More on my Flickr album

Except for doing a nice job of copying the look of Nano, the build quality of the knockoff is mediocre at best and the software is badly designed. It not only rip off Nano but is itself a real ripoff. The people who made this should really be ashamed of themselves.

Meantime, my Nano is looking very handsome with its new accessories:

Music
Music is at the heart of every iPod. But with only 8GB of storage, I have decided even before I ordered my Nano that this Nano won’t be my main music playing device. In my latest sync, I have selected only 48 songs from 25 albums to sync with my Nano.

Even with so few songs, I still get to appreciate the usefulness and beauty of Cover Flow. Cover Flow actually makes more sense to me on an iPod than on a Mac computer because it really makes navigation easier and more intuitive on a device that has limited input capabilities. If your albums come with album art, you will really love the new Nano because it makes full use of album art. Besides Cover Flow, a thumbnail picture is placed next to each album title under the “Albums” menu to make navigation, again, more intuitive. Because, chances are one can recognize an album more quickly by its picture rather than by its title. An album art is also displayed in each lyrics page as well. Speaking of the lyrics page, text is much more legible than on the 2nd Gen Nano.

Videos
Video quality of the Nano is much better than I had expected. I don’t have my 5th Gen iPod with me to compare now because it is on loan to a friend. But even at just 50% of the brightness, the videos appear very bright and viewable. For the purpose of demonstration, I have synced an episode each from my iTunes library’s TV Shows to my Nano. iTunes isn’t flexible in allowing its users to choose which episodes of a TV Show to sync with an iPod. It only allows synchronization in accordance with its predefined rules, like the “last 3 most recent unwatched” episodes of a TV show. And once you have selected the synchronization scheme, it will be applied to all the TV Shows that you choose to sync to your Nano. I hope in future upgrades, I can select the particular episodes that I want to sync.

Photos
Because the 3rd Gen Nano has almost twice the screen resolution over the last generation, photos on Nano finally look good. I’ve synchronized over 1,000 photos to my Nano in my latest sync. Besides resolution, there is another noted improvement in the Photos application over previous generations. If an album title is longer than the width of the iPod, it now scrolls automatically so the title doesn’t get truncated. The title appears on top of the thumbnails page also scrolls to make room for long titles.

For some strange reasons, my Nano thinks every photos I took were taken on 6th February, 2040. I don’t know whether it is a bug or not. My photos are synchronized with my Aperture library and their dates are reported correctly in Aperture.

Games
The new Nano came with 3 games pre-loaded, one fewer than my 2nd Gen Nano. I played the iPod Quiz and Vortex in the video below. Gaming experience has improved a lot over previous generations because of the higher resolution of the screen. The background soundtracks of the two games I played are also very good which make the whole gaming experience even richer. I think I will be very likely to get more games from iTunes in the next couple of days.

When Apple emailed me yesterday late in the afternoon that my Nano was on its way, I was afraid that I won’t be getting it until the end of the long weekend holiday. But I had half expected that it would arrive, which is why I had only left home for a quick lunch today. I didn’t want to miss the delivery.

It is now almost two hours since my Nano had arrived and I am really glad that I hadn’t gone with the iPod Touch. This is my 3rd Nano and my 6th iPod. I did struggle a little bit between the iPod Classic, iPod Touch and the Nano which explains why I had only ordered mine weeks after it became available (I ordered it online this Thursday). I already have a 60GB 5th Gen iPod Video which has been serving me well especially when I am on vacation. I finished the whole first season of Lost on it during a strip to Tokyo last year. One season of TV shows with 22 episodes take up about 10GB of storage space. My current library of TV shows has 228 items totaling 96.32GB of space whilst my music library has 2,600 items totaling 60.70GB of space. With the exception of music I bought from iTunes, my music library is ripped from CDs using Apple Lossless encoding which explains why merely 2,600 songs would take up so much space. And then I have another 10,000 of photos on Aperture that I really want to show them off on my iPods. My TV shows library has been growing very fast lately because of the discounted iTunes coupons that I have been able to buy at eBay. My videos and music are stored on a 250GB NAS that has gigabit ethernet connecting to my home network while my photos are stored on a FireWire 1TB hard drive configured as a 500GB RAID 0 system. Both are approaching their limits. Even though Apple markets the new 160GB iPod Classic as the device to hold everything, I had to pass it once I had done my calculations above. I am better off sticking with my 5th Gen iPod if decisions of what to put on an iPod have to make anyway.

With only 16GB of flash storage, it would be even harder for me to select what to put on an iPod Touch. Although it is thinner than an iPhone, the iTouch is still as large as the iPhone because of the 3.5 inch screen that they share. That screen, by the way, with multi-touch is perfect for viewing photos and videos. Since it is very likely that I will get an iPhone when it becomes available in Hong Kong, it really doesn’t make any sense for me to get an iTouch now. The iTouch does have double the storage capacity of the iPhone. But I can always make up that difference with a Nano which I can use it just to store music. Remember I have almost 61GB of music? I can fill all my iPods with different combination of songs that don’t duplicate. I would rather carry an iPhone with a Nano rather than two “iPhones”. And who knows, by the time iPhone is ready for Hong Kong it might already have the 16GB option.

Besides my usage pattern above, I do find iTouch’s lack of a speaker and Bluetooth radio rather disappointing. Without a speaker, I can’t really share my videos or music with others unless they like silent movies. Without Bluetooth to connect with my HSDPA phones, it means I am restricted to using the built-in Safari or YouTube or even iTunes Store within the proximity of a WiFi hotspot. Both missing features, however, are available on the current iPhone, although I am not sure if the Bluetooth software that comes with iPhone allows connection with a Bluetooth modem.

Going back to the new Nano, it is just super cool. I have recorded my unboxing of it in both video and photos. I will try to organize and upload them in the coming days. I have always liked the Nanos. It’s true that they don’t offer as much storage capacity as their siblings but their sizes make them perfect for almost every purposes save a long vacation. I can run without my Polar watch but I can’t run without my Nano with Nike+. Nike+ is the single most important motivation for my running. Nano is just great. And just when I thought my 2nd Gen Nano with Nike+ is perfect the 3rd Gen arrives.

Because it has to house a 2 inch screen, the 3rd Gen Nano is necessarily fatter than the 2nd Gen, albeit shorter. This almost square dimension makes the 3rd Gen not as easy to hold inside my palm than the 2nd Gen especially when I run. It doesn’t matter because I have decided to use the 3rd Gen mainly for video and photos while the 2nd Gen for music. The screen of the 3rd Gen is just gorgeous. Because it has the highest pixels per inch among all the current iPods, videos and pictures appear much finer and smoother than the others.

As far as the hardware is concerned, my only complain is its casing. It has the same stainless steel back found on the 1st Gen Nano and the iPod Classic which just makes it prone to scratches. In fact, I have already scratched mine while putting the 2nd Gen next to it for taking the comparison photos. Also, the metal casing makes any engravings that you have inscribed on the Nano difficult to read when the Nano is placed near light sources.

Even just playing with the new Nano for a few minutes I quickly noticed the many improvements that Apple has made upon it. Operation is smooth and responsive. The new user interface is intuitive in usage and elegant in aesthetics. Cover Flow is really cool. I can’t wait to show it off.

In the previous generations, menus will take up the whole screen. Now all menus take up only half of the screen leaving the other half showing either album art in the case of music or graphical representation of the current feature. It is just neat.

Lastly, if you are going to get a new Nano and you don’t mind the colour of red, try to get a red one. It is only available from Apple direct. Apple donates a portion of every Red Nano to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa, which in itself is a worthy cause. By ordering direct from Apple, you can also get free engraving on the back of the Nano. But I must say the red of the 3rd Gen looks more like pink to me.

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After loading the disc, my Windows desktop crashed and restarted itself without warning. It kept restarting every time I had the disc inserted. After spending some quality time with my system, I found the culprit by elimination. It was a feature called “Audio CD Free” that came with a software that I use to by-pass DVD’s region protection system. It allows ripping of audio CDs that are protected. Obviously, it needs to be updated. With it disabled, I was able to start my PC normally. The CD launched its own program to ask me what I would like to do with it, play it or burn a backup copy of it or rip its tracks into WMA. None of my software players, even Windows’ own Media Player was able to access that CD, let alone ripping from it. WMA files ripped from the CD using its own software have the usual digital rights protection. Therefore, iTunes could not import those WMA tracks for transferring to my iPod. Fortunately, one of the rights “granted” by EMI is the right to burn those WMA tracks onto a blank CD as Audio CD. iTunes is then able to rip from that CD. If this is EMI’s way to deter “fair use” (which in my case, format-shifting and backup) of their CDs, it surely has failed to dissuade me. I don’t know if there are any laws in Hong Kong that govern “fair use” of copyrighted materials nor are there any precedent cases for or against such usage. But “fair use” is recognized in the US and famous precedents include the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision. Personally, I think “fair use” is fair. I own and use 5 portable music players. Each of them fits a particular pattern of my usage. Am I supposed to buy 5 copies each of every CD?

The music industry needs to open up its mind to consumer behaviour. Please don’t make it any harder than it is already for people to transfer music from CDs to different formats. Don’t turn a blind eye to the millions of music players that have been and continuing to be sold in Hong Kong. With legal music download still an infant industry, how do you think consumers feed their players? If not from CDs, it has to be from illegal sources.

As for online music stores, WMA is great. Microsoft’s initiative of PlayForSure is also great. It offers seamless integration between music stored on computers and PlayForSure devices. All my devices are capable of playing back WMA protected music, but only one of them is PlayForSure compliant. Until sales of PlayForSure devices match those of iPods, I am not so sure that many iPod customers are as patient as myself in finding ways to work around rights protected WMA files to make them playable on their iPods. The music industry may consider these are necessary measures to combat piracy. But I can appreciate it how some users may see them as excuses for getting music the easier way.

While I admire greatly the recent efforts spent by the music industry to fight piracy by using the judicial process and increasing public awareness, I hope they are also working with the education system to educate children during their formative years the importance of respecting intellectual property. After all, intellectual property plays a vital role in a knowledge-based economy, if Hong Kong is to becoming one. It is not enough to teach them how to use the computers and the Internet. Parents, of course, also have responsibility to set an example for their children to follow.

I don’t have any children, so I have no idea what is being taught in schools nowadays. I consider myself lucky to have spent my pre-university study in a Jesuit-run school in Hong Kong. We had ethics lessons that taught us the value of righteousness. I didn’t own a PC until I went to university but yet I always know it is wrong to consume pirated goods. If I cannot afford it, I will just pass or work for it. Judging from the staggering rate of piracy in Hong Kong as reported in the news, at least a generation or two behind me had already ‘forgotten” the value of righteousness.

To fight piracy, a concerted effort to educate our younger generation is desperately needed.

(An abridged version of this letter appeared today on the Technology section of South China Morning Post)

The song I bought was encoded in WMA using a sampling bit rate of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). I don’t have discerning ears, so sound quality is not a great concern. I bought the song because it was a ‘pre-release’ and it wasn’t available as part of a CD album. A few days later, I bought another version of the same song from Eolasia.com.

When I read about Soundbuzz.com (Technology Post, August 9), I checked it out that morning and found that the two songs I had bought at Eolasia.com were available for $8 each, almost 24 per cent cheaper. While Eolasia.com listed those songs at $10.50 each that morning, it had cut the price to $9.50 each in the afternoon. Soundbuzz.com was still about 16 per cent cheaper.

I therefore signed up with Soundbuzz.com for a free account and purchased three songs right away. After downloading them, I soon found out that I didn’t overpay Eolasia.com after all. While Eolasia.com clearly and prominently lists the digital rights and sampling rate used to encode each song, Soundbuzz.com does not.

I could not find such information during the entire ordering process. It turned out the songs I bought were encoded with a sampling rate of 128kbps. They are available at Eolasia.com at 256kbps. I suspect most of Soundbuzz.com’s catalogue, if not all, is encoded at a 128kbps bit rate. But I can’t say for sure unless I purchase and download more songs.

Mathematically, music at Soundbuzz.com is 50 per cent more compressed than songs at Eolasia.com. So unless they are 50 per cent cheaper, I will stick with Eolasia.com in future. I can also take advantage of the points that I earn from purchases made to redeem even more songs. Digital or analogue, consumers like perks in the absence of a bargain.