Anandtech Dissects The New iPod

oDDmON oUT writes "Anandtech dissects the new version of Apple's iPod in this review. Everything is given a thorough going over, complete with photos. While not revelatory, consider this the must-have addition to the manual."

Comments

Cradle

[Traderdot]

The best thing about the redesigned iPod is the cradle instead of plugging in a firewire cable. This is a more consumer friendly idea, like the cradle for Kodak digital cameras.

Re:Cradle

[Mark Hood]

It's worth noting that the firewire cable plugs into the dock, and then the iPod sits in the dock.

If you prefer, you can forget the dock, and just plug the cable right into the bottom of the iPod - the connector's the same. The only addition in the dock is a line-out port.

Plus you get a power adaptor which simply turns the local power plug into a firewire socket... so you can power the dock or the iPod while you're away from your Mac, whichever you prefer. I might get a spare dock for work, even though I can't plug it into my PC, just to let my iPod stand on the desk rather than lying there all forlorn...

All in all, it's a very sensible design - I know a lot of companies that'd have the power adaptor built into the dock & require a firewire and power connection to use it, and three different cable connectors :)

Mark

Re:Cradle

[capmilk]

I'd rather say the cradle is a bad thing. All I needed to hook up my 5 GB iPod at work was a cheap Firewire cable.

Not sure if you can buy separate cradles (and matching cables), but I'd bet they are not cheap.

Re:No mention of other media formats supported.

[Mark Hood]

Just got mine, and I'm delighted with it.

Re sound formats, a quick check of Apple's site would have told you that on a Mac it does support AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, and WAV. Windows users (poor saps ;) only get MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, and WAV.

Mark

not just yet

[ionyka]

I got a second gen iPod for this past Christmas, and though its not the new line, im still really happy with it (10g). The new ones have some really nice features, like the backlight buttons, a thinner overall casing, the dock which is a very nice addition to its accessories. But, its still not enough for me to trade mine in. These are the firsts of a basically brand new line, and firsts always come with problems. I think it will take another release or two for me to trade mine in.

Re:not just yet

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Well, with the second generation iPods, you don't NEED backlit buttons.

I find all of the buttons on my iPod by feel alone. I probably wouldn't be able to use the new one nearly as effectively as I can use my Gen 2. Just yesterday, I was navigating my playlists in my pocket. I doubt that the new iPods have buttons that I could even feel through my pocket, let alone reliably press.

In my opinnion, the dock is just another port to clog with dirt. I haven't seen a new iPod in person yet, but if the dock port doesn't have a cover of some sort, I would expect it to fill with dirt rather quickly.

ipoding.com did it first.

[nilepoc]

For more photos, see
http://www.ipoding.com/
and look under the new ipod section. They have also taken apart the dock, and figured out where the line in and out are, as well as the USB 2.0, and Firewire leads in then plug.

Also thier photos are labled and show case details that are not covered in this review.

Re:No mention of other media formats supported.

[Mark Hood]

Quicktime. That and iTunes.

iTunes is built around Quicktime, so when they released AAC coding in Quicktime, iTunes could immediately do it. The iPod will play anything you can throw at it - I'm sure if you can get Audible tracks or AAC audio into MusicMatch, and then onto the iPod, it'll be happy - but good luck!

Mark

Very PC-Centric Review

[Mark Hood]

Which is fine, but they say 'you can't sync Contacts, Calendars or Notes automatically' without commenting that you can using OS X.

iSync'll take care of the first two (and very well). You can do notes manually, or there's a lot of OS X apps which'll do it for you - Pod2Go is a good one, which scrapes news, weather etc off the web and slaps it into notes. There are others, but there's also a new Interactive Fiction thing under development, so the opportunities are endless.

I'm quite sure some enterprising PC developer will code up something similar, if they haven't already, but for once it's nice to be ahead of the crowd as a Mac User :)

Mark

surprisingly...

[Gizzmonic]

Anandtech makes no mention of how many frames per second that the iPod scores in Quake III. They are running the risk of alienating their core audience!

Weak article.

[ubikkibu]

Anand clearly has never touched a Mac, nor wants to. So he's missing out on the simple beauty of iTunes 4 and an iPod. If the article had been titled "iPod for Windows users," it would have made more sense.

And what's with the swapped picture captions: "new unit on right, old on left." Match it to the picture.

And I'll be damned if Arkanoid was the "original arcade version" of Wozniak's Breakout. Children need to research a bit more.

You must be kidding

[soramimicake]

The new firmware also comes with a couple of new games; back from the original iPod is breakout (called "Brick" for some reason), which is a toned down version of the arcade original - Arkanoid.

Arkanoid the original? Atari's Breakout predates Arkanoid by years. And that Atari game have, shall we say, some ties with the company that brings you the iPod.

BTW, there was a version of it on the Apple ][ as well.

Lack of x86 support a disadvantage?

[coolgeek]

To quote the article: Unfortunately, the biggest limitation for Apple's computers continues to be the lack of x86 support, thus preventing all of this stylish hardware from being used on over two decades of the largest software user base.

Gee, I thought that was *the* most fortunate advantage of the Mac platform.

Some users reporting problems

[Van Halen]

I've had my 30 GB iPod for a little over 2 weeks now, and I absolutely love it. Finally I have access to my entire CD collection (over 320 CDs) wherever and whenever I want! But that said, it's not without its problems. This thread at Apple's discussion boards seems to hit most of them. The only ones I've had personally are the clicking between tracks and channel swapping when seeking through a track. Not nearly as bad as what some people have experienced, but it can be annoying.

ThinkSecret keeps predicting an iPod firmware update but apparently it keeps getting pushed back. Perhaps Apple is having a lot of problems with this one. When it does finally come out, hopefully it'll not only add the USB 2.0 support, but fix most of these issues.