4/24/02 I happened by the Apple retail store tonight at Valley Fair mall in San Jose, CA. The store was very sharp with great displays. There seemed to be a fair amount of traffic. The service is excellent. This ain't Fry's. The staff was very attentive and actually somewhat knowledgeable. I bought the 5GB model iPod. Here's the lowdown. First some pictures and comments, then what i think Apple could do to improve the device.
First the box. Great design as usual from Apple. A cube with pictures on it. You take the outer sleeve off and you get a slick folding section:
Inside the folding section is the pod and earphones on one side, and the power adapter, cables, and CD on the other:
The iPod kit includes the pod, headphones, power adapter, Firewire cable, docs, and a CD that matches the shipping contents of the iPod's internal hard drive. The power adapter is brilliant. It's tiny with a folding plug on one end. Since the iPod can only draw power from a Firewire port, the power adapter has a single Firewire port on it. You plug the adapter into the wall, and then a Firewire cable into the adapter and the other end into the iPod. No extra wires for the adapter! This is great because the Firewire cable serves as both data and power cable. Simple, clean, elegant. Killer.
Upon taking the iPod out, you are greeted with this friendly RIAA reminder: (I'll tell you what RIAA: stop gouging people on CDs and i will stop using MP3s. How's that?) The iPod's design is great. A chrome back. The only thing i don't like about the back is that it's too heavy and prevents the iPod from standing up on end without falling over.
The feel and heft of the iPod is superb. Everything about it says "Quality". It's solid and elegant. It feels perfect in your hand. All the components feel rock solid. Apparently the thing is made in Taiwan which is known for electronics manufacturing excellence. The iPod has one Firewire port, one headphone port, and a "hold" switch all on one side. All the connectors feel rock solid and high quality.
The iPod comes with Sony "earbuds'" headphones. While they are high quality, i have never liked this design. They fall out of your ears. You pull the cable, they fall out. You go jogging, they fall out. You tilt your head wrong, they fall out. Apple should have opted for the "earbuds with a band" style headphones - the kind that are like earbuds except that they have a slim band that goes across the top of the head. This style is much more wearable and actually stays on your head.
When you plug the iPod into your Mac, it simply shows up on your desktop as a hard drive. You can either drag files to it for storage, or to copy MP3s to it, you can run iTunes. iTunes 2.0.4 and later have the ability to auto-sync the MP3s on your Mac to those on the iPod. With the iPod 1.1 Firmware update you can also store contacts and sync with Palm PDAs too.
When you double-click the iPod on your desktp you see this default directory at the root:
Syncing songs from iTunes is a snap and it's fast! Simply plug the iPod into your Mac's Firewire port and launch iTunes. iTunes queries the iPod, deletes any old tracks, and uploads any new tracks that are in iTunes - all automatically - you don't have to do a thing. Awesome!
Controls In a word, the controls on this thing simply rock. They are high quality hard plastic and have a weighted, heavy feel. The controls glide almost effortlessly yet stop exactly where and when you want them to. The central "enter" button with a ring design is nearly perfect. I would have made the whole "hub" wheel design slightly smaller in diameter, but then again i have small hands. Sound quality The iPod's sound quality is excellent. At first i was a little dissappointed until i realized that some of my MP3s were encoded at low bit rates with an old version of AudioCatalyst. I hauled out some old CDs and re-encoded a few of my favorite tracks with iTunes' encoder at 256 bits with VBR turned off. The result is that the newly encoded tracks came out sounding almost as good as the uncompressed AIFs they were taken from. The downside is that the files are somewhat large: around 9 or 10 MB each for an average track. However, this is still 1/4 the size of the CD tracks. For this reason i recommend spending the extra $500 and getting the 10GB version of the iPod. A few negatives: There are a couple of things i don't like about the iPod. Probably the #1 thing i don't like is the LCD. It seems to be low quality. The one on my unit flickers a little and it's hard to get a good contrast setting. Too far one way and the display washes out. Too far the other way and the display turns purple - the whole display and not just the text. This lack of good contrast makes the display hard to see outdoors. However, i should mention that with the backlight turned on it's not that bad. And there's a setting to adjust the backlight times including always on or always off. I tried mine with the "always on" setting and it seems to have almost no effect on battery drainage. I wish the headphone plug was at a right angle. It's obviously straight up so you can slip the iPod into your pocket without the headphone wire jabbing you in the side. This is good i suppose but it does get in the way when both the headphone plug and Firewire plug are plugged in at the same time. I guess since you're not likely to have the Firewire cable plugged in as much as the headphone cable, this makes sense. After all it is a portable device. Now for some suggestions that Apple could do to the iPod to make it much better: - Color LCD instead of Black and White. Given that the cheapest sub-$1 cell phone in Japan has a color LCD, i don't know how they are able to sell the iPod in Japan for $400. - "Band"-style headphones - A lighter-weight Firewire cable. The included cable is way too thick and unwieldy. - Better front to back balance so that the iPod can stand up on end without falling over. - Some kind of wireless connection is a must considering this is a portable device. Either built in AirPort (802.11), or a Firewire-to-Bluetooth adapter. - Make the flat top edges of the front surface smooth and tapered in the same way the back is. - And now for the all-time #1 thing Apple can do to improve the iPod: Put a Sony Memory Stick slot in it! |
