Living with Apple's new iPods, iTunes

Apple's refresh of its iTunes and iPod line, while not a radical remake, looks like a winner, according to our preliminary tests. As the embedded video shows, we found that the new iPods and iTunes features worked as promised.

As we noted previously, the new Nano received the most radical overhaul, inside and out. The tall, slim design, a throwback to the second-generation Nano, is extremely palm-friendly, and its curved display and rounded edges look very cool.

The built-in accelerometer reorients the display when you tilt the Nano—just like those on the iPhone and Touch—and you can view your albums in cover-flow mode as well as play games. One feature it borrows from a lesser-known MP3 player, the Sandisk Shaker, lets you shuffle your songs by shaking the player. 

The new Touch's more subtle improvements, a built-in speaker and side-mounted volume control, also worked very well. It's a pleasure not having to plug in earphones just to watch a video or play a game. The edges of the new Touch are noticeably thinner than the original model, which makes it feel more comfortable in the hand. Otherwise, it appears and handles the same as the previous Touch.

The jury is still out on the new Genius feature, however, which creates a 25-song playlist based on the type of song to which you’re listening. For it to work properly, Genius requires iTunes users to open an account, and it has to scan your entire library. We tested it on a collection of about 1,000 songs and found it easy to befuddle. It frequently came back saying it was unable to make a playlist because there weren’t enough similar songs. It’s better if you have a large collection of music. Genius playlists can be created and saved on the iPod and then synced back to iTunes. One quibble is you have to enable Genius in iTunes then sync to the iPod to get it to work on the iPod. The Genius feature is available on iTunes, the new iPods, and older Touches and iPhones.

We will be completing our in-depth tests very soon. But our initial impression is that these new arrivals have a lot to offer.

—Mike Gikas

Comments

[zora]

I'm looking for a good play station with strong speakers for my ipod. Can anyone recommand a good model?

[sgd]

I read on a different site that the Genius feature uses purchase trends to determine "similar" songs by looking at what other folks bought in addition to your song(s). This is different than analyzing the song's beat and choosing from your collection. For better or worse, it sounds like a push to get you to music you don't own (which implies getting you to buy more music). I think I'd be apt to not use it.

[tmm]

@richard: Actually Creative and Sony players will play iTunes Plus music just fine, since they support (non-encrypted) AAC.

As long as you limit your digital downloads to either MP3 songs (e.g. from Amazon, Emusic, Wal-Mart, etc.) or non-encrypted AAC (iTunes Plus), you should have no problem moving your music across devices.

If you are stuck with a bunch of encrypted AAC songs from the iTunes store that you want to play on another player, it may even be possible to convert them (e.g. by paying for an upgrade on iTunes, which also upgrades the bit rate to 256kb/s, or by burning to a CD and re-importing, which removes the DRM but loses tags, album art, etc. and also damages sound quality slightly.)

When the iTunes (music) store came out, it was revolutionary but hobbled with DRM encryption; since then, record companies have (finally) agreed to provide their music in the format we wanted all along: unencrypted MP3. My advice is either to convert any encrypted songs, and buy new music in unencrypted formats, or to not worry about it and stay with iPods, which are great music players (and widely available new, used, and refurbished at pretty much any price point.)

[Richard]

It seems to me that both the Ipods are quality electronic devices. The problem is that they seem to be using digital rights to force consumers to pay a ridiculous premium for their product.

I have used Creative labs, Sony, and Samsung which all seem to be capable players at a much much cheaper price. The rub... they can not play tunes purchased through itunes

[Dan]

What about the new ipod classic? Some comments on that would have been nice.

[jrw]

Duh. But how good are the recommendations? I thought they were pretty good, but when I downloaded them, they didn't make it into the Genius list that was asking for them. It takes into account popularity, and if you just d/l the song, it's not popular enough. They have some refinement to do.

[alba]

The Genius feature is simply a advertisement to get to you buy more music from iTunes. They will almost always recommend something you don't already own.