I’m a little late in posting this, but as most of y’all know, Apple just announced their new iPods (among other things). They are quite amazing.
They now have the new iPod Touch which is virtually the iPhone without the phone portion.
With the introduction of the iPod Touch, Apple kept the iPod Video, but re-named it the iPod Classic. The only main difference between the iPod Video and the iPod Classic is the incorperation of the new iPod Menu and the option of a 160 GB hard drive.
And finally, the product that shall give the meat of this post, the new iPod Nano. The new iPod Nano is smaller (again) than the older iPod Nano, it has a brighter screen, and it offers crisp video playback.
Now it’s time for the whole purpose of this post - the redesign of the iPod’s menu. As you can tell from the picture of the iPod Classic, the menu looks different - it now has an image.
“Ok, so it has an image in the main menu - big deal Brian! What’s so amazing about that? Hasn’t the Zune been doing that for a while?”
Yes, the Zune does have a customizeable image in the menu. However, what the Zune doesn’t have is the information that that space occupies. What you can’t tell from the picture is that when certain menu options are selected, that space will display a very slick looking visual aid as well as some information. For example, if you high-light a specific playlist, then that space will tell you how many songs are in that playlist. Or, if you have highlighted a video, that space will be filled with a snapshot of the clip.
“Granted, the visuals are better - so what?”
Yes, the visuals are much better with the iPods re-design, but there several other features with the menu re-design. Now, all the screen-iPods have Apple’s famous Cover Flow - allowing the user to browse the music by album art. Further more, the iPods Nano and the Classic offer a search option using the click wheel. Now you can search that new Classic’s massive 160 GB hard drive instead of manually looking through the wealth of titles you have. And just like Mac OSX’s Spotlight, the iPod’s new search is extremely comprehensive.
Now let’s move back to visuals for a moment. The previous iPod generation introduced purchasable games for your iPod. iPods have just about always come with three games - well, now they’re better and crisper. The graphics are incredible - especially for something so small. Not only are the games crisp, but so are the movies. I watched Ratatouille’s featurette (which can be viewed on Apple.com/Trailers) and it was amazingly crisp and smooth. Other than the screen being less than three inches wide, I would have thought I was watching it in big screen HD! The new Nano’s screen resolution is actually 65% greater than the old Nano*, and features the greatest resolution shipped by Apple yet.
All in all, the new iPod line-up forms an amazing collection of high-tech gadgets. I think Apple did an extraordinary job with these technological marvals.
5
