Apple iPod

Ah, Apple products. They look fantastic, they're easy to use, and creative types love them - but not everyone buys them. The Apple iPod is typical of Apple's range - it's simple, gorgeous, and as cool as a chilled cucumber.

Let us enthuse about iPod. It's the size and weight of a pack of cards. Its 5Gb hard disk stores more than 1,000 music tracks in MP3 format. It can load the contents of a typical CD in 10 seconds. Its built-in battery lasts for 10 hours between charges. It has technical audio features which mean that its sound quality is at least as good as any digital music player we've tested. Its 185g, 100mm x 60mm dimensions are great. But perhaps the most impressive thing about iPod, in contrast with more confusing computer gadgets, is that its manual is six sentences long.

So why isn't everyone buying an iPod? As with other Apple products, it boils down to incompatibility. If you want an iPod, you need an Apple Mac because it won't work with Microsoft Windows PCs; and Apple, trying to protect its business, refuses to launch a version that will.

It uses FireWire to connect to a computer rather than most other players' choice, USB, which means it is 30 times faster to update. It can also be used as a external 5Gb disk drive.

But iPod's style comes at a price - £349 is a lot for a personal stereo - although buying memory cards to store as many songs would cost over £1,800. It could easily be used as a portable music library for a car stereo, too.

Our minor gripes were with the polished metal backplate, which got scratched within a couple of days; iTunes, Apple's free digital music software which works well but has a few annoying quirks; and the fact the FireWire port is exposed and vulnerable.

Contact
Apple 0800 039 1010 www.apple.com/uk