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Articles and Reviews
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The Apple iPod – About the iPod
The iPod has been heavily lauded for having the best ergonomics of any hard drive based player on the market and after first use; it’s easy to see why that is. The interface is truly elegant. I’m a confirmed PC user and have no desire to switch to Mac, but I gotta give credit when its due, because the iPod designers really got it right with this device. The design is not just brilliant, it’s f’ing brilliant (excusez ma francais). Using white as the primary color is also a slick way to market and differentiate the iPod from the crowd, just like Canon using white in their L series super telephoto lenses. Even if other companies copy the white, the color is already too associated with the iPod to make any difference and people are likely to mistake another brand’s player for an iPod. Once I had my X-Drive digital wallet at work to show a coworker and another coworker comes up and asked if it was an iPod. Er, no, ‘cause the X-drive is like five times the size of the iPod, but it is white J Walk
on the street or catch a ride on the bus and iPod users are given
away by the white ear buds that come with the unit. Incidentally,
while the iPod has scored big time in terms of market share for
hard drive based players, I don’t actually see that many users on
the streets of
The use of a 1.8 inch sized hard drive, flat battery from Sony, and design all add up to one compact, but versatile device. It’s been used so often, it’s a cliché, but no other word describes the iPod better than elegant. The iPod is also more than just a music player though. Since it uses a hard drive to store the files, well guess what, connect the iPod to the computer and it can act as…a hard drive. This is exactly what some photographers and others needing mobile storage use the iPod for, as a backup or adjunct storage to their notebooks. On it’s own, it’s not ideal because it has no interface to accept any memory cards and even with a third-party accessory from Belkin, the file transfer speeds are not considered speedy despite the support for USB 2 and Firewire transmission in the iPod. The iPod also has other features such as an alarm clock, calendar, and ability to read notes downloaded to it from the computer. Unfortunately, it appears that music can only be loaded on it via iTunes, instead of just being able to copy music files and folders in hard drive mode. The Music folder is hidden when accessing the iPod as a hard drive. If
you have the extended version of the Lord of the Rings box set,
on one of the bonus material discs, there’s an anecdote from one
of the support persons involved with the movie. Director Peter Jackson
had to travel back and forth from
Just
one problem, the hotel that
Elegance and ergonomics aside, while the iPod looks really slick brand new, out of the box, after a few minutes of handling, the rear chrome finish becomes quite tarnished with fingerprints and smudges easily building up. The iPod is also known to have a delicate finish and a protective case is highly recommended to protect your investment. Thankfully, there’s a large aftermarket supply of covers and accessories for the iPod family of players, but do think about the kind of case to buy though, per my experience further below. Sound Quality Redux I’ve already discussed how the iPod sounds in various sections above and from those earlier sections, I’m sure you got a sense that the iPod is quite a good digital player for sound quality. Below are just some additional comments and uses with other equipment. Directly
Connected to Speakers The portable Sony and multimedia computer speakers performed as expected, which is to say acceptable if one did not pay attention and merely wanted some background noise, but if listening for pleasure, not so great. Thin and pasty with definite lean towards high frequency edge with nary any quality bass. While bass could be bumped up on both speakers, it was a hardly satisfactory option. While the Sony speakers under battery power, could do okay connected to a laptop for providing more volume for video playback, that’s as far as I would go for serious use. As there will soon be a pair of professional, actively driven, studio monitors in-house, I’ll have to update this section with how the iPod fares with those speakers.
Line-out
versus Headphone Jack My coworker was quite curious if I would be able to notice a difference in sound quality trying both outputs feeding the Classic amp, so of course, I “had” to do this test J While I heard a difference, it was nowhere what I had been led to believe would be the case. The difference was tighter presentation and sweeter top-end, but not much more. About what I’d expect going from a 160 bit rate file to a 320 bit rate file and again, not everyone is going to hear the same way, or have those differences mean the same. Given how much some audiophiles spend to get a similar level of improvement, $50 is pocket change. Compared
to Sony MP3 Portable CD Player Accessories
There are probably more items available beyond my list above and let us not forget about iPod support found in some car stereos. BMW is one company offering some form of iPod support and Alpine car stereos also offer some support.
Noted Nikon expert Thom Hogan is also an iPod user and he suggests buying a protective cover, as did Yoda who owns the 30 GB version of the iPod. I took their advice to heart, but frowned at the $50 price tag for a case from Apple, which is why I bought the $30 Belkin case seen here. The Belkin was bought only a few days after the iPod purchase, when I was still getting familiar with it and didn’t quite appreciate that the click wheel is not only the heart, but also the brains of the iPod and without access to it, the iPod is dead. It’s not that the Belkin doesn’t provide good protection, it does, but you have to flip the front cover down anytime you want to access the click wheel. The design does allow the iPod to be docked with the cover on and the top section is totally open to allow the use of my FM transmitter, but I’m thinking that I’m going to have to buy a different cover that offers full access to the click wheel.
An
FM tuner that can transmit the iPod’s music via an unused FM station
is a handy way to workaround the limitations of many car stereos.
There are likely a few different FM transmitters available for the
iPod, but the one that was readily available for me to purchase
was the
The
Turn
on your radio to 87.9, plug the
My two-year old and I were boogieing to some 70’s disco that happen to be on the iPod (honest officer, I have no idea how those disco tunes found their way into my iPod). I tried teaching her the YMCA, but she’s a bit too young to get the hang of it J The
With the Griffin/iPod close to the radio, the noise is really only a factor when the music is faded down in volume at the end of a track and in actual playback, I didn’t find the noise to be a factor. Next
up was using
Inside my particular van, the iPod and Griffin must be very close to the dash where the radio is located. Placing the ipod in one of the front beverage cup holders was the best location without using some tape or velcro to mount the iPod right beside the radio. Any farther away and background statis was getting to be too much to make its use worthwhile. The volume on the iPod should only be around 50-75 percent. Setting the volume too high generates distortion. I had
hoped for similar quality from the Griffin iPod in the car as at
home, but it just barely gets into average radio sound quality.
For $50, it's a nice way to get some more use out of the iPod, but
this particular radio transmitter is a bit weak in overall quality.
I note though that Griffin does make a more expensive transmitter
in the $90 range that offers an LCD display, as well as cigarette
car charger adapter. No idea, though, on whether this product offers
any better sound quality.
Battery Life
Then there’s knowing that sooner or later (and probably sooner) that the battery will no longer be capable of being charged and either require supplementation via an external battery pack, or replacement by either Apple, or via your own DIY handyman skills. If anything, I’d hope for a battery failure sooner, as in within the one-year warranty period so that one can at least get a factory service replacement before having to look at your own options. Even so, if the battery goes dead, as long I can juice the iPod with AC, it can actually just become either a home based player, or a car based one with a car power adapter. It doesn't have to be a waste of money, but...
Conclusion Since I was 11 years old, I've owned a number of portable music playback devices. I had a portable tape player before the Sony Walkman ever became the cool fashion item, but then my original Citizen was the size and weight of a brick. Tape players, CD players, Minidisc, and now iPod. Each device had its merits, but without doubt, the most versatile player is the iPod thanks to its enormous capacity and small size. However, while that over two-decades old Citizen can still play tapes (not very well anymore), will I be able to say the same about the iPod, or any other hard drive player in two-decades hence?
I knew that sooner or later, I’d buy a hard drive based player and when I first began the research, I thought I’d be an iRiver purchaser, but everything kept leading me back to the iPod. With hindsight being 20/20, I think the Rio Karma would have been an excellent choice for me to, but I appreciate the larger capacity of the iPod I purchased. Elegant,
functional, good sounding. I have to agree that (without
experience with the Rio Karma) it is probably the best overall hard
drive based player on the market and I hope that my fears about
premature battery death will be unfounded, but I suspect that I’ll
probably be an iPod owner for years to come. But that’s not to say
that a
Read about the PocketDock USB/Lineout accessory |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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The
click wheel is slick. Use it to scroll through hundreds of music
files and once it starts playing, use it again to control volume.
It’s so simple and so intuitive that anyone can begin using an iPod
in seconds, or rather within seconds of completion of the four-hour
charge for the battery.
Back
when I was writing my review of the Headsave Classic headphone amp,
I remarked that I noticed little difference when comparing the Classic
to my standalone portable CD players’ headphone jacks. A coworker
reminded me that this is not necessarily indicative of the quality
offered by the Classic, but would be more an indication that the
headphone jack of a portable device is not of sufficient quality
to drive the Classic. He assured me that if my portable CD players
had true lineout outputs, that that would make a difference. This
was one of the reasons why I had it in my mind that I had to have
an iPod with a docking station so that I could bypass the headphone
jack as a lineout and use the real lineout offered by the docking
station.
One
of the prime reasons for finally buying an iPod is for the large
third-party support available to accessorize the iPod. Thanks to
its large market share, the iPod sets the standard and third-party
companies have gravitated to the iPod as a potential cash cow. While
other hard drive based players can only be accessorized with whatever
the manufacturer produces for it, with the iPod, you can buy:
For
me, I bought a protective case from 
This
was the one third-party accessory that got my attention about what
the iPod could be for me. The thought of being able to take 40 GB
worth of music on the road was a major enticement. My minivan has
a stock 6-disc CD player with no inputs to plug in an iPod or other
portable player and after a couple of hours, 6-discs is limiting
and quickly becomes a bore. 
