Everyone Disco Dancing!
So I got the new ‘Pod today. Yes, after almost two and a half years of loyal service, “bad motherfucker.” is being retired to make way for “Bear is driving!” appropriately enough. We’re talking about 10GB 2nd generation and 40GB Photo iPods, respectively, by the way. Just in case we’re not on the same page. I haven’t even opened the new one yet, because I literally just walked in with it. For all I know the Chinamen in Shanghai screwed up the engraving. Point is, I wanted to get some thoughts out on, uh, paper, before I lose my objectivity.
The day before the “Apple Special Music Event” announced the iPod Photo, I said “Whatever Apple is announcing tomorrow, I’m buying.” Fortunately, they did not announce a Creed iPod, or a John Tesh one or something. Unfortunately however, they did not announce a Video iPod either, which I was secretly hoping for, even though it would have come out of nowhere. So I ordered the iPod Photo instead. I am a man of my word, after all.
Besides the lack of video (and the difficulty of deciding on an engraving), I had a few reservations about purchasing the Photo. Namely:
- No video.
- Still no cross-fade.
- No visualizations.
- Bigger.
- Pricier.
Those are the ones that come to mind now anyway, a week later. I probably had other concerns at the time. Such as the overwhelming desire for recolored Darth Maul/A-Team iPod. Video, I acknowledge, was a bit of a longshot. Fine. Bigger and pricier are troublesome, but understandable, too. The Photo definitely does more than any iPod previous, so it only makes sense that it costs an extra benjamin, and is in turn a little bulkier, too. It also comes with a case. Thanks Apple. No really. Still no stickers though, bastards (an argument for another day).
The other two omissions are a little less forgiveable. Visualizations and cross-fading. I’m sure when confronted with the former, Apple would just be like: “Ah, fuck you, you don’t want to look at a little visualization of your music on your iPod as you’re listening to it, you want to look at the album art.” To which I would respond: “You’re pwoabably wight.” However, the iPod Photo does have a video out, and I think people would definitely dig having a visualization on their TV.
At this point the iPod has gotta be packing some decent horsepower. Obviously someone has already dissassembled it, but they didn’t have the decency to let us in on the new chipset. I’m thinking there is one, since it can decode TIFFs and PNGs and other non MPEGy formats on the fly. Perhaps this will all be disproved once I actually open the thing up, but I’m thinking there’s enough omph in this sucker to run a decent visualizer at 640×480. Oh yeah, and to cross-fade tracks. Is that too goddamn much to ask for?
Apparently it is.
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