iPod Mini

From the minute I first saw the iPod Mini, I was totally in aww. No, not awe, aww, as in "aww, isn't it cute", but this slender player is the little brother of the MP3 player that is ruling the MP3 world, and as such is fully capable of taking you to new heights of the MP3 revolution. Having used my Mini for almost 3 months now on a daily basis, it's changed my life, and can for you as well.

Let's start with the basics. The iPod Mini is no longer the newest member of the iPod family, with the Shuffle making it's debut at MacWorld in January 2005, but it's neither the oldest. Originally released February 17, 2004, it is what would be called the mid-level entry today. It's slender form factor (2" x 3.6" by .5") and weighing in at just 3.6 oz, the Mini is the ideal pocket device, neither too large to fit in a pocket, nor too small to be lost in the shuffle (no pun intended). It's 4gb storage and 8hr (estimated) battery life is usually more than enough for short trips, and from personal experience, even that is the conservative end of the spectrum. Keeping the volume down and using your car or home stereo's built in volume will extend that somewhat. And though Mac claims this is enough for 1000 songs, someone like me who uses lower bitrate files will be able to keep a few more files available on it.

Included on the hardware side of the device are the standard Apple set of ear bud headphones, two separate connection cables (one USB, one Firewire), a stand alone charger that can fold itself into a little box (using the included firewire cable to connect from the charger to the Mini), and a belt clip that clamps on to the back of the device. With these items, you have everything to start using your iPod as your new best friend. Additional accessories like the iPod arm band or various cases may make your experience unique, but are never necessary to get you up and going. The headphones are clean and crisp, including two separate sets of sealed bud covers, making this the only hygiene friendly MP3 player I've seen yet. At louder volumes they seem to be a little "metallic", but they are more than enough for your daily jog, working in the garden, or trip through the grocery store. The connection cables each end in a proprietary iPod connector, and though I have my issues with this (I would have preferred to see a universal USB or Firewire Mini plug) it is crisp and tight, allowing for little wiggle room, and definitely able to support the player should it fall off the desk while connected. The stand along charger is a very cute device in it's design, with the prongs to plug it into any power outlet folding in and out to smooth the lines of the pack when not in use. This device has a firewire port on it's top that accepts the included cable and is also nice and snug, resisting a glancing tug it may encounter in daily use. It is more slender than your standard "wall wart" block, and as such, will only tie up one space on your power strip. Although I would have liked to see a rotating feature accommodating into the power adapters prongs to allow it to be placed either vertical or horizontal, this is a minor gripe from someone who's had to chain a couple surge suppressors together to supply power to my various "wallwarted" devices. From a strictly hardware point of view, I can find very little to fault this package with.

As far as the software, Mac includes their venerable iTunes software package. If you haven't seen this yet, I urge you to take the free download available at www.iTunes.com. Although it's not what most windows users are used to, the marvel of it's search functions, catalog ability, and id tag editing features is a sight to behold once you've mastered it's low learning curve functions. It allows you to sort your music by one of dozens of criteria and has a friendly interface that anyone can master with a little work.

With that said, the one glaring omission that apple forgot is to include music with their player. And to me, this is a doozie. When had my first Creative Nomad, I was amazed by the fact that it included a library of songs already copied to my player. Not that they were the best songs in the world, but a nice library of classical music is often hard to come by, but there it was, waiting for me. Not so on the iPod Mini. Although it's loaded with other features that few can match without involving another device (games, calendar, alarm, contact list and more), the main purpose for this device is going to be for a long time, to play music. I know that they offer their iTunes store to purchase music, and perhaps a gift card of some sort would have made me loose my mind, I instead had to load the same songs I had on my current Zen into the Mini until I discovered Podcasting. Now this definitely isn't a deal breaker, but to the uneducated, this can be an issue. iTunes can rip your CD's for you, but what if you want to try it out as soon as you have the battery charged? What if you don't or can't download music from iTunes? (no credit card / no high speed connection, etc) Perhaps an included sampler CD with several non-offensive genre's would have been better, with the MP3 files pre-loaded with the software. On the other hand, the included software really is VERY good, and definitely worth the lack of music, so you'll have to weight the difference for your personal situation.

As far as the iPod Mini goes, I think Apple has knocked another home run out with it's inclusion into the mid-level MP3 player scene, and I look forward to seeing where they go from here.

9 out of 10


Update - After several problems, three emails to apple and several google searches on the subject, I've got to make a note on iTunes 4.7.1.30. This piece of software is very buggy in my experience and the experiences of several of my testers. If you haven't updated to this version yet, I would avoid taking the update till it moves past 4.7. iTunes and it's support from Apple gets a 3 out of 10