Porky Pig will love the new iPod Classic

Porky Pig will love the new iPod Classic

I was in the new Natick Collection Apple store tonight. (Yes, the “Natick Collection” is just a mall — but to be tragically hip it had to become a “collection”.)

The place was mobbed and we finally got a chance to try the new iPods. I immediately went for an 80GB iPod Classic to compare it to the 5th gen 80GB model I currently have.

My first impression was that Cover Flow made the thing very slow. Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart was loaded on this unit and while I listened to it, I rapidly pressed the center button. As any iPod owner knows, pressing the center button while you play a song takes you through a loop of additional play functions, like skipping back and forth or changing the rating of the song. I was doing this to see if Apple added any new functions to the loop. They did — the ability to shift in and out of shuffle mode.

But what blew me away is that if you press the button rapidly while the song is playing, the music stutters. I couldn’t believe it…I tried every iPod Classic in the store and they all did it.

Apple is now in its baroque period: constantly guilding the lilly with pretty stuff while the basic technological content slips. The fact they shipped the device like this is proof positive that Apple is cruising on design and brand, and that the technological core of brilliant innovation they used to combine with imagination has begun to wane.

As Porky Pig says, “Th-th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks, for the iPod.”


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4 responses to “Porky Pig will love the new iPod Classic”

  1. David Avatar

    A jittery center button is lousy, but this – http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/12/20-inch-imac-shipping-with-janky-lcds/ – is fantastically awful. Apple is shipping computers with 18-bit color panels in them, instead of 24-bit ones. (That means 6 bits per RGB channel, not 8, or for B&W nuts like me, 64 grays instead of 256!) That’s not a QA glitch, that’s a conscious decision to downgrade a component and hope that nobody notices or cares. Caveat emptor and all, but if there’s one thing you expect from a mac, it’s great graphics.

  2. Alex Neihaus Avatar
    Alex Neihaus

    Hi, Dave.

    It wasn’t so much their recent price problems with their customers that got me…it was that this was a bug QA either could have or should have caught and which they shouldn’t have shipped with.

    More than just screwing early adopters on price, Apple has now moved on to screwing them on the actual product content and function as well.

  3. Dave Orecchio Avatar

    Hey Alex,

    So they are cruising along merrily, they still come out with great products. Like you, I recently stopped into a Cingular store to check out the iPhone and fell in love immediately! As soon as I can convince myself that it can synchronize with outlook effectively, I plan to purchase one. — Perhaps I should wait a few weeks though to see if the price drops another $200 —

  4. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Yeah, Apple really needs to release an ipod that doesn’t stutter while you rapidly press the centre button. The world is crying out for this feature but Apple is resting on their laurels.

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