly coupled with, are no longer working with the newer releases of the DX9 SDK. So unless you go back to an older SDK release, none of the book's samples will compile. Even if you do use an older SDK, you will be wasting time learning functions and interfaces that have been deprecated. Bottom Line: The book's is very implementation orientated and the code are outdated, therefore it's best to stay away from this book to avoid frustrations.

My thoughts on this book........2004-06-04

Advanced Animation with DirectX is not a good book at all. The author did a terrible job on the skinned animation parts and the later parts of the book is just plain bad. The beginning was ok but the code was not right. I tried to implement some of the stuff at the beginning and it didn't work. When I sat down and thought about the problem at hand and how to do it, I got everything working smoothly without using anything that was done is the book (which means the book was a waste of money). Who ever gave this book 5 out of 5 stars must be the author or a friend.

Unbiased review.......2004-02-15

First of all the retail price of the book is too much. The last section (video on texture and cloth simulation) which he thinks are the most advanced are just pretty lame. He could have better described how to export a skinned mesh better. The ragdoll effect as given is not combined with an animated model making it a bit less useful. The book does cover a lot on using skeletal animation that was definately not covered in other books that I've bought on the subject. I'm also glad that it has no intro to DX section. PS: Who wrote the 5 star review, the author?

Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9 (Wordware Game Developer's Library)

Average customer rating:

Useless
Excellent textbook for a short course
Save your money and buy something else
Confusing, unfocused, incomplete
A minimal update of the DirectX 7.0 edition

Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9 (Wordware Game Developer's Library)
Peter Walsh
Manufacturer: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1556229682

Book Description

Targets experienced computer game programmers as well as those interested in computer game development.

Customer Reviews:

Useless.......2007-05-11

For the most part of this book, its trying to fill its 500 pages with images and function references that are essentially a copy/paste from the freely available DirectX SDK. The book's content is either SDK material or completely basic stuff. Even the introductory books that I have read are far more advanced than this one.

Excellent textbook for a short course.......2004-08-22

Because it covers all principal topics on game programming in a straight to the point way and with C++ code, makes it a practical book for learning fast and concise. it is possible to develop an application in less than a semester. I recommend it to students and people who prefer reading a book than the DX API documentation from the screen. Hope to see "Advanced 3D Game programming with DX10" someday (anyway it should be called "Intermediate" instead of "Advanced")

Save your money and buy something else.......2004-07-13

I only rate this one star because I cannot rate it no stars.
I don't know why they bother updating this book everytime a new version of DirectX comes out. It sucks everytime.
What they should do is throw out everything they have and start over.

Confusing, unfocused, incomplete.......2004-06-28

I bought this book to advance from what I've learned with Microsoft samples and tutorials. The book introduces basic concepts in the first few chapters then did not provide any concrete examples or explanations. It doesn't even offer any examples on how to create a simple geometry in DX!! The coding style is so different from what MS offered that I had a hard time adapting. On contrary to the misleading title "Advanced 3D Game Programming...", it strays off and attempt to cover DirectPlay, DirectSound, 3D Math, AI(even!), and DirectInput in short chapters instead of focusing on D3D in-depth.
To make the long story short, I'm back on Amazon looking for a decent book and revisiting Microsoft tutorials during the wait. Don't make the mistake of buying this book. I totally agree with everyone else's reviews! If only I checked the reviews on Amazon first :(

A minimal update of the DirectX 7.0 edition.......2004-05-13

"Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0" by Peter Walsh covers a broad range of subjects critical to making games: graphics, artificial intelligence, networking, and mathematics. Priced at just under $60, the book contains eleven chapters that span approximately 520 pages.

The first chapter, "Windows" describes how to create a window and respond to some of the common Windows messaging events. The chapter defines several custom classes that loosely resemble code created by Visual Studio's workspace wizard but cleaner and in a Win32 flavor. These classes form the framework for a generic Windows game.

The next three chapters (Getting Started with DirectX, DirectInput, and DirectSound) show how to compile and link DirectX with your application and initialize two of the sub-systems found in DirectX, DirectSound and DirectInput. The sub-systems are briefly highlighted and wrapper classes are given to simplify their usage. The DirectInput and DirectSound chapters focus on initialization of each system rather than exploring the more sophisticated uses of each system like force feedback or dynamic audio mixing.

Chapters on 3D math, artificial intelligence, and networking follow. The math chapter provides basic math definitions like the dot and cross products as well as container classes for vectors and matrices. The AI chapter is brief. Readers seeking to gain a deeper understanding should read the chapter in conjunction with a decent college text that describes fundamental search routines like A* or Djkstra's algorithm. Lastly, the networking chapter relies on WinSock without mentioning DirectPlay. Classes are provided to encapsulate the network layer of a game. While all three chapters are essential to game programming, none adequately covered the complexity and nuances of each subject given the space provided.

The remaining chapters presented in the last fifth of the book discuss rendering and are easily the highpoint of the text. Walsh attempts to detail advanced topics like multi-texture and multi-pass rendering using the fixed function pipeline. Yet despite featuring DirectX 9.0, many of the new SDK features were missing from the text such as vertex and pixel shaders, displacement maps, or the two-sided stencil mode. Beginning with lighting and fog parameters, Walsh explores several sophisticated graphics techniques including the mathematics of animation, subdivision of surfaces, radiosity, and progressive meshes. Then, examples of multi-pass texture mapping (light maps, environment maps, and glow maps) are provided to illustrate various DirectX render states. Last, Walsh discusses scene management to assist in reducing the number of objects drawn per frame by using portals to test visibility and octrees.

For the price of the book, a companion CD containing the source code would have been beneficial. When I downloaded the sample code to try them out, three of the four examples crashed because DirectX device wasn't successfully initialized when rendering began on my GeForce4. Since the examples executed in full-screen mode, the computer needed to be rebooted. Additionally, the sample code contained a couple C/C++ techniques that are not commonly found in game development: exceptions and nameless unions. Support for exceptions can add to the size of a program and slow its execution speed while unions hinder portability and create potential memory alignment issues that are compiler dependant.

I found the book's title at odds with the subject matter. Generally, Walsh provided an overview of the basic theory, API calls, and usage. When more details would help clarify understanding of a point, the reader was often referred to the DirectX SDK help. As an experienced developer, I found very little of value in this book. While Walsh attempts to cover a broad spectrum of subjects, none of the topics are adequately explored leaving the seasoned reader with nothing but an unsatisfying overview and possibly a reference to the SDK help file.

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