You wouldn't want to see my 5G iPod right now. It would ruin the fantasy. It's still got the clear screen protector that is stuck onto it when you take it out of the box. That's not so bad except that the two bottom corners have curled up about 1/4 inch each. Not nice. But I'm not ready to remove what little protection this screen represents right now.
I've got the little pouch that Apple provides. But in order to do anything with the iPod, I have to take it out of the pouch and that's when trouble might occur. I remember how incredibly sensitive my nano was to scratches. It seemed like if you just breathed on it, it would scratch. So I'm not taking any chances. I'm tempted to just keep it around in the case for now and use the nano except for special occasions.
I'm worried it will slip out of my hands and fall to the ground while I'm out walking or something. I had it with me today walking downtown and back. It was in the case except for when I needed to adjust the volume. I was wishing for a tiny little scroll wheel on the top right then so I could keep it in the case.
My nano has a couple scratches and I want this one to stay pristine in its beauty. Kind of like the people who keep their cars covered and in the garage and barely use them. This really is a museum piece. Too bad it had to be delicate.
Now that there's a nano lawsuit about the scratches, maybe this will be the most beautiful iPod ever. Next time, they'll make it more rugged and perhaps a little less gorgeous. Or not. It is Steve Jobs after all. I'm convinced he counts public opinion at about 25% and his personal opinion at about 75%.
But I have been using my iPod since I got it Friday night. I've listened to music and podcasts. I've watched a TV episode. I was surprised just how good the TV show looked on the little screen. I think this iPod will be great for short programs including 43 minute TV episodes.
I would only want to watch a full-length movie under duress. I'll put a couple emergency movies on my 5G so that in case I really need that kind of distraction and have no other options, I will have them there. But this screen is too small for a 1.5 - 2 hour movie. I would get eyestrain.
I tried using PodWorks 2.8.5 to copy TV episodes from my iPod to iTunes on my G5. That worked in case you wondered. Copying episodes is fast, downloading them takes a few minutes on my DSL connection.
I tried watching DigitalLife TV episode 10 from iTunes on my iPod and it was audio only. Disappointing then. But now that I've downloaded the Video iPod version from their site, it's fine - all 168 megs of it. I like this. I could stick this in my pocket and listen and then take a look from time to time.
I'm hoping to find a good blogger who makes it his or her business to learn this stuff find the best video material. There are full-blown TV commercials on here though. Too bad but I guess inevitable for free content. iLounge has a really thorough review but not enough real world user info for my taste.
Saturday I spent a couple hours going through my iPhoto collection and cropped a lot of photos and put them in an album for the video iPod. That was kind of fun. I like doing a best of rather than putting every photo I've ever taken on there.
I was expecting a bigger form factor on the video iPod. And will look forward to such a device in the future, but the pocket-sized device has a lot going for it. On-the-go, the pocket-sized device rules. The iPod is definitely an always-have-it-with-you sort of thing. Once you go beyond pocket-sized, you've got problems in that regard.
Given the state of the art, I'm thinking Apple did about as well as they could. I get to have a single device that can play video when called for. If this video stuff gets really big, I'm guessing they'll do the 3“ plus device Steve talked about a year ago.
New purchases. Some Music Videos. No Doubt with Gwen Stefani - Don't Speak and Sunday Morning and Coldplay Fix You and Yellow for a start. I can see collecting a few choice music videos for my video iPod. I don't watch MTV so I've never seen these videos. But I do like to see my favorite artists performing and now I can do that easily and efficiently. There are lots of and lots of music videos that are not on iTunes, though. I wouldn't mind going back in time and finding some gems here and there.
By the way, I've definitely run into more iTunes download problems since the video iPod came out. Someone is downloading a lot of videos is all I can figure. Apple is probably struggling to keep up with the bandwidth requirements.
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