Linkstew

I got my new 30 gig iPod today, and while I don't plan on rambling on as long as I did in my review of the original iPod, I've still got a few things to say.

The first thing to notice about the new unit is definitely the button placement, and I think that's probably one of my most significant points of contention with the redesign. I don't care for the new button placement either aesthetically or functionally. Aesthetically, I thought the old buttons offered a unique visual style that was unique to the iPod, and their locations mapped well onto their functions. In their new locations, the buttons are fairly boring. Functionally, the new button location is very frustrating, but I'm wondering how much of that is because of muscle memory. If I'm holding the iPod in the palm of my hand, I've got to learn to reach to a different place for the buttons, and I can no longer tell the buttons apart by their shape and location.

The thing is, trying to tell the buttons apart by shape wouldn't work with the new iPod in the first place, because the buttons are no longer physical buttons. Instead, they're now touch sensitive buttons, so there are no moving parts. Unfortunately, they're very touch sensitive, and I've already accidentally skipped songs several times. Of course, they're only touch sensitive if you touch them: My old method of controlling my iPod by pressing the buttons through the material of my pants is no longer a viable option, because even if I could tell which button is which, it wouldn't respond.

Right after the iPod 2.0 was announced, I had a few IM conversations, and we couldn't understand why the buttons were moved around on the face of the unit. While I'm still not happy about the rearrangement, now that I've used it I at least understand why the locations were altered. If the new touch sensitive buttons were in their old locations, people would accidentally activate the buttons all the time while using the scroll wheel. The touch sensitive buttons just wouldn't have worked surrounding the scroll wheel, so they had to move somewhere. Of course, I think the only reason they switched to the solid state buttons in the first place was so that they could add the completely frivolous orange button backlight, but don't start me down that topic of discussion.

From the sounds of things, the iPod 2.0 is pretty unusable for my method of operation, eh? Well, what saves this redesign from Benjy's Book of Disaster is the iPod Remote. The remote serves all of my song skipping playing pausing needs from wherever I choose to clip it. Better still, I can enable the hold switch on the iPod and still use the remote to manipulate my iPod (the remote has its own hold switch), so that I don't accidentally skip songs when taking the iPod out of my pocket.

Of course, the remote itself has a few flaws, but most of them aren't resolvable. I still haven't settled on a final place to clip the remote, but the best place I've found so far is just along the bottom of my t-shirt. Unfortunately, when it's clipped there, it's so close to the iPod that I end up having to stuff all of the extra cable into my pocket. And between that and taking the iPod in and out of my pocket and the inability of the remote cable to rotate, the cable ends up getting wound up if I accidentally rotate my iPod while putting it in my pocket. I'm sure I'll work out a solution to these problems, but for now it's kind of irritating.

Another minor complaint about the remote is just that the buttons are fairly tiny. As is, the forward/back buttons are smaller than the tip of my pinky. It seems like there would have been room to make them a little bigger than they are. Also, it feels significantly more fragile than the iPod itself, which makes me afraid of breaking it. And a $40 accessory -- especially one that is apparently going to be integral to my usage of the device -- isn't one I particularly want to break.

Another concern I discussed with friends on IM was the fear of getting pocket crap into the newly positioned bottom port on the iPod. But not to fear, because Apple bundled a couple of little port covers in the box... which will be great until I lose both of them...

The Dock is a fairly nicely designed hunk of plastic, but I don't see it fitting into my current iPod usage scheme. If I had a desktop, I could definitely see leaving the dock plugged in and just dropping the iPod into that each night, but with my laptop in bed next to me at night, my iPod just usually ends up plugged into that and under a pillow or something, and the cable is fine for that. One subtle feature I do like about the Dock is that it has a line out, so I could leave speakers hooked up to the dock and then use the docked iPod as a little stereo. Maybe once I get a job, I'll leave the Dock at work or something. Of course, that'll require me dropping $20 on an extra cable so I could just keep my primary cable at home so I wouldn't forget it at work...

And finishing up on the hardware side of things, I actually tried using Apple's headphones today, and they were alright. I think my ears must be different sizes, though, because while the right bud stayed in my ear just fine, the left one kept moving around and falling out. Maybe putting the foam covers on the earbuds will help things... I guess I'll stick with the Apple ear buds for awhile to see how they work out.

On to the software side of things, the very first thing I checked out was the On-the-go playlist, and it works as advertised. And actually, it's even better than that, because when you're browsing, you can just hold the select button on any artist, album, genre, etc, or even another playlist, and it will add that whole set of songs to your On-the-go playlist. My only complaint about the way they implemented the On-the-go playlist is that there's no way to remove individual songs from the playlist, and the only option is to "Clear all." It'd be nice if holding down the select button on a song when in OTG would remove the song, but instead it just ends up playing it. Another nice option might be to "Remove songs after they've played."

Oh, I guess one other really minor complaint about the OTG playlist is that I can't sync the playlist back to my Mac, but I don't think that's a feature I'd ever actually want to use.

The second software feature I checked out was the ability to rate songs on the go. Getting to rating features was fairly intuitive, and I figured it out on my first try: From the "now playing" screen, click select once to switch from volume to seek, and click select again to switch from seek to rate. But then the problems started: First, the scroll wheel is really really sensitive on this operation, and with a twitch of my finger the rating flies from zero to five. Okay, so I started to very slowly move the rating back, only to have the iPod suddenly switch back to controlling volume instead of rating, and I ended up turning up the volume very suddenly and blasting my ears.

That's not so good. And actually, I noticed a few other spots where the iPod doesn't pay attention to the fact that you're actually using it and it probably shouldn't change the mode just now. In particular, the back light will turn off regardless of the fact that you're actively spinning the scroll wheel, or playing a game, for example. So, the iPod could do with a slightly better idle time detection method.

Speaking of the backlight turning off, when it turns off automatically, it doesn't just turn off suddenly. Instead, it does a very cool fade out as it turns off. And speaking of the backlight, as I mentioned above, the buttons on the iPod are now backlit. La-de-da. Y'know, if I could tell them apart by touch they wouldn't need to be backlit. Bah.

Here are an assortment of other observations:

• The iPod can finally be operated while it's plugged into my computer, which was especially handy while writing this review, because I was able to play with its iTunes integration and the iPod itself without unplugging it repeatedly.
• There's now an option to have the clock in the title of the now playing screen, which is pretty convenient.
• Though I can now customize the main menu, I just wish I could put the "Shuffle" options at the very top of the Settings menu, like it used to be before the 1.1 firmware update. I miss just being able to double or triple click on "Settings" to change my shuffle options, considering how often I do it.
• The second time I plugged my iPod into my laptop, after I listened to it all day, it showed a graphic of a magnifying glass and a spinning disk, which I can only assume was some sort of fscking... I never saw my old iPod do this, and it took about 30 minutes... I can't imagine why it decided to do it then, considering I hadn't forcefully reset it or anything... Hopefully it doesn't have to do that very often, because it took way too long, and I couldn't figure out any way to cancel it.
• It's really nice to not have to use the broken "playlist selection" dialog in iTunes now that all of my music fits on my iPod. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the "playlist selection" dialog is still practically useless. I filed feedback about this at least 3 times regarding iTunes 2 and 3, but now I guess I need to file some more. I really hope that dialog is fixed before I have to use it again.
• One thing that they did fix that I filed feedback about was when iTunes finished updating your iPod, it would forcefully switch you back to the iPod playlist, which, if you were doing anything else in iTunes, was really frustrating. Of course, it still forcefully switches you to the iPod playlist when you first plug in an iPod, but at least that's in response to some user action, so it's less infuriating.
• Another thing they (sort of) fixed that I filed feedback about was the "Some of the songs in the iTunes music Library were not copied to the iPod because they could not be found / cannot be played on an iPod" dialog. Before, that dialog did not tell you what songs were causing the problems, and it offered you the option of "Do not warn me again." Thankfully, in iTunes 4.0, that dialog is a little improved, and now reads "Some of the songs in the iTunes music library, including the song "Ant", were not copied to the iPod because they could not be found." Okay, that's very helpful, but note the part of the dialog that reads "including." Yes, that's right, more than just Ant can't be found, but that's all it's telling me about. It'll pop up one of each type of dialog, and after I resolve those and attempt to sync again, it tells me about the next problem songs. And for reference, the song it tells you about seems to be the one that is the first problem song based on the current column you're currently sorting by in your music Library. This is stupid. Obviously it should just list all of the songs that can't be found. How hard could that be? Feedback!
• Syncing 27 gigs of music takes a long time. Admittedly, thanks to Firewire it was only about 30 minutes, but that's still a lot longer than it takes to upload 5 gigs. Of course I was expecting this, but it was still notable the first time I had to do it, and I was waiting anxiously to play with the iPod while my entire music collection was copied over.
• When I was first browsing the freshly copied 27 gigs of music on the new iPod, it was very slow. I had to hit play several times before it started, and it took 1 or 2 seconds to change screens while browsing, compared to my old iPod which was pretty much instantaneous. However, the next time I interacted with it this had resolved itself. But just now when I was playing with OTG playlists, it paused for a long time and then jumped around in response to some input which it had queued up. So it seems like it has some performance issues at times... Hopefully they optimize the software more.

Overall, I'm happy with it just for the ability to have all of my music on my iPod and the On the Go playlist. I'm very relieved that I now have a copy of all of my music on my iPod, because I haven't had a backup of my music since back in November when I bought my Powerbook. Needless to say, I was pretty worried when I spilled soda on my PowerBook in March and it was in the shop. And the On the Go playlist makes my 27 gigs of music manageable, allowing me to easily pick albums or artists that I feel like listening to and then listening to those on shuffle or shuffle by album as appropriate. And once I get bored of what's in there, I can just add more!

Sure, I've got minor problems with it, but I'm left wondering if they're actually significant problems, or if the small problems are all that's left to complain about next to the relative perfection of the rest of the unit, or if the minor problems just seem that much worse because I use my iPod so often. Whatever the case, they're there, and they're going to annoy me until Apple hopefully fixes them. In the meantime, I'll be regularly filling out feedback forms.

I guess the only real question left to address is whether you should get a new iPod or buy a used old iPod. If your music fits on one of the older iPods, then the only reasons to get a new iPod would be the On-the-Go playlist and the possibility that future Apple software updates will add more features. And if you don't have that much music, then you can probably make some pretty good playlists that you can copy to the iPod, and those will be good substitutes for the On the Go playlist. So overall, I'd lean towards recommending the good old faithful original iPod over this revision.

Heh, and in the end, I wrote 100 more words here than I did in my review of the original iPod. I've now written 5,000 words of iPod reviews... So much for not rambling.

Aesthetically, the iPod is brilliant. Based on the pictures, I expected it to be unbroken white plastic all the way around, as if it were an i(ce)Book that didn't have to open. Granted, that's not really possible, but I wasn't thinking about it that much.

And while the white pod of plastic I imagined would have been cool, the iPod's actual exterior is even cooler than that. The pictures didn't make it clear, but the back half of the iPod is actually metal, while the front half is the white plastic. The metal back features an etched Apple logo and the iPod name, and etched at the bottom is the fine print. The metal is a beautiful solid smooth hunk, but it really attracts finger prints and I've already got several tiny scratches in it. (It's probably stainless steel or some close relative)

The front plastic is equally nice, and was molded out of a single piece piece of plastic so that there are no breaks on the face of the unit where the display is. In fact, the only break on the front of the unit is for the circular control pad. Looking at the side of the plastic, you can see that the bottom 3/4 is cloudy white, while the top 1/4 is transparent. Looking at the face of the unit, there is a strip of transparency all the way around the edge of the unit, in addition to the blank spot for the display. Thankfully, the plastic doesn't seem as scratch prone as the plastic on the i(ce)Book, even though they look to be about the same.

The edge around the front of the unit is a sleek sharp plastic corner, while all the other edges are nice and rounded. The sharp edge is not a negative, and works well as part of the style of the thing.

As beautiful as it is, I'm going to be getting one of these leather cases (LINK ME) to avoid scratches and fingerprints.

The whole thing is held together without any screws. The plastic apparently plugs down into the metal, and it just oozes style. However, the plastic face on my unit isn't firmly in place, and I can push it back and force just a hair. It's not really a big deal, because it's not loose and it only happens when I try to make it happen. ;-)

The size is perfect, and, as advertised, is the size of a deck of cards. Mind you, that's the size of the small cheap cards you get from gift shops, not larger Casino-size cards. In the case of cards, I can't stand the smaller kind, but in the case of the iPod, the size is perfect. Once I get my belt case, it'll fit perfectly on my belt.

The iPod easily is one of the best bits of industrial design I've ever seen.

Along the top of the unit the firewire plug, the headphone jack, and the "Hold" switch are set into plastic which dips down into the metal half of the case. Unfortunately, the headphones are in the center of the unit, and my headphone jack has an L-shape, so that the plug ends up hanging over the hold switch, which is really obnoxious (Of course, Apple's headphones probably had a straight jack).

The hold switch itself is my least favorite part of the whole unit. It's very necessary, but unfortunately, "hold" is towards the middle, while "no-hold" is towards the outside. Because the only grip on the switch is a tiny raised on the edge closer to the middle, and because of the aforementioned headphone L-jack problem, this means that it usually takes me a lot of effort to get hold turned off so I can pause the music or turn the volume down. I really wished they had 1. put the grip on the switch on the outside edge, or 2. made "out" hold and "in" no-hold, or 3. put the headphone jack on the corner and put the firewire jack in the middle. Any one of these three would have made it easier to turn hold off, and the existing arrangement doesn't exactly offer anything over any of those three alternatives.

Um, it plays music, and it plays music well.

The circular control pad has five buttons and a wheel, and will probably be copied by other players very soon. The buttons are Play/Pause, Forward, Backward, Menu, and the button at the center of the wheel is used to make selections. The wheel is surprisingly loose, and doesn't actually have notches -- it's just a freespinning wheel that's used to do any kind of on screen manipulation. By default, spinning the wheel makes a little clicky noise, but stupidly, the clicky noise is made externally instead of in the headphones. Not only does this irritate people around you, but it also means that they had to bother to include a tiny basic speaker in there.

The display is gigantic compared to the display of my Rio, and it's very clear and easy to read. When a song is playing, it displays the name of the song, the artist, and the album. Each one gets its own row, and the text scrolls if necessary, but that doesn't happen until about 25 characters. But it displays so much more than that on this screen as well: In the top left corner are the play/pause/hold status icons, and then the name of the current playlist, and then the battery display. On the next line is what song this is of the total songs in the current list (ie "54 of 1609"), and shuffle and repeat indicators. A subtle, but irritating, point is that the shuffle/repeat icons are in a different order in iTunes than they are on the iPod. And finally, along the bottom of the display is a time left/time remaining display and a graphical display of how much progress has been made in the song! In other words, everything you could possibly want to know about the song is clearly available at a glance.

It's so clear, in fact, that it's made me a little self conscious about people glancing over my shoulder and being able to see what I'm listening to.

The basic interface is entirely hierarchical. The wheel makes a selection, the select button takes you a level deeper or makes the selection, and the menu button takes you back up a level. At the top level is Playlists (which takes you to any playlists which you defined in iTunes, and is a great way of grouping your music), Artists (Allows you to browse your music by artist, and below that by album, much like the "Browse" mode in iTunes), Songs (A big long list of every song on the iPod), Settings (duh), About (also duh), and (when something is playing) Now Playing (takes you to the display screen of the current song, which will also pop up if you don't press anything for about 5 seconds). The iPod actually remembers what menu you were last in, so if the display screen pops up, hitting menu will take you right back to where you were, even after hours of not touching it. When you scroll up and down the hierarchy, the screens actually slide on and off of the display, which is very cool. Unfortunately, from time to time this has really sputtered and coughed in an unpretty way, but it's pretty rare.

Not only does each button do its thing when you press it once, but each button also has a function when you hold it down. Holding down forward or backward will seek within the current song, holding down play/pause will put the unit to sleep, and holding down menu will activate the insanely powerful white backlight. And holding down the select button on the "About" screen will take you to the Breakout game. ;-)

The interface with iTunes is also pretty slick, even though I've got more music than my iPod can hold. The iPod settings dialogue allows me to select which iTunes playlists I want synchronized over to my iPod when I plug it in, and when I plug the iPod in, it checks for any changes and selectively updates the contents of the iPod as necessary. If a few files were deleted from the playlist and a few more added, it just copies over the new files and doesn't waste time re-copying all the files already on the iPod. In addition to making nice clumps of songs to copy to the iPod, I can navigate the playlists on the iPod to selectively listen to my music. The interface could be refined ever so slightly in subtle ways, but 98% of the iTunes/iPod interaction is simply flawless. Most of the alterations I'd make just have to do with displaying a little more information in certain places to streamline the process building and selecting playlists to put onto the iPod.

If only a small percentage of mac users used iTunes, then the iPod would be a difficult sell. My Rio came with custom Windows software for managing playlists and copying music to the Rio and burning music, etc, that was simply awful, and was a negative point that many reviewers of the Rio frequently mentioned. But because most mac users listen to their music with iTunes and like iTunes, iTunes integration is a huge selling point for Apple. And I couldn't be happy about the integration.

Transfer time is fantastic, and it only took 20 minutes to transfer 1574 songs to my iPod. It'd be kind of nice if iTunes displayed an "Estimated Time Remaining" while this was happening, but that falls into the "wanting more information" clause I mentioned above. When the transfer is happening I keep worrying that I'm wasting the battery life of my poor iPod after bad experiences with my digital camera and my old Rio, but then I remember the little Firewire trick Apple pulled, so that the unit is able to charge off of Firewire's power. On that topic, the power brick is also pretty cool, and is very tiny.

By default the iPod doesn't function as a hard disk, but that allows you to freely plug in and unplug the iPod without worrying about mounting and unmounting it. To turn on hard disk mode, there's an option in the the iPod preferences in iTunes, and once you flip that switch, the iPod pops up on your desktop once you plug it in. Files copy to it just as quickly as a disk as songs copy to it in iTunes, and it's a very nice little bonus feature.

Though it's advertised as holding 5 gigs, the about screen shows me that it's only 4.6 gigs formatted. It's a good thing they also advertise it as holding 1000 songs, because most people will be happy when it holds more than that because their mp3s are encoded at 128 kbps. All of my mp3s are at 128 kbps, and my iPod currently has 1574 songs on it with 62.9 megs still available. I'm amused that while 62.9 megs is exactly as much as my Rio held, I wasn't particularly worried about filling up that space when I was picking out songs to put on the iPod. "Eh, I've already got exponentially songs more than my Rio held..."

The battery life is great, and as long as I charge it nightly there won't be a problem. I've been listening to it constantly for the last 7 hours, and it's still at 2 bars (of 4), which seems better than advertised. My only real complaint here is I don't like having battery life indicated by bars, and I'd prefer a percentage. But such is life.

Speaking of battery life, it might seem a little silly that I listen to my iPod while riding the train even though I'm using my laptop with all of my music on it at the same time. But it's not as silly as it sounds: I can get up and walk around and still have my music. I can do something else and not have to have my laptop out. And most importantly, my battery life on my laptop has been about 10% better than it normally is when I listen to music on the whole train ride on my laptop, and that's a better reason than any, especially when Apple's new laptops aren't dual-battery capable.

Really, the iPod is orders of magnitude than my Rio at being a portable music player, and in the end is only $100 more expensive than my Rio and the Smart Media expansion were. There are little imperfections in the interface here and there, but on the whole, it's simply the best portable mp3 player there is.

And on top of everything else, the box is one of the coolest boxes I've ever opened, and it was obviously designed by the same team that designed the iPod itself.

(I focused this review on the iPod does, not what I wish it did, because that's not fair. I'll write a follow-up piece about what I wish the iPod/iTunes dynamic duo did later.)