Thoughts on the iPod
Apple is doing some pretty neat things these days. And it’s interesting that I’m writing something positive about them, considering I spent the better years before MacOS X complaining about schools using primarily Macintosh computer systems.
Of course, I have always liked the iPod. It always made a lot of sense to have a portable device that was capable of storing lots of music without having to downsample your audio collection. The biggest drawback was always the price. $400+ always seemed like a lot of money for such a device.
When rumours started circulating about the iPod Mini, I was quite excited. Rumours on Slashdot suggested that prices could be as low as $100 USD, which seemed ridiculously cheap for a 2GB device. When Apple finally made the announcement, we found out that the new iPod Mini would retail for $249 USD with a 4GB drive.
Outrageous, I thought. There’s no way I’m going to buy it now. Sure, it’s pretty small and light (probably smaller than my cell phone). And it would hold about 1/3rd of my music collection — still more music than I would ever really want to listen to anyway.
The Canadian iPod Mini prices haven’t been released, but I suspect that it will run somewhere around $300 CAD. The regular 15GB iPod retails for $399 CAD — but students can quality for a education discount, which brings the price down to just $365 (plus they’re throwing in free custom engraving on the back for a limited time!).
I’ve been wanting to get a portable audio device for some time now. Of course, one of the biggest things is cost. I can’t really afford one — so I’m going to wait until my next co-op work term.
What do I really want in a portable audio device? Well …
(1) A nice interface. This one’s obvious. I should be able to quickly browse through the file system (sorted in folders to my choosing) and build playlists easily. I should also be able to load playlists directly on the device. And the player’s UI should have good support for mp3 tags so I know what I’m listening to.
(2) Ogg Vorbis. Well, okay, so this isn’t a requirement — especially given the lack of hardware available (more on this later).
(3) FM tuner. This would be nice, but it won’t break the deal.
(4) FM broadcasting. Even better. How many times have you been stuck in a car with nothing but a radio and wish you could listen to your portable audio device? Not widely available, and I do wonder how well these actually work. Plus, you can always buy add-ons to do this for you.
(5) Probably the most important factor: good Linux support. I’m not that picky about it — as long as I can mount the file system in some way, shape or form and be able to synchronise, merge, etc. with my mp3 collection on my harddrive then it’s fine.
(6) Portability. Another obvious one. It should be small enough to slip into my pocket, and light enough that it won’t pull my pants down. My camera weighs about 600 grams, so I don’t expect the device to weigh anymore than 200 grams (and preferably much less).
As far as media goes, I’m not terribly concerned as long as I can store at least 512MB of data on the device at once. So be it flash media or a microdrive/harddrive, I don’t care.
So I started my search.
Ogg Vorbis hardware is few and far between. The 20GB Neuros device has a nice price, has an FM tuner and broadcaster, as well as a decent interface, and it supports Ogg Vorbis. That’s a check on most of the requirements. The biggest drawback with this particular device is that it’s quite big and bulky (especially compared with the full-sized iPod, which is already on the hefty size). It weighs over 250 grams, and it’s 5″ wide!
Rio and iRiver also make 20GB portable models that support Ogg Vorbis — the cheapest of which is $349 USD. Seems a little expensive when you can get a 15GB iPod for the same price in Canadian, eh?
Of the cheaper products on the market made by companies like Rio, Yepp, Samsung, etc., most of these are flash-based, which as I said, isn’t such a big deal. For one, they’re certainly a lot smaller and lighter than the iPod is. However, for a relatively good device with 256MB built in, you should probably expect to pay at least $200CAD, plus the cost of additional media.
That being said — that means if the difference between 0.5GB and 15GB is around $100 — why wouldn’t you buy the iPod? (or even the iPod Mini — which now seems quite reasonably priced!)
Unfortunately, it’s probably quite unlikely that the iPod ever will support Ogg Vorbis. Of course, 99% of my music collection is mp3, and those that aren’t, can be easily converted to mp3. But you never know — if Ogg really takes off, maybe it will become more mainstream and Apple will support it one day.
So now I just have to wait until the iPod Mini is released in Canada so I can check that out. If the smaller size and cheaper price warrants the loss of 11 GB, than that might be the way to go. Plus, from what I’ve read, the iPods are quite easily supported on Linux.
So we’ll see what happens …
