I wish to sing for you the praises of the Apple iPod.
It’s everything that is said of it, and more. I thought they were frivolous, until I bought a 20GB model for my daughter. Apple estimates 20 GB (giga, or billion bytes) will hold 5,000 tunes. In fact, my iPhoto stores 5,400 tunes (or 400 hours) in 20 of its 30 GB.
www.ipodnn.com says that the average number of tunes on an iPod is 500.
The iPod is great for more reasons than just the design and capacity. The key factor, in my opinion, is the way the whole process is integrated: ripping, organizing, transferring to the iPod, and listening.
“Ripping” is the process of transferring a tune form an audio CD, to a digital format such as MP3 or WMA or many others. The program used to accomplish this is called iTunes, not to be confused with the store. Once the tune is on your hard drive, you simply connect your iPod to the computer, and iTunes takes over, synchronizing the iPod to your PC by uploading all the tunes you have ripped.
The whole ripping process has been carefully designed for convenience and ease of use, which is important because if you have a significant CD collection, you will spend a lot of time ripping. At a rate of 15 minutes per CD, my 400 CDs required three weeks of solid work to prepare for transferring to the iPod.
The iTunes program has an option whereby as soon as a CD is shoved in the drive, it will automatically start ripping; I have two CD drives, so when one CD is completed, iTunes automatically ejects it, makes a “Boinggg” sound, and starts on the other drive. If you quickly insert another CD to replace the one that has just completed, you will have uninterrupted, back-to-back ripping. I am very grateful to my patient wife who faithfully trudged up & down the steps keeping the PC constantly supplied with material while I was at work.
The ripping was so intense that after 8 hours, iTunes started reporting read errors (iTunes has optional error checking). The solution was to let the drives rest & cool overnight.
An important part of this process is the Gracenote CDDB. CDDB is a data base with the Title, Artists, Tracks and genres (aka metadata) of gazillions of CDs. When you insert a CD in a drive, iTunes immediately logs on to Gracenote, transmits the CD’s unique identification number, retrieves the metadata, and writes a copy of it to your own hard drive.
It is very convenient to have this information automatically available, as having to enter all of it would tedious, time-consuming, and take the fun out of ripping. All information is submitted by the public. If you have an obscure CD that is not in the CDDB, you will have an opportunity to enter and submit the information.
I suggest you preview the metadata before accepting it. The quality is spotty; I bristle at seeing “Mozart” listed under “Artist”. Wolfgang was not seen laying down tracks recently at some hip New York studio. I’ve also seen entire albums where the title was under the artist, and vice-versa. I had to redo about 15% of my CDs. I then re-submitted information in order to provide a better alternative for my fellow audiophiles. You’ll recognize it: I snuck my web site URL in the comments (www.EnduringFuture.com).
You can also load the iPod with music you culled from the Internet, or tunes that you buy from the iTunes store. I found a few gems at the iTunes store, but a lot of good stuff that I like is not available from Apple Canada.
The amazing thing about digitally storing music is SHUFFLE! Shuffle consists of playing tracks at random. The tunes can be picked within one CD, or across your entire collection. Now this doesn’t sound like a big deal. However, have you ever experienced the following dilemma? You’re rifling through your CD collection, looking for something to play. You come across some old favourites, which you know will please you. But, there are hundreds of other, more obscure CDs, for which you laid down good money, but maybe they didn’t grab you as much so you don’t play them as often, although you should. So: do you go for the tried-and-true, or do you take a chance on some guy whom you can’t really stand a solid hour of anyway? Yes, you stick with the known, and wind up only listening to 20% of your collection.
The answer, of course, is to throw everything in one bit iPod pot, kick the shuffle switch, and let’er rip! Hours, days of bliss! There is something delightfully incongruous at having Bach followed by Jimi Hendrix, followed by some Flamenco or the wonderful Canadian folk group Quartette.
Eventually, you will have listened to every tune in your collection, in small, pleasantly juxtaposed, randomly dispersed tunes.
Another bonus is that once your music is digitized (yes, I know, the CD is also digital), you can click on any column and sort it by artist, title, date played, play count, etc. You get the pleasure of discovering you have four copies of Houndog, or O mio Babbino Caro, scattered across as many CDs.
In a small box the size of a pack of cigarettes, you hold your music, your soul, the essence of your being. With a flick of the thumb you can find any music you hold dear, to inspire any mood you experience.
(I predict we will hear of someone buried with their iPod.)
You can bring it with you to Sam the Record Man’s on Barrington, to make sure you don’t buy yet another copy of Piano Concerto No.9 in E flat, KV 271 because you can’t remember the title. Or else you can play some of your favourite acoustic instrumental for the clerk so he can suggest other stuff in the same vein.
I should mention that the battery is rumoured to die after 18-24 months, although I know people who’ve had their iPod for three years. Apple will replace the battery for U$99 (a bargain once you’ve seen what it entails).
So, in conclusion, I recommend the iPod because of the convenience and simplicity of its integrated design. Well worth the premium price.