iPod; iDumb; iGotquestions

Not true at all. That’s just one of a handful of places where you can buy them. You can also get them from Apple itself, but they’re a little more pricey. BTW, I still have my 1st-generation iPod, which I’ve had for over 2 years now, still on the original battery. No problems.

Unless they’ve changed their policy, you can’t actually get new batteries from Apple. What you do is send them your whole iPod, plus $99, plus shipping, and they send you a replacement with a fresh battery. Then they refurbish yours to send to the next guy. You can’t get your own unit back, which I think is a little weird. (If your old iPod was personalized by Apple, they’ll personalize the new one to match.)

Here is a $30 iPod battery replacement kit, with tool. You can even download the instructions (PDF file) and see how easy it is to do.

I’ve never replaced an iPod battery myself, but the instructions makes it look fairly easy.

I’d like to second the [URL=http://www.ipodlounge.com/iPod Lounge recommendation. Many hints, tips and gear reviews. Had I found it earlier, I probably would’ve passed on the car FM transmitter - which is barely adequate.

With the number of iPod users exceeding even the largest religious cults, it’s no wonder that two days after the new generation iPod announcement, Clear Channel radio execs announced they’re going to reduce the number of commercial announcemnts sold on their stations. I guess ratings drops sometimes do have positive affects.

I believe by 4G Vision of Love meant the 4th Generation iPod, which is not the same as the mini.

According to the article in this week’s Newsweek, the 4th Generation iPods have incorporated some of the features they created for the mini, such as no-button navigation (the “buttons” are built into the scroll wheel).

They also have the ability to create on-the-fly playlists. I’m really happy about this one, because it’s one of the things I asked for about a year and a half ago when I filled out an iPod survey. Looks like I wasn’t the only one asking!

If the 20GB and 40GB wide-body iPods seem too capacious for you, consider buying a mini. The mini has a 5GB capacity (around 1000 songs). It’s the same capacity as the 1st Generation iPod I’ve had for several years. I have never filled it up (I’m not a music addict and there are only so many songs I seem to want to carry around with me). My only real complaint with my iPod is its horrible power management - the battery drains really fast. They’ve apparently made significant improvements to this in the 4th G tho.

10Mine’s taken a couple diggers, scrapes, drops, and boots and is still happily working. It doesn’t care for Minnesota winters at all though.
2)I’ve got a 40gb iPod with 8618 songs on it right now (and sadly only 206MB free). I’d be satiated with about 250 gigs. I remove and replace a lot of songs on my iPod. Constantly playing favorites with my music isn’t too much fun. (I’ve really liked having a part of my music library at my fingertips at all times, but I’d rather have the whole thing.)
3)As others have said, you can always load up your CDs directly into iTunes and onto the iPod.
4)Plenty of other cheaper MP3 players out there, but this one did almost everything I wanted it to do.

Hey, Smeghead, what kind of MP3 player do you have? I’m looking at buying an MP3 player, but all I’ve really heard about has been iPod this and iPod that. I’m curious to know which one has a screen that supports video. I, too, have been a bit bummed about by the price of these things, and figure that if I’m going to drop that much, it better give me an improved sex life and make me breakfast as well as play me some songs.

Well, I’m an MP3 player nut myself, but I haven’t worked my way up to an iPod yet, I use the little flash players that have considerably less memory, but are cheaper and IIRC even smaller.

Right now I’m using an RCA lyra 1071 - 128 megs with a 256 meg secure digital card in the expansion slot. That’s enough for over 5 and a half hours of music, and when I play it through, I hook it back up and transfer over a new set, which takes about 10 minutes.

It looks a little bit like a pager… I can actually close my hand around the entire unit, though not quite well enough to keep it from being seen entirely. Runs for many hours on a AAA battery. :slight_smile: And I’m pretty sure that it’s considerably cheaper than an Ipod even with the cost of the card

Okay, I’ll quit gushing now. :smiley:

About two weeks ago, I was at the Apple store near my office, playing with iPods and deciding if I wanted the Mini or a “regular” one. I was torn between the Mini’s controls, and the overall feel and larger capacity of the classic style. I asked an employee there about availability of the various models and said that if they ever put the Mini’s wheel on the classic, I’d be grabbing one in a heartbeat. Fast-forward a couple days to the announcement of the 4G, and its melding of the Mini’s click wheel and the classic’s capacity.

Amazon still doesn’t have them, but is taking pre-orders. I checked back at the Apple store yesterday, and they said the shipment of 4Gs that they got on Monday was gone in 20 minutes. So, off to Apple online.

My new toy left Shanghai about three hours ago. :cool:

Is there a moral to this story? Not really. But, if you want a new 4G, right now, the place to go is Apple’s online store. Spend the $8 for 2-day shipping from the factory on the other side of the planet, and marvel at how they can get a package from China to your hands in 48 hours for eight bucks.

Oh, and if you’re looking for deals, there really aren’t any. You know you want an iPod. Apple knows you want an iPod, and that if you don’t get one, there’s no shortage of people lined up waiting for one.

:rolleyes: I don’t want an iPod, and if that’s their attitude, I think I’ve decided I never want an iPod!! Hope everyone else comes to their senses soon.

:smiley:

There is always the educational/government discounts on Apple. I am a student, but who is going to check the records if you aren’t? That’s how I saved 60 bucks off of mine, or at least I think it was 60. But, the crapper of the whole deal is that I bought a 3rd generation about a month before the 4th generation. Damn, do I feel like an idiot now…but I must say that the iPod is quite possibly the greatest peice of technology that man has ever invented, minus the Jack LeLane juice machine.

I myself look forward to the day when posters on this board who choose to discuss their iPods outnumber those who prefer to write about their cats.

iPods are a cleaner (no litter boxes) & more interesting topic.

Imagine a board where threads entiled:
‘What Should I Name My iPod?’
‘Post Pics of Your iPod’
‘I Adopted a Stray iPod’
and
‘My IPod Does the Cutest Thing’
Overshadowed all those lame :eek: cat and kitten threads!

[Hijack] I’ve got a 3g iPod that I bought a couple months ago. Now, with the 4g iPods hitting the market with the reported longer battery life I was wondering. Can I just get a 4g battery for my 3g iPod and have a longer battery life, or is it new firmware management that gives it the longer life? [/byejack]

Apple says the battery life improvement comes from firmware changes. I think the battery is the same size in both.

Sorry you feel that way.

Think of it like this - you run a grocery store and every single customer comes in and buys a can of pork & beans. Pretty soon, you’ve got no pork & beans on the shelf, but customers keep coming in wanting pork & beans. They go away disappointed. Next day, the truck comes in, and there’s a case of pork & beans. You put them out and people snatch them up in 15 minutes, and still, more people come in looking for pork & beans.

Given the overwhelming (and peculiar) demand for pork & beans, does it make sense to put them on sale? Nope. If anything, you might nudge the price up a bit to make a little more profit on the beans and to try slowing down the demand. You might put kidney beans on sale, but any sensible grocer would leave the pork & beans price alone.

It’s the same deal with the iPods. And they’re not raising the prices. Between the styling and technological innovation, it’s The Thing To Have. They’ve sold somewhere around 4 million of them. Apple has invested a large amount of time and money in the design of these things, and it shows. Not only is the technology amazing (40 GB in a little box scarcely larger than a $5.99 pocket calculator) but the whole package is very well thought out. First time I picked one up, I knew how to use it without needing instructions. I can’t say the same for other players I tried.

Apple can’t stamp these things out fast enough to satisfy the demand for them. Even when they cost $100 more for the same capacity, they still could barely keep up. Guess I and 4 million others know a good thing when we see it.

I would argue that it’s not styling, it’s the design. When they first came out I thought only a nut would buy one. Now I’ve seen them around, and seen how people use them, and seen how elegant iTunes is, I’m amazed by how dense I was.

Do iPods only play the MP3 format or can they play Ogg Vorbis as well?

According to the apple.com website:

I’m not sure what “Apple Lossless” is exactly.

Probably something similar to WMA lossless, which basically amounts to a zip-compressed WAV (with a few custom compression routines particularly suited to audio data.)

good sound quality, huge files in comparison to MP3. :slight_smile:

Apple Lossless is about half the size of the comparable WAV/AIFF file, it seems.

And iPods will also play .WAV sound files and Audible.com audio books.