And my dreams for a new iPod are dashed.
The battery is locked inside the iPod’s case; when it wears out, which should take a few years of sustained use, you’ll need to pay Apple or another firm for battery-replacement service instead of just popping in a new one yourself. A lesser subject of some complaints, the lack of a “gapless playback” option to eliminate distracting pauses between tracks in opera and classical performances, lives on as well.
The new model also shares quirks with its smaller sibling, the iPod Nano. Because it doesn’t ship with a power adapter, it can be recharged only by plugging it into a computer with the included USB cable, a process that took about three hours. It doesn’t allow file transfers via FireWire, which limits owners of older Macs and PCs to unbearably slow synchronization sessions over their machines’ low-speed USB 1.1 ports. And without the remote-control jack of older iPods, many accessories can’t plug into this new model.
When trasferring a couple of megabytes from a computer to an MP3 player, using a USB port is acceptable. However, when you have a device that holds 30 Gigs of music it’s ludicrous to deal with those ridiculously slow speeds. Boo to you, Apple. Boo to you.