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A Review of the iPod nano
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg has been testing the iPod nano for a few days, and he says he is 'smitten.' Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal, 'The nano has the best combination of beauty and functionality of any music player I've tested -- including the iconic original white iPod. And it sounds great. I plan to buy one for myself this weekend, when it is due to reach stores in the U.S., Europe and Asia.' Among other things, it has surprisingly good sound: 'Despite its small size, the nano sounded as good as any other iPod, and is packed with plenty of audio power. Plugged into my car speakers, it was able to belt out the new Fountains of Wayne rocker, "Maureen," loudly enough to be heard perfectly, even though I was going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down.'"
I like Apple products unfailingly myself. But then, I'm not a newspaper columnist.
Seriously, has anyone ever read anything by Mossberg about Apple products that wasn't either glowing, stellar, or outright raving?
In short, the reviewer's point was that the iPod puts out a crystal clear audio signal that sounds good and can be easily amplified with no apparent loss in quality.
How could he tell if the audio signal was crystal clear if he was "going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down"?
Why is he wasting paragraphs on trying things out that are there in black and white in the specs?
... or subjecting it to repeated drops to verify that it wouldn't skip. It's flash memory. Shocks and vibration are not going to be an issue.
"It has two GB of disk space. I tried putting 1.5GB of songs on, and there was room for another 0.5GB of data to spare!"
It does look like quite a nice gadget -- but I wouldn't personally buy anything with less than 20GB for songs.
it's smaller.
battery lasts longer.
its more dependable.
has more space than shuffle, but smaller size.
color screen.
This is the best iPod yet, though of course I do need more capacity. I think it's silly for people to complain about $199 for 4GB, though. You know, it's like looking at a Mercedes and saying, "$50,000 for four seats?!" Of course, there's more to a car than how many people it can hold. And the iPod is certainly the finest music experience out there - by far.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It's called a product review, dufus!
Sometimes Mossberg's reviews are negative. Sometimes they're positive. In this case, he obviously really liked the iPod nano.
He's a well respected journalist and doesn't just write puff pieces promoting any product he gets sent to him (not even if it's from Apple). I have no idea where you're coming from on this "embarrassment" angle. There is legitimate and valuable journalism in credible reviews, and you're nuts to say otherwise.
From the summary: "Plugged into my car speakers, it was able to belt out the new Fountains of Wayne rocker, "Maureen," loudly enough to be heard perfectly, even though I was going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down.'"
Ooooh! He's trendy (new MTV music), he's rich and stylish (convertible), and he's a wanker (blasting noise pollution).
Please, please, can I be like him? I'll definitely buy a Nano now!
This is a prime example of why trendiness drives iPod sales.
Not to upset the fans or anything, but why is this necessary in an article about a new product?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And since you clearly didn't read the article, the quote was: Plugged into my car speakers, it was able to belt out the new Fountains of Wayne rocker, "Maureen," loudly enough to be heard perfectly, even though I was going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down.Notice that he said "loudly" enough, being impressed by the volume that his car stereo was producing, not the volume of the iPod. Face it, the guy made a nonsensical statement in his effort to gush all over the nano.
define "better"
SNR/THD/A2D/SPL/HZ/BR ?
You actually have a very good point, AC.
The portable audio world is long overdue for a serious evaluation of all the handheld players out there, with both subjective double-blind listening tests and electronically measured performance specs.
The ideal test would first compare all players using lossless playback (if available), and then compare them once again using the "suggested" compression format for each unit (128 AAC for the iPod, WMA for the Zen, etc.)
I've heard audio critics praise the lossless playback performance of various iPod models before, especially when using the line-out from the docking port instead of the headphone-out on the top, but to date I know of no serious audio magazine which has done the sort of comparison they would do when evaluating CD players or Tuners.
Has anybody seen anything like that, and if so, do you have a link?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
According to Cage the artistic value of 4'33" was in being a member of an unsuspecting audience that progresses from expectant silence to speculative chatter to full conversation.
This value can only really be achieved in a live setting, where the audience is expecting an orchestral piece and doesn't already know the nature of 4'33".
Strangely, this isn't that far off from the experience of reading rumor sites in the weeks leading up to Apple keynote speeches.
Kevin Fox
I can not speak for the iPod in general but typically, line out jacks provide at least 150mv and should be in the 47kohm range for impedance matching to other standard stereo components. A headphone jack typically runs much lower in the 32 ohm range.
To follow the "standard", a piece of equipment should have different output stages to achieve the difference in impedance between the two different jacks. An impedance mismatch will result in distorted waveforms at different frequencies as will any encoding (I assume your testing square wave playback file was from a non lossy compressed or raw wav format audio clip) . Just my $.02
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The reason the iPod has been doing so poorly in Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere in Southeast Asia is size. People there like their mp3 players TINY -- they don't give a guff for capacity as long as it's super-small and shockproof. The Shuffle was a step in the right direction, but without a display its capabilities were limited. The Nano is perfectly poised to make serious inroads into the Asian mp3 player arena, if they market it well enough.
Now if they added recording capabilities (which Asian students often use to record lectures, for some reason), the Japanese manufacturers would really start to sweat.