My First iPod - 80GB iPod With Video Review

By Kelmon

It’s generally accepted that anyone who owns a Mac must, by definition, also own an iPod. If the halo-effect for the iPod is also accepted then it’s also possible that the iPod owner started with a PC and then switched to a Mac. Either way if you have a Mac then you must also have an iPod because if you don’t then you can’t be a real Mac person. Or something like that. Regardless I’ve gone through over 3-years of PowerBook ownership without owning an MP3 player of any variety (my wife has a 1GB iPod Shuffle but that doesn’t count) but a couple of weeks ago following the “It’s Showtime” announcement I caved and bought the new 80GB iPod, much to the annoyance of my accountant (read: my wife).

After opening the box, going through the bits that came with the iPod (basically, new style earbuds, connection cable, universal dock adapter, basic soft case and quickstart guide) and finally getting to the point of picking up the unit itself the overriding sensation that I got was one of weight. Yes, the 80GB iPod is surprisingly heavy and, frankly, much heavier than I was expecting. To be honest it is often difficult to gauge exactly what something will be like from its specifications but the overall feeling was of something that was solid. Personally, I’m not prepared to do something extreme like drop it on concrete but the build quality suggests that it stands a reasonable chance of surviving. The unit comprises of what was a shiny aluminium casing around the back and sides, a white faceplate (yes, I went for the iconic white version) and a clear plastic coating over the top for protection and, I think, just to make it look good. The click wheel remains in its usual position on the front of the unit with a dock connector at the bottom and headphone jack at the top. Given the connections provided by a bag that I recently looked at that offered iPod integration I can only assume that this is a change as it was clear that the bag wouldn’t work with my iPod as it was expecting some sort of connector socket beside the headphone socket. Also while the faceplate of the unit has withstood my punishment for a few weeks with no problems I should note that the metal casing shows up fingerprints really easily.

I recently placed an order for one of the new MacBook Pro laptops as a replacement for my aging PowerBook. One of the upgrades that I am looking forward to will be USB 2.0. One of the principal reasons why I didn’t buy an iPod sooner was due to Apple’s decision to drop FireWire support. Given this my available connection speed to an iPod for the purposes of syncing dropped from 400Mbps to a meagre 12Mbps after this bombshell, plus it would not be possible to use the iPod as a disk drive that I could boot from in the event of a disaster on the laptop, I’ve been putting off buying an iPod of any variety. Since I don’t have the new laptop yet my first synchronisation with the laptop happened across the aforementioned 12Mbps connection and had to run all night to complete for about 13GB of music and 3GB of photos (iTunes, which manages the iPod for you in version 7, converts your pictures to a format that can be viewed on the iPod and can also store the originals as well). Of course, each subsequent synchronisation doesn’t take anywhere near as long but it can safely be said that I don’t recommend using an iPod with less than a USB 2.0 connection unless you have a particularly paltry music collection, in which case you need to question why you need a full iPod in the first place.

At this point I’d better get my major peeve out of the way. The current iPod firmware (1.2 at this time) has a bug in it that causes the unit crash when playing some podcasts. Apparently the crash only happens with mono-recorded podcasts and can be rectified by either setting the start time of the podcast in iTunes to 1-second into the podcast or by setting the EQ settings of the iPod to Off. This isn’t a show-stopping bug but I’m genuinely shocked that the new iPods have been available now for almost 2-months and no update to the firmware has been released by Apple despite this being a know problem. This sort of support is not acceptable…

OK, so that’s the whinge out of the way and the question must be “what’s good?” Well, pretty much everything else as best as I can tell. 80GB gives me tons of space to fill and that’s what I’ve been doing now for the last few weeks. The music management and playback on the iPod is excellent. I’m not really an audiophile so I can’t really comment too much on what the overall audio capability of the unit is like but it sounds good to my ears, although I am going to be on the lookout for a set of headphones that will stay in my ears more easily (the right headphone always feels loose). Podcast management is a bit funky with audio podcasts accessible under the Music menu but you do need to look under the Video menu for video podcasts (oddly, video podcasts can also be found in the list of audio podcasts but when played you only get the audio, which confused me for a bit). Photo management works very well with my iPhoto library and its configured albums but I must confess that I’ve not really used this function much except to verify that my photos had been backed up and that it all works – on-screen image quality is fine but obviously not as good as on a computer screen or printed media. Additionally you get useful functions like international clocks (great for those of us with colleagues around the world and you need to know their time now), stop watch, synchronisation with Address Book for contacts and iCal for calendar events (complete with scheduled alarms).

I’m going to save a couple of paragraphs to talk about my favourite features of the iPod: video and games. Read on…

There’s no getting away from the fact that the iPod’s small screen isn’t suitable for watching a movie. Despite Apple now selling movies through the rebranded iTunes Store for playback from an iPod I simply cannot imagine sitting and watching a small screen for a couple of hours or more. That said I do think the compact size of the iPod and its convenience makes it ideal for watching television shows and other shorts like video podcasts. Given this I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time ripping my DVDs of Futurama and other such shows using the Mac application Handbrake. Again, syncing these shows across USB 1.1 takes a while (plus ripping and encoding to h.264 takes a couple of hours per show on my old laptop) but once they are there it’s a great way to while away time. On a trip back from Paris last week on the train a colleague and I shared an earbud each and watched an episode of Coupling. While I think the British humour of the show was perhaps lost on him it was at least a great way to kill time without needing to dig out a laptop and DVD. Now that I have the iPod and shows I expect to be travelling a lot lighter in the future and that’s definitely a “good thing”. One thing that I will note, however, is that if you are watching the iPod screen from a side angle (such as when sharing) then glare on the screen can be a problem.

Finally, let’s talk about games. Aelon.net is predominantly a gaming web site so it’s fair that we should at least give mention to the games that Apple now sells for £3.99 off the iTunes Store. So far I’ve bought 3-games (Bejeweled, Cubis and Zuma) and they seem to be a bit hit and miss for me. Basically, I found Bejeweled’s gem matching to be a bit dull but my wife is addicted to and keeps stealing my iPod for it. I still have absolutely no idea what I’m doing in Cubis, despite a lengthy tutorial, but again it’s gem matching of some description. Finally, there’s Zuma (right). Shockingly, Zuma is yet more gem matching (not all the games are, incidentally, but I just tend to like these types) but it feels a lot like games like Bust-A-Move with the player aiming a cannon that fires coloured gems at others moving across the screen in an effort to get 3 or more in a row. This is going to sound like a stupid statement in the days of über PCs and PlayStation 3s, but Zuma is the best game that I’ve played for years. It’s simple, highly addictive and works very well with the control scheme available to it, plus it’ll play your own music. I can’t, I should note, see the iPod seriously cannibalising the sales of Nintendo DSs or Sony PSPs but, again, it adds value to what is ostensibly an MP3 player and provides something else that you can quickly do when you’re stuck waiting for something else. However, I will note that it’s well worth buying a couple of the games from iTunes since the ones that ship with the iPod are a bit pish.

Ultimately I’m pretty happy with the iPod. I’m quite certain that my enjoyment will increase once I get the new laptop and when Apple irons out the firmware bugs. It’s hard to compare this player with other MP3 players since the majority aren’t really compatible with the Mac but I can say that it has satisfied my requirements by giving me a backup of my digital media in the event of a problem with my laptop and acting as a damned good media player/games machine.