Music on the Go: Apple's iPod

By Jonathan Berohn

I'm a long-time Mac user, so many of my PC-oriented friends, while of course doing their best to belittle my Mac, were always more than a little jealous of the cool products Mac turned out. They loved the iBook when it first came out, thought my G4 Cube was tremendous, and couldn’t get over the wireless Airport hub. So when the iPod first hit the scene, they were naturally filled with both awe and envy. OK—awe is a bit much—but they certainly were a little bitter it didn’t work with PCs—yet.

That “yet” is the key word there, as Apple has broken with its long-time separatism and turned the iPod into a product that works with PCs as well as Macs. For those of you that don’t know, the iPod is a portable MP3 player. An MP3 file is compressed digital music file. That is, it’s a smaller file than you’ll find on a CD. As they are compressed files, the quality of MP3’s is also a little less than what you get on a CD, but it’s essentially unnoticeable to the human ear (at least this human ear)—especially when you are walking around in public, which is exactly what the iPod lets you do.

iPods come in 4 flavors, based on storage capacity; 4 GB, 15 GB, 20 GB, and 40 GB. What this means to you and me is that you can store anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 songs on your iPod at any one time. You read that right—you can store up to 10,000 songs on a device you can put in your pocket and carry around.

In a nutshell, you get songs for your iPod one of two ways. You can download music from the Internet—legally, of course. Apple’s iTunes, fittingly enough, offers a great service for this, by the way. Or you can rip songs off your own CD’s into MP3 files (OK—here I go with the jargon again, but really, everyone calls it ripping…honest). Then you simply transfer files from your Mac or PC to your iPod and you are good to go.

As with most things Apple, you pay a premium. iPods range from $249 to $499, but for that money you get the reliable Apple name, as well as some spiffy extras. In addition to built-in compatibility with iTunes, iPods have built-in alarm clocks, games, and text readers. All in all, you get quite a shake, rattle, and roll for your buck.