Dichroic Reflections

product report: iPod

I was having a a most excellent day, but now my bubble is slightly busted. (I'm not sure that's possible, any more than being slightly pregnant.) With clear and sure decision, Rudder bought a new digital camera Saturday. We have a small digicam, but this one is on a par with our film camera. This will be nice, because we'll no longer have to tradeoff for who gets the good camera. (One afternoon in Antarctica, we got some spectacular penguin photos; unfortnuiately, he had the small digicam that day so they aren't quite as spectacular as they could have been.) After much vacillation, I ended up buying an iPod photo, which (with an accessory, due out later this month) can store photos to get them off the flash cards; can be taken to work to show digital photos around, and of course can play music and audiobooks.

In an attempt to justify blowing the money on it, I took it to the gym this morning. I don't normally listen to music in the gym (except what's played over the loudspeakers) but this turned out to be wonderful. Who knew? (Aside from everyone else in the world, I mean.) Moreover, I'd only loaded on a few CDs and a couple of bought songs: a tribute to Townes van Zandt and one to Bob Dylan, a Steeleye Span CD and one each by Stan and Garnet Rogers. Not, in other words, a likely pick for workout music. As it turned out, it worked perfectly, especially when a whaling chanty came on as I was doing lat pulldowns. The armband I had bought to holster it worked well enough, except that it was a little uncomfortable erging. However, the shirt I was wearing was actually designed for cycling, and so had water bottle pockets on the back. I popped the iPod in one of those and i worked perfectly - cords were kept out of my way and I was able to shift it enough to the side to be comfortable even during exercises involving a backrest. Also, the sound quality was fantastic and even without being loud thoroughly drowned out the gym music.

If I were doing a lot of this, didn't need the photo capability, and had the discipline to keep downloading different playlists, one of the miniscule iPod Shuffles might have been even better, but even though the iPod photo is the largest of the current flock of iPods, it's nowhere near big enough to be annoying.

However, there is one downside, which is what burst my bubble after I got to work. It turns out the iPod can sync to a Mac or a PC, but not both. I tried to upload iTUnes on my work PC, figuring I'd be able to listen to a couple of CDs I'd uploaded here (no dice; they're in RealAudio .rmj format) and in the process of loading software it reformatted the iPod and wiped off all the songs and photos I'd loaded last night. Grr. The manual warned of this, but of course I didn't read it until afterwards when it was too late.

Also, the controls take some getting used to. Still, I'm pretty impressed with the product - of course, being from Apple, it worked right out of the box. (Well, after charging.) Long may they run.