Ars Technica's iPod nano Dissection 532
starwindsurfer wrote to mention an Ars Technica review of the iPod nano in which they autopsy the cute little guy to find out what makes him tick. A more thorough review than the one we ran last week. From the article: "At this point we were astounded that the iPod nano was still working properly, albeit with a broken display. Because we had honestly expected the iPod nano to break by this time, we were forced to depart from our planned schedule of destruction and try and run over it with the car. Surely, we thought, it could never withstand the crushing power of German automotive engineering." Update: 09/12 14:58 GMT by Z : Changed linking words to previous article for clarity. Monday fuzziness.
What apple should do now (Score:4, Insightful)
Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
I am not sold on this. It is too small and costs too much. But I guess if I was driving 55 in my convertible, I'd be able to hear the playback over my car stereo crystal clear.
Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, for me the downside of the Nano is the lack of FM tuner. Mp3's are great, but sometimes you just want to listen to radio.
I have been looking at getting an mp3 player for quite some time, and I thought the Nano was going to be my thing. But I will probably just wait until iRiver comes out with their clone with the FM tuner on it.
Bad Selection of stress tests (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the radio sucks anymore.
Re:Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why engineers != business people != marketing people.
--Robert
Put it within 50ft of water like my cell phone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:3, Insightful)
When you think about it, the only radio stations that provide useful information that an iPod can't readily provide (ie traffic reports and weather) are AM radio stations...yet I only hear people clamoring for FM.
Re:Is autopsy the right word? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh.. battery life? (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh yea.. Join the pyramid - you may get a free nano [freepay.com]
Re:Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How to Kill an iPod nano... (Score:5, Insightful)
14) Throw phone out of Fifth-story window
Darn thing didn't even scratch.
I dunno about the nano, but if it's anything like similarly-shaped solid state consumer electronic devices, the weak spot is gonna be sustained torque. Take that thing, and put it in a vice to simulate supertight pants. Apply sustained forces for long periods and see if the case deforms, loosening a critical connection. Put it in one of those paint-shakers for a couple hours to simulate it being worn by a pogo-mad punkrockers.
Blunt trauma kills, but most of my devices die from "a long illness".
And now say this with a german accent (Score:4, Insightful)
And it finally gets funny!
Anyway: Thin objects tend to survive being driven over more than thicker objects. If the object is thin enough, the tire even stays in contact with the road, causing a lot less pressure on the object than you might expect.
Re:Firewire compatibility... (Score:5, Insightful)
riiiiight... because we all know that those leetle teeny hard drives are soooooo fast, much much faster than the data rate of a regular old firewire 400 connection.
Re:Where's the FM tuner??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please explain where the amplifier is in a crystal radio? It is possible to add an amplifier circuit, it isn't necessary.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
one reason they're scratch-prone... (Score:2, Insightful)
I abuse the hell out of my Palm, but I treat my iPod with kid gloves.
Re:Firewire compatibility... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and move your mouse around while doing the transfer
Hope you don't have USB speakers attached as well.
USB is a shared medium, and has some pretty neat traffic handling, but its still shared. Firewire is designed to be a dedicated host-to-host high-bandwidth data transfer medium.
Re:Mod parent -1 Totally Incorrect (Score:3, Insightful)
Neglect to provide a way to rip CDs, and most consumers will walk away. Neglect to include an FM radio, and you'll lose a few sales, but not many.
If Apple thought they could sell a device that could only be populated from iTMS, do you think for a second they wouldn't do just that?
Re:Firewire compatibility... (Score:4, Insightful)
The discussion is about Firewire performance WITH RESPECT to the Ipod (in particular, the Nano with flash memory). Tom's review tests DESKTOP HARD DRIVES with an order of magnitude faster transfer rates than Nano.
The benchmarks in that article show that Firewire 400 has about a 10% lead over USB 2.0 for larger, faster drives, and about a 5% lead for slower drives. Obviously, it is the slightly increased access time for USB2 which hurts it in high-performance situations...but as maximum media transfer rates go down, the small increase in access time becomes insignificant.
Given that the Nano is a flash-based device, and couldn't hope to have a write speed faster than 4MB/s (there's no way they're offering higher-speed flash at those prices), there's little gained in offering Firewire.
This is the kind of thing USB2 was intended for. CHEAP, UNIVERSAL connection technology that is "good enough" for most cases. Firewire 400, as popular as it has become, still cannot offer even half the total marketshare USB can. And for a device like this, where the size of the board is the limiting factor (instead of the size of the drive on other iPods), each additional feature (chipset, busses and external connector) makes the board that much larger.
YES, Firewire 800 is freaking fast. NO, you don't need it unless you have devices on the bleeding-edge of performance. Not to mention you can hardly take advantage of it anywhere because only Powermacs and a handful of PCs support Firewire 800 speed.
Re:there are better players (Score:1, Insightful)
I did my homework for a while before I bought a mp3 player, and decided on the iAudio 5, which is a nice little player. It plays oggs, works in Linux, and is pretty nice looking...but the battery life sucks on it. The control interface is also somewhat clumsy, and the build quality just isn't that of an iPod.
There's always going to be trade-offs, but Apple still puts out the most well rounded player IMHO.
Re:Non replacable battery??? (Score:3, Insightful)
ANCIENT WISDOM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iPod durability (Score:3, Insightful)
GAPLESS PLAYBACK!!!!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Stop ignoring the music lovers, Apple!!
Re:iPod durability (Score:3, Insightful)
They might say they get complaints like that all the time, but they're not about to tell a customer (and a mom) that they're full of shit. You have to ask the staff whether those complaints are valid or not.
Re:Firewire compatibility... (Score:2, Insightful)