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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.
Size of the iPod never really mattered to me, the 30 GB photo is small enough. What they should consentrate on is making it scratch proof, I can't stand so many scratches. Cases do not work so well, they still scratch and add lots of bulk.
also refer to the outstanding battery life?
Seriously, I find it funny how as soon as we get some new piece of technology our first instinct is to break it. Honestly think about it. I can't tell you how many things I can't wait to take apart as soon as I buy it. There has to be somehting unhealthy about this.
:)
Give somehting new and unknown to a bunch of apes and the first thing they do is smash it or rip it apart inquisitively.
Guess we ain't so superior after all.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Treat hardware really roughly and it will break.
I am not sold on this. It is too small and costs too much. But I guess if I was driving 55 in my convertible, I'd be able to hear the playback over my car stereo crystal clear.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Nice to know it is so durable.
:)
Like another poster mentioned, it would be nice if they (any iPod, really) was more scratch-proof, but I suppose it helps drive the acessories market.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Article on the new iGadget being a failure? Check.
Apple g33k pr0n? Check.
Wow, this guy really DOES have Apple pegged... I mean, at first it was funny, but now it's just creepy...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
If you open up a cat to see how it works, the first thing you have is a non-working cat.
What I don't understand is why, oh why hasn't apple incorporated an FM tuner into their iPod line yet?? Creative and iRiver have it on their models, it can't be that hard to implement. They are priced competitively as well so i can't be a cost issue.
Seriously, for me the downside of the Nano is the lack of FM tuner. Mp3's are great, but sometimes you just want to listen to radio.
I have been looking at getting an mp3 player for quite some time, and I thought the Nano was going to be my thing. But I will probably just wait until iRiver comes out with their clone with the FM tuner on it.
I got nothin'
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3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
That was a bit confusing on a Monday morning... You linked the words "more thorough review" to point to the less thorough review.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Their choices for stress tests were less than ideal. I'm never going to drop my ipod out of a moving car. What would have been good was some tests that would tend to bend the ipod rather than just impact tests. Instead of just sitting on it, put it in the back pocket of some tight jeans and sit down. For that matter, putting it in the coin pocket of some tight jeans and sitting down seems like it would put some stress on it.
Just the other day, I was planning a mountain biking excursion with my flatemate. He'd never been mountain biking before, and he somehow got it into his head that bringing his Ipod Mini would be a good idea.
I tried to convince him that he would break it via collision with rocks or maybe a tree. He claimed that it was a very durable piece of hardware.
To demonstrate, he dropped it to the carpeted floor and bopped it with his foot...
The display shattered.
I think I laughed for a good half-hour. I felt bad about it, but there's nothing you can do but laugh when something so perfectly comedically timed happens.
It wasn't all bad. He just used this as an excuse to buy the new Nano.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
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
--> 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 --
Will you please please run a review on my Mother-In-Law ??? Gratitudes in advance.
While overall I thought the article was informative, amusing, and well-written, I don't know why Ars brings up the issue of compatibity with FireWire as a reason to downgrade the nano's score (except perhaps for Apple's perennial refusal to put more than about 3 USB ports on its machines). The throughput on USB2.0 is 480Mbps as opposed to Firewire's 400MBps, and USB compatibility is all that's really needed to make the nano work with both Macs and even older PCS (although such models might not have USB2.0, they probably won't have IEEE 1394 ports either. Heck, I've got 3 on my desktop that I don't think have ever been put to good use). It seems like adding Firewire would essentially be redundant from a data transfer perspective and potentially increase the size of a devize of which part of the appeal springs from its ability to fit in a coin pocket. I'm not saying it's a bad review by any means, I'm just somewhat confused as to why Firewire--which has now been eclipsed by USB2.0 in terms of throughput--should remain a point of contention.
"For our second test, one of us held on to the iPod, jogged about 20 feet" ...which is the average distance a nerd can jog
It will break with 100% certainty.
They did kill it first. Then they autopsied it.
Surely, we thought, it could never withstand the crushing power of German automotive engineering.
And it finally gets funny!
Anyway: Thin objects tend to survive being driven over more than thicker objects. If the object is thin enough, the tire even stays in contact with the road, causing a lot less pressure on the object than you might expect.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Honestly, seeing as these are $100 cheaper than the next flash alternative I could find, I'm tempted to just pick up two as boot devices.
One for my Windows machines at work, one for my Macs.
You'd use up about 1GB for the OS, then have 3+GB free for data extraction. Throw a bunch of diagnostic utilities on there (usually a hundred megs or so at most) and you've got a kick ass clean system to test hardware with when you're troubleshooting. And since its got a batter of its own, it's not reliant on having a powered USB port.
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
So, basically, to sum it up. We've created a whole bunch of advanced shit to take apart and more advanced shit to *use* to take the advanced shit apart... all while being comfortable.
:)
Man, we sure have come a long way!
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I actually have an iPod nano and I will agree, that it really gets scratched up fairly easily, even if you keep it in a sock you still get those little scartches. It really mucks up the nice finish that it originally came with. Ive had my nano for 2 days now and it looks like Ive had it for a couple months.
GL HF!
After they ran it over with the car....
...the iPod's display was not cracked but was showing some nasty vertical lines. Shockingly, the nano was still playing music and the controls still operated as expected, as we were still able to skip ahead, go back, pause, and play music!
So basically, VW + Nano = Shuffle?
This sig rocks the casbah.
My reason for buying a nano was to get a flash based iPod so I could take it skiing. I have taken my 20Gb 3G iPod skiing several times, but I was always concerned about scrambling the hard drive in a badly timed fall. Also, the battery life was not good enough at low temps to last a full day of skiing. The nano should be perfect for skiing, and the Ars Technica review seems to confirm its durability.
But one test I'd like to see involves trying to damage it by flexing it. Sitting on a nano laid on a wooden chair or even running over it is different from putting it in a tight pants pocket and sitting on a hard surface.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Thus we get the truth, most people feel customer service is crap when they dont get anything out of it they feel they should, even if they go in fully knowing they wont because it was their own stupidity that broke it.
And considering I have Apples from 84 and on still working perfectly, saying Apple products arnt durable is a lie. They freaking shot a old iMac with a gun and it still worked, and numerous Apple systems have been trashed only to work perfectly once plugged in.
somehow I think this entire post was simply a advertisement for AbsoluteMac.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I abuse the hell out of my Palm, but I treat my iPod with kid gloves.
So I bought one of these yesterday and the first place I put it was in my pocket that I also keep my keys in. Big mistake. 1 iPod Nano, less than a day old, scuffed and scratched.
Does anyone know of any mild abrasives or similiar that can be used to polish an iPod such as a Nano back to scratch and scuff free brilliance? I'd really like to restore mine to normal and then maybe invest in a protective cover.
Incidentally, what's Apple's problem with making it scratch proof? My mobile phone stays in my pocket constantly with my keys and has done so for a year now. It's scratched to hell all over EXCEPT for the glass over the screen. Go figure.
No, Apple is simply walking the fine line between enforcing limitations that consumers will generally accept, and limitations that will kill sales.
Neglect to provide a way to rip CDs, and most consumers will walk away. Neglect to include an FM radio, and you'll lose a few sales, but not many.
If Apple thought they could sell a device that could only be populated from iTMS, do you think for a second they wouldn't do just that?
Did anyone else notice that the battery is SODERED ON. You can't even replace this one if you WANT to (unless you have your own soder kit and all).
- tristan
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
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.
As far as I know, you can still (a) create a playlist or smart playlist of all the songs you want to have on your iPod, then (b) drag-and-drop all those songs onto the iPod icon in iTunes.
Better yet, set up Autofill in iTunes (this requires some actual thinking) to pre-shuffle some music every time your sync up. Apple's iTunes sync page covers it pretty well.
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.
As the Old Wise labrats say: if you want to reduce the reliability of something, add a connector, if it is still too reliable, add sockets.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
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
Read the article, they ran over the friggin thing with a car. It's durable.
unless other nano pods are employed by ars-technica to dissect another nanopod, this would be a necropsy, not an autopsy.
ôó
It's true
:-), and put them back in the remotes.
I once knew a guy (who is Korean) who wrapped his remotes in plastic wrap. I thoughtfully took out the batteries and similarly protected them (being careful to cover the terminals too
I wish I could have seen his face when he found it. (He probably didn't think it was funny.)
Charles? Are you reading this? It was me -- I did it.
Back on topic -- The one thing I don't like about my ipod is its propensity to collect scratches. Could they not have used a more scratch resisant material? I guess not.
Ian Ameline
I have to disagree with you on the customer service and warranty. I got my 20 gig 4G iPod last October, and about two weeks ago I got the "Folder Icon with Exclaimation Point" (Drive Crash). Since I didn't drop it or treat it badly, I didn't feel bad at all about submitting a service request to Apple. I filled out the form online, and they gave me the info:
$30 includes shipping and handling all 3 directions (they ship me the box and foam, I pack it and ship it back, they look at it and ship something back to me). I handed the box to DHL at 6pm on Tuesday. Saturday afternoon I had a brand new iPod delivered to me (could be reconditioned, but there isn't a scratch on the back - it was still wrapped in plastic).
Not sure what the problem with the iPod was caused by, but it's back in its leather case and hopefully it will last a little longer. $30 is not bad at all for shipping and service I say.
Best in the business? When my IBook's hard drive started failing (bad blocks), Apple's technical support refused to speak to me without having my credit card number first, so that they charge me after "deciding whether my problem was covered under the warranty", even though it was obvious that the problem was.
When this was finally resolved, Apple returned the Ibook with not only a new hard drive, but also a new screen and new optical drive. However, my DVD/CD-RW drive was replaced with a much cheaper DVD-ROM drive, even though Apple claimed to have replaced it with the same component, thus requiring me to send it back again. Is that "best in the business" technical support, where the company doesn't even trust that I know what is covered under warranty, and then replaces components incorrectly?
During the three years I used the IBook, the power cord had to be replaced FOUR times because the cord would break near the tip of the very thin cord. When an ethernet card pulled up slightly on its plugin, the ethernet stopped working completely. Is this considered durable?
I also had a Powerbook from around 1996 or 97 (not sure, but it had a trackball instead of a pad) that broke around 2-3 years after buying it (new) because opening and closing the lid caused the monitor cable to break due to a design flaw. This was apparently a common problem.
That said, I have very old Apple desktops (Apple SE, PowerMac 7100?) that work perfectly. Perhaps Apple desktops are built to a different standard?
When my mom mentioned how crappy the staff is at the apple stores, they responded with 'Yeah, we get those kind of complaints all the time.'
They might say they get complaints like that all the time, but they're not about to tell a customer (and a mom) that they're full of shit. You have to ask the staff whether those complaints are valid or not.
Doesn't matter that iTunes hasn't improved, because you're still an idiot. Seriously, iTunes is a lot easier to use than Creative Mediaplayer. There's a preference setting in iTunes so you can export and import mp3s by default, instead of AAC (which is a useless format anyways) I've drag n' dropped mp3s from PCs and macs directly to both Creative music players as well as iPods as removeble disks with no problem. I've also used the trial edition of Anapod, http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod xpod and vpod on Win98. But iTunes is just so easy to use, I found I don't need a replacement, free or otherwise. You're Geek card is revoked! Go buy a portable CD player, kid.
In high school I was showing off my new car alarm to my buddy. I said see you just barely hit it and the alarm goes off. I lightly hit it... no effect. I hit it a little bit harder... and dented the car. The alarm never went off. He laughed his ass off. I didn't find it as amusing at the time.
TODO create witty sig.
I'm pretty sure they were talking about booting Mac OS X from it.
Booting Linux, etc. with it on an x86 machine will probably give a much different result.