[Z-man]

I own several Apple products (MacBook Pro, iPods, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV 2). All the products are pretty awesome, but the real value, IMHO, comes when you own multiple Apple products. They all seamless integrate with each other, which is truly amazing.

For example -- right now, I am streaming my Pandora music from my iPad to my Apple TV which is connected to my home theature system. I have done the same with my wife's MacBook Pro, and my iPhone. I also use my iPhone as a remote for my Apple TV. You can tell their R&D teams work together, based on the seamless integration and familiar interface from product to product. Not even IBM does this well. (Example: IBM's mainfarme DB2 environment does not work well with IBM's own DFSMShsm environment.)

A couple of years ago, my wife's MacBook Pro's hard drive failed. Unfortunately, I wasn't using Time Machine to backup that system, so I did lose some data. Apple Store replaced the hard drive and upgraded the OS Snow Leopard - and they only charged me to cost of the hard drive. Since then, I have that lappy connected to an external hard drive and I used Time Machine -- what an amazing backup utility.

One gripe I have occurred today -- I lost power in the middle of upgrading the firmware on my Apple TV, and I got the "LED flashing light of death." But a quick web search indicated that if I connect my Apple TV to my MacBook via micro USB cable, I can reset the unit thorugh iTunes. Sure enough, it worked, and within 30 minutes, I was back to normal.

And I agree with the general sentiment- the iTunes interface needs improvement.

-Z-man.