Apple's iPod - Pure Simplcity
Written: Mar 17 '03
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Pros: Small, FireWire transfer is lightning fast. Flashy, yet simple.
Cons: MusicMatch Jukebox is awful. Ephpod is the way to go. Read on.
The Bottom Line: Like I say in my review, one of the best toys I've ever bought. You'll say the same thing when you pick one of these babies up.
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| androoos's Full Review: Apple iPod (20 GB, PC - M8741LL/A) MP3 Player |
I have to Justify my Love
I had to have one. When you first see an iPod, you wonder how some people can be so addicted to them. It's a little white box with a dial on it and a small LCD screen. What's the big deal? The big deal is explained in this review. Plus, it's a gadget. Gotta have new gadgets, right?
The first time I saw an iPod about a year ago, I thought the same way. What's the big deal? I guess I shouldn't get interested in something I can't have because its only for the Mac. Well, now us Windows folks have an iPod too and its a huge deal for anyone who loves portable music. This little gizmo can hold a few thousands songs inside it, all in MP3 format. It is simply amazing. The Apple documentation boasts it can fit over 4000 songs...so lets do a quick calculation:
Assume an average of 12 songs per CD
4000 divided by 12 is 333.33
I could stack 333.33 CD's from my floor to my ceiling
Now thanks to iPod they fit in a package the size of a pack of playing cards!
Does that justify having an iPod? For me, yes, yes, oh yes, it does.
The Whole Package
Now don't get me wrong, this is a pricey bit of music hardware. At $500 there were probably a lot of other things I could have bought that made more sense, but I have to have my music with me!
I ran to Best Buy and snagged the last 20GB iPod off the shelf. Getting home (thank god it's only a 3 minute drive) I began to carefully open the box. The box itself is a work of art. A sleeve slides off and presents a silver clamshell box which hinges on one side. Next you see two flaps on each half of the box, one Apple logo and one iPod logo. Open the iPod logo and there sits your beautiful new toy, carefully wrapped and just screaming at you to be put to use. Under the Apple logo you will find everything else: a nice package which contains documentation and installation CDs, the IEEE-1394 Firewire cable, the wall power adapter, headphones, foam ear covers and the remote control. All are wrapped in a nice silver packaging and wires are coiled to perfection. Someone took their time doing this, that is evident!
Charge it, charge it good.
Now I must recommend that you open the iPod, wall power adapter and Firewire cable and charge the iPod until it is FULL, no less. You will experience lowered battery life if you let excitement take you over.
The only software to have is EphPod
Once the iPod is charged, take out the CD's and install the software. Here is another recommendation: install the MusicMatch software initially (because you have no choice) and then uninstall it. It sucks, literally. Go to www.ephpod.com and download the latest version of EphPod for Windows. The program is simple, intuitive and not bundled with any other useless software like MusicMatch. You'll be much happier, trust me.
Uploading Music
Now once you've got it charged and have installed EphPod, you are ready to upload some music!
There is one thing I must stress about your MP3's: Make sure your ID3 tags are set up uniformly for each artist and album you have. If you don't do this, you will have a very cluttered iPod with a list of songs that is very hard to search through. For example, here are some of the ID3 names I had down for Dave Matthews Band:
Dave Matthews Band
Dave Mathews Band
DMB
Dave Matthew Band
Dave Matthews
Dave Mathews
D M B
These all need to be fixed so they say one thing, Dave Matthews Band. That way it will only show up once in your list of artists when you're searching for a song. There are some good programs out there for easily renaming MP3 ID3's, the one I use is Tag & Rename. You can find them on Cnet.com.
Since this beauty uses Firewire, you upload songs at roughly 4MB per second. I've seen speeds as high as 6MB per second. Wow. One song, one second. Amazing.
Playlists
Next piece of advice is have your playlists set up well and organized well. One of the things I don't like about the iPod is that you can't form playlists on the fly, you have to make them on your computer and upload them (along with the correct files).
Another thing that I don't like about the iPod is the text character size relative to the screen size. On some of my playlist titles, I can't see what the album name is. Here are a few examples:
Counting Crows-A
Counting Crows-H
Counting Crows-R
I have to remember the names of the albums and go by the first letter. Also the playlist names don't scroll across the screen like the song and artist titles do. Oh well, I shall make do with this shortcoming.
The Remote
The remote is kinda neat but kinda not, I just skip it and don't use it.
The Case
the iPod comes with a black case and belt clip. The case isn't really meant for the iPod because you can't access the controls if it's in the case. I decided to spend $20 on a transparent silicone case called the iSkin. It's got breathing holes in the back (because this thing does get warm) and has access for all controls and the LCD screen. A marked improvement upon the OEM case.
The Earphones
These earphones are pretty sweet. They have great sound and an unbelieveable range. Bass is loud and low, highs are crisp and there is hardly any distortion at maximum sound levels (this was tested while riding in the back of a 757 behind the engines, where its loudest!). I'm glad Apple didn't skimp on headphones (like so many companies have before).
The Controls
The iPod is very simple to use. There is a main dial with four buttons encircling it and a button in the center. Around the dial are Menu, play/pause, back and forward. The center button is the 'select' button. The dial is pretty fun to play with. In earlier versions of the iPod, the dial moved. Now it doesn't, it works completely on touch. It's fun to play with and its speed is variable. If you have a long list of playlists you can scroll one by one or 10 at a time depending on how fast you move your finger around the ring. A great addition that adds even more simplicity to this already-simple gizmo.
On the top of the iPod is the firewire port with cover, headphone jack and HOLD button. The hold button is a necessity because the buttons on the dial are pretty sensitive to touch. The hold keeps your battery fresh when you aren't listening, otherwise it'd be deader than a doornail when you really want to listen to your music.
The Menus
On the main screen when the iPod starts up, you have:
Playlists
Browse
Extras
Settings
About
and if a song is playing, you see Now Playing on the bottom.
Under Playlists, it's pretty simple. It's a list of your playlists, which you can organize in your own order or have them in alphabetic order, all done through EphPod.
Browse: You can search through Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres or Composers. All of this information is taken from the MP3's ID3 tag. Again, be careful of what is in your tag, otherwise you're liable to get some very funky results in this menu.
Under Extras, you have Contacts, which you can import from Outlook through Ephpod. It gives you e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc. Next is Calendar, and you can do the same thing as Contacts...import your appointments from Outlook into the iPod. Next is Clock. Simple. Gives date too. Last is the Game. This is like Breakout for the Atari (I think). It's a pong game, use the scroll wheel to move the bouncer block back and forth.
Settings
The settings are where you make the most changes. You have Shuffle, Repeat, Sound Check, EQ, Backlight Timer, Contrast, Alarms, Sleep Timer, Date & Time, Contacts and Clicker, Language, Legal and Reset all Settings.
Shuffle, repeat, contrast, backlight timer are all self-explanatory. Your usual CD player/LCD screen functions.
Sound Check lowers volumes and makes songs of different volumes the same. I keep this off since I use the iPod a lot when I fly and need as much volume as possible.
EQ is the equalizer. It operates just like the EQ in Winamp for Windows. Many different settings for each type of music. Too many to get into here but the one I leave it on is Rock. Unfortunately you can't specify your own equalizer settings.
The sleep timer is exactly what it says it is. Turns off after a length of time that you set.
You can change date, time and timezone under Date & Time.
Contacts lets you sort and display your contacts how you want.
Clicker is exactly that. The iPod clicks when you scroll or hit buttons. You can turn that off here if you want.
Language sets your language. There are a lot here. English, Japanese, Dansk, Deutsch, Espanol, Francais, Italiano, Nederlands, Norsk, Portugues, Suomi, Svenska, and what I have to guess is Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese, although not in that order. Obviously Apple has entered the languages in the languages instead of in English...what good would English do someone from Thailand?
Legal is just legal mumbo-jumbo.
Reset All Settings does exactly that. I don't want to mess with that.
Menu Progression
The menu progression is really intuitive. For example, if you want to search for Astronomy by Metallica, you go to Browse, Artists, Metallica, now select the album, in this case it is Garage, Inc Disc 1, and the song will be listed in there. If you didn't know the album, you can hit 'All' under Album and it will list every song by Metallica on the iPod. Pretty quick and easy. Despite being easy, it does take some coordination between eye and thumb to scroll. Doing this while driving is extremely hazardous to your safety, I don't recommend doing this in the car while moving. Set up a playlist of songs you want to listen to beforehand and let it run while you drive. If you are more spontaneous than that, wait for red lights or traffic jams. That's just my $0.02.
Battery Power
I don't think I've talked about actual battery power yet. Here goes. The battery is pretty decent. It is supposed to last 10 hours or more. I recommend charging it in the wall, not from the computer. When you plug into the computer, the iPod is treated as an external hard drive (which it is) but it keeps the disc spinning inside which charging. I've found that I don't ever reach a full charge while plugged into the computer. When I want to transfer, plug to CPU. When I want to charge, I plug to wall. Again, just my two cents.
Finally...the end.
I think I can wrap up my review now. The iPod is a great little piece of gadgetry. I love it, I take it everywhere with me. It was expensive, but its value to me far outweighs its cost. Truly one of the best toys I've ever bought.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 499
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Epinions.com ID:
androoos
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Member: JC Andrews
Location: Chesapeake, VA
Reviews written: 70
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
Great job-check. House-check. Wife-check. Dog-check. Kids? Uh-oh.
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