Nine years and 275 million iPods later, Apple's iconic device looks nothing like the chubby white rectangular box that started one of the biggest consumer gadget crazes of all time.
I spent a week playing around with the three newest members of the iPod family -- the sixth generation Nano, the fourth generation Touch, and the fourth-generation Shuffle, all of which were released earlier this month -- and I'm pretty sure no one from 2001 would have thought these devices would change so much in form and functionality in less than a decade.
The tiny, aluminum-covered Shuffle, which at least sports iPod's classic wheel-shaped interface (although it clicks rather than scrolls), is perhaps the most retro of the three, but even it has a groovy new high-tech feature: The VoiceOver button.
Press this small metal circle on the top edge of the device once and a computer-generated voice will speak the name of current track and its artist. Hold it down a bit longer and you'll be able to hear playlist names as you navigate through them with the play/pause button. Tap it twice and you'll get a battery reading.
The Stephen Hawking-ish voice struggles with oddly named or spelled tracks -- Flying Lotus's "Satelllliiiiiiiteee" came out hardly recognizable as "Sat-ul-el-ah-ee-ah-ee-ah-ee-tee-ee" -- but it's an undeniable boon for folks who love the Shuffle's simplicity but would like just a smidgeon more control over track navigation and information.
The new Nano, meanwhile, has almost nothing in common with the look and feel of the Nano that preceded it, let alone the very first iPod.
Weighing just 21 grams and measuring about half the size of the fifth-generation Nano with a clip on the back, it could almost be mistaken for a Shuffle, if only it weren't for its pretty little 1.5-inch multi-touch screen. Once you power it on you'll see a quartet of familiar app icons on each home screen, which almost made me feel like I was holding a teeny tiny iPhone in my hand. The only tactile controls on the device are on its top: two small metallic circle buttons to raise and lower volume, and an oval power button.
Of course, hardware isn't the only way the Nano differs from the Shuffle. For starters, you can create and edit playlists using the touch screen, which makes it relatively easy to zoom in on specific tracks -- assuming you have sharp enough eyes to catch what you're looking for while scrolling through lists on that wee screen (it can accommodate only four tracks names at a time). Plus, as with the fifth-gen Nano, you can not only tune in to FM radio stations but also pause and buffer their broadcasts for up to 15 minutes.
What's more, it's easy to customize the Nano experience. I was able to rotate the screen with a couple of fingers so that it faced me properly, regardless of its orientation when clipped to my clothes. And you can easily slide icons between home screens so that the most frequently used appear first. For instance, if you use the built-in pedometer every day, just slide the Fitness app to the first screen to make your calorie and workout numbers a single tap away.
Dandy as it may sound, the Nano is merely a stepping stone between the Shuffle and the current flagship in the iPod line, the fourth-generation Touch, which has pretty much all of the music and multimedia features of the Nano and runs Apple's iOS 4.1, more or less making it an iPhone 4 without the phone.
The hardware is sleekness defined; the same height and width as previous Touches, but, at 7.2 millimetres, significantly slimmer. A woman who caught me using it at my daughter's playground stepped over and said she'd never seen a gadget so thin.
However, it was Apple's heralded 960-by-640 Retina display (with 326 dots per square inch) that grabbed the attention of the other moms and dads standing around me on that sunny afternoon. They (and I) were astonished by its clarity and visibility. One dad noted that he had a good view in the sunlight even while standing at a mild angle.
Indoors it's even more impressive. I needed to get within inches to be able to detect individual pixels. It's hard to image how 2-D screens can get much better. Everything -- games, movies, pictures -- just looks great on it.
Another hardware improvement is the addition of a rear camera for HD video recording and a front one to take advantage of FaceTime, Apple's Wi-Fi, email-based video calling system. I only tried it once, but I loved it. The picture is a bit choppy -- as one would expect with real-time video streaming -- especially when the subject is moving quickly, but you can see the person you're talking to. On your phone. This is the future we dreamed about as kids, folks, and it's as awesome as we thought it would be.
Meanwhile, the new A4 processor makes navigation super speedy. Loading and switching between apps was breezy and pretty much lag-free. Everything popped up the instant I touched it -- certainly much quicker than my well-worn second-generation Touch. There's a new three-axis gyroscope in there as well, which, combined with the accelerometer carried over from previous Touches, makes for six degrees of motion detection. I didn't try any apps that made use of this features, but one would think it would be a boon for games in particular.
On the subject of games, the new Touch was also my introduction to Game Center, Apple's gaming network/community for iOS 4. I didn't spend too much time with it, but I liked what I saw. Apple vets all the games that support Game Center (right now it's mostly well-known, well-loved fare, such as Fieldrunners and FarmVille), and each one now offers achievements, leader boards, and, if applicable, a simple way for players to connect with one another online for multiplayer games.
Particularly interesting to me is the notion of being able to see which games my friends are playing, which is basically a means of social game advertising. I can see myself downloading a new game based solely on having noticed that one of my game-loving pals is playing it.
After playing around with Apple's new family of iPods my biggest concern is the company's seeming obsession with making everything smaller. I'm certain that if I had a Shuffle it would eventually go through the wash, which I suppose I could deal with since it only costs $59. However, I'm pretty sure the same thing would happen to the new, similarly-sized Nano, which I wouldn't be quite as laid back about, given that it starts at $159. Still, I suppose a lot of people love the idea of technology so small you can't even feel it attached to your body.
The new Touch, meanwhile, is about as slim as I want a phone-sized device to be. Any thinner and I think I'd feel uneasy holding it -- it would just seem too delicate. In fact, even after a week of use I still find my old familiar Touch with its thicker, rounded edges to be more comfortable in my hand. Maybe I'm just getting old and better appreciate things that don't require such dainty handling.
All in all, though, Apple has another collection of winning iPods on its hands. With another decade of iPod rule I suspect the boast of 275 million units sold will seem rather quaint.