More or less most of the major changes that have been made to the Nano are either aesthetic or related to the user interface - which are quite significant, granted - and the quality of playback remains relatively high. However, anyone who is serious about listening to music – especially in a noisy environment like a carriage on the London Undergound – will tell you that Apple's almost-iconic in-ear headphones add more to the background buzz for other commuters than providing any sort of harmonious happiness for the actual iPod owner.
The menu set up and jukebox-style Cover Flow
Of course, this is an issue for most folk in possession of an MP3 player, regardless of brand, and it can be resolved with an additional investment of high-quality headphones. It might be nice though to see some sort of equally eye-catching high-end acoustic accessory like this to accompany the iPod range.
The changes that have been made to the user interface are welcome. Borrowing from the iPhone, the colour menu now fills just the left-hand side the screen, with the right half devoted to graphics. The text is rendered in that familiar smooth, sans-serif, bold lettering
The images on the screen are context sensitive - move the cursor down the list and the respective image changes. Top of the menu is the 'Music' sub-menu, initially showing a bold 'No Music' icon and message, but it's replaced with a dynamic jukebox-style slideshow of album art once you copy over some tracks.
The new Nano UI features a photo slideshow and a revamped calendar
The UI is identical to that found in the iPod Classic: each album entry is presented with the thumbnail, the album's title in bold above the artist's name in plain grey text. Similarly, other listings are presented with this kind of subsidiary information. Select Genre, and each entry has the number of relevant artists and albums presented below it. Only the Composers and Artists menus don't follow the pattern.
For fear of further repeating the same explanation, feel free to refer back to our Classic review. But one area that provokes concern is the Nano's capability as a video player. The display is 4:3 ratio, placed inside of the 3:4 ratio case, in opposite orientation to allow for the scroll wheel.
COMMENTS
@ElderNorm
Erm - what?
iTunes does not open - so of course I cannot drag and drop from iTunes.
With other media players, I can drag and drop from My Computer via Windows Explorer.
By only allowing music to be copied to the iPod from iTunes and not from any other source - apple has severely limited my options.
No it does not just work - iTunes has to work first.
The iPod Nano does not recognise many formats - or it would not need the user to click on 'convert' or 'consolodate' in iTunes. Come to think of it, the consumer wouldn't actually need iTunes.
@ElderNorm
You are showing your age a bit. The benefits which iTunes brings to the table far outweighs the negatives for me. It does just work. Grag and drop the music from iTunes to iPod.
Download and install the latest version of iTunes, plug the nano in, it just works. It doesn't work for you in this case because you are an ignoramous and haven't read the manual/Quick-start guide. You expect this Apple device to behave exactly like your former no-name/no design pile-of-tat player. I'm sure we don't sympathise with you here.
iTunes recognise plenty of music formats, all which are majorly used today in fact. This doesn't include Flac or Ogg, because the majority of people don't use them/know what they are or those that do should be well able to convert them to MP3. I prefer the old last generation nano personally, it was ace, although now I own a Touch (and lo it was good)
If iPods stop being decent players then nobody will buy them. I don't see that happening any time soon. Zen/Archos/Zune/*fill in* owners can enjoy their hilariously niche, aesthetically-displeasing products while they sit in their anoraks pondering the next linux distribution or the next music management software app they want to try, while the rest of us just happily listen to the music...
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@Elder Norm
As far as I'm concerned, if I pay £130 for an iPod Nano then I should be able to plug it into my computer and it should just work.
I should not have all this faffing around with drivers and trying to scrounge an iTunes setup disk because Apple don't want users to use a disk anymore and want them to use the iTunes 7 and Quicktime 7.
I paid £10 for an mp3 player by Matsunichi last year and it worked perfectly - plug it in, drag and drop.
Not so with the iPod Nano - no way.
As for other companies being the same - yes, but their products work.
Why 4:3?
So, why in blinkin' flip does Apple want to sell a 21st century gadget in a 20th century aspect ratio?! Can it deal with modern TVs and do a full-resolution video out on 16:9 videos, or do you need to use the TV's zoom function to crop the programme to hell?
Go and turn on a TV, any TV, and tell me what you see. 16:9 ratio programming. Sure, anything pre-2000 may be 4:3, but the vast majority of programming in the UK is 16:9 and has been for years, and the majority of the "must-see" programmes coming out of the US have been 16:9 for a few years. Few, if any, films are shot in the old 4:3 "Academy" ratio (aka yukky square-screen), and most TV is filmed in 16:9.
For crying out loud, Apple computers all come with widescreens now, don't they? Why not their iPods? It costs enough, can't they give it a proper screen?!
@michael
Michael and others.
If you like wav music so much, thats fine. There are a lot of mp3 players out there. Why gripe about iPods???
As I understand it iPods recognize wav as long as they are not DRM. Hmmmm Maybe a Zune would work? NOPE. Microsoft zapped you there too :-(
Then you go on to say, "Steve Jobs and his arrogant delusional team should be brought to bear for this. Maybe the bear could eat them." Maybe you are a paid M$ troll??? Microsoft does just the same thing. In fact everyone out there has some restrictions or "don't works" with their system.
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