tom.ternquist – a place for my things.

5th Generation iPod Nano
Despite all the sleek and sexy curves of its predecessor, the fifth-generation iPod Nano attempts to pack even more features into an already solid device. This time around, not only has Apple continued to deliver a near-perfect listening experience, the company introduced some new features that help the iPod Nano stand out from its competitors.

At its core the iPod Nano is a music player, and as such it does not disappoint. Consumers who have owned earlier models will be quite at home playing music, as the interface is nearly identical. One significant addition comes in the form of an FM radio tuner. I’m a huge fan of this feature, and while it’s a little hard to believe they couldn’t have put it in sooner, I’m glad it’s here. The tuner even includes a Live Pause feature and iTunes tagging, so that if the station has song information you can save it and then purchase the song on your next sync.

If there’s one thing that’s going to jump out at you on the new iPod Nano, it’s the video recording capabilities. Recording video is straightforward, and the Nano simply requires you to select “Video Camera” from the menu, rotate the device horizontally and press the center button to start and stop recording. The video quality is certainly acceptable and good enough for uploading to YouTube, but it isn’t HD-quality.

For all the potential usefulness of the video-recording capabilities, I found one very non-Apple-like issue that made me pause and look online for the iPod Nano’s full manual. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I do consider myself a expert user of computers — if I can’t figure out how to use a major feature on a device, it is a problem. That said, were this not an Apple product that had seemingly complete integration with iTunes, I might let this slide. But it is an Apple product, and it does integrate with iTunes — or at least I thought so.

To get a video you have recorded off the device you must first select “Enable disk use” through iTunes. Then you need to access files and directories on the device as if it were an external drive (e.g. a thumb drive) and select the DCIM directory and then the 000APPLE directory. Finally, you will be able to see your recorded videos — whew. Not impossible to do, but this process makes sharing videos difficult enough that I just can’t see it being widely used in its current state. This could all be fixed if iTunes would support a way to get the videos off the device and to your computer and online services like YouTube.

One of the cooler features I’ve found is the Voice Memo capability. Now that the iPod Nano has a microphone, it can record not only video clips but audio ones as well. And unlike the video, these recordings do get synched to your iTunes library. You’re going to want to make sure to ask your professor beforehand, but recording lectures can be a great asset and it’s a breeze on the device. You can even separate recordings into chapters on the fly.

I really enjoyed my time with the iPod Nano. I just wish Apple had spent more time working on a better way to share videos through the iTunes interface. The radio tuner is awesome, and the form factor is unbeatable. The price for the 8GB model is a very reasonable $149 and the 16GB version is $179. If you are looking for a new music player and don’t need the extra capabilities of the iPod Touch or iPhone 3GS, the iPod nano is a no-brainer.

And did I mention it also has a pedometer for counting your steps? You can finally keep track of all those miles you walk to class each day ... you do go to class, don’t you?