iPod Nano review

[clanger]

A comprehensive review of Apple's latest incarnation of the iPod is at;

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars

The destruction testing makes fun reading.

The Nano is the dope. I want one.

[davajonah]

The destruction testing makes fun reading.

It saddened me!

I too want one. My 2nd generation 15 gig is starting to look like this:

[kilroydegeek]

I still say the lack of firewire on the No-no is a disgrace.

[kilroydegeek]

Jeez, they beat 4 shades out of it's sorry, firewireless arse! Poor little iPod!

I know my nokia 3315 phone has pretty rugged (fell through a hole in a ratty jersey pocket while hammering on the treadlie at 40km/h casing one way, battery another, chassis to other side of road! Still works!), and the phone's nowhere near as densely constructed (which makes solid state elctronics tougher as a rule.)

I'm not surprised the screen went first, but I imagine only a spoiled teen would dish out treatment approaching what this poor beast got - so I say to apple's anti-abuse design department, "Respek!"

I like the combo lock feature, but really, Apple, firewire please.

[Kren]

I really enjoyed reading this review. It was funny the way they tried to kill the nano. Great article.
Especially since I bought my nano the other day. Only one left, white.
But can't use it till I get my new imac G5w/1.8Ghz

Can hardly wait

Kren

[kilroydegeek]

Ah, you lemmings

[clanger]

I was disappointed by the lack of FireWire connectivity but apparently it will work and sync fine with USB 1.1 in addition to the recommended USB 2.0 and will charge from a FW dock..but not sync. However this has to be weighed against the fact that the flash memory is quite slow and is unable to benefit from a fast connection like FW anyhow. Maybe its better to compare the Nano with the iPod shuffle in connectivity and speed terms. It must have a greater hassle factor when initially loading the 4Gb version than the 2Gb model (double the capacity of the biggest Shuffle).

This lemming fancies the one in black.

[ifingers]

...However this has to be weighed against the fact that the flash memory is quite slow and is unable to benefit from a fast connection like FW anyhow...

I didn't think of that.
I don't need a nano - but I sure would like one. I think the Back in Black model, would suit me.

[clanger]

Okay.. so to cheer myself up after a groin op last week I splashed out on a black iPod Nano and squandered a little of my earnings from my first 2 weeks back at work for quite a while.
Its the first iPod I have had and so fairly unaffected by the iPod mania that appears to surround these things.. till now.

As usual the Apple corporate packaging was slick and reminded me of an expensive box of chocolates. Its incredible that it made me unwrap the product as if it was an unexploded bomb. The additional components and CD are in perfect little sealed white packets that look as if they were manufactured for an expensive airline meal. The nano itself appears fairly robust and reassurringly heavier than it looks. I have read that they scratch easily and that the iPod mini is the best iPod for keeping its looks. Apple's own Nano 'tubes' to protect them are on a 5-6 week wait at the apple store.
I had to throw a USB 2 PCI card into my mac since.. as already pointed out..there is NO FireWire connection I used the standard Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 2-Port PCI Card (Model Number: F5U219) which Apple recommend. It was immediately recognized and worked fine. Loading the Nano is fast and I filled it with music and some recent photos within a few minutes.
The colour screen is very sharp and despite its diminuitive size its very friendly and even the extras such as games and calender etc. are easily viewed. Listening to AIFF songs I found that the music occasionally jumped being unable to fill its cache quick enough. Seems like this baby wants compressed files. This is my first gripe but I guess it is an mp3 player.. however I had hoped to use it for a number of formats. Non-the-less the sound quality is exceptional and compares to my son's Shuffle. There doesn't appear to be any loudness limitation although I needed to have the volume fairly close to maximum for my over-abused ears. Simply put; as a music player its does its job perfectly. I would have liked the album art to be a little larger (its bloody tiny!) or at least another page for each song just to display the album art if required. I really don't care to glance at a the volume/duration bar or even the name of the track if I can look at a cool album picture instead. Looking at the photos I had loaded via iTunes (why can't I do this directly just using iPhoto?) they looked fine if in the landscape view otherwise they are almost impossible to see. I will have to remember to take more close-up photos in landscape mode. The Nano lacks the potential to show slideshows of its photo content on TV which in my mind would appear to be all the more important if its only got a 1.5 inch screen! To be honest the photo facility on the nano reminded me of a hi res version of a camera phone display. Whilst on the subject..why don't the photo iPods display movies? Is there a technological problem with that? I read of someone playing a movie file from their iPod on their mac. I might try that later. Anyhow with a little subjective selectivity the Nano works fine to display photos well.
So overall the Nano does exactly what is expected of it. But to my naive brain I do not like all the wires. I thought with Bluetooth a standard for phones it should really be possible to connect it to a mac that way and in the same manner use BT enabled headphones. The wires are a pain. The position of the mini-headphone jack socket at the base of the Nano in variance with other models appears fairly natural to me for a portable of this size.
I was curious to try out some third party software (what do you use?) that would enable me to swop music files out from the Nano. I tried Podworks 2.8.5 which enables drag and drop from the the iPod to any computer. It worked well. However when I tried the Nano later it appeared to have lost the main 'Tunes' menu and I had to restore the software. Good to know that I can at least use the Nano as a backup for songs. I wish I had got the 4 Gb model so I could reserve some space for transferring files.
The iPod Nano itself is a compelling object of desire and it took this latest beautiful technological mutation to finally persuade me to part with some hard earned dosh for an unnecessary luxury.

Apple have done well to introduce this model as a nicely timed shot across the bows of the Sony ship and their attempts to re-capture the Japanese portable music market with their new player.

Now all i need to do is get used to the iPod control wheel.

[kilroydegeek]

Hey, Paul, just out of curiosity, have you tried it on a USB 1 socket? Had some nebisch flame me on my blog for quoting Apple's USB 2 minimum requirement spec (duly deleted him and my offending post on the strength of his claim to be an Apple dealer.)

[clanger]

Hey, Paul, just out of curiosity, have you tried it on a USB 1 socket? Had some nebisch flame me on my blog for quoting Apple's USB 2 minimum requirement spec (duly deleted him and my offending post on the strength of his claim to be an Apple dealer.)

It works/mounts/charges fine on USB 1.1 The only drawback is that its a LOT slower to load files. Apple recommend USB 2.0 but it is backwards compatable with USB 1.1

[kilroydegeek]

Cool, thanks, Paul. (Zoe's now talking about joining the lemming herd and I needed to be sure she could with out having to replace the eMac.)

[clanger]

Daddy should buy Zoe one
I guess the question is if this is the model line up that Apple have in mind for Christmas? No doubt they already have the 6 Gb version waiting in the wings.. to replace the 4 Gb versions price point. I still would like to see the video iPod and am puzzled that they already don't play movies in the same manner as digital cameras.

[kilroydegeek]

I'd like to see Apple bring out a video iPod with a reasonable quality single chip CCD or CMOS camera built-in. If you think about the digital hub concept, an Apple-badged device that takes movies, as well as plays them back, along with the usual iPod functions would just about superglue them to a tech-toy market eternally. Now that's an iPod I'd die for.

[clanger]

There would appear to be a lot of unhappy people with regards to how easily the Nano becomes scratched even with a lot of careful handling to the extent that some are returning them as defective.[see Apple discussion board] Some have become so rapidly scratched to render the screens almost unusable. In addition there has been a reports of a number of defective screens showing white stripes (not the band)

It may be wise to wait for these early production problems to be resolved before Zoe joins the lemmings Steve.