The first thing that strikes you when you unpack an ipod for the first time isn’t the cellophane wrapped scent of fresh electronics, and it certainly isn’t any sort of overwhelming presence as if you’d just unsheathed a thing of great power (even though it is a powerful piece).  It’s none of these things, the first thing that strikes you when you unpack your ipod box is how neatly laid out everything is, it’s almost… “cute”.  Compartments symbolized by minimal yet strangely intuitive icons.  You just know where things are and what they do.  The whole unpacking process makes it clear that Apple hasn’t just made an MP3 player, they’ve made a statement.

Let me get one thing perfectly clear off the bat.  I am not a fan of the Mac and I never have been.  The Mac world hordes remind of a cult.  Shining faces promote esthetic integrity only to lull you into the concrete prison that is the Mac OS.  I am no lover of Microsoft, Linux or any other operating system, they’re just tools.  But Mac users seem to project more into their beloved machines and that scares me.  The ipod itself feeds from the same sort of fanaticism, so my view has been skeptical as I take the journey into the ipod.  Researching the ipod I’ve come across many in the “community” who see it as an elitist toy that should remain exclusive to Mac users.

Back to the ipod, right out of the box it’s clear there is some “out of the box” thinking behind its design.  There is a design sense rare in the world of tech toys.  Sure, high end home theater gear has a snobbish exclusiveness, you buy a component made by a special high priced brand name and their packaging is probably unusual, possibly using packaging materials you don’t normally see in your average Pioneer DVD player.  But this was different.  Unpacking the ipod seemed to flow in a logical order, in a way it seemed to try to communicate as your fingertips reached in to caress its white plastic parts.  Packed in the center, nestled between two boxes that open up like a book is the ipod itself the tiny heart of the system.  It seems so small a thing for so much fuss, but you remind yourself that the tiny wafer thin box holds 20Gigs of storage space and includes tiny high efficiency audio playback components packed into something that makes a cigarette box look gigantic by comparison.  The 4th generation unit has a look of simplicity, dominated by two geometric shapes everyone learned in the first grade, a circle and a square.

Having experience with Creative’s Nomad I’m no stranger to MP3 players.  So, after finally installing itunes, the ipod’s control software and familiarizing myself with the basics I was a bit dismayed at what little control you really have with the tiny box when not connected to the computer.  Walking around with the ipod there is no way to create a play list or delete a song from the hardrive.  It took awhile but I had to learn to think in their system, not Creative’s.  Creative is a hardware company that’s been making peripherals for PCs for many years.  It’s no wonder the Creative Nomad’s controls were much like a scaled back PC, menu systems, submenus, tons of control.  This is the way of the PC.  But the ipod is designed to be simple and linear if minimal in its control.  It offers only the basic controls while you carry it around the street, you play music by either queueing up your favorite playlists or using random shuffle options.  To give you some idea of the difference between a 5 year old Nomad Jukebox and the new ipod, the Nomad had a two hour battery charge life at best, the ipod claims a 12 hour charge.  The Nomad had 6 Gigs of hard drive space, huge for its day.  The standard ipod today has 20Gigs.  If you find yourself in the market for a portable Mp3 player, you can’t go wrong with any of the Ipod.  A dedicated following means a high probability of good support well into the future and lots of great information available online.  This is something the Nomad can’t match as I cannot download the starting version of Nomad’s desktop software, not even from Creative.  If I didn’t find it archived on CD I’d be completely without any method of uploading data to the Nomad Jukebox.  I know it’s an old MP3 player but I was astonished to find that Creative doesn’t care to so much as host the older versions of their products desktop software.  I emailed their support and asked where I can download it and they said they don’t host it anywhere.  I was told they had it up on the web long enough now and that I should already have it.  So much for Creative, I’m happy not to provide future business to their line of MP3 players. 

It’s too early to get into much more than the unpacking thoughts right now, but I’ll be sure to give more thoughts in the future of sound quality and all the cool things this baby can do.