What? Staplers are destructive!
And speaking of staples, Apple’s Voltron-like superpower that is iTunes and the iPod has grown even more powerful with the addition of a new teammate and the replacement of two others. Actually, make that two new teammates; I think Madonna counts as her own. So let’s break it down.
The iPod nano. Well, it’s… interesting. I like the color screen. I like the size. I like the black finish. I don’t particularly care for the proportions, but when you are putting a circle on a rectangle there are only so many places it can go. Overall I think it’s a decent product, but the price throws me a bit when yesterday you could get 6Gb for $250 and now you only get 4. But thinking logically, you are getting photo-capability and there was no other way they could price it. $150 would compete way too much with the shuffle, and they don’t seem to care for prices that aren’t multiples of 50 (generally). Unfortunately, the nano means the death of our old and surprisingly well-selling friend the iPod mini.
The iTunes phone would be great if it weren’t for a couple of things. First, it’s made by Moto, so I’d be very surprised if it lasts longer than two days before becoming the victim of some sort of critical defect. Second, it’s ugly. Motorola has proven that they can make a decent-looking phone in the past, so maybe their good designers were on vacation or something. Finally, here in the land of cows and bass-fishing we don’t have that there Cingular everyone down south is gabbing on about, so even if I did want this thing, I couldn’t have it. Thanks guys. While Cingular is an unfortunate choice, it’s also the most logical. These days they seem to be the most innovative and “cool” phone company. But another 10 months from now, maybe there will be a viable non-Moto alternative offered by Sprint, which I can ignore because I just want a phone.
Onto the useful stuff. iTunes 5 is here, and it looks different. A little. I don’t have a problem with it. I’m using it now; it works the same. It has some nice little sub-options integrated into the search. I think the old one had them, but these are more after-the-fact so you can narrow the search to artist/album/title from the results. You can also narrow it down to music/videos/audiobooks/podcasts/etc. It’s a nice straightforward system for a nice straightforward piece of software.
Most importantly (I’m only halfway sarcastic) is the addition of most (all?) of Madonna’s albums to the music store. I am actually happy about this because I don’t feel inclined to buy entire albums of hers for one or two songs, so it’s nice to see she’s finally joined the party.
Overall it’s a respectable batch of updates and additions. However, I’m still kind of frustrated at the lack of a real, bona fide 5G iPod. Hopefully one will show soon with the features introduced by the nano. I just can’t bring myself to settle for a 4G after waiting this long.