Video iPod Turns Improbable Into Remarkable

In their race to cut into Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) market share makers of digital music players must feel like they're on a treadmill. The Cupertino, Calif. tune king is ending the year with a blizzard of new products, each pushing consumer expectations to a higher level and leaving its competition out of breath.

While many pretenders to Apple's throne are still trying to perfect the marriage of device and PC, the company has taken its iPod line into the loftier realms of digital imaging and video.

Apple skipper Steve Jobs may have been reluctant to bring video to his best-selling line, but the one million videos at US$1.99 a pop sold in the three weeks following the introduction of the video iPod has him changing his iTune.

Podheads Prefer Black

Like its predecessors, the "vidpod" is thin -- a mere 0.43 inches thick, 45 percent slimmer than the original iPod -- and sleek, with a faux chrome back and black or white face.

"We've seen as lot of great response to the black, but we still see a lot of people that love the signature white," iPod Product Manager Christi Wilkinson told me. "It's a good mix right now, even though black is a little bit ahead because of the newness factor."

Having used both black and white iPods, I prefer the white just because dust and lint don't appear as prominently on its surface.

A big differentiator between this new iPod and its predecessors is its display. It's a resplendent 2.5-inch QVGA screen that's bright and sharp. Colors really pop on the LCD, which has a resolution of 320-by-240 pixels.

Tube Rube

Call me a tube rube, but I found the screen good for watching short videos or television shows in bursts -- 10 minutes here and there between demands for service from my five-year-old.

And what a vast improvement the screen is for displaying photos over the iPod Nano with its 1.5-inch display.

What's nice about importing photos into the unit is you don't have to worry about formats. Apple's software, iTunes, does all the heavy lifting for you. You just have to point it to the right folder and it will automatically convert common image formats into something the iPod can digest.

The new iPod comes in 30 (US$299) and 60 ($399) gigabyte versions. The 30 GB version holds a maximum of 7500 songs and 75 hours of video; the 60 GB, double those amounts. Both can hold up to 25,000 photos.

Failure to Communicate

In the past, one thing that I could always count on with an iPod was a totally hassle-free installation. Not so with the video iPod.

After installing iTunes 6 for Windows, I plugged the iPod into my USB 2.0 hub. Nothing happened.

Familiar with this type of misbehavior with persnickety Windows programs, I connected the unit to one of the USB 1.1 ports attached to my system bus. The iPod flashed on, but iTunes turned a blind eye to it. Moreover, a garish warning appeared on the iPod warning me not to disconnect it from my computer.

After powering down my system, the warning remained on the iPod, but I disconnected it anyway. The unit remained on, and I couldn't turn it off.

So I placed the device in a safe place and waited for its battery to run out of power. In the meanwhile, iTunes told me another version of the program had been released so I upgraded again, to version 6.0.1.

Happiness Restored

When the iPod's screen went blissfully blank, I reconnected it to my USB hub. Suddenly, everybody was happy. iTunes saw the device. The iPod enthusiastically shook hands with iTunes. And my music, photos and video made their merry way into the iPod.

I've grown accustomed to these kinds of mystery installations with Windows hardware, but it took me by surprise with an Apple offering.

Installation glitches aside, the new iPod is a breakthrough product. With it, Apple has maintained the iPod's status as the best music player bar none and spiced its appeal with a display that makes imaging and video work in an improbable form factor.