iHarbour and the spiralling sense of defeat

Sitting on public transport you can look left to right and wouldn't have enough fingers to count the white headphones pointing towards their shiny DAP, ripe for the picking of any iMugger who fancies an upgrade. It's this enormous user base that has always deterred me from buying into what Apple describes as 'Wearing an iPod' and the stigma that goes with it.

In the last 6 years the players that have graced my ears have varied in quality and in some cases lacked the astatically pleasing lines and curves of an iPod but they all had one thing in common; they all pushed the market forward with a new, groundbreaking feature. I started my jaunt into portable digital audio players with the Archos 6000. Only one word can truly sum up this device up, it was a bloody brick. I remember if I put it in my pocket it would pull down my trousers so I always had to have it in my coat pocket; a real disability in the blazing heat of an August day I can tell you. The great thing about this player was it had a whopping 6GB hard drive 6 years ago. I then moved on to some very poor flash based drives then onto the Archos AV420 (20GB) which could record from any source, including the television which could then be played back just like a small DVR. Clever stuff. From here I moved onto a smaller, flash based player, the Sansa E20 (6GB/2GB Micro SD). This was a great player but I very quickly got fed up with not having my entire music collection with me on the move so this only lasted about 4 months. From here I was at a loss, there was no player on the market that was small in size, large in capacity and worked nicely with my Mac and pc. That's when I had the opportunity to pick up an 80GB 5th generation iPod for a fraction of the cost in USD. When your defence is down, anything can get in.

It's worth mentioning here that I was fully aware of the majority of an iPod's restrictions and quirks so the rest of this could just sound like bad research or stupidity on my part. I'm happy for you to pick one of the two but do maintain the thought that some of these annoyances are pure fantasy as to the MP3 player I really want, but does not yet exist.

• The dreaded Sync - If like me, you've spend many hours getting your MP3 collection just right over the last 8 years then you should approach iTunes very carefully. When you first install, ensure the button is unchecked which offers to automatically organise your music collection or you'll be left with a very different file structure. Syncing your music with iTunes and the iPod brings up some of the least convenient results when you're not really used to a computer making choices for you. I find it hard to pin point exactly what I don't like about the sync feature but I probably have a hard time with it so much because I like to be completely in control of folders on my portable devices and my PC/Mac. For iTunes to be responsible for syncing, especially when it comes to podcasts, I can miss that something has been added or more terrifyingly - removed without my knowledge or consent.
• Clicking Click wheel - For some reason this clicking really rubbed me the wrong way so it was the first alteration to the default settings that I made. It's probably there to mimic the old 1st generation mechanical click wheel that no longer exists. Thinking more about that click wheel as a whole, I think I would prefer one with a mechanical wheel to get a better tactical feedback on it anyway.
• Share and share alike - Often I'll visit a friend's home and rape their recently downloaded music and videos (only the legit, non digitally rights managed, legal stuff, naturally). Put video or music on the iPod and you'll struggle to drag and drop it back off the device and onto another person's PC. Pretty selfish to take and not give so apart from using the storage section of the drive, you need to use a third party application to extract them. Annoying.
• Doesn’t output to HD signal for displaying on a HDTV - Kind of a shame but understandable.
• Wifi is something that's getting much more commonplace in handheld electronic devices, a standard Wifi chip costs about $1/£0.50 to Apple and their iPod is more than powerful enough to utilise one. So why haven't they! My guess is that even if the technology is immediately available to them, it's in their best interest to stagger the leaps in technology to suck dry the financial gain from every generation of iPod. If they put all their cards on the table in one move, they'll have nothing to throw down in 8 months time when the new iPod is unveiled. To be fair, this has to be pretty much standard business practice but that doesn't make it any less frustrating for the consumer.
• Is it just me or is the iPod really below standard on battery life? I get about 5 hours use before my brain gets the "Must find charger" dread of seeing a battery symbol below 50%. With video it's substantially less. My old Sansa spoiled me somewhat, with 20 hours of audio playback and 8 hours of video. My only complaint with that was that if I used it for 20 hours over the space of 2 weeks, I would always loose the charger so at least the iPod one is always to hand. It's a fine balance of battery life and neglect in an MP3 player it seems.
• Doesn't sync through fire wire - Great! Enough said. The more ways of avoiding the sync feature the better.
• Proprietary cable - Mini USB would be incredibly useful. Call me cynical but I'm assuming Apple have done this to assist in 3rd party companies seeking the coveted badge of 'Made for iPod' on their packaging. This is a relatively unknown tax which assures the user to a high quality and the fact that it will work correctly, but also means Apple gets a 10% percentage of the retail price of a product they have not developed themselves. Sneaky.
• I was happy to see there's a software noise restriction lock in the menus. The amount of times I've accidentally blasted my ears with the first five chords of Pantera's classic love song "F***ing Hostile" is beginning to have long term effects on my hearing. This is especially relevant to sound isolating headphones as they need less than 60% of the full volume bar to be more than effective due to the nature of them blocking out background noise. The bottom line is that the thought of owning an iPod AND being deafened by it would be too much to bare.
• Formatted for Mac means you can't use with PC - Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing this is to do with the FAT32 formatting used in Windows and not as on Macs?! Irritating none the less that I have to format it on my PC so that it works on both platforms. Without access to a PC with iTunes it would be even more frustrating.
• Non user replaceable battery - it worries me that one of the hottest topics of discussion in the office is replacing a dead iPod battery that only lasts 30mins after 1 year of use. It's no mistake that the user can't replace the battery, I’m sure of it. Apple have made the assumption that most people will just buy the most up to date iPod as a replacement, if I’m honest, I probably would too if they made it all shiny and whacked Wifi and a touch screen in it, with a 250GB drive and a 1080i projector stuck in the top...

The bottom line is, I own an iPod and am finding it to be a love/hate relationship. It’s not the most stable of operating systems and often freezes up but I am impressed with the intuitive, simple interface design which I’ve used previously in Front Row on the Mac. The iPod for all its annoyances does do one important thing right and that’s the audio quality. Since using various portable music players this one really does come out on top of the pile, especially when used with a decent set of headphones like the Shure E2Cs. I like the form factor and the way I can put 80GB of storage into my pocket and pretty much forget it’s there. There’s also a great advantage to owning a player that 60 million other people own and that’s a constant supply of cables, support and people willing to put time into hacking the device to turn it into something which is more deserving of the title of Market Leader.

Ok Apple, I think this gunfight is over; I'm running low on bullet points anyway.