The new iPod line: a mix of hits and misses :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2689454,ihnatko-apple-ipod-review-090810.article
The new iPod line: a mix of hits and misses
September means three things: letter carriers and UPS delivery drivers tentatively start wearing long pants again, there will be a day when your entire sunny disposition is soured by the sounds of the first Christmas ad of the season … and Apple releases updates to all of their iPods.
I’ve had time to use the new Shuffle, Nano, and Touch and I declare the 2010 editions to be a mixed bag. One is a retreat back that amounts to a big step forward; another is set of “under the hood” upgrades that adds true muscle car performance; and the third is …
… um …
Quite creative.
iPod Shuffle: The Big Command-Z
The 2008 iPod Shuffle was a little postage-stamp metal clip dominated by a traditional set of playback control buttons set into a circle about the size of a nickel.
The 2009 iPod Shuffle looked like a tie clasp. It was a tiny bar of aluminum with no control buttons of any kind. You worked the whole thing through a little squeezy button in the headphone cord.
The 2010 iPod Shuffle is a little postage-stamp metal clip dominated by a traditional set of playback control buttons set into a circle about the size of a quarter.
I’m compelled to conclude that the iPod team has has come to regard the 2009 Shuffle as something of a colossal mistake.
And they might be right. The Shuffle serves one function as part of the iPod family: it’s affordable. $49 buys you a tiny player that clips to any bit of your clothing. It’s so small and unobtrusive (about an inch and a quarter by barely more than an inch) that you’ll probably want to set an alarm on your phone reminding you to remove it from your jacket before tossing it in the hamper. I don’t know how much it weighs, because I’m not a drug dealer; my kitchen scale doesn’t go down that low.
It has no screen. A built-in voice will help you navigate through tracks and playlists as you tap the buttons. As a “workout” iPod, the Shuffle is aces; it’s a slickly-designed player that’s easy to operate.
But you should take a look at other cheap digital players. Sandisk’s Sansa Clip+, for example, lists for about $49. You give up elegant styling and the space that’s taken up by the Clip+’s absurdly ungainly 2” length (sarcasm). In exchange, you get a screen, an FM radio, a voice recorder, and twice the Shuffle’s 2-gigabyte storage capacity.
One thing about an all-Apple ecosystem, though: an iPhone, iTunes, and an iPod Shuffle all work together seamlessly. For folks who want a basic music player, that one difference can be worth all of the bonus features offered by a third-party budget device.
iPod Nano: Stop The Music
I’ve been using the Nano all afternoon. I’ve exercised with it. After exercise, I went to the coffeeshop and listened to music while I read and enjoyed my usual dose of phosphoric acid and caramel coloring. I’ve been plugged into it here at the desk all afternoon, while I work.
I’ve yet to find a scenario in which this new design is superior to the design that it replaced.
From a design and engineering standpoint, the new Nano is one hell of a cool object. It’s as though Apple beheaded a 2008 Nano and threw away the body. The 2010 edition is all screen: it’s just an inch and a half square. It takes all of its styling and UI cues from the iPhone. There’s a Sleep/Wake button and two little volume buttons, but that’s it for the clicky-clicky interface. You operate every other function via a very pretty 1.54” diagonal 240x240 multitouch color display.
The lack of physical buttons offers a design advantage: the interface can adapt to the task it needs to perform. That’s a Win in a device that does so many different things. It has all of the music playback features you’d expect from an iPod, plus FM radio, a chronometer, pedometer (enabled by the Nano’s new built-in accelerometer) and integration with the Nike+ system.
It’s a great interface. It’s definitely prettier than most other music players that cost $149 or $179 (the price of the 8 and 16 gig Nano) and arguably more intuitive. It’s so close to the iPhone’s UI — all the way down to the style of alert boxes and buttons — that I had to ask Apple if it’s running any flavor of iOS but nope, it’s just an extremely close reproduction.
The Nano steals a good feature from the Shuffle: it’s mounted to a metal clip, making it wearable. I’ve already been told by two different friends that they intend to buy or make a little wriststrap and wear their Nanos as wristwatches. Indeed, the Nano is barely larger than the face of my watch.
It’s a charmer. But its size, and the fact that you need to hold it by its edges to keep the screen clear, makes it tricky to use.
When a crummy song comes up on Shuffle Play, you will not reach over and tap the “Next Track” button, as you could on the old Nanos. Instead, you will have to pick it up with one hand; juggle it with your fingers a little because the headphone plug is getting in your way; press the “Sleep/Wake” button to wake it up (after adjusting your grip a little, because now the headphones are exactly where your thumb needs to be to squeeze the button); and then you’ll adjust your grip a third time because now you’re holding it in the wrong hand to tap the onscreen “Next Track” button.
At the end of this first day, I kind of would rather sit through a mediocre song than pick up this new Nano and navigate to a new one. That ain’t good.
Dammit, man, I think I have two American Idol songs in here somewhere!!!
I bet that after a week with the Nano, I’ll have trained my hands to eliminate many of these steps. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to one-hand it. And I don’t see how I could ever avoid holding this carefully by its edges, instead of just pawing it casually as I often do when I’m just looking for the next thing to play.
I miss the old Nano’s “remote control” shape. You didn’t need to juggle it at all and there was plenty of room for your hand. It was a tool, not a work of art. I didn’t even really need to stop my walk and take it out of my pocket. I could feel for the control ring, squeeze the left side, and presto, it’s skipped to the next podcast without stopping my walk.
The new Nano’s 100 percent touch interface brings with it one of the iPhone’s major annoyances: you can’t operate it if you’re wearing gloves. Even my thin cotton glove liners were a no-go when I put them on and took the Nano for a test.
That’ll be a big deal in November, won’t it? True, the 2009 Nano used a touchwheel for scrolling. But when I was outside shoveling snow or waiting for an airport shuttle, I could at least move through a playlist without taking my gloves off and losing the tips of my fingers to frostbite.
And then we move on to the features that are just plain missing. Last year’s Nano included a (tinny but usable) speaker and a video camera. Like previous Nanos, it could also play video, and sync notes and data from your desktop. None of that stuff is available on the new Nano.
So no: I’m not a fan of the new Nano. It has a narrower focus than previous iPods which is worrisome in a device that costs $150, minimum; for that amount of cash, I’d like my music player to have more features and be usable in a wider range of environments and scenarios.. But I don’t know that this design was a mistake. Apple has updated the product to more closely reflect their most current understanding of what a Nano buyer wants in 2010, as opposed to 2009. Clearly, they believe that this person cares about music, activity, and mobility over all other things.
Did they guess right? Well, we won’t know until we get to see the 2011 Nano next September. If it’s not working out for anybody, then we’ll see the old “remote control”-style Nano back.
iPod Touch: Just One Letter Off
I’m not inclined to believe rumors that Apple is sourcing parts for a smaller, 7” iPad, slated to be released next year. Apple already has a pocketable version of the iPad: it’s called the iPod Touch.
Actually, this year’s edition is less of an iPod Touch and more of an iPad Nano. The Touch feels precisely like a pocket edition of the iPad. It almost literally is, now that the 2010 model has the exact same A4 processor as the iPad.
The new Touch inherits most of its other new features from the iPhone 4 and has a magazine-quality 960x640 display, digital gyroscope (for Wii-style motion-controlled gaming), and a front-facing camera that works with FaceTime, Apple’s zero-configuration video conferencing feature. You’ll need to be within range of a WiFi base station to make it work, naturally.
There’s also a rear-facing camera that shoots 720p HD video. The camera also shoots stills, but it’s limited to 960x720 pixels. That’s good enough for Facebooking and Tweeting, but I’m still disappointed that the Touch won’t take “real” photos. Blame the touch’s profile. Apple made it even slimmer: it’s barely more than a quarter-inch thick.
Add it up and it’s an exciting bit of tech. Even the price ($229, $299, and $399 for 8 gigs, 32 gigs, and 64 gigabytes of storage, respectively) isn’t quite so off-putting when you think of all the things you can do with it. As an iPod, its features as a media player are at the head of the class.
You can run any iPhone app that doesn’t require GPS or cellphone hardware. It’s a huge library that includes Office-compatible word processors and spreadsheets, cloud services that link the Touch to files on any of your PCs or Macs, one of the best game libraries in mobile, and apps that can stream media from just about anywhere … including Netflix or your home cable box.
So for $80 more than the price of an iPod Nano, you get a legitimate pocket computer with most of the specs of a netbook. There are other mobile devices on the market with great app libraries. But the Touch is the only one that does it without a monthly cell bill attached.
Suffice to say that if you promised your spouse that you wouldn’t take any computer with you on your big second honeymoon, you can slip a Touch into your shirt pocket and feel pretty good about both the apps you’ll have available to you as well as the validity of the statement “Sweetie: you said ‘no computer’. This is clearly an iPod.”
(But bringing a Bluetooth keyboard just in case you want to do a little writing? That’s just pushing it.)
iPod Classic
One iPod was left untouched by the 2010 round of updates. If you want a traditional iPod with a 160 gigabyte …
… wait, let me check my notes here. That can’t possibly be what it’s called. Is it a “hard drive”?
Well, that’s what it says on Apple’s site. OK, a 160 gigabyte hard drive. The 160 gig iPod Classic is still for sale, unchanged, at $249.
It does throw some light on my reactions to the rest of the iPod line. I’m glad that the iPod Shuffle has been (mostly) rewound back to 2009. I’m glad that the Touch has received such huge improvements under the hood, and equally pleased that Apple hasn’t tinkered with its design overmuch. As for the Nano, I think it’s undergone way too much change.
But it’s dumb to want a design to stay the same from one year to the next. Why didn’t Apple give any love to the iPod Classic? Because they got it exactly right in 2007?
Nope: because the original iPod design barely even matters any more. The original 2001 iPod’s spirit lives on in these new bodies that take chances and learn from past mistakes.
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