Note 1: I wrote this awhile ago and wasn't going to post it, but I saw Zunster posted a similar review, so I tought I'd pile on.

Note 2: This is my personal experience, and it is not written as an official MS critique. It only represents my views as a consumer. Also, I've added some new comments as I've lived with the device for a few more weeks.





I recently got a new Nano. I think it is important to see what's out there and live with it for some time. For the record, I have 8 iPods of various models and makes I have collected over the years. So, I was pretty intrigued by the new device and couldn't wait to put it through its paces. I got the (Product)Red version, in case you care.





My initial impression was that it is far more appealing than the original photos I saw. In those pictures, it doesn't do the thinness justice. It is really thin. I like the color (it is not a fire engine red, but more like a metallic burgundy). One thing I'm not crazy about is the top of the device (the red metallic layer). Apple seems to have gone away from the rounded edges of previous iPods and moved to a much sharper top cover. My fingers kept getting hung up on the edge. I know it is a minor nit, but it was one of the first things I noticed right out of the box.





The screen is really nice. True to their word, the pixel density is excellent. However, this raises one of my first questions... How many people will actually use this device for video? I've got one of the new flash-based Toshiba Gigabeats that is approximately the same size as the Nano. Even though it is video capable, in my house, people prefer the much larger screens of a full sized player (either an iPod or a Zune) over the smaller flash-based product. In fact, the flash products are almost solely for working out and I find the small and fat product doesn't lend itself well for that function (either the Nano of the Tosh product). I suspect we'll eventually see a resurrection of the Nano "classic" at some point for this very reason.





My one major complaint with the device is with the click wheel. I think that the size of the product is actually too small. I find my thumb misses the touch pad between the 3 and 5 o'clock positions when rotating around the dial. I think that will come with time, but the buttons appear to have build quality issues (at least mine does). The actuated button feels loose when depressed. It is certainly usable and I'm not going to return it, but it just doesn't feel as polished. Another area of disappointment was with the combination of the screen UI and the touchwheel . What's up with only using half a screen? And what happened to the album art in the cover flow? Not a single album was shown, which made the feature pretty useless. Which such a beautiful screen, I think they should have picked classic view or cover flow, but not both. Neither seems to work very well.

ED NOTE: After checking with some other Nano owners, I am now under the belief that my clickwheel is defective. I did not have the same issues with the buttons on other similar devices.

ED NOTE 2: I also figured out how to manually add album art to iTunes. Unfortunately, I had to format the device to get it to transfer over. But, I do have Cover Flow now working on the device.

I'll throw in one more observation that isn't device related. I plugged the device into a machine with iTunes 7.0 on it. It required a complete update including a computer restart. It took about 30 minutes. not a great out of the box experience. Even worse, I caught an episode of South Park from the iTunes store to test my theory above about video. Guess what? the download failed and it was never able to recover. Lastly, I bought a game. It turns out that the Nano can't play games (for reasons that escape me).

ED NOTE 3: It turns out that if you read the fine print, it says that PacMan can't be played on the new Nano. I am still baffled why some games work and some don't, but this was a case of user error on my part. And, I still haven't received credit for the failed download.

So what's the verdict? I think it is a cute device. I think they will sell a lot. However, I actually think I prefer the old device for working out (well, let's not kid ourselves, I don't work out. I just like the form factor better). In the end, it has some amazing technology in terms of miniaturization, but it feels a bit rushed. I'm sure that it will get polished through device updates over time, but now it just seems a bit rough to me. I think it would be fine for somebody without a Nano, but I'm not sure I'd be compelled to upgrade if I already owned one. I'd love your opinions on the subject, but please no "fanboyisms" on either side. Remember, you're talking to a guy who has 8+ iPods, just about every PFS device and all the Zunes (and I run Vista, Ubuntu and OSX at home). :)

Last week I was in Frankfurt for the IAA show. I was really impressed. Imagine a show the size of CES filled with nothing but cars and car accessories. Now imagine it is six times the size of CES. It was amazing. I read in the newspaper that there were over a million visitors to the show. WOW!

I was there to meet with a few of our partners and to collect some information on trends in the automotive industry. One thing that was clear is that the number of gadgets in the car are proliferating. The other thing is that there is no standard way (elegant or not) to connect them all in the car. There was everything from simple cables to black boxes to aftermarket headunits to OEM systems to nav systems with built in wireless. I'm not sure there was one single trend that emerged as a clear winner, but it sure was great to see more options starting to emerge other than the FM transmitter. I'd say 80% of the cars there had some sort of connection built in. most of them were standard aux-in cables, but that is still better than the world we live in now. Some of the cool interoperability with in-dash electronics was impressive. One of the cooler implementations was Blue and Me from Fiat (yes, Fiat). It was a simple integrated entertainment system, but was easy to use via a display embedded in the speedometer and connected to external devices such as a nav unit. It was very slick - especially for an entry-level car. The next year or so should prove very interesting if the manufacturers standardize on an implementation.

Well, things have calmed down a bit over here, so I thought I'd ramp the blog back up. It has been one CRAZY summer here, but fun and exciting none-the-less! Several friends have asked why I stopped for so long. I'd often make up excuses. So, here are my top (semi) made-up excuses for not blogging this summer.

• I live in an area without broadband access (not true)
• I was stopped at the border during a business trip and ultimately deported (semi-true. I get stopped at the border all the time)
• Xbox took over my social life (that one was mostly true when I was playing Gears)
• Took up fly fishing (100% true)

The real answer is that I was just plain swamped. But, now I've got a little breathing room and I'm ready to share some of what we've been doing. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with all of the friends I met last year through the blog.