Glad I'm finally on the iPod train.

I don't think it's any earth shattering news that the Apple iPod is a fantastic product. However, I finally reached threshold to get one, and now I want to share my happiness.

Firstly - I'm glad that I waited (unintentionally,) for the third generation player. I really like what they did with the buttons for this iteration - I love that they are touch sensitive, and I love the way they light up when the backlight is activated.


Here are some of the better (in my eyes,) qualities of this widget:

Styling:

It is extremely important to me how things look (maybe because I grew up in Detroit and I'm a car guy . . .) and the iPod more than fits the bill. The elegant, simple look it has is very pleasing. Small and light, soft white finish, perfectly smooth, nothing silly protruding from it. The face doesn't have a single button it doesn't need - and the gleaming silver back just completes the picture. This is a piece of hardware I am proud to hang off my belt - it just looks great.

Buttons:
As noted above - the touch sensitive aspect of the buttons really puts this model ahead of older iPods. Because there are only four, I've already learned them by heart, and I love being able to just brush them when I'm in the car (with the iPod plugged into the stereo,) and pause, fast forward and rewind. Additionally, they don't seem to activate except when touched by skin - so the buttons don't get pressed when it's in my pocket. There is a handy "hold" feature to prevent accidental button pressing, but I've never needed to use it.

Sound:
I'm no audiophile, so take my words with a grain of salt. I do, however, think this thing sounds great. It's plenty loud, I don't bother with the equalizer (actually, I find it useless - more on that later . . .) and there's very little distortion. I listen on the earbuds that came with it, and they sound just fine. Probably better than any earbuds I used previously. Also, when it's plugged into the line-in on my Jeep, it sounds as good as the radio and CD player. One little aggravation - I have to turn the volume all the way up on the iPod when it's plugged into the stereo - not really a problem, but I'm worried I'm going to forget one day and blow my ears out when I put the 'phones on.
As to my remark about the equalizer - using it, for the most part, seems to cause distortion. I've looked around on the web, and many people have noticed this - some say that if you have really good headphones, this doesn't happen, and the equalizer becomes useful. I certainly hope so, because iTunes has this marvellous feature that lets you set custom equalizer settings for EACH song! I haven't upgraded my headphones yet, so I've yet to try that out.
Also important - I encode my music at a pretty high bitrate (256kbps minimum,) so this also helps with the sound. The drawback here is that it takes up considerably more space, which leads me to . . .

Capacity:
As is evidenced by the Title/Category of this review, I bought the 15Gb model. If I had $500 burning a hole in my pocket, I would've bought the 40Gb, which would hold my entire current music collection (at the high bitrate!) but that was a little out of my range this year. As it is, 15Gb holds a GREAT DEAL of music and, since transfer speeds are so nice with FireWire (or USB2.0,) it is really easy and convenient just to rotate my music around. 15Gb will hold over a third of my entire collection, so it's more than enough for about the longest car trip I'll ever take!

Connection Speed:
As noted above, FireWire or USB2.0 (if you're using a PC,) is very nice. Entire albums are transferred in seconds - more than fast enough to satisfy all but the most demanding of instant-gratification junkies. Contrary to what the manual says, if your PC's FireWire port is powered, you CAN charge your iPod that way. I did buy a FireWire/USB2.0 cable anyway though, because it will charge much faster that way, plus I know have an extra cable for when I'm on the road.

File Playback/Organization:
Organization of your music, much like the styling, is elegant and simple. If you properly manage your labels in iTunes (I highly recommend iTunes, by the way . . .) then all your music is by default organized by Artist, Album, Genre, etc. It's very easy to place one or more of these categories on your main menu so you can use the scroll wheel to rapidly navigate your collection. You can also make playlists in iTunes, or on the iPod itself which is useful particularly because if you're playing an album, it'll just stop at the end instead of moving on to the next album. So if you want long sequences of varied music, playlists are going to be key (of course it has random as well . . .) The major drawback here, and I've never met a hardware digital music player that could do this, is no gapless playback. Normally not a problem, since the songs on albums are separated anyway - but if you're listening to opera, DJ sets or any other kind of music where the tracks are supposed to run together, there will be little pauses at the end of each track - kinda jarring. The only way around this is to merge all the tracks into one (which iTunes can do,) but then you can't skip around the tracks.

Battery Life:
There have been many rumors all over the web about battery life. Sadly, one thing is true - the batter life indicator is relatively meaningless. However, I've never owned an electronic device that did seem to have an accurate battery meter. The good news is that I've been able to routinely get more than 5-6 hours out of it (using the backlight and skipping around tracks as much as I want,) and it charges up very nicely. The official word is that leaving it on the charger all the time will NOT kill the battery.

So in total - I am very happy I purchased this product and, while I have a few beefs with it, they are minor and easy for me to tolerate. Also - I would HIGHLY recommend a nice case for this thing because it is SO PRETTY - as well as getting the Apple iPod in-line remote (comes with the 20Gb and 40Gb models, but not the 15Gb,) which I find extremely useful in the gym. Watch for reviews (coming very soon, I swear!) on those products as well.

Wily