Apple iPod Technical Specifications
Capacity	5GB hard disk drive Holds up to 1,000 songs in 160-Kbps MP3 format Stores data in FireWire disk mode
Size and Weight	Height : 4.02 inches (102 mm) Width : 2.43 inches (61.8 mm) Depth : 0.78 inch (19.9 mm) Weight : 6.5 ounces (185 g)
Input and Output	FireWire (IEEE 1394a) port 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
Power and Battery	Built-in rechargeable lithium polymer battery (1200 mAh) Playtime: 10 hours when fully charged Charges via FireWire connector to Mac system or power adapter Fast-charge time : up to 1 hour (charges to 80% of battery capacity) Full-charge time : up to 3 hours
Audio	Up to 20 minutes of skip protection Maximum output power: 60 mW rms (30 mW per channel) Frequency response: 20 to 20,000 Hz Audio formats supported: MP3 (up to 320 Kbps), MP3 Variable Bit Rate (VBR), WAV, AIFF Upgradable firmware enables support for future audio formats
Customizable Settings	Shuffle Repeat one or all Startup volume Sleep timer Backlight timer Display contrast Clicker Languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean
Included Accessoris	iPod earbud-style headphones Apple FireWire Cable (2 m) Apple iPod Power Adapter CD-ROM with iTunes 2 software and electronic documentation, a getting started guide and a 90-day limited warranty.
Headphones	Earbud-style headphones with 18-mm drivers using Neodymium transducer magnets Frequency response: 20 to 20,000 Hz Impedance: 32 ohms Sensitivity: 104-dB sound pressure level at 1 mW
Display	2-inch (diagonal) liquid crystal display with white LED backlight 160-by-128-pixel resolution, 0.24-mm dot pitch Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously
Power Adapter	6-pin FireWire connector AC input: 100V to 240V at 0.4 amp maximum Frequency: 50 to 60 Hz DC output: 12V at 1 amp maximum
Environmental Requirements	Operating temperature: 32° to 113° F (0° to 45° C) Non-operating temperature: -4° to 158° F (-20° to 70° C) Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)

The Apple iPod - it's no larger than a cassette tape box.

The back of the iPod is furnished in shiny chrome.

 

Apple has once again entered the consumer electronics market with the introduction of the iPod. The last time Apple made the foray into this market was with the Newton and that ended when Steve Jobs returned to steer Apple back to health. Steve Jobs articulated that Apple's vision of the third era in personal computing is the age of the digital lifestyle which was brought on by the explosion of digital devices such as cell phones, digital still cameras, DV camcorders, PDAs, handheld computers, DVD players and MP3 players. A great digital lifestyle solution relies on many components, the hardware, the software, the operating system, the Internet and the integration that ties all these components together. The iPod and iTunes is one such example. In this review, I will discuss and highlight some of these points.

The accessories that came with iPod which includes the software CD, a FireWire cable and a pair of earphones.

 

When I first saw the pictures of the iPod when it was first announced, I thought, well this is yet another MP3 player and this one's from Apple but with Apple's distinct and great industrial design. Little did I know that this (just another MP3 player) is a power packed MP3 player with features that would put any existing MP3 player in the market to shame. When the box first arrived at the Hardware Zone office, I was amazed at the packaging and the thought that went into the design of the package let alone the iPod. I can tell you that I wouldn't throw the box away. It is beautifully designed with the box shaped like a cube with 2 halves. One half holds the iPod, the other the FireWire cable and AC adapter. The iPod is neatly and cleanly sealed in a plastic bag with printing that says, "Do not steal music". Beneath the iPod package, a neatly packed pair of headphone leads me to think that they hermetically sealed the headphone and the sponge. It is as though they assembled and packaged the entire thing in a clean room.

The AC adapter is a neat little package with flat retractable AC pins designed for the US and Japanese wall socket. The adapter looks just like a little powder compact that some women have in their handbag. This is also in white. Almost everything is white in the package which projects the impression of purity and cleanliness.

The 11th commandment - Do not steal music.

The AC adaptor - fits right into your palm.

 

Upon removing the iPod from the package, I proceeded to power on the unit. The iPod seems to ship with some power in its built-in battery. I was able to power up the unit and navigated its menu. The user interface is just fantastic. I can't tell you how easy it was to navigate the entire menu system. I think I looked through everything in the menus in under 5 minutes. Little wonder that a thick user manual isn't required. Apple shipped a single folded up page as the user manual and it is all graphical. This is certainly one of the strongest point of this product.

There are very few buttons or controls on the device. With only 5 buttons, a very well hidden wheel, a hold switch and 2 jacks (one for your headphones and the other for FireWire), there is indeed little else that could go wrong. I proceeded to then install iTunes 2 into my Power Mac G4 to start everything rolling and to have some MP3 tracks loaded into the iPod. Installing iTunes 2 is a breeze. I use MacOS X so I had to install the MacOS X version. iTunes 2 for MacOS 9 is also supplied for those who does not have MacOS X.

Personally I think iTunes is a godsend to Mac users. Before iTunes, there wasn't really any good MP3 software for the Mac. When Apple made iTunes available, it not only became the facto standard MP3 software for the Mac, it had built-in capability to burn CD-DAs from MP3 tracks. It also has an easy to use and powerful cataloging feature for managing your music library on your Mac. In terms of usability, there is little difference between the original iTunes and iTunes 2. New features in iTunes 2 includes, a sound enhancer to digitally enhance or enliven audio quality during output, a multiband EQ and EQ presets that can be applied to individual tracks, a crossfader that smoothens transitions between songs, the ability to burn and recognize MP3 CDs, improvement in the CD burning resulting in faster CD burning, Unicode support to accomodate Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters to be entered as song information, AppleScript support allowing users to automate iTunes and lastly, integration with iPod. If you have iTunes installed, you will need to upgrade or re-install to iTunes 2 to use iPod.

The new iTunes 2 for MacOS X.

Five buttons and a wheel - that's about all the controls you'll ever need to navigate through the functions in the iPod.

Once iTunes 2 is launched for the first time, it will look through you hard disk for MP3 tracks and put it into its library. I then quickly plugged iPod into my G4 using the supplied FireWire cable. There was a warning that came with a cable saying to use only this cable to connect to the Mac and the AC adapter, so do ensure to use the cable supplied if you do not want to risk damaging your iPod.

Immediately after plugging the wire into iPod, iTunes will prompt you to setup your iPod. At this point, you can give your iPod a name and set iTunes to automatically update iPod upon connection. After this you can start loading MP3 tracks into your iPod. It took mere seconds to download the tracks that I have on my Mac (I didn't have many, perhaps 30 tracks or so). Once that is done, disconnect and you are ready to go. Loading music with iTunes is just so easy, all you need to do is just plug the FireWire cable in and everything works on its own. All you need to manage is your music library in iTunes and this entire library will appear in your iPod complete with playlist (provided you created the playlist in iTunes). You cannot do any editing or ordering of playlist and songs on the iPod. Everything needs to be done with iTunes.

Charging can be done with the AC adaptor via the FireWire port.

You'll find the Hold switch, the headphone jack and FireWire port on top of the iPod.

The speed at which the tracks are loaded into iPod is just plain amazing. All I can say is, FireWire is absolutely fast! It is the ideal interface for transferring huge amount of data. Because of this feature, the iPod can also be made to mount on your desktop as a hard disk which means that you can copy regular files or applications into the iPod. Yes, it's a portable hard disk! While connected via FireWire, the iPod also charges itself by drawing power from the FireWire interface. iTunes 2 for both MacOS X and MacOS 9 comes pre-installed into the iPod hard disk so you could actually install iTunes into any Mac that you connect to. I did not try this but I suspect that the iPod acts as a portable FireWire hard disk by default. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case though.

I spent a few hours listening to tracks that I loaded into the iPod from my Mac. The tracks were imported by iTunes from CDs that I have. The bitrate I used for the import was 160kbps. I found the sound quality quite good and the volume control smooth. The iPod is quite capable of delivering enough power to the headphones to blow your eardrums. I did find the earphones a little uncomfortable probably because I did not have the sponge installed. The headphone sound quality is acceptable but lacks bass. However, the headphones were able to reproduce the audio quite faithfully. Listening with good quality and larger headphones certainly does the iPod a lot more justice (eg. Sennheiser, AKG, etc). This is usually the case as with all other portable audio devices, being lightweight and portable, in-ear headphones often lacks bass when compared to larger over-the-ear type headphones.

I especially like the display backlight. The white LED illuminates the display very well offering good readability under low lighting conditions. In addition to that, the monochrome LCD also offers very good resolution and contrast thus allowing good readability as well. I wished the iPod weighed less though, at 185g or 6.5 ounces, it is too heavy to put in your shirt pocket. The chrome back and thick polycarbonate case probably accounted for most of the weight (not to mention the built-in harddisk too).

The monochrome display is big and that makes it very readable.

 

Apple certainly did a great job with the iPod. It is a true reflection of a well thought out design - credits to the industrial designers at Apple. It is indeed a great piece of engineering and a work of art. I would even say that the design makes the iPod ornamental. Its unique style and look certainly makes it very appealing to the young and trendy, making it a fashion or a lifestyle product. My only gripe is that it looks too clean and that the chrome and polycarbonate exterior makes it extremely difficult to keep from wear and scratches.

PC users enticed by this product would also be put off by the requirement of iTunes 2 which is currently only supported by MacOS. It would certainly be a boon to Windows users if Apple could make this product available to those users. At US$399, it certainly doesn't come cheap but with its 5GB of storage, I think it is actually quite a good deal since it is not only an MP3 player but a portable hard disk or is it the other way round? A 1GB IBM MicroDrive certainly costs a lot more than the iPod. Whichever way you look at it, the iPod remains one of Apple's best product to date. At the time that this review is published, Apple Asia has yet to announce the availability of the product and the pricing.