It's been a while since my last story; it's the same excuse every time: I've been busy. Well, it's true. This week is no exception. I have a lot on my plate and It will stay this way for the next two weeks. That's when I finally go home. I have a presentation to give a week from tomorrow and I still have to make the finishing touches on the two websites I'm working on. Also, I have a few major recreational events coming up this week that I will go into detail later.
However, I'm going to focus on something different, as you may have guessed from the title. Late last week, I finally got my "toy" for the summer. It is an Apple iPod. I'm not the first one to say this, but when I first opened the box, I was afraid to touch it and get it dirty. I overcame that fear quickly so I could play with it. It's so small, one could describe it as "cute." It's about the size of a deck of cards, and yet it's a 10 GB (10 billion bytes) hard drive. I was instantly enthralled.
I plugged it into the firewire port on the computer and iTunes (My computer's mp3 player program) opened automatically and downloaded my entire music collection into the iPod in a matter of minutes. I was ready to go in less than 5 minutes. At the same time, it had already idenified itself as "Chris Taylor's iPod." Also, the battery in the iPod was charging from power from my computer. It also comes with an AC adapter so I don't have to charge it through the computer every time. The firewire cable also works for the adapter.
The controls on the iPod are extremely easy to use and the scroll wheel spins so smoothly, I can barely tell it's rotating. When I was browsing through the screens, I found that not only did the iPod have all my songs, but it also had my various playlists set up. I plugged in the headphones and gave it a listen. I was dancing around the room just like the guy in the commercial. The sound is crystal clear. I looked at some of the features listed on the box. This is an exact quote of one of the features: "20 minutes of skip protection (yes, minutes)." There is also a button lock switch so there are no accidental button presses when it's in your pocket, and the screen can be backlit with a brilliant white light.
Ok, ok. For all those non-Apple people out there, I'm sorry. I've been going on for a while about this. People may think I work for Apple. I probably could with the way I've been carrying on for the past few paragraphs. As far as I know, the iPod can only be used with Macs because it only works with iTunes, which is also only available for Mac, and it connects with the firewire port. So far, I haven't seen any PC machines with firewire ports in them. I have to get back to work, so stay tuned and stay safe!
P. S. - Have fun on vacation, Morgan!
Written 7/16/2002 by Chris Taylor
Update 7/17/2002: I visit the Apple web site and find out that they have unveiled a new 20 GB iPod and lowered the prices of the other two models. They also have made the iPod useable on Firewire equipped Windows machines (good news for you PC guys). I've barely had my iPod for a week! The same thing happened when I got my laptop. I get it, and roughly a month later, the new Titanium G4's are released. I tell you it's very frustrating. Oh well, I still love my iPod.