Apple's iPod raises bar for digital music players

By Leonard Fischer
Gannett News Service

Striking the right balance between price, portability and memory has been a challenge for companies that make digital music players.

Apple Computer's new iPod player does perhaps the best job yet of letting consumers comfortably carry their music libraries with them, even though it's not inexpensive and only works with Macintosh computers.

After spending a couple of weeks playing with both pre-release and final versions of the iPod, it's easy to find good things to say about it.

Its clean design is striking. Its built-in 5-gigabyte hard drive can store more than a thousand CD-quality tunes, and it's 32 megabytes of built-in "cache" memory prevents the player from skipping.

To make it easy to find an album or song in its music library, iPod includes a large, backlit display and a scroll wheel for your thumb that lets you navigate a series of logical menus that organize music by artist, by album or by playlists you create.

It's easy to transfer music from your Mac to the iPod thanks to its speedy FireWire connection, which automatically synchronizes with the included iTunes 2 software. Transferring a gigabyte of music takes under a minute.

But as exciting as all of iPod's features sound, it's the quality of music it plays and how long the battery lasts that matter most.

Overall, sound quality is excellent, especially when iPod is hooked to professional speakers or headphones.

iPod doesn't skimp on battery life. In tests, the lithium polymer cell lasted the rated 10 hours and recharged quickly, too.

This isn't to say that iPod is perfect. Some joggers said it might be too heavy to carry while running, while a lot of people who looked at it were concerned its stylish case might be susceptible to scratches.

iPod also isn't cheap at $399, although its convenience and storage features, as well as its ability to work as a portable hard drive, help justify its price.

Finally, Apple should consider adding Windows support because some folks who looked at iPod said it won't make them switch to a Mac, despite its innovative features.