just another gadget junkie coming from Hong Kong, a city where its peoples are always in pursuit of the latest and coolest gadgets, but not necessarily making any good use of them …
It was just before 15:30 when the courier delivered to me my personalized Apple 3rd Gen Red iPod Nano. What a way to kill a Saturday afternoon!
When Apple emailed me yesterday late in the afternoon that my Nano was on its way, I was afraid that I won’t be getting it until the end of the long weekend holiday. But I had half expected that it would arrive, which is why I had only left home for a quick lunch today. I didn’t want to miss the delivery.
It is now almost two hours since my Nano had arrived and I am really glad that I hadn’t gone with the iPod Touch. This is my 3rd Nano and my 6th iPod. I did struggle a little bit between the iPod Classic, iPod Touch and the Nano which explains why I had only ordered mine weeks after it became available (I ordered it online this Thursday). I already have a 60GB 5th Gen iPod Video which has been serving me well especially when I am on vacation. I finished the whole first season of Lost on it during a strip to Tokyo last year. One season of TV shows with 22 episodes take up about 10GB of storage space. My current library of TV shows has 228 items totaling 96.32GB of space whilst my music library has 2,600 items totaling 60.70GB of space. With the exception of music I bought from iTunes, my music library is ripped from CDs using Apple Lossless encoding which explains why merely 2,600 songs would take up so much space. And then I have another 10,000 of photos on Aperture that I really want to show them off on my iPods. My TV shows library has been growing very fast lately because of the discounted iTunes coupons that I have been able to buy at eBay. My videos and music are stored on a 250GB NAS that has gigabit ethernet connecting to my home network while my photos are stored on a FireWire 1TB hard drive configured as a 500GB RAID 0 system. Both are approaching their limits. Even though Apple markets the new 160GB iPod Classic as the device to hold everything, I had to pass it once I had done my calculations above. I am better off sticking with my 5th Gen iPod if decisions of what to put on an iPod have to make anyway.
With only 16GB of flash storage, it would be even harder for me to select what to put on an iPod Touch. Although it is thinner than an iPhone, the iTouch is still as large as the iPhone because of the 3.5 inch screen that they share. That screen, by the way, with multi-touch is perfect for viewing photos and videos. Since it is very likely that I will get an iPhone when it becomes available in Hong Kong, it really doesn’t make any sense for me to get an iTouch now. The iTouch does have double the storage capacity of the iPhone. But I can always make up that difference with a Nano which I can use it just to store music. Remember I have almost 61GB of music? I can fill all my iPods with different combination of songs that don’t duplicate. I would rather carry an iPhone with a Nano rather than two “iPhones”. And who knows, by the time iPhone is ready for Hong Kong it might already have the 16GB option.
Besides my usage pattern above, I do find iTouch’s lack of a speaker and Bluetooth radio rather disappointing. Without a speaker, I can’t really share my videos or music with others unless they like silent movies. Without Bluetooth to connect with my HSDPA phones, it means I am restricted to using the built-in Safari or YouTube or even iTunes Store within the proximity of a WiFi hotspot. Both missing features, however, are available on the current iPhone, although I am not sure if the Bluetooth software that comes with iPhone allows connection with a Bluetooth modem.
Going back to the new Nano, it is just super cool. I have recorded my unboxing of it in both video and photos. I will try to organize and upload them in the coming days. I have always liked the Nanos. It’s true that they don’t offer as much storage capacity as their siblings but their sizes make them perfect for almost every purposes save a long vacation. I can run without my Polar watch but I can’t run without my Nano with Nike+. Nike+ is the single most important motivation for my running. Nano is just great. And just when I thought my 2nd Gen Nano with Nike+ is perfect the 3rd Gen arrives.
Because it has to house a 2 inch screen, the 3rd Gen Nano is necessarily fatter than the 2nd Gen, albeit shorter. This almost square dimension makes the 3rd Gen not as easy to hold inside my palm than the 2nd Gen especially when I run. It doesn’t matter because I have decided to use the 3rd Gen mainly for video and photos while the 2nd Gen for music. The screen of the 3rd Gen is just gorgeous. Because it has the highest pixels per inch among all the current iPods, videos and pictures appear much finer and smoother than the others.
As far as the hardware is concerned, my only complain is its casing. It has the same stainless steel back found on the 1st Gen Nano and the iPod Classic which just makes it prone to scratches. In fact, I have already scratched mine while putting the 2nd Gen next to it for taking the comparison photos. Also, the metal casing makes any engravings that you have inscribed on the Nano difficult to read when the Nano is placed near light sources.
Even just playing with the new Nano for a few minutes I quickly noticed the many improvements that Apple has made upon it. Operation is smooth and responsive. The new user interface is intuitive in usage and elegant in aesthetics. Cover Flow is really cool. I can’t wait to show it off.
In the previous generations, menus will take up the whole screen. Now all menus take up only half of the screen leaving the other half showing either album art in the case of music or graphical representation of the current feature. It is just neat.
Lastly, if you are going to get a new Nano and you don’t mind the colour of red, try to get a red one. It is only available from Apple direct. Apple donates a portion of every Red Nano to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, which in itself is a worthy cause. By ordering direct from Apple, you can also get free engraving on the back of the Nano. But I must say the red of the 3rd Gen looks more like pink to me.
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These Pics make the ipod look really red, but when I actually saw it, it was totally pink. Are there two red 3rd gen ipods or is this just a trick of the camera?