Apple iPod Nano third-generation Earlier this month, Apple announced the newest embodiments of various iPod lines. The new iPod, the Classic, doesn't look substantially different from its predecessor. The new Nano, which supersedes the second generation product is - on the other hand - a complete revamp. What you'll notice straight away is its shape: it's a …
Yes they look nice and are shiny, but why the fuck do i have to use bloody itunes just to get the damn thing to do anything other than play tunes?
The day i can drag and drop mp3 files into folders, and use the spare space on an ipod as storage, for whatever i feel like is the day i might stop disliking apple so much, Sony wanabe scum
-or am i wrong?
given the price apple charges for the 3.5mm => 3 RCA jacks, it's worth noting that all they've done is switch the cabling around. you can buy a non-apple version, and all you have to do is figure out which cable is which (not hard). Granted it's an extra cost, but it's only £5 or so (amazon) for the cable as opposed to £15 apple charges.
I've not got a new nano (my video ipod works fine), but I presume it's the same system. If nothing else, it may help other ipod users
I kind of agree about the iTunes comment except that I kind of like iTunes as a media management system.
Enable HD mode and manually manage tunes and you *can* use that spare space to store anything you like and it shows up as a standard disk (which is why I own an 80gb iPod, it's a back up device and stores VIDXs which I play back on my laptop) and you can drag tunes to/from iTunes yourself.
Rob, the Creative Zen player is just over there --->
Personally, I can't stand having to copy files individually to and from players, and would far rather ask iTunes to keep my database up to date, based on what's set in my iTunes. So I'll stick with Apple devices.
The width of these new Nanos puts me off a bit, though. If the thing is going to be that wide, I can't think why you wouldn't just pay the extra and get 10 TIMES the disk space with a full-size one. But then, I did exactly that last generation. I suppose some people just don't need the space.
As for the complaint that the screen is 4x3, and that means black bars on widescreen material, well, yes. But a 16x9 screen means bars on 4x3 material too, and I find telly stuff more suitable to the tiny screen of my iPod than films anyway, so I'm not bothered. Everything is a compromise of some kind or another when it comes to aspect ratios.
>all they've done is switch the cabling around
Before someone jumps on this and tries to put it as a bad thing, normal 3-channel 3.5mm sockets are made so that you can use a normal stereo cable for video/mono audio. If Apple had it wired this way, one side of the headphones wouldn't work - hence the swapped wires.
I don't worship it at the dawning of the sun, or anything, but it seems to me to be a big advance on the previous model. The screen is bright and very detailed, moving around it feels snappy, photos look good, and above all the damn thing is outrageously tiny and thin.
I haven't watched movies on it - I can't imagine it would be an immersive experience, but for the odd TV show it should be fine. Photos look good.
I could be a little early with this, but Songbird (www.songbirdnest.com) looks like a promising iTunes alternative. Its development team includes Winamp people and it's being developed under the aegis of Mozilla. It can read the current contents of an iPod and can currently write if you do a full resync (it does drag and drop rather than Apple's hide and seek). It's a little early for prime time yet (developer release is 0.2.5, nightly builds are 0.3.0) but it's looking interesting.
Just use winamp to manage the music, no need to install itunes (actually you might have to install it to put your ipod into disc mode and update the firmware from time to time put other than that...). TBH most media players these days natively support ipods so itunes is strictly optional.
It amazes me that so many digital music players completely ignore OGG Vorbis and FLAC, both of which are free. And yet these same players offer MP3, which must be licensed. I understand that MP3 is the most popular digital music format currently, but it would be nice to have a choice of music formats other than MP3 and AAC.
"its astounding if you see how many people are wearing those white earbuds..."
It's not as if they're any good, either - one pair that I tried were not only excruciatingly uncomfortable (for me) but the sound quality was terrible. Got me a nice pair of Sennheiser earbuds for my portable music device of choice[*]
[*] - A minidisc player. When that finally kicks the bucket I might consider a
flash-based media player of some description.
Yeah, I also think the new nano is a bit of a disappointment. I just want to listen to music, I sure do not want to see videos in any portable crap (I mean, the ones smaller than the portable DVD players, which are OK). I was expecting they would release a 16Gb nano -- then, video or not, I would get this one to replace my 4 Gig generation 1 nano (which is only used for music, never used the games, calendar, etc. crap). Now I'm sorry I didn't get the 8 Gig generation 2 nano before this... Oh well, I guess my nano will have to survive another year.
It seems to me that the Nanos - despite the name - start to get bloated. I can't imagine video playback on such a small device are gonna sell many extra devices...
I have personally never really used my nano for anything but playing music. I like being able to sync through and have my selected playlists on the iPod to choose from...
Like J, I too am a little sorry I didn't get a 8GB 2nd gen nano to replace my 4GB 1th gen. As I like having different playlists for different occasions the shuffle isn't a good alternative...
Well, I don't know why everywhere I hear "iPod this" "iPod that". Used to also include "zune this" and "zune that" too, but thankfully this stopped.
Also, I hear many people dissing the Zen Vision:M, on how the hard disk dies too easily. Were you guys using your Zen Vision:M as footballs or something? I baby mine and carry it in my shirt pocket, had been doing so for 10 months now, and it still works beautifully.
"So, cramming a 16:9 video inside an already tiny 4:3 screen..."
Um, I might be being naive here, but surely you can only play widescreen without bars on a 16:9 screen. And if you did that, when you tried to play 4:3 video, you'd get vertical bars either side of the picture. This is the same for any screen, and since I assume Apple want people to pay iTunes to download and watch TV on it, they're going for a TV-friendly aspect ratio.
Anyway, what's the point of watching ANY video with a screen that small, anyway?
I got an iPod Nano yesterday - could not open iTunes after downloading it and of course it did not recognise any of my wav music files after dragging and dropping through Explorer or via Songbird.
It is a piece of crap - I'm going to have to use a system restore to factory settings to be able to open itunes (if it opens) and then convert all wav music files to mp3 because apparently the iPod only recognises mp3 files.
Steve Jobs and his arrogant delusional team should be brought to bear for this. Maybe the bear could eat them.
So, why in blinkin' flip does Apple want to sell a 21st century gadget in a 20th century aspect ratio?! Can it deal with modern TVs and do a full-resolution video out on 16:9 videos, or do you need to use the TV's zoom function to crop the programme to hell?
Go and turn on a TV, any TV, and tell me what you see. 16:9 ratio programming. Sure, anything pre-2000 may be 4:3, but the vast majority of programming in the UK is 16:9 and has been for years, and the majority of the "must-see" programmes coming out of the US have been 16:9 for a few years. Few, if any, films are shot in the old 4:3 "Academy" ratio (aka yukky square-screen), and most TV is filmed in 16:9.
For crying out loud, Apple computers all come with widescreens now, don't they? Why not their iPods? It costs enough, can't they give it a proper screen?!
Michael and others.
If you like wav music so much, thats fine. There are a lot of mp3 players out there. Why gripe about iPods???
As I understand it iPods recognize wav as long as they are not DRM. Hmmmm Maybe a Zune would work? NOPE. Microsoft zapped you there too :-(
Then you go on to say, "Steve Jobs and his arrogant delusional team should be brought to bear for this. Maybe the bear could eat them." Maybe you are a paid M$ troll??? Microsoft does just the same thing. In fact everyone out there has some restrictions or "don't works" with their system.
EN
As far as I'm concerned, if I pay £130 for an iPod Nano then I should be able to plug it into my computer and it should just work.
I should not have all this faffing around with drivers and trying to scrounge an iTunes setup disk because Apple don't want users to use a disk anymore and want them to use the iTunes 7 and Quicktime 7.
I paid £10 for an mp3 player by Matsunichi last year and it worked perfectly - plug it in, drag and drop.
Not so with the iPod Nano - no way.
As for other companies being the same - yes, but their products work.
You are showing your age a bit. The benefits which iTunes brings to the table far outweighs the negatives for me. It does just work. Grag and drop the music from iTunes to iPod.
Download and install the latest version of iTunes, plug the nano in, it just works. It doesn't work for you in this case because you are an ignoramous and haven't read the manual/Quick-start guide. You expect this Apple device to behave exactly like your former no-name/no design pile-of-tat player. I'm sure we don't sympathise with you here.
iTunes recognise plenty of music formats, all which are majorly used today in fact. This doesn't include Flac or Ogg, because the majority of people don't use them/know what they are or those that do should be well able to convert them to MP3. I prefer the old last generation nano personally, it was ace, although now I own a Touch (and lo it was good)
If iPods stop being decent players then nobody will buy them. I don't see that happening any time soon. Zen/Archos/Zune/*fill in* owners can enjoy their hilariously niche, aesthetically-displeasing products while they sit in their anoraks pondering the next linux distribution or the next music management software app they want to try, while the rest of us just happily listen to the music...
R
T
Erm - what?
iTunes does not open - so of course I cannot drag and drop from iTunes.
With other media players, I can drag and drop from My Computer via Windows Explorer.
By only allowing music to be copied to the iPod from iTunes and not from any other source - apple has severely limited my options.
No it does not just work - iTunes has to work first.
The iPod Nano does not recognise many formats - or it would not need the user to click on 'convert' or 'consolodate' in iTunes. Come to think of it, the consumer wouldn't actually need iTunes.
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