Apple's iPod more than a music player
By John Yaukey
Gannett News Service
It had to happen, and it had to happen in time for the holidays: Apple's first portable digital music player.
"1000 songs in your pocket,'' is how Apple describes the new iPod MP3 player, which will be available starting Nov. 10 (apple.com).
Like Apple's recent laptops, the iPod features impressive performance and steely good looks in a compact package.
The size of a deck of cards, the iPod measures 2.4 inches wide, 4 inches tall and less than an inch thick. At a mere 6.5 ounces, you may forget you've got it with you.
While it's not cheap, at $399 the iPod isn't exorbitant, either.
Features include:
- Ease of use. When you plug the iPod into your Mac via a speedy FireWire connection, all of your songs and playlists are automatically downloaded onto the iPod. When you add new music or rearrange playlists on the Mac, plug the iPod back in via FireWire, and it's automatically updated in seconds. The liquid crystal display — backlit by a white light-emitting diode for easy viewing in poor light — has room for six lines of text.
- Speed. With FireWire, the iPod will load an entire CD in 10 seconds.
- Endurance. The lithium polymer battery carries a 10-hour charge. You can fast-charge the battery to 80 percent of capacity in an hour or fully recharge it in three.
- Capacity. The capacious 5-gigabyte hard drive holds a whopping 130 CDs. The iPod supports the MP3, WAV and AIFF audio formats, and it can store any type of Macintosh file so it also works as a portable hard drive.
- Requirements. Apple Macintosh computer with a built-in FireWire port; OS (operating system) 9.2.1 (or later) or OS X version 10.1 (or later), iTunes 2 software (included with iPod).
