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Ars Technica's iPod nano Dissection
starwindsurfer wrote to mention an Ars Technica review of the iPod nano in which they autopsy the cute little guy to find out what makes him tick. A more thorough review than the one we ran last week. From the article: "At this point we were astounded that the iPod nano was still working properly, albeit with a broken display. Because we had honestly expected the iPod nano to break by this time, we were forced to depart from our planned schedule of destruction and try and run over it with the car. Surely, we thought, it could never withstand the crushing power of German automotive engineering." Update: 09/12 14:58 GMT by Z : Changed linking words to previous article for clarity. Monday fuzziness.
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3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
subSystm has a video if the inside of the nano for anyone who is interested
subSystm is a short version of the full episode Systm
All spelling mistakes are due to solar flares...honest
The article should really be entitled How to Kill an iPod nano as I think that's the real purpose of the article. It must be fun to buy the latest gadget and then find creative ways to destroy it.
Basically the final cause of death for the iPod was to throw it up in the air as high as possible, about 40 feet, and then let it smack down on the concrete. That was the final nail in the coffin after dropping it from 9 ft., dropping it multiple times from a speeding car (10 MPH to 50 MPH) and running over it twice. Pretty durable for a little music player.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Are you crazy? NPR has given up almost none of its best shows to podcasting. This American Life, Car Talk, What Do You Know?, Morning/Weekend Edition, All Things Considered, and pretty much any other of their big shows aren't podcast. There's actually very few good NPR shows available through podcasting.
Anything you can do, I can do meta.
Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
As an aside, that's not a coin pocket, Levi Strauss designed it for matches when he created the jean for miners to keep the matches dry.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Having RTFA, they did actually kill the thing first - It survived being dropped out of a car window at 50mph with nothing but scratches, and was still playing after that, plus being dropped onto concrete from 9ft then being run over by a car. Twice. It finally died when they threw it as high in the air as they could and let it land on concrete.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I agree that the nano targets the market that is not used to carrying their entire music collection around, which is why it is replacing the mini. But I don't believe it creates a market in which the shuffle is obsolete. The $100 pricepoint that the shuffle falls under is still crucial for many people, plus it is still smaller, lighter, and very close to indestructable during normal use. Someone who own's a full size ipod might still purchase an additional shuffle, I doubt they would purchase an additional nano.
Example: I like having my entire music collection with me when I'm walking around campus, driving in my car, etc. The size of a normal ipod isn't an issue for these activities. But for the gym (which I loathe) I need something smaller. I don't need huge capacities or a screen or a click wheel. Just something that plays enough music to get me through the 60-90 minutes of hell that is the gym three times a week. The shuffle fills this void, the nano is overkill.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
No iPod supports FireWire 800.
The ones with FireWire use FireWire 400, which is compatible with a FW 800 port the same way a USB 1.1 device is compatible with a USB 2 port, although in the case of FireWire you need an adapter cable to make the connection because the FW 800 port adds two extra pins.
Here's Apple's page confirming that the current full-size iPod has FW 400, not 800: http://www.apple.com/ipod/color/specs.html
Greetings,
A few years ago I learned a trick from my local Swatch store. I had scratched the face of a watch given to me as a gift; a keeper mainly for its sentimental value. The face had several scratches, some looked deep. I steeled myself to pay $50 to replace the watch's face (an $80 watch) and headed to the store.
The clerk was very helpful and passed on one of the best tips ever: Put some toothpaste on the polycarbonate surface, rub softly with your fingers, and wipe off with a moist cotton pad or paper towel. Scratches be gone! I've used that trick on mobile phone screens as well, with excellent results.
I hope that helps,
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Here's your NPR podcast:
/tmp/NPR /dev/null 2>&1 &
/user/joechmo/bin/record_NPR.sh SFR "Science Friday" 2h /user/joechmo/bin/record_NPR.sh PHC "Prarie Home Companion" 2h /user/joechmo/bin/record_NPR.sh CTK "Car Talk" 1h
This script records your podcast. Call it record_NPR.sh
=================
#!/bin/bash
PREFIX=$1
NAME=$2
LENGTH=$3
if [ -z "$3" ] ; then
echo "Usage: record_NPR.sh "
exit
fi
FILE_DATE=`date`
FILE_NAME=`date '+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M.mp3'`
FILE_NAME="${PREFIX}_${FILE_NAME}"
cd
wget -nv -O $FILE_NAME http://edtv.opb.org:8000/radio.mp3 >
WPID=$!
sleep $LENGTH; kill $WPID
sleep 3
tagmp3 set "%A:${NAME} %a:NPR Records" $FILE_NAME
#update_RSS.pl "$PREFIX" "$FILE_NAME" "$FILE_DATE" "$NAME"
echo "$NAME was recorded"
===================
Stick it in your crontab, and you are done:
===================
0 11 * * 5
0 15 * * 6
0 10 * * 6
======================
Search for it. It's used for this exactly. It's great on CDs/DVDs too.
Your phone doesn't scratch on the display because if you look closely, the display is covered by an hard plastic insert. The rest of the case is a softer (actually more durable) plastic. Apple doesn't seem to want to insert harder plastic over the screen because it would require a bumpy frame around the display. The Mini had the harder plastic, because it was made of metal elsewhere.
Also note that since Apple doesn't use an insert over the display, their displays show rainbows when viewed through polarized glasses due to the stresses resulting from injection molding. Again, the Mini didn't have these.
Nobody makes large plastic things like phones scratch proof all over because "scratch proof" plastic is more brittle and much more expensive to shape. If your phone or iPod body was made of it, the keys would chip the corners off it in no time.
Well, they don't make affordable things "scratch proof". It's usually only used in small areas like the inserts over displays on your phone. This means you don't use much of it, and making flat sheets is cheap and easy.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Not so - all of SciFri is podcast each week. They do cut the program into 2-6 segments though depending on how many topics they're covering - so you have to make sure you get all the parts.
The article incorrectly states that the sound quality is the same across the iPod line.
This test and actually, just comparing by the ear, shows interesting results from a number of players:
http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/playertest/play
J
You can buy some stuff called "Moly Coat" from grainger and other places. It's a spray on coating used on gears in teletypes in the 70's to keep them from wearing out. I've been using it on maglight lenses and some optics stuff to keep things from scratching.
About $10/can, but it'll stop those scratches on the metal. I've used it on laptops more resently and seems to really help.
-=fshalor