General Apple iPod Description Notes and Review

A lot of stuff is said about Jukeboxes that is at best marginally misleading. Here we give a balanced view of the capabilities and features of Apple's iPod.

For a period of 1 year we banned sales of iPods through Dukebox.com. This was a period of very high sales world wide, so there must have been some good reasons for us to refuse to sell the best selling item in the field. For those of you who would like to know why we banned iPod sales click here to find out why we stopped selling iPods.

Who are Apple?

For those of you who don't know, Apple make computers, computer peripherals and the like. Generally they represent the more expensive but also more highly featured, slicker designed models available. In the case of the iPod they make a slicker designed, but less highly featured model.

Confusions

A lot of the information that you can read about the iPod states on many occasions and in a variety of different ways, phrases like ' ...skip free because ... there are no moving parts... '. This could be misleading: there are no moving parts in that specific part of the Jukebox that they are talking about, but that does not mean that there are no moving parts in the Jukebox at all. The main storage capacity of the range is provided (as most of the others on this site are) by a Hard Drive. Hard Drives currently all have moving parts and being called Apple does not make you an exception to that rule.

iPod Capabilities

What can they do? They play music. They can also double as a portable hard disk for non-music files. There are a swathe of other mini-features until 2003 not found in other Jukeboxes: store or import names and addresses and the like. Do fancy vCard tricks by sending and receiving virtual business cards, including some nifty features like corporate logos, and live URLs within those virtual business cards.

Mac users can even load their appointments and iCal calendar on to the iPod - get reminded about meetings, birthdays, deadlines, telly programs etc.

Big Features

One of the big features of this MP3 Player is the fact that its one of the few whose manufacturers' actually still claim it to be non-skip, and so suitable for jogging and all kinds of active use. The reason why this range has this capability is because the RAM element of the unit is so capacious while the HD is so small (in size and weight, not capacity). A lot of RAM allows the iPod to 'read ahead' - up to 25 mins for the 4th generation - while the small size of the HD means that the forces involved during any jolt are considerably lessened.

It's the smallest size and weight currently available for any similar capacity Jukebox (in simple terms its the smallest and lightest 20GB+ player). It would probably even fit in hot-pants pockets, though we're not sure how comfortable it would be (or even if hot-pants have pockets). The units all come with 'designer' carry-case, but unless your showing off to your mates we think that its best to carry your Jukebox out of sight. Having a smaller lighter Jukebox certainly makes that easier.

More Features

It's hard to imagine how this is possible, but the 4th generation iPod is the first iPod to include a 'shuffle', or random play feature. "Everyone's favourite way of mixing things up." according to apple, but until this 4th generation of iPods it was a feature that was missing from any Apple MP3 player and has been present in the competition since 2001.

Customizable settings are another big feature for this range. Most Jukeboxes have some customizability. Some have lots of 'why-would-I-want-to-bother-customizing' options. Some of the more useful ones available to the iPod are:

Timers for timing things, such as how long the 'Sleep' timer keeps the tunes playing before automatically switching off as it sings you off to sleep at night. 'Contacts' list (name and numbers) sort by first/ last name. You can even switch on or off the clicking noise that it makes as you scroll through to make a selection - the same kind of noise that mobile phone buttons make when you press them.

Officially, you cannot use the iPod to copy music from one computer on to another using it as the medium - it won't allow it. That's according to Apple. In reality the music is just stored in a hidden folder and there are easy ways to get round that, if you so desire.

One of the problems that older MP3 players had was the volume preset. The levels at which the original music was mastered can vary greatly and this variance can sound very pronounced through headphones. Some music sounds too muted so you turn up your jukebox. The next track starts and your ears bleed.

In fact some of the software that we have listed on the site helps deal with this very problem - allowing you to get all the MP3 volume to about the same level. Apple have built-in this feature to the iPod range. Apple call it Sound Check and it mercifully allows you to standardize the volume of your tunes. Having said that this has become standard in almost all players since 2003.

Absent Friends

These machines cannot record directly from any standard source: either digital or analogue in real-time - such as a radio station or the like. Nor can you record simple things like Mafia meetings or sound from a microphone without buying add-ons.

No line-in; no recording.

Even though you can record from a separately purchased Mic, you cannot record from a stereo/ amp or the like via line-in, so top level recording is a missing feature that is present in plenty of competitors for about the same price.

There is also no line-out. This means you have to buy yet more accessories in order to get the iPod to connect with a stereo system at a party, for example.

For the price you pay the absence of these important features that are present (at least in some form) on the other jukebox ranges is a big blow.

Ease of Use

The whole menu system (with a new easier layout) can be operated using the click wheel. The wheel used to be separate clickable quarters, but now its one smooth single wheel. That means that you don't need to press separate buttons, so you never have to actually lift your thumb off, you can just slide it around. Its easy as pie to use. Getting into the sliding around is easy. Adjusting back to lifting your thumb on other models proves difficult once your brain has learnt a faster and more lazy solution to navigation.

The iPod will play several digital music types: MP3s and AAC are the important ones. The rest are WAV - Audible, AIFF, and "Apple lossless", which is an odd fish - it claims to be half the size of uncompressed digital music.

As with other late 2004 models the 4th Gen iPod has games included and the ability to download more games that can be played at your leisure.

Recording voice or storing photos still require the separate purchase of accessories.

iPod Battery News

Apple's iPod battery Fiasco (see the bottom of the page), which was a big factor in our decision to withdraw the iPod, has been resolved. Batteries were a particular weak point of the older generations of iPod. Not only breaking down, but even when they didn't they could only offer about 8 hours of playback time. The newer models have boosted their performance by 50% from 8 up to 12 hours (approx.), which is great news for anyone on a long-haul journey, such as a teenager. The superfast recharge is also an improvement on earlier recharge times and they weren't too shabby to begin with. Quick (80%) recharge can now be done in 2 hours, full recharge: 4 hours.

Normally we do not actually comment on many of the system requirements, but the 4th generation iPod requires newer versions of Windows or Mac OS to work. Windows 2000 or Windows XP and Mac OS X are the only Operating Systems compatible.

"A design classic" - we have heard it called and it may well be, but most importantly the price has come down to a reasonable level, and Apple's much vaunted customer support no longer try to encourage you to buy a new iPod if yours develops battery problems. As those two main bones of contention have been fixed we're happy to sell iPods once again.

Fundamentally, if you buy one at this price we think it's worth the money.