A Distorted Reality.

So yes: my iPod arrived; and no: I’m not disappointed with it. I love it, I really do: it allows me to listen to all of my music one one device, something that the other two never could. Being honest, that was the only reason for the change. In the past, I had always spouted my ‘Apple is the devil’ rhetoric: partly out of jealousy for my lack of an ability to afford their goods, but also partly out of a genuine feeling against the company; batteries and hard drives that only last a year, tops? Not cool. Super-fragile screens on £100+ consumer goods? Fucking ridiculous. Of course, my possession of two Creative players made me completely overlook the headphone jack issue that still isn’t fixed in even the newest of players. Thinking back, I sent the Micro back four times and still bought the Touch, which now suffers from the same fault – curse my youthful brand loyalty!

Price

Hah, I always start reviews with price: it’s important, I maintain. I paid £120 for the Zen Micro in 2003, I think; £40 for the Zen Touch in 2007 and £60 for the iPod, last week. Granted, I can’t objectively compare prices when one was bought new and the other two used, but it is relevant somewhat, I suppose: it shows the transience of value for such goods, and what a shame that that is. Clearly, the winner here is the iPod, the features:price ratio is much higher than the other two.

Player Firmware and Controls

I’ll treat the Micro and Touch as one entity for much of this: they pretty much have the same firmware and most functions are carried out in the same way; with the only exception of the dedicated volume control on the Touch increasing its usability above the other two greatly. It really is a tragedy that I have to somehow get to the Now Playing screen on the iPod or open a context menu on the Micro to be able to change a volume which I want to change immediately, not after a few seconds’ fiddling.

The Creative and Apple firmwares are much the same (with Apple leasing Creative’s menu style for their players) in operation and in features: with only the colour screen of the iPod allowing for cover art, photos, video etc.

One (unintended) advantage of the iPod (of this generation) is that alternative, non-stock firmwares can be used, such as Rockbox and iPod Linux (the site of which may be down), allowing for a more diverse range of features. As is oft the tragedy of open-source efforts, neither offering is completely feature-complete, with Rockbox in particular suffering from a terrible battery issue. The stock iPod firmware suffers from a little bit of slowdown, but nothing as bad as the Creative players’ 15-30 second large playlist loading time: plus, it has games, and a calendar!

The issue of firmware is another win for the iPod: the execution is a little smoother, a little slicker, and a little prettier. Again: the games help.

Looks

This is not fair. At all. iPod win again: another 3 years of design-schooling for Californians means that Creative’s offerings just look heinously ugly. The Micro is elegant, but the Touch is just blocky. And fat. Below, we have the players in order of sheer sexiness.

Software

I hate iTunes.

There, it has been said: I hate the single most popular computer media player. Why, you ask? It’s fat, it’s slow, it’s not pretty. Again, yes; I said something which could be considered a cardinal sin. Isn’t everything Apple beautiful?, I hear you scream, and the answer is no: it is not. On Windows, at least, it looks so out of place: the screen elements suit OSX just fine, but look so dreadfully out of place on Windows, and indeed in Linux (through Wine). I can’t see the hubbub about not-even-subtle supposedly-metallic gradients which are not at all pleasing to the eyes. I’m starting to think that Apple are putting something perception altering in the Kool-Aid.

Enough about aesthetics: I also hate the functionality. We have a choice between syncing all files with one computer, or managing everything manually: why can we just not sync with a sole computer and add elsewhere? Oh yes, I forgot: Apple’s yielding to the RIAA and MPAA over the ability to copy music/movies back from the player through an Apple-endorsed method (of course, this can be done through other means). It’s really a chore to add new music from a computer that isn’t at home, not to mention backing up music. I know that I could use something such as vPod, but I don’t feel that I should have to turn to 3rd parties for something that the manufacturer should provide as a courtesy for such a fucking expensive purchase – and such products don’t synchronise album art in such an elegant manner as iTunes. All this said, I love the automatic album art downloader, event though it couldn’t find any for half of my music.

Creative, on the other hand, turned to using MTP for both of my players: a universal transfer protocol engineered by Microsoft and reverse-engineered to support Windows pre-XP, Linux, Mac OSX and BSDs. This was wonderful to use: you could copy and back and forth, without the threat of being labelled a pirate. These were the good old days: these were days of trust. Drag and drop anywhere, without the computer moaning about syncing and possibly destroying everything that you have on your player: they way things should be. The Creative players win here, undoubtedly.

Durability

They are all awful in this regard.

The Verdict?

I like my not-so-new toy: I really do. If I didn’t have to use iTunes, I would like it more, but I will cope with my lack of coding prowess and not expect someone else to fix it for me.