iPods really are the best MP3 player out there.

First a little history. My first personal music player was a Koss cassette player with a digital tuner. It was ok. Next came a Panasonic cassette player with auto reverse. It was better. Then came a Sony Minidisc recorder/player, it was the best of all.

Then I got my iPod. :-D

Boy, what an upgrade! I have over four days of continuous music stored on this thing, as well as two movies in AVI (DivX) format. I have room for another day of music. And that's just the 10 GB model! This is certainly enough for most people; those of you with a few hundred CDs can go read reviews for the 30 GB model. ;-)

I am using my iPod with a PowerMac G4 and an iBook/500, with the latest versions of iTunes and OS X.


First off: construction. The iPod is made of a sturdy polycarbonate plastic on the front, and real shiny metal on the back. It doesn't squeeze when you apply pressure. There are no seams to be found anywhere. No discolorations, no jaggies in the text. Just immaculate construction. If you want, Apple will even laser-engrave your name on the back for $20! Sweet! Heck, even the BOX is impressive when you open it!

There is plenty of storage space in the iPod. As much space as my iBook! Crazy! Paired with a firewire connection, music transfers over at blazing speed. It literally takes only a second or two per song; it's finished uploading before I'm ready to use it! You can't get the songs back once you've uploaded them, this is a way of preventing piracy. You can; however, play any of the songs on your iPod through iTunes. I have my iPod set to update manually, so that I can transfer songs from either my iBook or my PowerMac. You can, of course, set it to synchronize with your iTunes playlist every time you plug it in. The iPod supports regular old MP3s, as well as MP4s, which manage to squeeze better sound into the same size file. This is a first for an MP3 player in the industry, as far as I know. Half my songs are in MP4 format, and they DO sound much better.

I can use the iPod as a second hard drive very easily; it mounts when I plug it in, and it works just like any other drive. As I mentioned above, I have two movies stored on it, and I can watch them directly from the iPod.

The newest iPods, like this one, have a few extra features that the older generation did not. The thing I like best is backlit buttons. They turn on when the backlight does, and naturally make it simple to use the iPod in the dark. The backlight itself is very bright, almost enough to quick light up a piece of paper to read it in the dark.

The iPod is able to display notes which you copy to the iPod as text files, but there is a limit to the number of characters that can be displayed. Unfortunately, this means you can't use the iPod as an eBook reader unless you divide the chapters into separate files. Maybe in a future OS update this will be fixed?

If you have an address book made up in Apple's Address Book, you can display the contacts on your iPod. Useable as a simple address book if you don't already have something like a palm pilot, and definitely suitable as a backup if you DO have a palm pilot.

The Calendar feature on the iPod not only displays a calendar that goes many years into the future, but also synchronizes with Apple's iCal organization software. Again, a nice backup to a Palm Pilot at the very least. Naturally, there is a clock on the iPod which you can use as an alarm, or set up a "sleep" function like your stereo.

Finally, there are a few games included. Carried over from the original iPod is a version of Breakout, but it is no longer hidden as an easter egg. There is also a pretty simple version of solitaire, and a game called parachute, where you have to shoot parashuters and helicopters out of the air before they reach your gun turret.

The iPod offers a multitude of settings, from simple stuff like contrast, language, date and time, and audio feedback, to EQ settings, backlight timer and shuffle and repeat settings. I didn't really need a manual to figure out any of this stuff.

The iPod lets you browse your music by artist, song title, album, genre or composer. There is also a feature called Playlist-on-the-go, which lets you play DJ and make up a new playlist right on your iPod, rather than in iTunes.

But how do you control all this? Simple. The iPod has 5 touch sensitive (ie. solid-state) buttons and a touch-sensitive scroll pad. The buttons are: skip forward and backward, play/pause, menu and select. All but "select" and "menu" are exclusive to music control, so you can skip through songs while playing solitaire without having to interrupt either function. "Menu" is used to - big surprise - return to the menu. No matter where you are, Menu will go back one step in the iPod's various menus. It's also used to exit games, notes, calendar, etc. Select is used for everything else, including selecting an option in a menu, selecting a card in solitaire, etc.

The clever scroll pad, which surrounds the select button, is used to scroll up and down through menus and playlists very quickly and efficiently. It is also used to control the volume of the iPod when in the "current song" screen, and to control games. It is similar to a laptop's trackpad, but really only goes in two directions.

Naturally there is also a hold button on the top of the iPod to keep the buttons from being pressed accidentally.

The iPod comes with a set of reasonably good earbuds and two sets of foam covers. I've heard people complain that the earbuds are too big in their ears, but I don't have a problem because I don't use the foam covers. They make the earbuds too big. ;-) The iPod can drive my Koss R/80 headphones pretty well, although you don't get the thunderous bass response like you'd get from a home stereo's headphone amp.

The sound quality of the iPod is really really good. It sounds just as good as my computer (better than the iBook, actually), and as good as my stereo, too. Of course "good" is relative to the listener, but for those of you who are really picky, you can rip your music in MP4 at 320 kbps, the iPod can handle it!

Included with the 10 GB model is the firewire to proprietary iPod connector, which provides both the firewire connection AND power to the iPod for charging. It snaps in so that you can't accidentally disconnect the iPod while it's mounted to your computer as a hard drive. The firewire end of this cable can also plug into the included power adapter, to simply charge the iPod from any wall outlet. The iPod will charge to 80% capacity in less than three hours, and to full power in four hours or so.

Speaking of battery life, I get almost exactly 8 hours of battery life out of my iPod (down from 10 hours on previous models.) This is because Apple had to make the battery smaller to make the whole iPod smaller and lighter.

Also included in the box is a 6 pin to 4 pin firewire adapter and two covers for the connector on the iPod to keep lint out.

The 10 GB model does NOT include the dock (mistakenly shown in the picture for this model), and does NOT include the inline remote control. It also doesn't come with the leather carry case. These are available separately from Apple if you decide you want them after all.

One last thing: the iPod does NOT skip. It has a massive 32 MB buffer which it fills with 4 or 5 songs, then the hard drive spins down. This not only allows for skip-free operation, but also protects the hard drive and saves battery life. Nice.

So a summary of the PROS:

- It holds more music than you can stay awake listening to.
- It is brain-dead simple to use.
- It offer extras like firewire hard drive storage, notes, contacts, games.
- It is the size of a deck of cards, and weighs a bit less.
- The battery life is long enough to just barely cover your work day.
- Skip-free!
- It attracts men/women (no, really!)


Now, here we go with the negatives.

The case, as awesome as it is, is hard plastic and thus prone to scratching. I only keep it in my pocket, and although I removed my keys from the same pocket after a week, the front and back were covered with tiny scratches all over. It still looks okay, just a little used. I would recommend a case or protector for your iPod if you want to keep it looking perfect. Additionally, the silvery back collects fingerprints and smudges like a magnet. They wipe off easily enough, but if someone else sees the back they'll think you have the sweatiest hands in the world!

Although the battery life is a pretty good 8 hours, I would prefer 10, simply because MY work day is 9 hours, and because I don't like to let the battery die completely. This has happened a few times, and although the iPod suffered no ill effects, I'm still wary.

The solid-state buttons ARE an improvement over the old iPod. They look awesome in the light and even better in the dark. However, sometimes they don't respond like a traditional button would, meaning sometimes you have to push a button harder or longer than you should have to. I guess it depends on how sweaty your hands are. ;-)

The iPod IS a miniature computer, with a hard drive, RAM, a processor and an operating system, and so CAN crash. Mine has crashed a few times, for no apparent reason. It restarted just fine by holding down the "menu" and "play" buttons, with no ill effects aside from losing its place in the playlist. As far as I know it's usually just a buggy MP3 file that causes crashes, so whatever...

FInally we come to PRICE. I bought mine direct from Apple (with free shipping) for $300 US. Sure you can get a 20 or 40 GB MP3 player from other manufacturers, but NONE of them can match the size, quality and features of the iPod. You really do get what you pay for.

Summary of the CONS:

- Scratches easily
- Battery life COULD be longer
- Buttons are unpredictable on the rare occasion
- Can crash
- Price, if you're a poor starving student.


As you can see, the iPod is truly a wonderful little machine. The pros far outweigh the cons, making it an essential part of any music lover's arsenal. I would use it 24/7 if people didn't want to keep talking to me for one reason or another! The iPod is a wise purchase, since it is pretty much immune to things that plague the computer world, like becoming outdated in 6 months. It plays today's formats, as well as the formats of the future (MP4, and others with firmware updates). I'll never use a portable tape, CD or minidisc player ever again.

P.S. If you made it through this entire review, I thank you. You must be very patient or have a lot of time on your hands. ;-)