Apple iPod Video 5th Generation White (30 GB) MP3 Player

As a self-proclaimed gadget freak I'm very careful when a "trendy" gadget hits the market. I'm always open to the possibility that other manufacturers may make a device with superior features and not necessarily all the hype. I cautiously waited a long time before jumping on the MP3 player bandwagon; carefully studying and playing with different brands. The Apple iPod, without a doubt, created the market and the hype that is MP3 players, but I had always thought – they want way too much money for that thing. Other companies make the same or better product and some are less expensive.

True they are expensive, but boy was I wrong. In this case: buy the "Real Thing" and you won't be sorry. The beauty is in the details which you might never find unless you own one. Apple didn't create the idea. Believe it or not they were not the first company to produce a hard-drive-based portable MP3 player. That honor goes to Creative Corp in 2000. But Apple was the first company to wrap it into such a classy, desirable and easy-to-use package and market it like no other.

Apple introduced the first iPod in October of 2001. It was met with mixed feelings as certain details of the device had its ups and downs. Year 2006 and Five generations of iPod designs later…and Steve Jobs (president of Apple Corp.) is on the cover of Newsweek. Great advertising can only carry you so far. The iPod really does merit the awards it's been given.

Well, after my being a good boy and doing a lot of begging…Santa rewarded me with a black, 5th-Generation (5G), 30Gb Video iPod this past Christmas.

Let's begin with the hardware – the device itself. A growing market trend, it appears, is to NOT provide consumers with many included items. Sadly, Apple is following this trend. Your $349 buys you a small, but very appealing box that contains the Video iPod itself, a PC-to-iPod USB cable, a soft protective case, the trademark white ear-bud earphones, a plastic dock adapter cup, and a software CD. That's it. No power adapter. No other cables. Not even a printed owner's manual.

The Video iPod charges itself from the 5 volt source within your computer's USB port. When completely drained, it takes about 2 – 3 hours to fully charge. At first I was concerned, but this ends up being more convenient than you imagine. The black face and chrome back is sleek, slim, shiny and sexy. If you have heard anyone say that the black iPods are very easily scratched…I'm here to tell you it is absolutely true. Use the included protective case or buy a "skin" for your iPod immediately. Do not wait. One day of having this in my jeans pocket produced tiny scratches – they are faint, but I'm anal about these things…so I see them.

The Video iPod has a large, bright, sharp and colorful 2.5" diagonal display that is trans-reflective. That means it's as sharp and clear in direct sunlight, as it is in total darkness using its bright backlight. The backlight is white LED based, not fluorescent lamps, so it consumes far less power and is very evenly lit without any obvious edge-bleeding of light. With such a big screen it's hard to believe that the device is no wider than a standard iPod, and measures 4.17 inches L x 2.43 inches W x 0.47 inches thick! The only controls on the device are the signature touch-sensitive "click wheel" on the face and a sliding "hold" button on the top to prevent accidental activation of any click wheel functions when you don't want it.

The click wheel is actually a capacitive-based touch sensor. This advanced sensor allows you to manipulate the functions even through a gloved hand or a protective case. Five of the major functions around the wheel are also pressure-sensitive switches with tactile feedback. (You can press it; and both feel and hear a click). It's a great control that is flat, smooth, highly functional, very intuitive and appears very robust. Such pure genius is this control, that almost every other major manufacturer has copied some variation of it since its introduction. But that's just the control.

Pressing the center of the click wheel wakes the unit and you are greeted with a clear and simple menu. The menu is tiered such that sliding your finger around the click wheel surface moves the cursor up and down. Pressing the click wheel selects that item or progresses to the next menu. The menus are animated and blatantly obvious as to their function. If your grandmother picked this device up for the first time, she'd be listening to music within seconds. I guarantee she would accidentally figure out how to adjust the volume on her first attempt.

The internal hardware appears more advanced than you would expect. I have a few MP3s in my collection that are compressed at 128K bit rates, I consider these to be just "acceptable" quality. On my PC they sound "acceptable" but with the subtle artifacts you'd expect from a low sample rate. Interesting that the same song, when played on the iPod, has a distinctively different and better sound quality. I cannot explain why or say for certain…but I am convinced Apple is using hardware to improve sound quality. That same song played on my buddy's iRiver sounds just like it does on my PC. There is no comparison to the iPod. From a hardware standpoint, Apple is doing something right. Want Volume? The iPod has plenty of it. This thing cranks! If you are on a noisy airplane you will have no problem hearing your media – even using the included ear buds. If you're a 16-year-old and need your ears to bleed…there's a chance you could achieve it. They built a nice, powerful headphone amplifier into this machine.

This 5th generation of iPod is packed with features you wouldn't expect from an MP3 Player. It has a built in contact book, a calendar, the ability to store and display thousands of color photos, and play games. The key is the now infamous iTunes software that comes included. The included CD contains the software and drivers for your iPod for both MAC and Windows operating systems. Linux users: sorry to say that Apple does not support you…yet. But have no fear. I also am a part-time Linux user, we are a creative bunch. There is a piece of software out on the Internet written by CodeWeaver that allows you to run iTunes in a Windows emulation on your Linux workstation – and it is fully functional!

I have to admit; when I first started using iTunes with my iPod I was disappointed and almost frustrated with the software. When you approach it in a "Windows" frame of mind you will think they have left out some important software features. It took almost a week for me to realize all of the necessary and wanted features are there – they are just not as logically implemented as you would expect. For example, items that on any other software package would require a "right click" to select are just executed differently. Typical MAC oriented programming. (you be the judge of whether that's good or bad. – I'm just stating that it is different.)

Once you get comfortable with iTunes you realize the package is actually quite good. It is integrated tightly with their iTunes Music Store, allowing you to freely sample any item before you buy it. Prices are very reasonable and downloads are fast. A surprising number of items, including some video, is free and varies daily. For your existing music library, iTunes can import your existing MP3 collection or rip the music directly from your own CDs quickly and efficiently. iTunes and the iPod support full MP3, AAC and a number of different formats and you can specify what format you want to rip or add new items in. So you are not forced into one format – or forced to convert your entire library. iTunes will allow you to completely edit or change the ID3 tags for any song and convert the tag version if you like. It can completely organize your music library both on your PC and on your iPod – and, if you want it to, it can automatically update your iPod with every change you make to your library every time you connect your player to the PC. For the hackers: You do not need to use iTunes to manipulate items in your iPod

iTunes will automatically add any album artwork to your iPod display when you download a song from them. However, if your existing music collection is missing the album art, you can find a nice free piece of software on the Internet called the "Album Art importer for iTunes". A slick little program based on .NET code that allows you to highlight a title or titles in your iTunes music library, then click a button on the importer software – it goes out to the internet and Amazon.com to find the appropriate album art. You select from the best artwork and click a single button to import it. What a time saver! It works well, and it's free. Kudos to whoever wrote and made this software freely available.

Finally, this new iPod does video. Video you can download from iTunes, or video you can create yourself. Now is a good time for me to stop and tell you: DO NOT give one more penny to Apple and buy iPod related software. By this I mean resist the temptation to buy Quicktime Pro, thinking you need this for video. You do not. And you would be severely disappointed. There are software packages on the Internet, both free and for a tiny cost that do a far better job. I chose Video-to-iPod converter from Xilisoft. This great little package allows you to rip one of your own (purchased, by you.) movies from DVD and compress it to MPEG4 format and play it on your iPod. A 2 hour DVD, converted to MP4, takes about 1 Gb of space, so given your music library size you could reasonably fit several movies on your iPod. Hey! You frequent airplane travelers…I'm talking to you! Are you still using the DVD drive in your laptop for in-flight movies? How 20th century!

When held in your lap, the screen is very tolerable in size and amazingly crisp and colorful with surprising resolution. The iPod has an interesting feature – regardless of what type of media file you are using, be it a podcast, music or video – if you are in the middle of listening or viewing that file and decide to switch to another file or put the unit to sleep, when you return to that file it remembers where you were and picks up where you left off. This is a cool feature so let me give you an example. I listen to a podcast on my way to work. I get about halfway through as I pull into the parking lot, then turn off my iPod. I take the iPod into work and set it to play music from my playlists most of the day, towards the end I put the iPod to sleep. I leave work, wake the iPod up and select the podcast I was listening to on the way in. The iPod remembered where I left off, and returned to that exact moment to continue the podcast file. This same feature works for video as well. This is a valuable and unadvertised feature.

If you decide to purchase an iPod docking bay, not only will you gain an AC adapter, but you'll gain RCA audio and RCA-Composite video output ports. While you can plug the headphone jack into any stereo and listen to your music – the docking port will also bring out video. You can watch your iPod videos right on your TV – with tolerable quality. (Might be useful in a hotel room while traveling.) You can also display slideshows of your photos. Nice feature. It's like owning a portable mini-media center.

Ok. So the video iPod is not perfect. Here are the cons. The published battery life (30Gb model) is supposed to be 12 hours. I find I get about 10 hours with continuous music use. Hold on to your hats – that drops sharply to about 2.5 hours when using video. This makes sense, since during video playback the mechanical hard drive is almost always active, but Apple did fail to point that out in their famous dancing silhouette ads. I find that if you use a moderate combination of both music and video play time you will obtain about a 4 to 6 hour battery life depending on your use.

One inescapable benefit is that the iPod is extremely popular. Extreme popularity means nearly unlimited support. Accessories are easy to find from hundreds of manufacturers, software both free and not is rampant on the Internet. Rumor even has it that Apple created one of the many iPod hacking web sites – just to see what folks were doing to the machines. Those ideas somehow find their way into the next generation of unit. I'm not a giant MAC / Apple fan, but if that's true…you have to appreciate a company that is that open minded.

With Apple software on the unit (which is actually BSD Linux at the core) you can imagine the following of hackers this unit has. For those not in the know...hackers are not evil...they are simply folks like you and I whose hobby happens to be experimenting with code. Like anything else you can push a talent for good as well as mal intent. Several innovative people have "hacked" software that can make an iPod record, perform various functions and the like. After all, it is just a microprocessor with a massive hard drive. Again, a huge following means a huge number of experimenters. All I'm saying is that you would own a device that well known, well played with and well exploited. For an experimenter thats an awesome position to be in.

Hands down, I think it is the best player out there. It is expensive. It is not without its drawbacks – but over all it is extremely well designed and provides exceptional performance and features. It is sexy. And it appears to be one product that does live up to the hype. My advice: part with your money and buy the real thing. Spend the extra money and get the largest hard-drive-sized-unit you can afford. Once you get into it, you'll use it – trust me. I wish mine was the 60Gb unit. Be prepared to spend a little more for accessories that Apple doesn't include. (Although, you don't have to buy them from Apple). Have patience with the iTunes software. It does do almost everything you want, except video. You just need to learn how it is done, and it may not be like you're used to.