Geek4ever

Okay, I finally broke down and bought an Apple iPod last year (Black of course) after my old Creative MP3 player died beyond repair. The iPod has its share of features and flaws that drive you nuts, though when you compare it to the rest of the MP3 players on the market it comes out on top for me.

Why get the 30Gb instead of the 80Gb?

Portable, sure the 30gb is just a little bit smaller and lighter than the 80Gb, though I don’t intend to store a lot of files on this, use it only as an iPod, not a portable drive so that hopefully it will last a long time.

What doesn’t work about the iPod?

• Format support - It only plays MP3 and AAC music or special quicktime movies. This is a real pain if you have your music in an open source format such as ogg?? or anything else other than what the iPod supports. Sure you can convert movies and there are programs that do a quick and easy job of it.
• On the fly playlists - Apple calls them “on the go”. Creative does this so much better that its really frustrating to use the iPod system after having used creatives.
• Only supports iTunes - sure iTunes is great, though I would love to have an ‘all you can eat’ style system that other services such as Rhapsody etc offer. You just pay a monthly fee and can ‘rent’ any music you want as long as you keep paying the monthly fee. I quite like this idea and hope that iTunes does it soon.

What works about the iPod???

• The scroll wheel works really well for me. I can quickly and easily scroll through a whole list of songs and select what I want. If you like this, then it’s hard to go back to anything else. If you don’t like it, then run far, far away.
• Accessories - There must be a million of them. No other MP3 player has the 3rd party accesory support that the iPod does. If you have the cash then you can easily get carried away, make sure to reseacrh and test any accessory before you buy.
• Podcasts - The iPod is so tightly integrated that you can easliy subscribe to and listen/view podcasts with the greatest of ease.

Overall:

It works really well the way I use it, though it sure isn’t for everyone and you need to think carefully about how you plan on using it, though if like me the pros outweigh the cons and it suits the way you listen to your music/podcasts, then I highly recommend the current model.