Cons: No clip or case; Earbuds aren't comfortable; doesn't work with PC's yet
The Bottom Line: The iPod is simply delectable and shouldn't be overlooked. If you are searching for the perfect gift for the mac person, this would be it!
shanna's Full Review: Apple iPod 1st Generation 5 GB (MAC) MP3 Player
Out of the box this sleek little baby is total eye candy. Even if you aren't an Apple person you should by now be familiar with how stylish their products are. The iPod doesn't disappoint. The iPod is an excellent accessory for any TiBook, the new and old iBooks or even the G3,4 or iBook lines. Don't dispair if you aren't Apple equipped in that way. If you're using an older mac but have upgraded it with OS 9.2.1 or greater, and have firewire you're up and running. I've frequently heard the iPod compared in size to a deck of cards, I'd say this is quite accurate and I too will use this as a measurement for comparison. The coolest part is that I 've never seen a deck of cards that will hold the equivalent of 1000 CD's, but the iPod will.
What's in the box?
The iPod has a whopping FIVE (count 'em again 5!) gigabyte hard drive
A rechargeable lithium polymer battery
A 6-pin FireWire cable and AC adapter
Ear bud style earphones with Neodymium transducer magnets
60 mW amplifier and a frequency response of 20-20,000 Hz
CD-ROM that comes with iTunes2 software and electronic documentation.
20 minutes of skip protection.
2" diagonal LCD display with white LED backlight with 160 by 128 pixel resolution
Multilingual display support
Supported audio formats: MP3, MP3- Variable Bit Rate (VBR), WAV, AIFF.
All good things come in time.
I had an immediate disappointment when I took my precious little bundle of joy home. The battery IS NOT charged. Bringing back flashbacks to childhood when that present you wanted oh so badly was found under the tree but your stressed out parents forgot to buy just that size of battery. I still see that as some type of twisted psychological experiment. Never fear you won't be running around Christmas day looking for the forgotten batteries, you can charge your iPod battery and in a few short hours be circling the block to a "Flock of Seagulls" tune in no time. The iPod has a tiny rechargeable lithium polymer battery that goes about 10 hours. My first charge required the longest three hours of my life but it was worth it. The Pod will also charge whenever you have your firewire connected to your Mac. You will also find a handy FireWire AC power adaptor for when you've left home without your Mac (of course I never recommend that). So the battery life is excellent and far surpasses any other MP3 player I've ever used. If you are considering giving the iPod as a gift, do the recipient a favor and charge the battery for them so they can play straight out of the box, I know I'd appreciate it, there's nothing quite like instant gratification!
Sound Matters
All this drivel is unimportant if this player doesn't sound good. I'm not going to put out hard earned cash if I'm not going to enjoy the end result. I can only say unequivocally that this is the best sounding MP3 player I've ever heard. The iPod kicks out between a 20 to 20,000 Hz frequency response, and can easy be heard when outdoors. I'm not an ear bud fan, but the ones that come with the iPod have neodymium magnets "for enhanced frequency response" and do sound excellent, but they are not very comfortable. What in the heck are neodymium magnets anyway? Neodymium Iron Boron (NIB) magnets are extremely powerful, and allow effects to be heard that aren't possible with normal iron or ferrite magnets, which is why they can be found in high quality ear buds and upscale in-car speakers. I don't like anything in my ears and ear buds, tend to always fall out so I plugged in a pair of ear muff style phones from an my walkman and was quite pleased with the result. No they're aren't as stylish as the earbuds that came with the iPod but comfort is king.
I also experimented Car use of the iPod by plugging in one of those Cassette to CD converters into the iPod. Remember the days when all cars didn't come standard with a CD player and we hard to find a workaround... well that workaround works with the Pod. I popped the cassette adaptor into my car cassette player and the jack into the iPod and found myself listening to MP3 files driving down the road. Cool! The CD changer in my car only holds 10 CD's, so by implementing the iPod into car use I have now increased my music listening time almost tenfold. This is a good thing.
It's a mini computer (well maxi really!)
I can't boot my Mac from my Pontis, but I can from my iPod, and that's due to the fact that located on the five GB hard drive of the iPod is a complete system folder, and Norton utilites among other software. Goodbye Zip drive? No not really, but my iPod means I don't have to carry around my zip anymore. I can transfer files from other Macs by downloading files from any Mac with firewire to the iPod and vice versa.
I am in control here
The controls on the iPod are what give it it's very stylish appeal. I can control my iPod using one hand, which just gives me an ultra cool appearance as well, similar to the cell phone flip that will become passe in comparison. Take a glance at the iPod at www.apple.com and you will see that the large circle on the front of the unit is where you can put the whole world in just the palm of your hand. The dial/wheel on the front controls your volume, allows you to scroll through songs and menu options. The wheel is designed to be extremely easy to use and you don't have to have pencil fingers to be successful at it. Using the one hand technique: The dial is easily rotated when the iPod is safely cradled in your hand, you can rotate the wheel with your thumb. It just feels good to whip through menus' with ease and speed and at only 6.5 ounces you won't exhausted after searching your vast song library.
Speaking of control, what happens when things beyond your control come into being, things like bumps in the road that might make your MP3 player skip a beat. Well Apple considered this and added 32 megabytes of memory that hold about 20 minutes of audio. What the iPod efficiently does is then load songs from the hard drive, download them in microseconds to it's memory and plays away from there. This makes jogging or exercising with the iPod a fairly skip free experience.
The controls are displayed on the 2" LCD backlit display, it is sharp and easy to read. The display will also tell me how much battery life I have left.
Included software:
iTunes - iPod integrates seemlessly with iTunes 2 all you have to do is literally plug and play via your firewire cable. Once you're wired, iTunes will automatically launch and you can update the Pod in minutes, sometimes even seconds if you've only made minor modifications to your playlists. On my Pontis which used USB technology, the process of my initial upload of some 250 songs would have taken 2-3 hours. It was accomplished on my iPod in less than 10 minutes. iTunes 2 also has a built-in 10-band equalizer with 22 EQ presets, MP3 CD-burning and, cross-fading between songs for your listening pleasure. Therein lies one of the downfalls of the iPod, the settings you change for your listening pleasure on the EQ will not download to the player. SO if you tweak a song on the EQ you will only hear those changes on your Mac, not the POD. iTunes 2 is multi-lingual, supporting our French and German friends and and also displays in Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Apple is working hard at adding more languages soon.
In comparison to my Pontis MP3 player the iPod kicks serious butt. Just as kids seem to forget all to quickly about last years must have toys, we big kids do the same thing. My Powermac 7300/180 doesn't have the same allure as my iBook or even iMac DV.
If you experience problems with the iPod, the brilliant engineers at Apple have given us a remedy. What do you usually do when your computer locks up, well start pressing sequences of force quit buttons, you know the all too familiar Control-Alt-Delete sequence that we all can do in our sleep. Simply hold down the menu and play buttons at the same time for about 3 seconds and the machine restarts (refreshes). Remember this is really a palm sized computer so you are basically rebooting it's hard drive and starting anew.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness
Fingerprints - being a little obsessive compulsive when it comes to my Apple merchandise I will not tolerate smudges on monitors, goop on my desk or fingerprints on my iPod, especially it's shiny stainless steel backside. Common logic tells you not to use the chore boy from under the kitchen sink to keep your jukebox clean, so I found that precious shammy in the garage that the other adult in my home uses on his Harley Davidson. Seeing that it did such a fine job on that precious little motor scooter it would surely suffice just fine for my precious iPod. I don't know that he'll notice the little 4x4 square that is now forever lost from the geography of the shammy, but I now possess a nice, scratch free, cloth to use in keeping my Pod up to standard.
Wish List:
I wish the iPod came with some sort of attachment device to attach to my clothing. I thought about using one of the cell phone clips that adheres easily by way of a strong tape, but I don't want to mar my iPod and will wait for a nice leather carrying case equipped with a clip. In the meantime I have to secure the iPod into one of my pockets when using it.
The cost
Leaving behind around $430 of my dollars at the Apple store, it cost $100 more than my Pontis. Do I mind paying this difference? Absolutely not. A dinner at a nice restaurant runs around $100 most times so I just figure I won't eat out for a month. Now in thinking along those lines, if I stop eating out for two months, I've actually saved money by buying my iPod. I love obsessive Apple justifications.
My favorite thing about the iPod
Choice - I can choose how I want to listen to my music, change the order, browse gigabytes of music, and choose how I want to use the free space on my Pod. I can use the 5 GB's for nothing but music or load a two or three gigs of music and save the remainder for file transfer.
Okay, It's Not for everyone.
Do I feel bad that presently the iPod only works for Apple users? Nope, haven't lost a wink of sleep over the fact, I promise. How many days have I lamented the fact that PC folks got a game a month or six before I did, several times. Now it's my turn to have a new toy first! But alas, those hardy PC folks are spending sleepless nights looking at a solution for that as well. Check out http://www.mediafour.com/xpod/ for MediaFour's cross platform solution. Realizing that iPod will no doubt storm the market making Harry Potter merchandise look small in comparison (ha ha, a little Apple delusion), MediaFour will enable the iPod to work with Windows (Me, 2000 & XP), XPod, assuming you have FireWire on your PC. XPod is going into public beta soon according to the MediaFour web site so those of you PC folks will be ready to rock and roll soon. MediaFour even has an email alert to let you know the moment it hits cyberspace, sign up for it at their website.
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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