iPod nano hands-on: This is more like it

So today we went to Bonifacio High Street- always a pleasure to go to- and we went into iStudio where smack dab right in front of the doorway iPods both old and new were placed for mass fondling. Naturally, I went to the newer nano and tried it out, unfortunately I had to make do with my cellphone's video camera as its still camera is next to broken (it rarely works) but at least it's video!

You seriously have to hold it to see how amazingly thin this thing is. Still, I did not realize how sharp its base edges are. Sit down in a certain angle with that thing in your pocket and bam, potentially bruised leg! But I guess that's beauty for ya- like that pair of awesomely contoured but painful to wear shoes, you just have to make sacrifices for the sake of coolness.

That quirk aside, this iPod is unbelievably nearly as slim as a credit card which is no joke, yet like a shuffle is ultimately easy to lose because it can easily drop and the grip you have on this is thing is not exactly anything to write home about especially if you have sweaty hands like mine.

Features-wise, the new nano works excellently on most if not all accounts. Yeah Genius, although not turned on in that specific unit will depend on the kinds of varieties of music you have in your library. The accelerometer is surprisingly snappier and more responsive so you get to Cover Flow mode in your music or landscape mode in your photos faster if you rotate the position of the iPod... or maybe I got used to the angle you have to rotate the iPod in to do those things? Whatever the case, the nano does these things beautifully. Unfortunately, the controls don't rotate accordingly, thus even when you flip the nano 90 degrees, the Menu button does not become either the Next or Previous buttons in the click wheel, the function of the Menu button merely remains the same.

But another thing that's more responsive is the aforementioned Cover Flow. When it was first introduced in the fat nano and the then new classic, operation was rather slow unlike in the iPod touch where it was invaluable as a navigation tool. Now, well, the new nano doesn't exactly change everything, but it feels less slower and more responsive.

And when you fire it up, you'll notice some more practical aesthetic changes in the interface. You know that little preview screen that divided the real list into half and made navigation slower? It's been relegated to the lower part of the screen instead seeing that the screen's dimensions don't exactly fit a setup like last time's.

Another beautiful aesthetic change comes when you actually play something because it now looks like the iPod touch's Now Playing screen wherein the album art covers up most of the screen. And if you hold on to the center button long enough, you'll see a new context menu with options for browsing songs of the same artist or album, for adding a song to the On-The-Go playlist and for starting Genius which makes a playlist of songs that it thinks sounds great with the current song, which is a nice touch.

But if you don't seem to like a specific song, you can always give the nano a vigorous shake as if you're blaming the nano for making yourself know that you have a horrible taste in music, so it will switch tracks and activate Shuffle. If you're wondering whether this gimmick will ruin your mood because it'll repeatedly switch tracks while you're running or jogging, don't fret, because Apple worked hard to make sure that that will rarely happen, if not at all. Besides, if the thing is on Hold, shake-to-Shuffle is disabled anyway. If you're still paranoid about it, you could always disable it entirely.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, video and picture quality are superb, and the screen has become more tolerable for longer video viewing sessions, but I encountered plenty of glare. The video or picture you're viewing will rotate accordingly to the angle you're viewing unless it's portrait though.

I didn't get to try out the acceleremeter driven game Maze, nor was I able to gauge how clear the Voice Recording feature was, but it's still safe to say that the new nano is a more than welcome enhancement- and a must-buy especially with its competitive price in the 8000-10000 peso range for 8 and 16GB models.

On an unrelated side note, the Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street branch is just pure heaven for booklovers. So obviously today was also my first time going in there. I mean, what more can you ask for with a whole building devoted to books of all genres? Starbucks? It's got that too.

iPod nano: What was supposed to be a hands-on T_T

"Hayop ito, grabe," said one man.

That particular man was the only thing between me and the attractive new iPod nano in our brief visit to the Power Mac Center- the only establishment that offers free trials of Apple stuff to the grubby hands of the masses, me included. And note the word brief. Which means no, I didn't have the chance to fiddle with it as the actual agenda of our visit to that store was to look for protective plastics for my brother's and sister's iPod classics.

But from what I saw, the screen real estate has been dramatically increased- or at least it seems to be the case- making for more than tolerable video viewing, and unlike the last generation nano, the Ken Burns montage of your album art has been relocated to the lower part of the menus for a better view of your song list.

I saw some video playback action going on, and as usual the screen looks stunning doing it- the only different thing is that you have to do this activity in landscape, not portrait.

And there ends the stuff I saw today as my father called for me to stop ogling at the impeccably gorgeous device as they could not find any plastic there. That's how brief that sighting turned out, although I did see a little girl trying out the new touch, which is not much when you've got a first generation iPod touch upgraded to the latest software (2.1) at your disposal. The only edge it has, however, is in the hardware. The design makes my first generation touch look like garbage, and the volume controls and built-in speaker sure help a hell of a lot even if in paper, these enhancements are seemingly petty.

The new classic makes an appearance, but I was like, "Meh... there's no reason to check the classic out... Next!".

The price of the new nano, however, I got to put in pictures when we went to Avant. Hmmm... makes me wonder how much it is in Greenhills?
CAPTION: I thought the 8GB nano would sell in Avant/Abenson for like, 10000. I was wrong. (P8900 or something is the price for 8GB). LOL, multiple price tags.

iPhone 3G Hands-on

Basically both expected and unexpected in terms of features. For one thing, typing is at least made less of a pain because of the extremely intelligent auto-correct system, the camera is pretty good for 2 megapixel (my dad is actually wanting to downgrade from 3 megapixel to 2) but surprisingly, there's no zoom! Still, I'm actually glad to see that there are sane buttons for volume and sleeping (also the equivalent for Lock). The unit overall is actually really sexy up close and personal, and to be honest, I liked the wobbly curved black back. At least there's a phone  
that's not anorexic nor boxy!

Multi-touch gestures are greatly implemented here and although it isn't always responsive, the fact that the unit can tell whether you're holding it sidewards or normally is pretty cool, and it makes browsing music or the web via 3G extremely easy.

Of course, I didn't exactly test everything. And that's because it's merely a demo model from Globe Telecom. However, based from the video that was being shown outside makes it apparent that SMS will be G-Mail like, and again, there's no MMS, but getting extremely user-friendly E-mail options that contains Yahoo! Mail which is surprisingly free even for those not using Yahoo! Mail Plus verily much makes up for it.

The music side of the iTunes store is still not available here, so advertising it will not do any good, but the App Store works... And as I said in the past few posts, there are bad ones and good ones.

It's not as feature stripped as I thought, but it's still not worth the money.

Getting Fingers on the MacBook Air

Medyo pasmado nga ang mga kamay ko noon (My palms were a bit sweaty), but I dared touch that surprisingly durable feel of aluminum on that ultra-thin new ultraportable that, though it didn't make as much waves as the iPhone, cooked up quite a storm. Yes, the iPhone part was a give-away because the thing that I tried was none other than Apple's new MacBook Air.

CAPTION: It even comes in a cost-saving, smaller eco-friendly box!

Greenbelt

We went in the Power Mac Center in Greenbelt because my mother was having a one-hour facial (Murad coupon.) and the first thing I would see is not the laptop, but Apple's upgraded

 Apple TV. We tinkered with the usual iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros in display but later, my brother would find the Air in a sort of not so obvious location. Funny that they should do

 that, because when we started using the thing, people were crowding up behind this, because this was the most stylish piece of Apple tech inside.

Hardware

I inspected the sides of the machine, and yes, I missed the ports that could be found on the left side, but when I checked the right side, the pull-down door was instantly discernible and it would reveal the 3 magic wishes, err... ports namely, the USB port, VGA and mini-DVI ports (one each). I kinda miss the DVD drive (What's the use of iDVD then, right?) but still, at least they covered that itch with Remote Disc which I unfortunately did not have a chance to try.

Amazingly, Apple did not compromise the user by placing smaller keyboards and trackpads,

 but normal-sized ones, hell, the trackpad's larger than the MacBook I'm typing on, and it's quite fun to use. And when I say fun to use, I point to the "multi-touch gestures" that the

 mousepad supports. You can use three fingers to switch to another photo or whatever, you can pinch it to zoom in or out, and move your fingers in a specific way so that you can rotate something. These moves are surprisingly intuitive. And opening this MacBook, and organizing

 the photos for the II-1 DVD, makes me miss them. Hell, I wondered how I could've lived without them!

CAPTION: I adore the intuitive, innovative mouse gestures! How did I ever live 

without them?!

Features

Plus, the screen looks brighter than ever, especially with its power-saving LED backlight, plus it makes the screen super thin as well!

Other features that come standard include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and not to mention the very

stylish and functional Mac OS X Leopard (which is still in my list of "Pirated software to buy when we go to Greenhills"). It's pretty speedy too for a stripped down dual core processor powered machine and it's even got 1GB more (of RAM) than the MacBook I'm using!

CAPTION: LEDs allow the screen to be ultra thin.

Predictions

It won't really sell as much here. It's not yet as practical, nor future-proof, as it should be. But if Apple released the product, or at least another iteration of it... maybe after 2 to 5 years, it (the next iteration) will sell A LOT. Because by that time, most of our streets will probably have Wi-Fi access pang-masa (public), and software will rarely be distributed by CDs and be set up for download in the Internet instead. It wouldn't be really the best time to buy a MacBook with features like these, but it's quite the pioneer, and a daring one if I might add. Because it will lead the way towards the promotion of the death of CDs (which, on the bright side, is VERY

 eco-friendly) and the Internet will be where we go for music, and pretty much many things else. This is the future, people. But it's still too early to be used frequently, lest your house is a Wi-Fi hotspot, that is.

CAPTION: Great in the long term, not so much in the short term. (ON SCREEN: Me and my little brother.)

(I didn't see the price tag......... but I bet it's more expensive than this MacBook.)

Hands-On Affair: the new iPods

Straight from Trinoma's Power Mac Center, I had a little hands-on time with the new iPods. They generally work great and look gorgeous but they have their shortcomings as well...

iPod Nano

The little wonder was the one I wanted to test most since I didn't actually see the iPod Touch which is the first Apple touch product in the Philippines and Asia. Anyway, it's wide but literally almost paper-thin. It has what the iPod Classic has: new interface features like Cover Flow. But more importantly, a feature that is a selling point for this device is its unsurpassed video quality. They literally jammed pixels in that small 2 inch screen for the best video quality of its class! I'm not sensationalizing, people! It's TRUE!

A con is present here, and it's the size of the Click Wheel. It's hard to get used to it, especially with big fingers like mine. But once you do, it's a great experience nonetheless.

This is the iPod you'll most likely be buying. The price is competitive (10,000 for 4GB and 11,000, a bargain, for 8GB) and features signature iTunes synchronization and wide third-party accessory support. Plus, it's the most portable, too!

iPod Classic

I actually didn't bother testing it since it's almost the same with the new Nano. Only bigger...

iPod Touch

I didn't expect it to be there but it was! I waited in line to try it out and it was actually a bit hard to learn especially since it's a glass screen with multi-touch features (because touch screens are normally unresponsive with multiple fingers). I never got to try out the web features, though (YouTube, iTunes Store and Safari browser) but videos are excellent and photo handling is intuitive. But I won't say that it's the best deal you can find in an Apple music product. You can't use it in public (because it's sexy and expensive-looking), you can't use the iTunes Store (you need a .Mac account which is expensive) and Wi-fi isn't actually that common nor free as the hotspots in America (so you can browse the web)! Plus, the storage is relatively meager for a device that is most suitable for video (it's excellent, btw) and costs 16-20 thousand pesos for 8 and 16 GB models respectively. If you want to experience it yourself, it's exclusive only in Power Mac Centers. It's so cool!