I’ll skip all of the usual stuff about how great the iPod is, how well it does music, etc. Here’s why I bought the new iPod Classic 160GB: consolidation.
I loved the idea of Palm’s LifeDrive. Carry all your important electronic “stuff” with you at all times. The biggest problem was the storage limit. The iPod Classic 160GB breaks that barrier, giving you plenty of storage capacity in the form of a device you’re probably already carrying. This allows you to get rid of a device, not add to your portable collection. You can carry around not only your music and video collections, but also your important PDA info such as contacts and calendars. Having your photo collection and some games along for the ride is a nice touch as well. Sure it’s not a true PDA replacement, but this is coming much closer to a usable “life drive”.
The features of a typical iPod are great, but not anything we haven’t seen in previous models. Here’s the thing that I’m most excited about. I spend a fair amount of time traveling between client offices, my home office and my company office. I have a desktop in my home office and a laptop (actually two laptops) I carry the rest of the time. Up until now, that’s meant carrying one, sometimes two portable hard drives with me. With the larger capacity, all of the documents and files I would have normally had on those portable hard drives can now go on my iPod. Much cleaner and one less device to carry around and keep track of.
Other stuff I’m pleased about in the new iPod Classic:
- Cover Flow – Not something that would make me upgrade for, but a nice touch.
- New interface for browsing music and videos – This IS something I’d consider worth upgrading for. Makes it much easier to browse through your playlists and songs. I especially like the number of songs displayed under each playlist.
- New face surface – It’s not the “shiny, pull it out and it’s already scratched” surface of my past iPods. Seems like Apple has finally gotten it right.
If you’d like to know how to use your iPod as a hard drive, we wrote up some simple instructions for you here.