Yesterday was Christmas Day. I finally got to play with the iPod that was purchased in September. I wasn’t really looking forward to it that much because all the hype had gone and I had moved onto other things. When that day finally came, I had a quick play and put it aside to return to the internet. I did take the uttermost care to not leave a fingerprint on her by wearing gloves. Shes in a case now and not getting fingered anytime soon.

There was not much else to do on it other than listen to music, but in the short time I was playing with it, my first impressions are not that great. I am pretty disappointed with this product and I think I should thank higher powers for not giving this to me earlier, before the patchs because that could have been torture. I have to say, I enjoy listening to music on this. Other than the “nothing special, generic” earbuds, it sounds pretty good, but its elsewhere where the flaws lie.

It looks great, I do have to point that out. Apple always has brilliant design in their products, more so now than ever, and this this is beautiful. I just with that it wasn’t so fingerprint prone. I accidentally touched the screen before I put the protector on but lucky I had wet and dry wipes to clean it away. I know how bad the back scratches and marks, its the same as it has been since the start of the iPod. Its pretty and shiny but I do with they could use a more resistant metal.

I have never been a fan of the nearly endangered scroll wheel. It has always given me problems on older iPods. I always either under scroll or over scroll and I have always found it slightly tricky to get it in the exact location first try. This iPod’s scroll wheel it absolute torture and the worst thing about the classic I have found so far. It is so unresponsive that is it frustrating. Even worse is that it doesn’t work very well with my iPod sleve, so much that I will most likely have to resort to self modification and sergically remove the scrool wheel cover from it just so I can get a little funtionality back. It is not prefect and I wish they had this sorted before they released it. If there is anything worse I hate about iPods than over scrolling, its having it not scroll at all.

One of the most hyped features about the new iPods was Coverflow. I never really use it on the PC because it is painfully slow and I feel no compelling reason to use it. I was hoping that would be different with this, because I lovethe idea of flicking through album art to play an album. I generally pick an album to play, rather than use playlists so this feature is for me. I do have to say, it is generally an okay experience, as long as you don’t jump ahead and scroll too far and end up with a bunch of question marked albums that eventually load. Yes, there could be many reason that it does that but I don’t really care, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is when an album art is duplicated. It is one album, but because there is a variation with one of the artist names, it thinks they are seperate. iTunes is smart enough to realise that it is the same album and to group it together, so I have no idea why the iPod cannot do the same. Its really slack of them to not have it work right. Don’t go telling me about workarounds because they have their own flaws, it should be done rightand not have people working around it.

This thing is a little slower compared to older iPod but since this is my “first” iPod, I can’t really comment on that. My overall opinion is if you have a iPod video, there is no need to upgrade. If you want a iPod Classic, see if you can get an iPod Video first, or if a Nano suffices your music collection, get that instead. There is always the touch for the big spender that like pretty things and lots of features, but then again, I have never played with a Nano or Touch so I can’t give an honest opinion. I am a little displeased and disappointed with this product, but because it has the Apple Logo on it, I have to let it slide and say its a good product. Well done Apple! Well done Steve Jobs!

As I said two weeks ago, I pre-ordered my iPod. I did so a few days after the announcement of the new models. On that same day, there were pictures of people in the US with their new iPods. I knew I was going to have to wait a few days for them to get to my country.

Well now it has been exactly two weeks since I have pre-ordered it. Today I went to Dick Smith’s to see if my iPod was there yet since the expected date at the time was the 20th of September. That is a long time to wait for a product that is out everywhere but here. The status on the iPods is that there has been a delay in shipping. This now means I have to wait longer.

This could result in me getting it next month, possibly exactly 30 days after its release date. This would be okay if it was launched like the iPhone and I wasn’t expecting it but I think they someone should be putting a little bit more effort into getting these things to us here in little old New Zealand. Our neighbours in Aussie have probably had them for two weeks now.

But this is not new! We are always the last people to get products (with the exception of third world countries,) no matter what it is. Okay, that is easy to understand. It it can be a lot of work getting a piece of hardware released worldwide in a short time period. It is also just as hard to get software, such as video games released simultaneously worldwide with the PAL and NTSC and languages ect. ect. I have just counter-argued a point I was trying to get across.

Lets move onto to one last thing then, television shows. Why is it so hard for them to be released at the same time as New Zealand (and possibly Australia.) I can watch the show a few minutes after it has finished airing in the US so why do I have to wait a month, half a year, a whole year in some cases before I can watch a show broadcasted on TV in my country?

No wonder people pirate television shows, its because you make us wait so bloody long. Also you try and target piracy by using tactics like offering some shows cheap or making it easy to pay for stuff, but the big problem is, all this stuff is only available in the US. Why can;t you give anything to us international viewers.

It sucks that the world revolves around the US. Maybe I should just move there so I can get in with all the action and getting things on time and as soon as they come out. New Zealand is a great place but it is behind in a lot of things, some of that is our fault but sometimes some things are just out of our hands. It’s not our fault we have a tiny population and we are insignificant to the rest of the world.

Yesterday I managed to make the frontpage of Digg. This is a difficult thing to do in my opinion, although there are people that are naturals and get heaps of stories on the frontpage daily. Anyway, I strategically got a story that was bound to make it to the frontpage to get there before someone else submitted it.

First off, I needed to work out what the reader wanted to see and/or know and find a place that would be able to provide that information. I decided to go with the big topic of Apple’s new iPods, one that is seen on Digg at least 5 times a day. I was going to submit one of those stories!

One thing that hadn’t been done is the dissection of the new iPod Touch. Okay, it may seem like nothing but one question that is on a lot of people’s minds is Bluetooth, is it or is it not in the iPod Touch? The only way this could possibly be answered if in one of two ways, either Apple confirms it, or someone rips apart a unit and discovers a chip for Bluetooth.

I knew where I had to go to find the story. iFixit had recently taken apart the iPod Nano and iPod Classic and I was positive that they were going to do the same to the iPod Touch when they got their dirty hands on it. I frantically waited for signs of them having their way with her, refreshing the page every minute. The iPod was out and they had to have one by now.

After about an hour of refreshing, in fine print down the side of the page was the first sign on life “Check out our first look at the iPod Touch.” I click and saw a bunch of unboxing pictures. When are they going to rip into her? Are they going to? There was no mention on the site about taking it apart, but they had to! I refreshed a couple of times. I went to submit it to Digg, entering in all of the field waiting to submit it. I went back to iFixit. After more minutes of refreshing, finally there as a sign, they were going to take a look inside.

This was when I finally submitted it. I was hoping no one else had submitted it during my period of hesitation. To my luck, I was the only one. My story is bound to be on the frontpage by the time they finished stripping her naked. I get Peppery to digg it, he did as well as twittered it. I submitted it to Pownce, thats where a lot of the Kevin Rose Fanboys… errmm… I mean Diggers hang out.

Every 10 minutes, a picture of the iPod Touch went up, each one more less article of clothing from the last. After two hours, she was completely stripped of her glory and out there for the world to see her bits, every single component, every single chip. Every hour, I got one or two diggs. 6 hours later, my story only has 20 diggs. The problem was the timezone conflicts. I was going to have to wait till the morning to see the progress of my story. I went to sleep. In the morning, I wake up to discover my story hit the frontpage an hour ago. 400 diggs by the time I wake up. Yay! I got there! I win!!!

Today is the day Diggnation come out for members. Usually on this day, I would download Xvid Diggnation from a mirror. Unfortunately the mirror I use isn’t mirroring this week and I cannot find an alternative so I can get Diggnation early. This makes me uneasy because I am missing out and it has also ruined my Saturday Schedule.

Generally how it goes is on Saturday, I download Diggnation early in Xvid format to watch at night time. Then the next day, Sunday, I download the Quicktime HD H.264 and watch it at night then again too. This has been my weekend schedule for the past… 3 weeks now (I think) and I do not like my schedule being disrupted.

I am also thinking about downloading Diggnation a 3rd time each week, once in iTunes so I can put it on my iPod Classic when I get it. I’m not sure if it is worth it though. I wish I could just throw the Quicktime HD or Xvid onto it but iPods don’t support it. I vote for DivX/XviD support in Apple products!!!

I have read 2 not so good reviews on the iPod Classic. One was saying it is a piece of shit compared to older iPod models and the other review was saying it has some flaws. Generally I wouldn’t care about bad reviews, but on this occasion it bugged me, that is because of the fact that I have the iPod Classic pre-ordered.

I generally don’t pre-order products. I have only ever pre-ordered 2 other things in my life (so far) and they have been my PlayStation Portable and a game for it, Burnout Legends. Both of these purchases I was extremely happy with and are still happy with them today. I don’t want the iPod Classic to be the end of my pre-ordering products that are coming that I want.

Hopefully the iPod isn’t as bad as the reviews say and if it is slightly flawed, the problems can be ironed out in firmware updates to make me a happy customer. I don’t want buyers remorse over an expensive product, one which I have pre-ordered because I want to guarantee getting one when it does hit the stores. Lucky I’m not spending any of my savings on this product and that it is m parents money which makes me at ease at this stage.

Well today my parents pre-ordered my iPod from Dick Smith Electronics. They were one of the cheapest places with the 80GB Black Classic costing us $339 NZD. Now all I have to do is wait for the stock to arrive, which they predict to be the 20th of September. Lucky Me! Only problem I have now is keeping my nose clean or else my parent’s with hold it ransom.

I’m going to quickly touch on my opinions on the 4 new iPods that were announced yesterday at Apple’s Keynote.

Lets start small with the iPod Shuffle. New colours, big whoop! I have never really though of the Shuffle as a proper iPod. Its really just a thing that plays music that looks pretty nice. I’m not a huge fan of the new colours though, I preferred the old ones. Whenever I see a shuffle, which is rare, I think of that person as someone that can’t afford a real MP3 player.

3rd Generation iPod Nano’s look a little squashed and plumped. The colours aren’t that nice either. Yes it now plays video but how good of a player would it be in a small screen? I suppose I’d have to use one to properly judge it. I have never been a huge fan of the iPod Nano’s, or the Mini’s for that matter.

The iPod Classic looks pretty similar to the iPod Video, and the functionality is pretty much the same too, but with minor differences there and here. One of them being the implementation of coverflow, a feature I would find myself using quite a bit. Its also at a very nice price too and comes in the 80GB and 160GB models.

Last but not least, the one everyone as waiting for, iPod Touch. This iPod has most of the functionality of the iPhone, but without the communication feature. I was disappointed to find out it only comes out in the 8GB and 16GB varieties. I would have preferred if they had gone with Hard Drive storage for bigger capacity than going with Flash memory. I wouldn’t pay the money for a 8GB, or a 16GB iPod touch knowing that I can get the 160GB iPod classic with more storage, even if it has less features and no touch screen.

To sum it up, I wasn’t that pleased with the new iPods. I couldn’t justify buying the iPod touch at the price point it is since it only has a minimal amount of storage, 16GB at the most. I can see myself paying for the pretty reasonable 80GB iPod and if I had $399, I can see myself getting it without a second thought.