October 14, 2005
iPod iRritation
On Wednesday, Apple released the latest generation of the iPod. Boasting a larger screen and the ability to play video clips, the audience at the Apple special event roared and applauded with approval. More screen! More battery life! It comes in black! TV shows! Movie Trailers! VIDEO!
Not so fast. Behind all that fanfare, the new iPod is actually a severe disappointment to many people, myself included. Here's why I'm not happy with Apple's latest offerings:
- First and foremost, the new video ipods continue the trend started by the iPod Nano, namely the fact that the new iPod no longer supports Firewire. At all. It was one thing for Apple to bundle the previous iPods with just a USB cable, and ask Mac customers to buy a Firewire cable for $19 if they needed one. But this is a step too far.
Connecting the Nano or the new video iPod to a firewire port gives you the following error message:
Oh sure, you can still charge your iPod with Firewire, but you have to transfer files over USB. So why is this so problematic?
- I have a 1 Ghz 17" powerbook. I bought it only a little over two years ago. While it comes with both Firewire 400 and 800, both USB ports on it are only 1.1. Therefore, if I bought a new iPod, I'd have to transfer my entire iTunes library via USB 1.1 Said library is 51 gigs. How long would it take to transfer 51 gigs of music across USB 1.1? Over nine and a half hours.
- Macs can only boot from external Firewire drives, not USB drives. Which means that none of the new iPods can be used as bootable backup drives. I personally know a lot of people who used their iPods to recover their systems from HDD failure, that's now a thing of the past.
So at this point, what is it exactly that Apple expects people with USB 1.1 to do? Perfectly good macs that support Firewire but only have USB 1.1 are now not good enough for new iPods.
- The capacity of the new iPods did not increase at all. As I already stated, my iTunes library, comprised entirely of music that I ripped from my CD collection, is too big for a 40 GB model, and comes close to filling a 60 GB model. Somehow, I'm supposed to fit all of that, plus videos, onto a 60 GB iPod. Where's the 80 gig model? When news came out that the iPod capacity was not going to increase to 80 gigs, three of my friends simultaneously sent me one word instant messages; "Fuck." Their collections are even larger than mine.
- The remote jack is now gone from the new iPods. All that remains is a headphone jack and a dock connector. So now there is a slew of products on the market that will not work with this iPod. Have an iTrip? Don't expect it to work on these new video iPods. So now we'll have different versions of similar products floating around for iPods without dock connectors, iPods with dock connectors, iPod Minis, iPod Nanos, iPod Shuffles, 4th generation iPods, and 5th gen video iPods. This is getting ridiculous.
- While the battery life expectancy for music playback on the new models has gone up to 14 and 20 hours for the 30 and 60 GB models, respectively. But when playing video, your battery life plummets to a mere 2 or 3 hours, depending on your model. Hope you don't mind recharging.
- The video quality coming out of the iTMS is pathetically low, a mere 320x240 resolution. I remember, back in January of this year, listening to Steve Jobs prattle on about the new H.264 QT codecs and how 2005 would be "The year of High Definition video." Not only is this video not HD, it doesn't even conform to a widescreen 16:9 format; instead, the video is 4:3. Fine for an iPod, maybe, but pathetic on a Powerbook, iMac, or Cinema Display. Oddly enough, Apple uses an iMac in their advertisement for this:
- The videos themselves are locked down, in regards to DRM, even more so than music purchased from iTMS. The videos, which are protected by FairPlay, cannot be burned to CD or DVD using iTunes. Jobs glossed over this quickly in his presentation.
- The videos cost $1.99 each. For a lossy, 4:3, non HD video. How is this a good deal? The video is going to be too grainy to play properly on a large TV, and will definitely look subpar in comparison to a progressive scan DVD player.
Speaking of DVDs, a full season of a TV show usually contains 21 episodes. At $1.99 each, you'd pay $41.79 for a season of an average TV show. Most DVD box sets cost a comparable amount, between $35 and $50 for a season. Except with that DVD box set, you get much higher quality video in a 16:9 widescreen format, physical media that can be loaned to people, different languages, subtitles, deleted scenes, audio commentary from cast and crew, behind-the-scenes featurettes, etc. There's no real comparison, you're getting the short of the stick if you buy more than just an episode or two from Apple.
I guess it's not all bad news though, at least you can finally get an iPod in solid black now...