In terms of sound quality, I would agree that there's better options than the iPod, my old minidisc from the early 90's sounds better and I think ATRAC is still highly regarded but Sony's sonicstage software stinks.

Sound quality part of the reason I'm going to lossless see if there's much difference over AAC.

 

I think he was referring to the shuffle mode on a nano/full size iPod, rather than on a Shuffle. If that's the case, there is some logic to the idea.

I'd like to see the abilty, whilst listening to a song, to, for example, press the select button and cycle through to the "Go To Artist" or "Go To Album" option, at which point it would take me to the Artist or Album listing for that track.

 

Any consumer electronic device that sells in large numbers will have failures, and the iPod is no exception. One could argue that the failure rate is higher than other devices, and that is probably true, but then what's the iPods market share compared to other devices. I think, and I could be wrong, that it does somewhat dominate the market.

I'm not saying they are perfect, far from it. I've had the odd problem with mine, but if you have a problem and it's under warranty, send it back to Apple and they'll fix/replace it. If it behaves then great, if the replacement one fails, then I would start to get a little miffed, to say the least.

I've spoken to many people who say "iPod's are crap" and then go on to explain the problems they had from day one, or very shortly after they got it. I ask if they had used the Applecare warranty and sent it back to Apple for repair/replacement and the majority of these people had not. Claims of "I'd be without the thing I paid for" or "It's too much hassle" or the classic "My friend did that and it still did not work" seem to be used when I pushed as to why they'd not used the Warranty the device had.

 

My battery problems started just after the warranty expired, and when I rang the tech support about the crashes etc (while the warranty was still valid), the best answer I got was along the lines of "they all do that sir". I wasn't impressed with the service and is one of the reasons I'm not sure I'd buy another...

 

I'd like the option to be able to queue up the next track while the current track is playing. Or can you do this already and I've missed something.

 

My new Nano arrived this morning. It's a very slick piece of kit!

 

Are they available now?

 

Yes, I ordered mine from the Apple Store on Thurs.