: iPod
I actually bought my iPod on Nov. 10, the day they went on sale, but I am writing about it now that I’ve had a chance to really play with it.
If you’re not familiar with iPod, you’ve got to check it out. It’s a tiny — and I do mean tiny… it fits in your shirt pocket — digital music player. The idea is nothing new, but Apple’s implementation is incredible. This is the way a music player is supposed to be designed!
The key feature of iPod is that it uses a new Toshiba 1.8” 5GB hard drive. That allows it to store over 1,000 songs! (Most MP3 players can only store an hour or two of music.) Of course there are other hard drive-based players out there, but they’re huge (the size of a portable CD player), only last three hours on battery power, loading your entire music library takes hours, and the interface for browsing through thousands of songs is actually painful.
iPod changes all that. The unique scroll wheel lets you zip through a thousand songs in seconds, with just one hand! The unit’s 20 minute “skip protection” memory means it rarely needs to power up the hard drive (just three times an hour) and that means long battery life: try over 10 hours! The final major difference is Apple uses a FireWire connection instead of the more typical USB. FireWire is the standard for digital video and it’s fast: you can copy over 5GB of music (over 72 hours worth) in about ten minutes! That same FireWire connector also provides power, so you use it to charge your iPod. You can even use iPod as a portable hard disk: move files between work and home, or give your laptop extra storage!
Apple doesn’t stop there: they’ve incorporated iPod into their MP3 software player, iTunes. iTunes is free: you use it to convert your audio CDs to MP3 format and manage your songs. Plug in iPod and it automatically syncs your iTunes songs and settings with your iPod! Creating playlists is a snap in iTunes, and having them available on your iPod is terrific. iPod lets you browse songs by artist, album, playlist, or all your songs in one long list. It’s really transparent and amazingly easy to use. iPod’s going to be the hottest item on everyone’s Christmas list this year.
Imagine holding a jukebox in the palm of your hand: that’s iPod. Mine has nearly 1,200 songs on it, and there’s room for a hundred more (I’ve got a few hundred megs of data on mine as well). I carry it with me everywhere, and it connects to my car stereo with a simple cassette adapter. It sounds great with headphones or plugged into my speaker system. I love having the ability to use my playlists to restrict music to my favorites or a particular genre that fits my current mood. If you love music, you’ll love iPod.
Topic: [/technology] |
