IPod's Latest Siblings
The Nano Is Small, Slender
And Surprisingly Powerful;
Color Photos, Flash Memory
September 8, 2005; Page B1
Grab a standard American business card. Now, get a pair of scissors and trim the long side of the card by 20%. That's all the space you need to hold over 1,000 songs, plus audio books, podcasts and photos if you buy Apple Computer's newest iPod model, the gorgeous and sleek iPod nano.
This latest iPod was publicly revealed yesterday at a razzle-dazzle marketing event orchestrated by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. But I have been testing a nano for the past few days, and I am smitten. It's not only beautiful and incredibly thin, but I found it exceeds Apple's performance claims.
Apple's iPod nano
In fact, the nano has the best combination of beauty and functionality of any music player I've tested -- including the iconic original white iPod. And it sounds great. I plan to buy one for myself this weekend, when it is due to reach stores in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Available in classic iPod white, or a lustrous black (my favorite), the nano is not only small, it's stunningly skinny -- about the thickness of five credit cards stacked on top of one another. That means it can be carried easily in even the snuggest of clothing and the smallest of purses, and worn comfortably during exercise. You could even carry it in a wallet, if you were sure you wouldn't sit on it.
Yet the nano, which starts at $199 in the middle of the iPod range, contains key features previously available only on the largest, costliest iPods. These include a sharp color screen, the ability to display the album covers for the songs it's playing, and the ability to store a user's photos and display them in slide shows accompanied by music.
WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO
Walter S. Mossberg reviews the Apple iPod Nano, saying it's the best music player he's ever seen.
Also, despite its small size, the nano holds plenty of songs and can play them for a long time. The base $199 model has two gigabytes of storage, which Apple says can hold 500 songs. A second model, at $249, has four gigabytes of storage and can hold 1,000 songs, Apple claims. The company says this slip of a player somehow packs in a large enough battery to play continuously for 14 hours.
In my tests, I found that the nano's battery lasted a bit longer than Apple claims -- 14 hours and 18 minutes. And I was easily able to pack around 1,200 songs, plus a couple dozen photos, into the $249 model, because most older pop and rock tunes tend to be shorter than the notional song Apple uses to calculate capacity.
In a second test, I loaded the entire 16-hour unabridged audio version of "The Da Vinci Code" onto my test four-gigabyte nano and still had room left over for 1,128 songs, plus my 24 photos, a couple of podcast episodes and about 50 contacts copied from my computer's address book. That's more than enough material for most people, even if it doesn't compare with the 15,000 songs or up to 25,000 photos that Apple says its $399 full-size iPod can hold.
Apple is also shipping some optional accessories for the nano, including colored rubber covers, called "tubes," an armband and a desktop dock. But the coolest accessory is a $39 lanyard with earbuds built-in at the neck. I found it to be perfect not only for exercising, but for walking around with the nano.
IPODS FOR ALL PEOPLE
See a chart comparing the three iPod models.
Overall, in my tests, the iPod nano performed as advertised, or better. I found no significant flaws or downsides. The only quirks are that the headphone jack is on the bottom, because there isn't room for it on the top; and to make room for the jack, the standard iPod connector port that hooks up to many accessories has been placed off-center. But neither of these oddities matters much. In fact, the bottom-mounted headphone jack makes the optional lanyard earbuds possible, and keeps the screen oriented properly when you're wearing them.
Despite its small size, the nano sounded as good as any other iPod, and is packed with plenty of audio power. Plugged into my car speakers, it was able to belt out the new Fountains of Wayne rocker, "Maureen," loudly enough to be heard perfectly, even though I was going 70 mph in a convertible with the top down.
The nano replaces the wildly popular iPod mini, which had been Apple's smallest full-feature iPod. When the mini came out in February 2004, it seemed incredibly small and sleek compared with the original iPod, which itself seemed amazingly small compared with its competitors.
But the nano is 62% smaller than the iPod mini, is half as thick and weighs less than half as much. Yet it holds as many songs as the base model mini. The four-gigabyte nano costs $50 more than the mini of the same capacity, but it is even more stylish and easier to carry, and it includes a color screen where the mini's was monochrome. It also displays the album title for every song you play, which the mini omitted.
This combination of small size, good battery life and healthy capacity is made possible by the fact that the nano stores its music and photos on slim, small chips called flash memory modules, instead of the hard disks used by most earlier iPods. Flash memory not only takes up less room than a hard disk does, but it uses less power and isn't as susceptible to skipping due to motion, or damage from drops.
In fact, during my tests, I dropped the nano several times, deliberately, from a height of about 3 feet, and it didn't miss a beat. I also wore it around my neck on the lanyard during a couple of hours of pounding treadmill exercise, and it never skipped or froze.
There are dozens of small, flash-based music players, but I haven't seen any that combine the nano's size and features. These features include the relatively large, 1.5 inch high-resolution color screen; Apple's famous iPod navigation wheel; and the standard iPod connector port, which links to numerous iPod accessories. Most flash players have tiny screens that are hard to read, lousy navigation and few or no accessories.
Apple's low-end iPod, the shuffle, which is even smaller than the nano and remains in the lineup starting at $99, is also a flash player. But it is barely a true iPod, because it lacks a screen, the scroll wheel and the connector.
In my tests, the nano synchronized perfectly with both a Mac and a Windows PC running Apple's iTunes software, and I was able to easily buy songs from iTunes and play them on the nano.
The company introduced another flash-based player yesterday, but it's not an iPod. It's a phone called the ROKR, made by Motorola, that contains iPod-like software, made by Apple, for playing music. The phone, which Apple didn't design, is chubby and lacks the iPod navigation wheel. And it holds just 100 songs. It's essentially a huge iPod shuffle with a screen. (I'll review the ROKR in a later column.)
Surely music-playing phones are a big part of the future of digital music, and Apple will be involved with more of them over time. But the company clearly considers the new iPod nano a much bigger deal for now. In fact, it hopes that the nano's slender size and ample capacity will blunt the belief that people don't want to carry a separate phone and music player.
All I can say is: It sure is small and it sure is cool.
iPod家族新成员：iPod nano
拿过一张标准的美式名片，把长边部分剪掉20%，在这方寸之间，就可以放下1000首歌曲，外加有声读物、语音日志(podcast)和照片。这就是苹果电脑公司(Apple Computer)新推出的iPod产品，华丽而动感的iPod nano。
2005年9月7日，这款最新的iPod由苹果公司首席执行长史蒂夫?乔伯斯(Steve Jobs)在一场精心准备的发布会上隆重推出。不过我在此之前几天就试用过它，并被它深深吸引。iPod nano不但设计时尚，体型轻薄，而且功能表现也超过了苹果公司的宣传。
事实上，在我试用过的所有音乐播放器中（包括鼎鼎大名的白色原型iPod），nano是外观与功能融合得最佳的一款，声音效果也非常出色。这个周末nano在美国、欧洲和亚洲全面上市时，我打算给自己也买上一个。
nano的颜色不仅有经典iPod白，也有闪亮黑（我的最爱）。它不仅体型小巧，薄度也到了令人震惊的地步--只有五张信用卡叠起来那么厚。这意味著无论衣服有多窄，皮包有多小，它也能与你随身相伴，而且运动时也便于携带。你甚至可以把它放在钱包里，只要记得不要压坏就行。
nano的起价是199美元，价格位于iPod系列的中游，但其一些重要功能以前仅出现在最大最贵的iPod身上，包括配备色彩清晰的液晶屏，播放歌曲时能显示唱片封面，以及能储存用户照片并伴随音乐以幻灯片形式展现这些照片等。
虽然个子小，但nano能储存大量歌曲，并能持续播放很长时间。199美元的基本型容量为2G，苹果公司称能储存500首歌。售价249美元的nano容量为4G，能储存1,000首歌。公司表示该播放器使用了大容量电池，能持续播放14小时。
在对249美元的nano进行的测试中，我发现它的电池持续时间比苹果公司宣称的还要长--能播放14小时18分钟。而且我很容易就存进去了1,200首歌，外加几十张照片，这是因为大多数流行老歌的长度要比苹果公司计算容量所用的歌曲更短。
在第二次测试中，我把整个一段长达16小时的《达芬奇密码》(The Da Vinci Code)有声读物放进容量为4G的nano中，剩下的空间还足够存1,128首歌曲，24张照片，几个语音日志，以及从我电脑的通讯录中拷贝过来的几十条联络信息。虽然这与能存放15,000首歌或25,000张照片、售价399美元的大iPod不能相提并论，但对大多数人来说已经够用了。
苹果公司也为nano提供了不少选配的外设，包括彩色的保护套、臂挂套和扩展底座。不过最酷的莫过于售价39美元、内置耳塞的耳机吊绳，我觉得这个设计让nano无论在运动还是四处走动时都适于携带。
总得来说，iPod nano的测试表现与公司的宣传一致，甚至更好，我没有发现明显的瑕疵和缺点。唯一美中不足的是耳机插孔是在机器底部，因为顶部没有空间了；为了给耳机插孔让位，用于与许多外设连接的iPod标准接口被挪到了一边。不过，这些变动不会产生什么大问题。事实上，把耳机插孔放在底部使耳机吊绳的设计成为可能，并让佩戴nano时显示幕的方向便于观看。
虽然体积小巧，但nano的音色和其他iPod产品一样优秀，而且音频功率也很强。将它与我车内的扬声器相连后，它能完美地播放出需要放大音量的摇滚歌曲，即使在时速70英里的情况下、坐在敞篷车里收听依然非常清晰。
nano是广受欢迎的iPod mini的替代品。iPod mini曾是全功能iPod中最小的一款，2004年2月上市时，它与原型iPod相比显得非常精致小巧，而原型iPod在同类产品中已经算是很小的了。
然而nano比iPod mini还要小上62%，厚度仅是它的一半，而重量连一半都不到，但存储容量却和iPod mini基本型一样。4G的nano比同型的iPod mini贵50美元，但设计更时尚，携带更方便，而且配有彩色显示幕，而iPod mini仅有单色屏。nano在播放歌曲时还显示专辑名称，而iPod mini不显示。
nano之所以能将体积小、电池持续时间长和内存容量大完美地结合于一身，秘诀在于其使用了更小更薄的闪存晶片来存储歌曲和照片，而非此前iPod所使用的硬盘。闪存晶片不但占用空间小，消耗电量少，而且抗震动，抗跌落。
在测试中我故意把nano从约一米的高度摔到地上好几次，但它播放的音乐没有出现任何异常。我还把它用吊绳挂在脖子上，然后踩脚踏车锻炼了好几小时，音乐也从没出现过跳动和停顿。
市场上有几十种使用闪存的小型音乐播放器，但我从没看到象nano这样将体型和功能结合得如此完美的产品。nano有较大的1.5英寸高清晰度彩屏，苹果著名的iPod按键转盘，以及标准的iPod接口，用于与各种iPod外设相连。大多数使用闪存的音乐播放器的萤幕都太小，很难看清显示内容，操作不方便，而且外设很少或根本没有。
苹果的iPod低端产品shuffle比nano更小，起价仅为99美元，也使用的是闪存，但它不能算真正的iPod，因为它没有萤幕，按键转盘和标准接口。
在测试中，nano能很顺利地通过苹果的iTunes软件在Mac电脑和Windows电脑上实现文件同步更新，而且我能很方便地通过iTunes购买歌曲，并在nano上播放。
苹果公司于同日还介绍了另一款闪存产品，但它不是iPod，而是一款名叫ROKR的手机，机身由摩托罗拉公司(Motorola)制造，内部的音乐播放软件由苹果公司提供，与iPod的相似。机身设计并非出自苹果手笔，显得有些臃肿，没有iPod的按键转盘，而且只能存约100首歌。从本质上来说，它就是一个带萤幕的大个儿iPod shuffle。（我会在今后的专栏中专门对它进行评测。）
当然，音乐播放手机在未来的数码音乐产品中将占很大一块份额，苹果公司今后会在此领域有更多介入，但目前公司显然把新的iPod nano看得更重。事实上，苹果公司希望借助nano的小巧体型以及充足内存，打破业界的传统观点，认为人们不会愿意同时携带单独的手机和音乐播放器。
而我所能说的就是：iPod nano，真小，真酷！
