dtobias's Full Review: Apple iPod 5th Generation Black (60 GB) MP3 Player
Recently I decided it's about time to replace my ailing, antiquated iPod with a newer model. Yes, that's the same iPod I waxed enthusiastically about in a review here a couple of years ago, but it's the way of high-tech stuff that pretty much every device, no matter how snazzy and state-of-the-art it is when it comes out, will be old and obsolete in just a few years. (NOTE: My old review, linked above, is still a good place to start if you're looking to introduce yourself to the exciting world of iPods from a position of unfamiliarity with the concept. This one will focus more on what's changed in the succeeding few years of iPod evolution.) In the case of my old iPod, it had fallen victim to the battery problem many iPods get after a few years of service, where the battery just won't hold a charge for long; it got to where I was lucky to get a solid hour of music before the thing ran out. It was still good for use in places where a power source was available, including at work and in the car, but for portable use it left a lot to be desired.
I had received a notice of a proposed class-action settlement regarding people in the situation of having iPod batteries go bad; supposedly, should this settlement gain final approval, I'd be entitled to a replacement battery installed by Apple. However, the sluggish legal system is no match for the rapid-pased world of technology; the new models were so much better now that I eventually decided to buy one instead of waiting for a free repair to be finally available for my old one. I chose the black style to contrast with my old white iPod. (Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony...)
I've heard that Apple once said that it would never release an iPod that plays videos; they were a carefully crafted appliance for the specific purpose of music playing and wouldn't lose their focus by expanding to other uses. But then again, Apple also once said that the Macintosh would never be expandable beyond its original built-in tiny black-and-white screen, single floppy disk drive, and 128K of memory. Each stage of improvement from there, to add expansion slots, color monitors, hard disk drives, and more, went contrary to their original claims that the Mac was to be a closed "appliance" computer. The iPod represents Apple history repeating itself, as new features keep appearing without regard to prior statements from Apple. So never believe an Apple spokesperson who says that some feature is never coming; perhaps their engineers are actually working on it right now. I don't fully blame the Apple marketing types; if people always knew what was coming in the next model, then perhaps they'd never buy the current model; they'd just wait a few more months.
Anyway, I ordered the new iPod (top of their current line) through the Apple online store. I considered purchasing it at the actual physical Apple store (since there is one in a local mall), but every time I went there the place was so packed with other customers that it would be hard to get served. Anyway, when you buy it online you get free personalization; they engrave a brief message of your choice on the back of it. Once the order is placed, Apple provides a FedEx tracking link to let you see where the iPod is while it's on its way. From this, I was surprised to see that the shipment originated in Shanghai, China, where they manufacture iPods now. But it's not sent on a slow boat from China; it still took only three days from the shipping date for it to arrive. It's a small world, after all.
If I'd known about the Chinese origin in advance, maybe I'd have tried something more provocative for the customized engraved message, like "Free Tibet" or "Remember Tiananmen Square 1989", or "Falun Gong Rules!".
Anyway, I waited in anticipation for my new iPod as the tracking system followed it from Shanghai to Anchorage to Indianapolis to Memphis to Fort Lauderdale, and from there to where I am. Or, at least, the tracking page claimed it had been delivered; I still saw no sign of it. I had used my work address, and the receptionist had received no package for me. Looking more carefully at the tracking system, I saw that it had been signed for by "A. Mann". Nobody of that name works where I am, so the whereabouts of the package was a mystery. Perhaps it had been delivered to the wrong suite; I considered going around the building making inquiries, which perhaps ought to be done in a style and tone imitating Bartender Moe of the Simpsons when he's just received one of Bart's prank calls: "Is A. Mann here? I really need to find A. Mann!" Fortunately, the mistaken recipient of the package soon brought it to our receptionist (I wasn't around to see if A. Mann was actually A Woman), so I got it. All's well that ends well, but FedEx really should be more careful about delivering things to the correct address. I thought for a moment there that the iPod had come all the way from Shanghai only to get shanghaied.
Anyway, I finally got the new iPod. It has a number of changes from the earlier model, which can be good, bad, indifferent, or incomprehensible:
* This model has even more storage space than the old one, also top-of-the-line for its time; the old one had 40 GB, while the new one has 60. So far, I haven't needed this much space; I was nowhere near filling up 40 gigs even after importing all my CDs, a number of tracks downloaded from iTunes and elsewhere, various podcasts, speeches, and other stuff, as well as my address list, datebook and other reference information. Now I've got 20 gigs more than that, though with the video and photo capability there's even more that can be done with it.
* It's got a full-color, graphical screen, in contrast to the black-and-white screen mostly used in text mode in the old model. I'll discuss some of the things that can be done with this graphic capability a bit later.
* The style has gotten sleeker and slimmer. The old model was a marvel of classy design itself, but it still looks a bit clunky and awkward when put next to the new one, which continues the Apple design evolution. Many of the new iPod models are really thin, practically fitting in a wallet; this biggest one is thicker than those, but still a bit thinner than the old model.
* As one element of the increase in sleekness, the control buttons were combined with the trackwheel, instead of being in a separate row above it. This seems odd at first glance -- just how do you select the right control if the same spot on the iPod is part of more than one switch? -- but actually it works very well, and the buttons are easy to push when you want to, and hard to activate accidentally when you don't (which was a constant problem with the old model).
* For some unknown reason, the "lock" switch at the top, which disables the buttons so that you don't accidentally activate a function by bumping into them, goes in the opposite direction from the similar switch on the old model, a source of confusion if you've got one of each as I do. (However, there's less need for this function given that the buttons aren't as hypersensitive as the old ones; you actually have to make solid contact with them to push them, instead of just brushing your finger somewhere near them.)
* Another odd change is the removal of the double-holed earbud jack, which allowed the plugging in of a remote control between the iPod and the earbuds or earphones (some models, such as my old one, came with such a remote, and it was available as an accessory for others) letting you change the volume, pause and restart play, and skip a track without using the main iPod controls; it was handy when you were carrying the iPod in your pocket and listening to it while out for a walk. Now there's just a single plug, which works with the standard earbuds or other earphones, but has no ability to attach controls.
* An improvement, however, is its ability to get power directly from a computer's USB port, so it can charge the battery while you're docked to the computer. Earlier models used a Firewire port instead, something that is more common on Macs than Windows PCs; you had to buy an adapter separately to hook it to a USB port, and this had a separate split-off power line that had to be plugged into an AC adapter to power the charger. With all of this bulky stuff in place, you could still charge the iPod and dock it with a computer at once, but now this process is much more simple and automatic. On the down side, they don't even give you an AC adapter with the iPod any more, since it's not usually neeeded. If you're going to be traveling a lot with no access to a USB-equipped computer, you might still need to plug it into a regular outlet to charge it, so fortunately I can still use the power cord from the old iPod for this. My gadget for plugging the iPod into a car's power also works for this one.
* Apple seems to have made the new iPod smarter about holding your place in certain kinds of programs, such as podcasts and videos. Old iPods lost their place if you switched to playing something else, or if the battery ran out, or if you docked with a computer; this could be a nuisance when playing a program that could be an hour or longer and for which I'd rarely have enough of a span of uninterrupted time to listen to all at once. I haven't quite figured out how position tracking works in the new iPod, but it does seem to remember where you are in multiple programs at least in some circumstances, and resume where you left off in a podcast even though you've played some music in the meantime. This can be useful, but also confusing if it's been a long time since you listened to the beginning of the podcast and you don't even remember that you had a place in it to save.
Oh, I guess I'd better define terms for those who might be unfamiliar with them... A "podcast" is something new that's sprung up in the last couple of years, giving iPod (and other portable audio player) users something to listen to besides music. It is basically a radio show done as a downloadable file, and it might have talk, music, or anything else that can be done by audio. Since creating a podcast takes vastly fewer resources than starting up a radio station, podcasts are available from a much wider range of interests and perspectives than can be found in the mainstream media. There are "fanzine" podcasts for fans of entertainment things (Harry Potter, Kelly Clarkson, etc...), techie podcasts discussing computers and the Internet, alternative-music podcasts featuring the sounds of non-mainstream bands (many of whom are happy to have their songs put into free downloads, unlike the big-money record industry that gripes about "piracy"), political podcasts (left, right, center, libertarian, anarchist, ...) and just about anything else you can imagine.
Anyway, I said I'd discuss the graphic capability some more. Like I said, the new iPod has a full-color screen which can display both still pictures and videos. The still-picture capability is used to show album covers related to the music you're listening to, if they're stored with the music track. iTunes downloads come with such pictures built in, and you can drag images into iTunes to associate with other tracks such as ones you "ripped" from CDs; either scan in the CD cover yourself or find it on the Web.
The graphic capability is also used for display of personal photographs and other images of interest to you. You can configure iTunes to find your pictures where you store them on your computer (e.g., in the "My Photos" directory) and transfer them automatically just as it does with music. In the normal configuration, it does photos last, so if you run out of space on the iPod it will be pictures that get left out instead of music.
The moving-picture capability is used to show videos in the iPod. These can be TV shows downloaded through iTunes, or compatible-format video files from elsewhere. Unfortunately, the supported formats are pretty limited. A large portion of the Internet videos a typical person is likely to have accumulated will probably be in unsupported formats such as WMP or AVI... Yeah, I know they're proprietary Microsoft formats and I hate that concept, but they do tend to be what's out there now. The non-proprietary Ogg format (used on Wikipedia for instance) isn't supported by the iPod either. QuickTime, a proprietary Apple video format, is supported (unsurprisingly given that this is an Apple product), but only when you use a function in iTunes to convert it for iPod use. Thus, you'll have a lot of trouble putting any video material on your iPod other than what you get from Apple's own store, which may be Apple's intentional strategy here. When importing sound files, on the other hand, most of the commonly-found formats (aside from proprietary locked-down formats used in competing music stores) are supported, as well as "ripping" of CDs, so it's much easier to populate a music collection on an iPod than a video collection. (However, the Ogg sound format used on Wikipedia isn't supported, unfortunately.)
Videos on their store include a miscellany of television shows from The Apprentice (NBC) to The Daily Show (Comedy Central) to That's So Raven (Disney Channel), as well as some music videos. They've chosen to use the flat price of $1.99 for all video downloads, which seems kind of unequal given that they range from hour-long shows all the way down to music videos and comedy skits that are just a few minutes long. The selection isn't yet as broad as that of their music store.
When I first hooked the new iPod to my computer, I had some problems at first; I had tried putting it in the docking bay from the old iPod, but since the new one was slightly thinner it had trouble staying in place and interrupted the connection in midstream. Afterward, I switched to connecting it to a normal USB port without using the dock, but perhaps the earlier interruptions had caused some data corruption because for a while it was doing strange things like failing to recognize each time that it was the same iPod I had docked with last time, and thus wanting to reinstall everything from scratch. However, as all Windows users learn, when all else fails, reboot; this seems to apply to iPods too. After a cold-boot restart, everything worked fine from that point on. (I had been prepared to do the even more drastic full software wipe and reinstall, if necessary, as I had to do a couple of times with the old iPod to get out of messy problems.)
As perhaps a lingering effect of the initial problems, I later found some of the associations of album cover pictures to particular songs to be "scrambled"; when certain songs played, I saw a totally unrelated cover on the iPod screen, even though the correct cover showed in iTunes on my PC. What was necessary to fix that was to force those particular songs to be re-loaded onto the iPod, by making changes to the metadata such as title, artist, and album name.
Anyway, I've enjoyed the new iPod since then (about a month now), and its battery life is excellent (I hope it stays that way). Playing videos draws more battery power than playing music, but under normal usage I can take it on a trip, listening to it during flights out and back and a few times in between, and never have to drag out the charging cord. The old iPod with its nearly-shot battery is now in my car, where I can hook it up to the stereo system and power it up from the car's electrical system (with an accessory I've had for a while), so the battery power is only an issue when I don't drive the car for a few days straight (like when it's parked at the airport while I'm out of town), and it goes totally dead (which happens after a few days even if it's not used); when that happens, it resets the date and time in the unit, which messes up the syncing of song play counts when I finally re-dock it to the computer, unless I manually reset the time first.
By the way, iTunes has no problem at all dealing with two different iPods, even when I dock both of them at the same time (the old one in the old cradle, the new one in another USB port). It knows which one is which, and keeps them both updated with my current song library (and, in the case of the new one, my videos and pictures as well); I can also copy my datebook and address book info to both of them. iTunes also brings in all the song play statistics from both of them (unless the date and time is messed up by a dead battery) to aggregate the totals in the iTunes library, letting me see my personal "Top 40" (Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" is currently #1) based on how many times I've played each song.
So I'm getting a lot of good use out of both of my iPods, and I like the way Apple is going with them... other than their use of proprietary locked-down formats in their store (mandated by the record company cartel) and the limited life span of their batteries, anyway.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399 Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
Stores up to 15,000 songs, 20,000 photos, or 150 hours of video playback 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlight Up to 14 hours of music play...More at Amazon Marketplace
Recertified to New by major retailer and sealed in brown box Comes with sealed headphones and USB cable 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlig...More at Amazon Marketplace
Stores up to 15,000 songs, 20,000 photos, or 150 hours of video playback 2.5-inch (diagonal) color LCD with LED backlight Up to 14 hours of music play...More at Amazon Marketplace
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