A Long Five Years
I figure five years is not all that long to wait for a new music player, right? Or for a new cell phone?
As it happens, it has been five years since I bought either one. I got the cell phone in August 2003, and the iPod 3G in October 2003. Note that I actually seemed to like the cell phone, partly because it had a messy–but workable–kludge to import the address book from my Mac. At the time, it was actually fairly impressive for a phone that I was able to get for a fairly cheap price. And I really liked the iPod, which, as I pointed out at the time, was easy to figure out, unlike the cell phone.
But now, both are fairly junky, the cell phone more than the iPod. The cell phone seems positively chintzy. The camera is so bad that after I had taken a photo of a landmark along the route to our wedding hall, neither Sachi nor I were able to make out any details in the image later. The phone book is a bit of a joke, the thing doesn’t ring out loud half the time when people call, and the other features the phone has are so hard to figure out that I just ignore them. When I am able to figure out the email, inputting text using the keypad is so freaking monotonous I can’t stand it.
The iPod, while old, at least still works as advertised, and I have no trouble accessing its features; it’s just old and has none of the newer features, is all. No color, no video, just the Chicago-font menus. I still use it regularly; these days, it’s my exercise companion, playing music to help keep me going on the elliptical trainer.
It’s a 20 GB iPod, so will actually have slightly more memory than the new iPhone I’m getting. After 5 years and no battery exchange, the lifetime of the battery is still surprisingly long–several hours at least–though if I leave it for more than a week, it gets dangerously close to dying after a half-hour of use. The cable is beginning to fray where it meets the body, and the plastic cover of the firewire connecter broke loose some time ago. I have no idea what I’ll do with it when I get the iPhone; put it in a drawer, maybe. It works fine, but I think that if I tried to sell it, people would just laugh. I paid $450 for it new, by the way.
Usually, I don’t wait that long for new devices. Three years is how long I wait between laptop purchases (I am due for a new one, waiting for the next MacBook/MacBook Pro models to come out), about the same for desktop computers (I am on my third desktop since 1998, only two of them Macs). I guess one of the reasons I have not gotten a new cell phone or iPod is because I have been waiting for the all-in-one device since August 2006, when rumors started getting more copious about the iPhone. Since then, it’s been a waiting game for the thing to come out in Japan. After all this time, I’m pretty antsy to switch over to something that isn’t five years old and devoid of any new features. I mean, just look at what I’ve got now above, and what’s coming soon below. Can you blame me?
The iPhones are undeniably sexy, but if you’re like a lot of people within a day or three of buying one, you’ll be putting it into SOME kind of holder that lets you grip the thing better.
My iPhone 1.0 is slicker than snot; I knew if I didn’t do something, I’d drop it. I killed my original Motorola Razr that way- got lucky the first few times I dropped it, but eventually it landed right on the hinge and never really opened/closed quite right after that. (At least it functioned until I was able to get a replacement, fairly cheap, on eBay.)
Maybe the newer case on the iPhone 2.0 (or iPhone 3G as they seem to be calling it) will have a better grip, but I doubt it.
Oh, one nice feature- I read that it’s going to have a STANDARD headphone jack. Guess Apple got tired of all the heat they got for the stupid headphone jack on the original version.
Paul:
Slicker than the 3G iPod? It’s got a polished metal back and is about the same size. The front is pretty slick as well. I think I may have a natural advantage: I perspire more than people usually do, making my hands normally moist enough to give traction with such surfaces. But they do sell tons of traction skins in any case, should be no different with the new model, even if it is as slick.
Yeah, I had heard of that recessed jack. Nice to know they fixed that, at least. What I would like are BlueTooth headphones, hopefully nicely executed, hopefully not too incredibly expensive.