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September 14, 2004
Apple iPod Mini Review
Updated April 17, 2005.
I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago and bought an Apple iPod Mini. It was a barely considered impulse purchase at the local Apple store which happened to have them in stock that day. I rationalized the purchase by reminding myself that now that my old Palm pilot was dead I could put my address book on it. I got it home and immediately had buyer's remorse. What the heck was I going to do with this thing? I have no interest in walking around the world, oblivious to sounds outside of music pumping in my head. I have my entire record collection of 5000 songs in iTunes on my desktop, which is where I actually like to play music. iTunes is great, but do I really need to carry these songs with me everywhere I go?
I have now found a useful purpose for this gorgeous $200 device. Audible.com offers a $15 per month subscription to their digital books - the iTunes version of Books on Tape. (See 50% off special offer.) It actually works seamlessly with iTunes, downloading the digital audio files you purchase directly into the program. A $15 subscription gets you one book per month, a $20 subscription gets you two. You can cancel whenever you want. Since I spend hours on the road and I have lists of books to read, this is a useful service. (If you sign up, tell them that user BauerElise referred you.)
The next question is how to connect the iPod to my car stereo. The Apple store sells a Sony CPA-9C MiniDisc/Discman Cassette Adapter for $19.99. On Amazon you can get the same product for $12. I had rather low expectations for the sound quality of this set up. Surprisingly, it works well, better quality than you would get from an FM radio station, probably about the same quality you would normally get from an audio tape.
Back to the iPod itself. The sound quality is fantastic, the controls (mostly) intuitive, the earphones, problematic. Although the sound quality of the earphones that come with the iPod is great, the earphones tend to very easily fall out of my ears, even when I'm not moving. Apple and Sony both sell in-ear earphones, so I may have to check those out. Regarding the interface, one control that is useful but hard to find is the process that lets you fast forward in an audio file. This is especially important with audio books, whose files can be 10 hours long. The trick is while you are playing the file to click twice on the center circular button of the iPod. This will bring up on the screen a scale with an arrow. Use the scroll bar to move the arrow across the scale to fast forward you to the position you want on the file. You can also hold the right forward button down to fast forward, but sometimes that doesn't work with audio book files.
Update April 17, 2005
Apple released a new version of the iPod mini, with a SRP of $199, fifty dollars less than the previous version. The price reduction comes at a cost - you now now charge and sync your mini with a USB connector, not the faster Firewire connector. You can still find the earlier versions used, but I caution against that as the batteries have been known to poop out after a year. The new versions sport brighter colors as well.
Links:
Amazon listing for the Apple 4 GB iPod Mini - the last price I checked on Amazon was $189.
Apple.com - iPod mini page.
Audible.com - Special promotion - You can save $100 off an Apple iPod.
iPodlounge - all things iPod site.
Recommended Audiobooks
Posted by elise on September 14, 2004 to Computers
| Comments (4)
Comments
Hey, Elise.....
I was considering buying an iPod or iPod mini, but which one? The mini has 4GB of memory, of which my current collection uses about 2 GB and it's smaller and kinda cooler. But I might feel guilty about not spending $50 for the extra 15 GB. I guess I could use the extra as an external harddrive, which would be cool. The 20 GB iPod is cool except that it's a little larger and not in any color but white. What should I do?
By the way, I just found out the WONDERS of Sherlock! If I had known about this earlier, I would've purchased a Mac MUCH sooner based on that alone!
Scott
Posted by: Scott Abraham at August 28, 2004 9:55 PM
Hi Scott - I guess it depends on what you want to use your ipod for. My iPod stays in my car and I'm only using it for audio books, so a mini-ipod is just fine. It is also really small, very light, so when I do carry it around, it isn't that heavy.
Posted by: elise at August 28, 2004 11:43 PM
Hi,
I got it a birthday present and I AM HAPPY.
I have a lot of audio books, but I don't know how to get them into the audiobook folder ON the iPod mini.
can anybody help?
Posted by: uli at March 30, 2005 1:34 AM
Hi Uli - Not sure if you have already got an answer to your question (probably as you posted nearly a year ago), but to get your audio books into your audiobook folder on your ipod you need to change the file extension of the audio book files from .m4a to .m4b. Once done try syncronizing. If this doesn't work simply remove them from your itunes folder (copy them into another folder first) and then re-import and syncronize.
Posted by: James at January 24, 2006 8:44 AM
