The iPod Nano And Why It's Cool

Besides the obvious greatness that is a tall iPod Nano with more color choices (finally! Purple!) there’s a ton of improvements that it seems not everyone is impressed with.

And honestly, I think this is just a case of people expecting too much. I think they were expecting a smaller iPod Touch or maybe an iPhone with all the perks and doo dads crammed into a smaller device. Perhaps this is because Apple makes such crazy progress that they thought Apple should be able to make a miracle device that somehow caters to everyone’s individual needs (but I also think no one cares what everyone ELSE wants just so long as they get what THEY want).

But I’m not here to talk about that (primarily, anyway). I’m here to talk about the progress that DID happen. First and foremost is the “bigger” screen which isn’t really bigger than the screen on the current Nano but turned on its side. Personally, I have no problem with this. I like it, actually. I would not like it if the Nano didn’t have an accelerometer now though. This way, when the Nano is right side up you can see the album artwork cover the screen, which looks awesome, and when you turn it on its side it’ll go to cover flow mode and you can scroll through with the wheel which I also like because it means less fingers messing up the screen.

You also have the genius feature which, honestly I haven’t wrapped my head completely around. I mean, I just synced up my iPod to my new computer which meant that all of the music data that I HAD stored on my iPod was deleted and replaced with the exact same data on my new computer since I put all the music on it before I plugged my iPod in. This means that all of my play counts were lost. But if I had all of my play count data on it, I could see how if I wanted to make a genius playlist using the song Guitar Boogie as the base song it would make a playlist of all the most starred, or most played songs for me. The way it was described to me was this: “It’s like shuffle, but with a brain.” That is pretty cool. I’m always interested in what a computer would think is up my alley.

There’s also the shake feature which is the only thing I’m not too keen on. You shake the actual iPod to shuffle to a different song. To me, the less shaking the better. I mean, it is a piece of machinery. I think the memory is flash based which would mean it’s less fragile than an actual hard drive but come on. This is the only part that seems more like a novelty than an actual benefit. Right now, my iPod is sitting on top of my tower next to my leg and if a song comes on I don’t want to hear I just push next, which I’m sure I could do on the Nano, but just the fact that they think actually shaking it to change the song seems a bit of a reach, more of a “look what we can do,” and less of a “you’re going to love this.”

Anyway, how about the battery life? 24 hours of music. That is awesome and will be oh so beneficial in the desert whenever I deploy. I love long battery life, especially considering that my current iPod has trouble getting through a normal work day.

And what about the colors? Man, this is how Nintendo should release their stuff! I dig the fact hat the color is all around the body too instead of the aluminum back which is way too easy to scratch.

The most important thing regarding the colors is the fact that the red iPod is the same price as the others. In case you don’t know, the red iPod is part of Bono’s Project Red and it used to cost more, supposedly because that extra amount of money will go to the cause. I’m glad to see Apple bite that bullet instead of me.

The price is pretty sweet too. The same prices as the old Nanos, but the upgraded capacity of 8gb as the smallest one for 150 and 16gb for 200 isn’t that much to ask for such a cool device.

Overall, I think it’s an amazing step forward for the Nano and want one before I head out to the desert again. 16gb would get me through my deployment, I would just need to plan my musical upload carefully.