Phil
02-21-2004, 07:28 AM
I have a 3rd gen 20GB iPod and was totally not planning on picking up a mini until today when I made an impulse purchase at my campus bookstore. Anyway, we've all read the praises, but I'm bored and feel like listing my complaints with the mini.
1) $249 and no dock? If a dock were included, I wouldn't have anything bad to say about the price. This bugs me the most.
2) No dock port covers. The covers for the iPod work fine on the mini, and the bottom of the mini is white to match.
3) My iPod came with scratches on the part of the case around the scroll wheel between 10 and 12 o'clock. It looks like it was either from the plastic packaging or from a poor finishing of the metal. Not too bad though, but noticable at the right angle under decent lighting. When I was at the Apple Store, I saw a couple of minis in which there was a dent or knick in the center of the scroll wheel, as though the plastic circle wasn't cut well. Also, the scroll wheel on some of them jiggled a lot and could be turned a bit. Poor construction or QC?
4) The non-glossy, eggshell scroll wheel seems like it'll get dirty easily. At the Apple Store, the wheels were already dirty. One had someones fingerprint (with black ink?) on it that couldn't be rubbed off.
5) (not really mini specific) Having such relatively small capacity makes it harder to manage the library, no more auto-sync, especially when dealing with playlists. Deleting a playlist is easy, but then you have to manually find and delete the songs on it as well.
6) The mini truely seems like a disposable gadget. Wait till ipoding.com opens theirs up, but it looks impossible or more trouble/expensive than it's worth for Apple to open the iPod and repair components. Maybe that's why the prices of all iPods and "repair" costs are so high?
7) Unmounting the mini still keeps it in disk mode, at least on the PC anyway.
8) Now that the screen is small, long album/artist/song names still don't scroll while browsing. For all Creative Nomad HDD players, when you browse thru the library, if an item (song, album name, or artist) is too long, when you put the cursor on it, it'll begin to scroll. In the playing now screen, long song, artist, and albums also scroll (the ipod oly scrolls song name). Neat features the iPod should have.
9) The clicker is so quiet, too quiet, to really hear. Maybe it's all that metal casing insolating the noise.
10) No album name displayed on now playing screen. Well if you can only fit a couple hundred songs on it, then maybe it doesn't matter. But shift the progress bar down a few pixels and text up a few pixels, and then there's enough room for a third row of text for the album name.
11) The great backlight color debate. At the Apple Store, I saw 3 minis with the light blue backlight color that everyone else seems to have in the pics they've posted on the net. However, I saw one with a darkish purple color. Same sort of situation with regular ipods - some are light bright blue, others are dimmer purple.
12) Fast transfers. I didn't bother measuring the time to fill the mini because it was fast enough not to be an issue.
Ok, I'll list praises as well.
1) Size - isn't really important to me, though everyone else seems to think so.
2) Weight - very important. It's so much lighter that it feels better in my pocket.
3) Mechanical buttons - the 2nd gen ipod were truely the best in terms of controls. Mechanical buttons and touch wheel return in the mini.
4) Metal casing - matte finish, less prone to scratching, solid feel, why aren't iPods made like this (or maybe they will).
5) Battery recharging - I think that unlike the iPod, the mini won't start another charge cycle if you unplug it and plug it back in. When my iPod was fully charged, I plugged it into my PC to transfer songs. Surprisingly, the battery said it was fully charged and didn't begin to recharge again. Unplugged it and plugged it back into the AC adapter, and it also didn't begin recharging again. (Note that for the iPod, it really isn't starting a new cycle, it's just trickle charging but appears to be a new cycle.)
6) Screen - it's small and nothing great, but the backlight is very bright and evenly lit, so it's easy to read.
7) Sound quality is excellent for a device this size. It sounds just as good as the iPod when using difficult Sennheiser HD600 headphones without an amp.
8) Although I was skeptical about the mini (mainly due to the price), I think Apple has another winner in the mp3 market. Tiny size, large enough capacity for most people, and at a price point more people would consider looking at.
9) My mini will definitely go case-less. It's rugged and cheap enough that I don't feel bad and worry if I don't protect it. Well I did put on a piece of PDA screen protector over the screen, which is invisible and all that's needed. (My iPod has an almost-invisible case - it's wrapped carefully and neatly in PDA screen protectors, not big bluky ugly case.)
1) $249 and no dock? If a dock were included, I wouldn't have anything bad to say about the price. This bugs me the most.
2) No dock port covers. The covers for the iPod work fine on the mini, and the bottom of the mini is white to match.
3) My iPod came with scratches on the part of the case around the scroll wheel between 10 and 12 o'clock. It looks like it was either from the plastic packaging or from a poor finishing of the metal. Not too bad though, but noticable at the right angle under decent lighting. When I was at the Apple Store, I saw a couple of minis in which there was a dent or knick in the center of the scroll wheel, as though the plastic circle wasn't cut well. Also, the scroll wheel on some of them jiggled a lot and could be turned a bit. Poor construction or QC?
4) The non-glossy, eggshell scroll wheel seems like it'll get dirty easily. At the Apple Store, the wheels were already dirty. One had someones fingerprint (with black ink?) on it that couldn't be rubbed off.
5) (not really mini specific) Having such relatively small capacity makes it harder to manage the library, no more auto-sync, especially when dealing with playlists. Deleting a playlist is easy, but then you have to manually find and delete the songs on it as well.
6) The mini truely seems like a disposable gadget. Wait till ipoding.com opens theirs up, but it looks impossible or more trouble/expensive than it's worth for Apple to open the iPod and repair components. Maybe that's why the prices of all iPods and "repair" costs are so high?
7) Unmounting the mini still keeps it in disk mode, at least on the PC anyway.
8) Now that the screen is small, long album/artist/song names still don't scroll while browsing. For all Creative Nomad HDD players, when you browse thru the library, if an item (song, album name, or artist) is too long, when you put the cursor on it, it'll begin to scroll. In the playing now screen, long song, artist, and albums also scroll (the ipod oly scrolls song name). Neat features the iPod should have.
9) The clicker is so quiet, too quiet, to really hear. Maybe it's all that metal casing insolating the noise.
10) No album name displayed on now playing screen. Well if you can only fit a couple hundred songs on it, then maybe it doesn't matter. But shift the progress bar down a few pixels and text up a few pixels, and then there's enough room for a third row of text for the album name.
11) The great backlight color debate. At the Apple Store, I saw 3 minis with the light blue backlight color that everyone else seems to have in the pics they've posted on the net. However, I saw one with a darkish purple color. Same sort of situation with regular ipods - some are light bright blue, others are dimmer purple.
12) Fast transfers. I didn't bother measuring the time to fill the mini because it was fast enough not to be an issue.
Ok, I'll list praises as well.
1) Size - isn't really important to me, though everyone else seems to think so.
2) Weight - very important. It's so much lighter that it feels better in my pocket.
3) Mechanical buttons - the 2nd gen ipod were truely the best in terms of controls. Mechanical buttons and touch wheel return in the mini.
4) Metal casing - matte finish, less prone to scratching, solid feel, why aren't iPods made like this (or maybe they will).
5) Battery recharging - I think that unlike the iPod, the mini won't start another charge cycle if you unplug it and plug it back in. When my iPod was fully charged, I plugged it into my PC to transfer songs. Surprisingly, the battery said it was fully charged and didn't begin to recharge again. Unplugged it and plugged it back into the AC adapter, and it also didn't begin recharging again. (Note that for the iPod, it really isn't starting a new cycle, it's just trickle charging but appears to be a new cycle.)
6) Screen - it's small and nothing great, but the backlight is very bright and evenly lit, so it's easy to read.
7) Sound quality is excellent for a device this size. It sounds just as good as the iPod when using difficult Sennheiser HD600 headphones without an amp.
8) Although I was skeptical about the mini (mainly due to the price), I think Apple has another winner in the mp3 market. Tiny size, large enough capacity for most people, and at a price point more people would consider looking at.
9) My mini will definitely go case-less. It's rugged and cheap enough that I don't feel bad and worry if I don't protect it. Well I did put on a piece of PDA screen protector over the screen, which is invisible and all that's needed. (My iPod has an almost-invisible case - it's wrapped carefully and neatly in PDA screen protectors, not big bluky ugly case.)