Pros: Great size/capacity ratio, now Windows compatitable. 5, 10, or 20 gigs of music
Cons: cost, sort of.
The Bottom Line: Great size, great design, great capacity. Fantastic synching software, wonderful extras. Best mp3 player out there, even better thanks to new software additions.
ginomctien's Full Review: Apple iPod 1st Generation 5 GB (MAC) MP3 Player
I've had the iPod for about a year now, and I'm still blown away by it. This is a great little music machine. I'm not going to lie: I had to pay a lot of money to get this thing in my hands and at first I wasn't sure if I had spent the money in the right place, but now that I've used it for a while, I wonder how I got along without it.
Let me be clear: if you're in the market for an mp3 player, Windows or Mac user, hands down, this is the one to get. I'm sure you've all seen the stats on the iPod by now, but here's a quick rundown just in case. The iPod is now in its second incarnation, so there have plenty of chances for the few initial quirks to get worked out. I spend a lot of time talking about the features; if you're familiar, then skip down to the bottom where I make my case for the iPod as opposed to any other mp3 player out there.
* 5, 10 or 20 gigs of storage, or about enough for 1000, 2000 or 4000 songs
* 20 minutes (yes, minutes) of shock protection
* 10 hour battery life
* About the size of a deck of cards/pack of cigarettes
* Charges and transfers files with FireWire
* Display calendar and contact list information, transferred from a variety of PIMs
I have the 5 gig model myself, so I'm primarily talking about it. However, the only difference between the various models is the capacity and slight differences in their physical dimesions.
The interface to the iPod is superb. You've seen the pictures, I'm sure: there's a big screen that takes up the top half of the device. Under it is a big round button, surrounded by four buttons: menu, play/pause, next and previous. The big round area in the center that you see in all the pictures is a thumb wheel that you can use to scroll and navigate through menus and lists. I have around 800 songs on mine; the iPod's interface is so well designed that I feel that I could find any one song on the iPod in less than 10 seconds. No small feat, I assure you. The menus allow you to browse a variety of ways: you can navigate a big list of songs, lists of artists, lists of albums. New to the 1.2 version of the iPod software is the ability to bring up all songs of a particular genre; the iPod finds these songs by examining the tags on the mp3s.
iTunes is now in version 3.0, and just continues to get better. It's seamlessly integrated with the iPod; if I update a playlist in iTunes, it's updated on the iPod the next time I plug it in. You can't change any of the playlists directly on the iPod; you have to do it from the computer. This is good; I wouldn't want to manage a list of a thousand things on a Gameboy sized screen. You can also leave the iPod set on manual update; in this mode, you have to copy songs to and delete from the iPod manually. iTunes 3 also features something called "Sound Check" that analyzes all the music you have, and sets it so that they play at a consistent volume, rather than all your AC/DC songs being really loud and all your James Turner being really soft.
On the PC versions of the iPod, Apple bundles a version of MusicMatch JukeBox that duplicates the file transfer and play list synching abilities of iTunes.
FireWire is fast. Really fast. I was able to transfer about three and a half gigs worth of music in under 4 minutes. Remember also that it draws power from FireWire, so when you plug it into your computer to charge, it can potentially update the playlists automatically. On the PC versions of the product, Apple bundles a FireWire PC card in case your machine didn't come with FireWire.
Battery life is great; rated life is 10 hours. Though it's hard drive based, the iPod spends most of the time playing music from a 32 meg RAM buffer. It will spin the drive up every so often, copy about 20 minutes of music into RAM, and spin the drive back down. This allows the iPod to get some phenomenal battery life, and have an insane amount of shock protection as well. After a year of use, I get about 8 hours of battery life with normal usage.
The iPod is a great size. Any smaller, and it would be hard to hold onto in your hand. Any bigger, and it wouldn't fit comfortably in your pocket. It feels solid when you hold it. Although I wouldn't hurl it against a wall, I would feel reasonably comfortable dropping it. (And I have dropped it a bunch. It's also survived the dust of a New Mexico summer. It's scratched on the outside, but sounds as good as ever.)
And don't forget that it doubles as a FireWire hard drive. I have over 800 songs on mine, and still have over a gig free. This is more than enough for a bootable OS X install, a few apps, and some data. How cool is that...4000 hours of music, and a bootable drive, all in my pocket.
The 10 and 20 gig versions come with a remote that plugs into the headphone jack; the headphones then plug into the remote. You can clip the remote to a jacket pocket, and then skip songs with it, instead of using the buttons on the iPod. A feature of dubious value to me, but a feature nonetheless. The bigger versions also feature a trackpad style, touch sensitve scroll wheel instead of a wheel that actually moves. I prefer the older style of wheel that mine has, but I've played with the new ones, and it's not bad either.
With the 1.2 version of the software on the iPod, you can now use it to display calendar information. You can get information into it from any PIM that supports the vCalendar format; you can use this information to set alarms. The alarm is a simple "beep-beep" that's not very loud, but you can hear it without the headphones and the iPod doesn't have to be on for it to work. You can also use the iPod to display contact information imported from either the OS X address book, or any PIM that supports the vCard format.
I'm sure the question you're asking yourself is: why would I want to buy the more expensive/less compatitible Apple product when I can go and get something cheaper/bigger/faster? The answer is the same every time: no one does it like Apple.
Cons...
There are a few things that Apple could fix newer versions of the device, however. Previously, I had complained about the lack of a cover for the FireWire port and the lack of Windows drivers, and those got fixed. Maybe these next couple will get addressed soon...
The finish has got to go. The back is polished chrome, and it shows greasy fingerprints if you look at it wrong. I'm thinking about figuring out a way to sandblast it to make it a little rougher and make fingerprints not so obvious. The clear plastic over the screen also scratches easily; I ended up cutting a Palm Pilot screen protector film ih half and putting it over my screen.
No belt clip. This is annoying as all hell. Given that there's no way to attach it to clothing, and it scratches so easily that I don't feel comfortable putting it in my pocket, does Apple expect us to just walk around all day holding it? (Actually, it's not all bad...walking around with it out these last couple of days have started a lot of conversations.)
The bundled earbuds sound great, but are too big for me to wear comfortably for very long. I retired them almost right away.
It's a little more expensive than some of the other stuff out there, but we'll get into that more later.
So...what does it all mean...?
There are players out there that are physically smaller, cheaper and hold less. Most of these players use smart media or compact flash to store their music...why would you want to mess with that? You have to plan out what songs you want to hear for the next couple of days, and then transfer them to your memory cards. With the iPod, you have all of it all the time; I know I much prefer this setup. They're often not much cheaper, either. Compare the 5 gig iPod with the Pocket Concert Player. $278 new from Amazon.com, but only 128 megs of capacity. There's no contest there. There's a bunch out there in that price range, and that capacity. The iPod beats all comers.
There are players out there that hold more music, but are physically bigger. The beauty of the iPod is that I can put it in my pocket and forget about it. Like I said earlier, their size makes it extremely unlikely that you could put either the Nomad or the Archos in your pocket and then forget about them. Even if you did manage to forget, their crappy battery life would remind you soon enough. There are also details about the onboard software to consider...I've played with a 10 gig Archos, and organizing the music and navigating the music was no where near as intuitive as the iPod. You couldn't play one song while looking for another. You had limited options to sort and make playlists. The Archos may be cheaper, but the flexibility to find and listen to music the way I want to do it is worth the price difference.
Here's the bottom line: Having a 5 gig device in my pocket means that I have pretty much my entire music collection with me all the time. It gives me the freedom to hear pretty much any song I want whenever I want to hear it. That's what you're paying for, and it's worth every penny. And now that there's a Windows drivers for it, the iPod is hands down the best music player out there.
Side note...
If you're in school or associated with a school, buy your iPod through your education apple store...www.apple.com/education/store. The 5 gig iPod is $269, which is a great price for a great device.
Discontinued by manufacturer, replaced by model #M8976LL/A FireWire interface for fastest digital transfer available Download audiobooks from Audible....More at Amazon Marketplace
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