Picking an Apple: Part 2

I wrote yesterday about my experience buying an iPod from the Apple Store. If you haven’t already, go read it now, because it kind of sets the tone for this update. I’ll wait for you here.

Done? Good. As promised, I thought I’d write a bit about my foray into the Apple orchard now that I’ve had a few days to play with the iPod. Let me just say without further preamble that I friggin’ love this thing. LOVE IT. It’s now on my list of “Best Products Ever”, which goes like this:

1. TiVo
2. The George Foreman Grill
3. Apple iPod

Samantha seems to love it, too:

I know that I paid a lot more than products that do the same things (or more), but there’s definitely something to be said about the iPod’s smooth design and user interface. I’d be a big fat liar if I didn’t admit that was part of the appeal. All the other high-capacity audio players look like ham-fisted neanderthals next to the iPod’s sleek, Miss Universe good looks. Nobody else has gotten it this right, and in the end it’s worth a few bucks¹.

Heck, even the packaging is cool. Besides the swank shopping bag/backpack the Apple Store gave me, the iPod comes in an intricate cardboard cube that unfolds into smaller cubes like a new age matryoshka doll. Inside everything is wrapped in clean smelling plastic and snugly fit into styrofoam hollows. Apple definitely knows how to do presentation.

Once you get the thing out of its styrofoam and plastic womb, it’s really easy to use, too. Like anyone else with thumbs, I especially like the scroll wheel that lets you move the cursor through lists and menus just by running your finger over it in tiny circles. It’s the kind of thing that I just keep doing for the novelty of it. I don’t need to do this much scrolling, but it’s fun, damnit! Wheee! Clickity clickity click!

In fact, the only interface complaint I have is that if text is too long it gets truncated to the point of incomprehensibility while you’re browsing through menus. It should side-scroll when highlighted so that “The Best of Metallica” and “The Best of Miles Davis” don’t both show up as just “The Best of M…”.

And of course, it’s amazingly cool to be able to carry every CD I own with me and play them at any time. So far I’ve ripped about 400 songs from my collection, plus a 15-CD audiobook (I got this thing in no small part for its ability to hold entire audiobooks) and I’ve only used a fraction of its capacity. This level of “load and forget” convenience is probably the best reason to get this kind of product.

Now, iTunes I’m less happy with. This is the music management/shopping program that comes with the iPod, and is the program Apple practically forces you to use. For many things, it’s pretty powerful. It will organize your tunes by genre, album, artist, etc. It will rip CDs for you. It will let you buy digital music. It will transfer music from your computer to your iPod. It does all this moderately well, though I must point out that the user’s manual and online documentation are pathetic, requiring you to dig deep through the help files and resort to trial and error like a lab rat trying to get a treat in some incomprehensible experiment.

iTunes also has an online music store that would be awesome if it weren’t for the crippling fact that you can’t save your purchases ($.99 per song) to .mp3 format, so you can only play them in iTunes or on the iPod. I’ve ranted about this before, and my comments still stand despite the fact that I’ve bought maybe half a dozen songs. To Apple’s credit, their selection is fantastic and it’s perilously easy to shop for, buy, and download music from them.

The iTunes program also suffers from being a round peg crammed into a square hole. Or in this case, a square Window. Not only is it as slow as spit (10-second pauses are common when I try to do certain things), it ignores many Windows navigation and user interface conventions, and it’s ugly. Todd and Joost have recommended Anapod Explorer as an alternative to iTunes, and it looks impressive. I’ll probably check it out.

So in summary, I love my iPod but I only like iTunes. The iPod isn’t perfect, but my only substantial complaints are having to use iTunes (which can actually be replaced), its lack of accessories (I already discussed the nickle-and-dime routine to sell me things that should have come with something at this price), and its relatively short battery life (8 hours is barely long enough for me to use it throughout the day at work). Still, I love it and it has definitely changed the way I listen to music and audiobooks. Thumbs up!

¹Not that I’m now sold on buying an Apple computer, since they have such an anemic software library –particularly games. If the iPod only played 20% of the music I like, I wouldn’t have bought it, either.