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.

Comments

there are better players

[Truekaiser]

*rolls eyes*
when will people learn that apple is behind in capacity, features(as in playable formats), and batterylife..

DRM - Still as much of a pain in the ass?

[MrZaius]

I went the route of a 1gb flash card for my Zaurus after fiddling with a friend's 2nd gen iPod and iTunes for about an hour. Getting music onto the iPod was a hellish nightmare compared to most mp3 players and PDAs.

Are things much better? I'm not asking if iTunes has improved, as I've used it more recently and still not been impressed. I'm asking if there's sane ways to just dump mp3s and AAC files onto the Nano and other recent iPods and make them play with minimal pain-in-the-assedness.

If not, I'd go with the Wal-Mart Special. A proper, intelligently designed mass-storage device/mp3 player should Just Work.