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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.'"
...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.
:)
...Its your car's amplifier doing the job, not the Nano. The nano has a line-level or headphone-level power output... Nothing impressive there, other than that Apple didn't goof up, right?
Wow, the Nano has a built-in power amplifier with enough power to play that loud in your car? Cool
I'm your huckleberry
The iPod audio out is very good. Much better then may other portable players. Of course you can't tell this with the earbuds they come with, but that's another issue.
So with a good set of headphones or speakers, and the right music, you can easily tell the difference.
I have relatives who are teachers at various levels. They are reporting that many young kids have gotten these small music devices as gifts, and often listen to them in school during lectures. Because they're so small they are often quite easy to hide if the teacher does come along.
That said, several of them have recommended the use of these portable audio devices. They can often allow those students who are easily distracted to get some work done in school. They also have been used in second-language courses to allow the students to directly hear the spoken language, rather than them trying to listen to some audio tape player at the front of the room.
I would love to see companies like Apple do more research into the educational benefits of these portable audio devices. Considering Apple's past experience providing computer systems to educational institutions, they no doubt have the talent and the ability to create a very powerful education medium. The possibilities of using such devices when teaching languages are nearly endless.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I've actually found it hard to get a good idea of how big iPod nano is from the photos, because my brain wants that color screen to be larger than it really is. I finally stumbled onto Apple's iTunes sync webpage which overlaps iPod nano with a regular iPod to put its size into perspective a bit.
Creative Zen Nano Plus Is Apple losing creativity or did I miss some division getting bought by someone else?
As for running, that's a different story. I had heard that the iPod could do that, and I tried yesterday (I usually run without it). I got about a minute of music before it crashed requiring a hard reset.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Even today, there are still lingering attitudes about Apple. How many articles have we seen in the last two years predicting the imminent arrival of devastating viruses to the Mac? How many articles have we seen explaining why Macs are no more secure? How many articles have we seen trying to play up the nonexistent virus threat while downplaying the simple fact that there isn't a single virus for OS X yet.
And yet, people compain that someone in the media might be too nice to Apple.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Is there any reason to believe that Apple will dropping the prices on any of the older iPod models in the near future?
Of course, in this case older is a relative term...
And thus we see why slashdot people are not in marketing.
It's all about form, not function. iPods are functionally inferior to most other MP3 players- no radio, no voice record, no optical outputs, no OGG/WMA support, too expensive for the size, only work with iTunes- but they have a form factor that has yet to be equaled let alone beaten. They look good and feel good. That is what sells. Scoff all you want.
And yes, form matters, even beyond just selling more. I have an iRiver device with a clicky joystick control. It sits at home, unused, because the joystick is a pain to use. My shuffle get carried everywhere and used all the time because it has a simple interface that works.
Mossberg's column has been full of puff pieces for the past 5 years. I still remember a 4 megapizel digital camera review he did where he picked the HP (big WSJ advertiser) model over the Kodak model because the HP came with a far superior 32MB CF card standard, whereas the Kodak only had 16MB of builtin memory as standard you had to purchase a card extra.
I understand that a significant problem for Apple is that they've achieved so much market penetration that most of the people that want an iPod have an iPod. The solution to this is to produce new models that will encourage those people to chug their old purchase and get a new one.
I find the sound quality on my Mini to be perfectly fine for my middle-aged ears. I don't miss the ability to "view album covers in full color" and if I want to share photos with someone, that's why God made the internet.
The smaller size is great, but the Mini is already really small--much smaller than my wallet. The only part that seems attractive is that there isn't a mini-drive in there to pug out.
I think that Apple has a tough row to hoe when it comes to getting people like to me switch up. I can't think of any features that could reasonably be incorporated in a new iPod that would make me dump my present one, except maybe if it could convert those miserable DRM files that iTunes sells to MP3s.
Mossberg was an Apple coup.
Disclaimer: I've been an Apple fanboy and using Macs consistently since December '84. And also reading about them for all of that time. (I've put my favorite Apple quote below.)
There was a time, not too long ago, perhaps ending in the mid- to late-90's around the time the iMac came out, when Mossberg was relentlessly ANTI-apple. In fact, as I recall, his name was pretty much synonymous with "Apple-basher" in the "beleaguered" Mac community (God, we hated that word...). Perhaps not many people, period, around the time of the Gil Amelio era were pro-Apple (I was a holdout... and proud of it), but Mossberg was quite visible as he was sort of the tech mouthpiece of corporate America.
And then... I'm fairly certain someone at Apple courted this guy. Hard.
Ever since then (and perhaps because of Apple's string of hits, starting with the iMac), Mossberg has been a fanboy. Of course, it's been easy, lately...
(my favorite quote about Apple follows...)
"One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy."
-Jean-Louis Gassée, Former Apple Computer, Inc. Executive
Slashdot readers also bafflingly think people who dont post on Slashdot care about OGG. Do we need to post the URL to the first iPod Slashdot thread?
They'll never learn.
I think that realistically, if you like other iPods, it would be very difficult to find much wrong with the Nanao. The form factor's extremely cool, the color screen is great, and the price point is same as its predecessor. I would have liked to see a 6gb version, but other than that I see few downsides to it.
The iPod is a great product. Period. Apple makes a lot of great products. I applaud Mossberg for being willing to consider Apple when many reviewers just ignore the company.
Someone else pointed out the Mighty Mouse review, which was negative, as reasonable evidence that Mossberg's not biased. Certainly I would say that he's harder on Apple generall than Apple fanboy magazines are, and harder on Microsoft than Microsoft fanboy magazines are. To me, this indicates that he makes a strong effort to be fair, which is why I like him.
D
Having owned a Rio Nitrus (basically a Carbon with 1.5gb instead of 5) I can say that's why Rio's not making mp3 players anymore, because they think people are just looking at hardware specs and buying based on that.
It's not the specs people, it's useability. That's where iPods slaughter everything else on the market. Before iPods mp3 players were no more than glorified cd players. You had "next track" and "random", which really just played the same 10 songs again and again out of hundreds to chose from. Oh, and if you wanted to spend all day you could make playlists.
And they were making 20gb mp3 players like this!!!
Shuffle changed all that. You rate the song and it tracks how many times it's been played and how much you like it to determine if it should play that song.
Not only that but you can create smartplaylists. For example, I have a playlist (actually a combination of several) that basically plays the newest, most liked song first, then plays an old one that I liked, then a new one that I kinda liked, then a old one that I kinda like, etc. It does this automatically, all I have to do is rate the songs 1 to 5 stars and it figures out what to play and when to play it. No other mp3 player does this.
I sometimes wondered if other manufactures ever even used their own mp3 players, the shuffle feature just seems so obvious.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
That nano is really nice looking though. Typically I wouldn't care much. I usually put function before form, especially in a device like this, but something about that nano really is drawing me in.
One part of the whole deal is that I don't feel like having to figure out which playlists to take with me at different times.
But the draw of the nano is making me start to think it wouldn't be that bad.
I'm feeling very confused and annoyed to have my typical efficient nature toyed with in this way.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Apple's buy a new one attitude?
For $60 I traded in my 2 year old iPod for a new one simply because [b]the battery was not working like it used to[/b].
That's damn good support.
"Why is he wasting paragraphs on trying things out that are there in black and white in the specs?"
Because often products do not live up to claims, and consumers like to know that a product acts as advertised. They like to know it is durable, as advertised. There's always how many HP the car is advertised to have, and how many it really dyno's at.
If you believe all advertising, and no advertiser ever lied or exxagerated, then you'd have a point.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The same cannot be said for my Cruzer Companion. I was really disappointed by the output. I turn the volume all the way up and it's still pretty weak- or at least not loud (with the earbuds). I won't even drive low frequencies on my HD280.
Additionally there is audible distortion using a Y to the RCA in on my car's amp. My friend's iPod (Gen 2) works great.
Fortunately I only paid $10 for it. I love my Cruzer Micro USB drive, it's tiny and holds a gig, but don't expect quality from the MP3 Companion (I wouldn't pay more than $15 for it).
For those of you who think it doesn't make a difference where your music is played from, let me assure you , it does!
It also holds all your addresses and calendars from your iBook
The new version of iTunes can also get that data from Outlook and Outlook Express in Windows now.
Am I the only one who doesn't really understand this need to miniturize everything?
The only exception to this may be the cellphone (says me with a Treo 650). The point is that all these things have to be carried on your person.
I now have a (regular) iPod, a PSP and my previously mentioned Treo.
Sure, for a gadget hound who wants phone, music, movies, games and PDA on my person, this is a shrinking but they will not all fit in my pockets, unless it's winter.
I carry a 'man-bag' when I'm going somewhere sans laptop. Given that, I'm not really bothered that the new iPod is 50% smaller (or whatever). It makes no difference.
I'm a mac fan. I love the computers.
I really was only ever interested in the iPod for the storage capacity though, and then a little bit of brand prefference.
I was in a store that got a supply of the nano, and the eather hit the air strong!
Looking at the internet doesn't do this thing justice. I can only equate the size to about that of a remote to a car stereo(if you're even familiar with those).
This unit is beyond description after that.
Nothing will truely give you the idea of how genuinely awesome this unit is until you hold it.
The black ones will be in short supply soon, I garuntee it. In my opinion, this is one of the best designs Apple has done to date. I really encourage everyone to find a store and check them out!