02.17.06

Why I love/hate my iPod

Posted in Geekdom at 10:51 am by Leopoldo

Being a long time Apple user and avid mediaphile many people had wondered why I had never bought an iPod. I always thought they were nice but overrated and overpriced. More importantly I had most of the functionality of the iPod between my home Media Center (a Windows PC with large hard drives that hosts my ripped CD collection), my laptop (a G4 Aluminum Powerbook) and my palmtop (a Palm Tungsten with an MP3 player, a 1/4″ audio jack and a couple of 512MB media cards). That changed when I started to work a contract where using my laptop as a walkman was not feasible and the proximity to other workers dictated headphones be worn at all times. Playing with a friend’s iPod sealed the deal as I realized just how small and usable the little devices are, so on December 27 I gave myself an iPod as a Christmas present. Two months later I have a set routine of iPod use and am ready to share…

Why I love my iPod:

• It is small. I mean surprisingly and amazingly small. That makes it very convenient to carry and innocuous. Sure adding a Speck ToughSkin made it a bunch bulkier but starting with a box the size of a small hard drive this makes little difference.
• The first iPod I bought was 30GB. When I got it home iTunes announced it was not big enough to move my whole library and started moving as much as would fit. Hmmm, not big enough to fit my library? Just how big was my music library? 55GB, say doesn’t Apple make a 60GB model? Yup, a trip to the store and an upgrade later and my whole freaking CD collection fits on the thing!
• It is black. I like black. I got a black (rubber bumper) skin and black headphones for it, so the whole package is all black. The style of both iPod and skin is so clean it looks good hanging from the belt.
• The integration with iTunes is intuitive and highly functional. I already have a number of both manual and intelligent playlists set in iTunes. Copying them to the iPod is very easy and very useful.
• It plays videos. I collect music videos and while I am seldom in a place where I can stop to watch one (I mostly use the iPod in the car and to listen to music as I work) there have been a couple of occasions where I was bored somewhere or telling someone about the work of a particular director (Michael Gondry) and was able to just pull up videos. I also carry the Channel Frederator and Tiki Bar Video Podcasts around with me, both of which bring a smile to my face when I need a break.
• While at work I remove the iPod and belt clip. The size of the clip provides a handy brace so the iPod sits at a nice 20 degree angle in front of me, always displaying song information.
• I have all my music with me at all times. Yes, I do realize I already mentioned it but this is SO beautiful it is worth repeating.
• I have for the last few years been rating each song in my collection. I thought I would only be able to listen to the tracks on the iPod and was delighted when I found it how easy it is to rate music as you go. The two main playlists I listen to are ‘Not Yet Rated’, an intelligent list that I listen to while I work (pausing to rate each song as it comes up) and ‘My Top Rated’ which is the main list that plays while I am driving.
• Intelligent playlists rock. Yesterday I was driving home and ‘My Top Rated’ went from Massive Attack to Beethoven to Manu Chao. An Eclectic selection of some of my all time favorites.
• You can randomize (shuffle) what song comes up within any list but instruct the player to stick to al album if more than one song from the same album is present. This is perfect for those concept albums that flow from song to song.
• It shows cover art. This might seem superfluous but my brain is good at building visual associations and I can recall a lot of information about an album song or artist by glimpsing the picture of the album.
• Forget iTrip. I rummaged through the electronics closet and found my old headphone to cassette adapter (under $20 at Radio Shack), it works perfectly and I can now listen to (ripped) books on CD while commuting or music when driving. By the way did I mention that all my music fits on the little bastard? Yes, that means that anytime I get a hankering for a specific album or song I can quickly pull it up and listen to it.
• Scrolling is intelligent, it starts slowly and starts to move faster as you keep scrolling through a long list. I still regularly go past the item I am searching for but everyday I get better at fast and controlled scrolling

Why I hate my iPod:

• When I traded the 30GB model in for a 60GB, just a few days after purchase the people at the Apple Store charged me a 10% restocking fee. Now I understand some charge for having to sell the device as ‘refurbished’ but given that everything was packaged as originally sold, that it was pristine and that I was paying for an upgrade I asked if that fee could be waved. It was not and I did not at all like the attitude I got from the Apple Store manager when I asked for this. Not happy at all, so much that I doubt I will want to purchase from an Apple Store in future.
• After I applied the ‘iPod Updater 2006-01-10′ update a bug materialized where flipping through the info fields on a track (something I do constantly since I rate each track as it plays) often fails to redraw properly. The symptom is this: I will click on the center of the wheel until the rating screen comes up. I will then either let it flip back to the default view or click on the center again to return to the default view and about half of the time the screen will redraw but the rating view will still display. If I operate the wheel the volume will change (the appropriate behavior on the default view). If I click on the center it will keep redrawing but keep showing a rating window. Clicking through over and over will eventually redraw properly, but this sometimes means cycling through all views a number of times. This is a nuisance with a simple workaround that I know what view I am in and how many clicks it takes to get to each view but it means I often am blind to how far into a song I am or how much remains.
• I got the ‘Two Towns Go to War’ remix of ‘Relax’ stuck in my head last weekend scrolled to find it by artist. Huh, not there, wonder if I got the artist wrong, lets try scrolling by track name (this takes a lot longer). Nope, not there either, lets look by genre (yes, I actually have an ’80s Remixes’ genre) but not to be found there either. I guess it must somehow not have been copied to the iPod, guess I will have to wait until I get home to debug. When I got home I found the track is indeed in my library under ‘Frankie goes to Hollywood’ and it indeed shows up in playlists that are copied to the iPod. I created a test playlists and moved this and other tracks to it. When I checked that playlist on the iPod the tracks were there but when I went back and tried finding it by artist they don’t show up. This is a very annoying bug because it suggests I will not find other tracks and I can find no rhyme or reason why these show up in a playlist but not when browsing by artist. If I at least knew what caused it I would have more confidence in finding music via each of the browse methods.
• I regularly find bad MP3 info and can’t fix it. I tried that thing where you hold down the center button to add the track to the ‘On-the-Go’ playlist so I could fix it later but this is for some reason not working. The feature worked before I updated the iPod software and I don’t know if it is a bug or if it is caused by switching from ‘Copy all Music’ to ‘Copy only selected playlists’ (even though ‘On-the-Go’ is one of my selected playlists). Best option I have found is to try and remember the bogus track to fix when I am back home or to not rate it so it will show up again and give me a chance to fix it while listening to ‘Not-Yet-Rated’ at home.
• Since the ‘On-the-Go’ playlist is not working and there is no other book marking function I have to write down the last track of my book on CD when I park so I can switch to a music playlist while working and then return to where I left off the book as I drive home.
• I find the ear buds that come with the iPod to be terribly uncomfortable. They put out good sound but I cannot wear them for more than 30 minutes and then I have to insert them ‘upside-down’, that is with the cable sticking upward. I think this has more to do with the shape of my ear than with the ear buds, but it still meant dropping another $90 for form fitting ear-buds. I did some research and decided on the Etymotic Research ER-6 Isolators for their reported comfort and ability to block out noise. While it is true that they block out a LOT of external noise I don’t find them to be terribly comfortable and am very disappointed with their weak bass output.
• The belt clip digs into my side. Yeah, I know this is not strictly an iPod problem but it still annoys me. I wonder how people can walk around with those cell phone clips all day.
• It is yet another thing to carry. This is not that big a problem since the belt clip keeps it out of my pockets but I am still looking forward to the day when my PDA, Cell phone and iPod will all fit in a single neat little device.

A final word:
I don’t actually hate my iPod, I am really terribly happy with it. Expensive as it might be, it has been a great investment. And oh yes, did I mention all my songs fit on it?

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