There’s no doubt about it, it’s the Rolls-Royce of MP3 players. For those of you that have spent your entire life under a rock, an MP3 player is a little gadget in which you can store your music. MP3 stands for “Mpeg-1 audio layer-3” and is the standard technology and format for compressing a song into a very small file.
The iPod’s design, as the boys at Apple like boast, “is ahead of the curve”. It has rounded corners and a chic silver and white case and it is also incredibly easy to use. After five minutes you’ll be navigating the menus like an old pro and making playlists for every conceivable eventuality. It also has a winning interface — a tiny round mousepad that you use by twiddling your thumb. I tested a battered 15gig machine, which should be able to hold about 2 700 songs.
Apple recently trumpeted the first birthday of the iTunes Music Store, saying it had sold 70-million songs at 99c a go. Here in Africa, we can’t use the service yet because of some copyright issue or other, so you’ll just have to rip all your own cds to the machine (for your personal use, you understand.) Battery life seemed fine — it’s inside the machine and you can’t take it out — and Apple says you can get about eight hours continuous play. Besides playing music, you can use it as an alarm clock, calendar, or to store notes and play games. You can also buy any number of add-ons (check the zastore.co.za) including a little transmitter (for about R500) that lets you broadcast to an FM radio, which will be very useful in the car or the kitchen.
The iPod is not cheap. The 15gig one costs R2 899, the 20gig R3 719 and you won’t get much change from R5 000 for the big 40gig. There are much cheaper options, like some of the machines from Creative, but the ‘pod is way ahead on looks. Then again, maybe you should hold off until Apple launches the iPod mini in SA soon, which is as small as a business card and hold 4gigs (about 1000 songs). Well, it’s only money.
Web guide:
Online Apple store: www.zastore.co.za