About a month ago, Apple announced a refresh of its entire line of iPods for the upcoming holiday season. To make it short: the iPod shuffle only got a new color palette; the iPod, now termed the iPod Classic, got a bump in its hard drive capacity; and the iPod Nano was completely redesigned. In addition to all that, the highly anticipated touch-screen iPod, named the iPod Touch, was released. But which one should you get for the holidays?
iPod Shuffle
The iPod Shuffle is Apple's low-end flash player with no display. It has a built-in clip that you can use to clip it onto your shirt/shorts/jacket, making it easily portable. Even with new colors, I wouldn't consider getting one unless the price significantly dropped. By that, I mean to around the $50 range.
I'd recommend this to those who need a cheap, rugged, fashionable mp3 player for everyday use. I use mine when I go to research lab; it clips on easily, and it's not a big investment even if I spill stuff on it.
iPod Nano
Don't let its new look fool you! The new third-generation iPod Nano is far removed from its nickname "iPod Fatty." The new design is shorter but wider to accommodate a very high resolution two-inch screen. In pictures, the Nano almost looks clumsy and kind of silly, but when you get a chance to hold it in person, the "fatty" factor almost goes away.
The Nano seems much thinner than before, thanks to rounded edges, and you'll be amazed how a thing that tiny is able to play video (a new feature on the Nano). One downside to the new design is the return of the shiny metallic back cover, which looks great for the first five seconds you own it, but scratches the instant you put it in your pocket.
The redesigned Nano has a new user interface, including the popular Cover Flow feature. As you scroll through your menus, you'll be able to see previews of album art and videos on the side even before you enter into the menu. Personally I find that a little annoying because it clutters up the screen with mostly irrelevant information.
As for Cover Flow, it's a nice addition on the Nano, but it doesn't run nearly as smoothly as on iTunes. When you try to scroll fast through the album art, the interface will lag and you'll wind up looking at a bunch of pictureless albums as the Nano tries to catch up and load all the album art. It's a good start but needs a lot of improvement.
As a side note, most popular peripherals work well, including the Nike+iPod kit. And with a plethora of armbands out there, this makes a great iPod for all athletes out there.
iPod Classic
The new "classics" are thinner than before, with the 80 GB model being a little smaller than the previous generation's 30 GB model, and likewise with the new 160 GB model and the older 80 GB model. The front of the iPod is now a metallic surface, meaning it's scratch-free except the screen, and as a result, the white model has been dropped. The back is still the same annoying shiny metallic, which, as I said before, looks terrible the minute it gets scratched.
The Classic also gets the same user interface upgrade as the Nano, but Cover Flow looks even worse on the classic than it does on the Nano. The main reason is that the Classic is still a hard drive-based player, and it takes a long time to pull up all the album art from a spinning hard drive, so Cover Flow lags even more than it does in the Nano.
The fact that the Classic is still a hard drive player means that you can't really take it for a run because you can easily damage the mechanical parts. It's still a good choice for those of us who have lots of music and need that space to carry it around.
iPod Touch
Stay tuned next week for the review of Apple's latest offering ... I'll even post an easy how-to for installing applications on it.
