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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.
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
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
They're scratched, btw. In case you were wondering.
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'
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.
Small, rugged, scratchproof: pick any two?
Tell you what: if you buy an itty-bitty iPod nano and still think it's too bulky after adding a sleeve around it, I will personally come to your house and sew bigger pockets onto all your clothes.
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.
--> 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.
Tell you what: if you buy an itty-bitty iPod nano and still think it's too bulky after adding a sleeve around it, I will personally come to your house and sew bigger pockets onto all your clothes.
I added the sleeve and it's still too bulky. I'll be expecting you at my house at 8am sharp tomorrow.
"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
firewire (assuming thats what you meant by fw) is the choice for digital video tranfer on apple. Apple has a lot invested in being the digital video editing platform of choice. There is no way they are going to give up on firewire. For connections to random devices that don't need the speeds of firewire, and benifit from PC connectivity, USB is the obvious choice.
Because regular iPods support Firewire 800, which all Power Macs also support, and which trumps USB 2.0's bandwidth by a healthy margin.
riiiiight... because we all know that those leetle teeny hard drives are soooooo fast, much much faster than the data rate of a regular old firewire 400 connection.
music lover since 1969
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.
Wrap it in plastic wrap* -- it's cheap and you can buy it anywhere!
* I high-school intern we had last summer wrapped his 20GB iPod in plastic wrap. When I asked him why, he said, "Because I'm Chinese. We wrap everything in plastic wrap. You should see the remote controls..." Flabergasted, I looked over at another intern, also Chinese, who was nodding in agreement. I thought nothing of it, ok that's a lie, until I went into the local Chinese take-out place the other day and saw their cash register wrapped in Saran-wrap.
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
Little wonder that China has such a large population.
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