To an 160 GB iPod Classic from a 60 GB iPod Video

Up until a month ago, I had been using a 5th generation 60 GB iPod video. It served all the purposes I needed it to, except that I had over 60 gigs of music alone, and I wanted to store photos and videos on the iPod as well. When I had the money to buy a higher capacity iPod, I sold my iPod Video right before Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), hoping that a new iPod might be announced at the event. No new iPod was announced, but I had already sold my Video, so I went out and bought a new 160 GB iPod Classic.

What I was expecting was nothing more than my old iPod with a higher capacity. What I got was a lot more than that. The new iPod offers a slew of small touches, both on the hardware and on the firmware running on the device.

The advantages on the hardware side are that the screen is brighter and crisper, the battery life is more than twice as long, and the iPod still manages to stay the same size while more than doubling capacity. On my older iPod Video, the screen had a high enough resolution to display the important items, but the newer screen is both brighter and higher resolution, allowing more information to be displayed on the screen at once. As for battery life, my Video stopped at around 12 hours of playing music, but the new Classic will play it for 30 hours. On top of all that, the dimensions of the devices are almost identical, other than the shape of the front edge is shaped slightly differently.

The firmware improvements include a better method of displaying the time in the top menu bar, artist names listed under song names while viewing playlists, and an overall sleeker and more appealing look and navigation through my media. On the Video, the top menu bar was usually taken by the name of the playlist or navigation menu you were in, so trying to check the time in the top bar was a time consuming process. The newer firmware takes advantage of the higher resolution screen and displays the time constantly, regardless of what menu you're in. Another slight annoyance I had with the Video was that many artists have songs with the same name (for example, I have 9 different songs, all called "beautiful" and all by different artists). If these songs were in a playlist, I wasn't sure which of the songs I was choosing. Again taking advantage of the higher resolution display, the Classic displays the artist of each song when looking at a playlist. Lastly, the Classic really utilizes album art that is tied to the songs in my library. At each music menu, the menu options are on the left side of the screen while albums that are in the current selection are faded in and out on the right. This often provides me with something random but good to start listening to and makes for an interesting way to pick music (another thing that is always a task for me).

Overall, the new iPod fit my goal of storing all my media on one device, but also surprised me with a number of small fixes and improvements in the user interface. I would recommend anyone who also has a few annoyances with their older firmware or needs a higher capacity to upgrade, and with current iPods still worth a lot of money, the upgrade shouldn't be nearly as costly as the initial purchase.


Full Disclaimer: I was an employee of Apple Inc., but I am not one currently.

TechTelic Tip: More Finder Keyboard Shortcuts

I love discovering new neat things on my mac, and today I stumbled upon OS X's built in clipboard switcher which allows for multiple copies and pastes to be saved and accessed at any time.

You can access the clipboard switcher by adding the shift key to the normal cmd+c or cmd+v keyboard shortcuts. To add a new clipboard entry to the manager, just select the text you want to copy and press cmd+shift+c. To paste, select where you want the text/image to be pasted and then double click which copy you would like pasted.

A few other finder keyboard shortcuts that I also discovered today are:
instant access to the Applications folder: cmd+shift+A
instant access to the Utilities folder: cmd+shift+U
instant access to the Desktop: cmd+shift+D

and my personal favorite,
instant google search of selected text: cmd+shift+L

UPDATE:
A recent machints.com article adds that you can also drag selected text to the safari icon in your dock to perform an instant google search
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080619191307294

TechTelic Tip: Quicktime Keyboard Shortcuts

I read a good dozen or more blogs per day, so I have to use an RSS reader such as google reader to keep track of what's news. With google reader, you can scan through new articles with the j and k keys, j to go forward one article, and k to back up to the previous one.

This evening I was reading through an article in google reader while downloading a song in the background. When the song finished downloading, it automatically launched quicktime to play the song right as I was pressing the j key to go to the next article. The song started, but something wasn't quite right - it was playing in reverse!

I quickly discovered there are many other keys that can be used to control quicktime. On a quick side note, I do use quicktime pro, so some of these keys may only work if you have the upgrade.

k = pause
l = play
j = play in reverse

you can also use keyboard controls for minor edits (definitely quicktime pro only)
i = set an in point
o = set an out point
right arrow = 1/4 second forward
left arrow = 1/4 second backwards

You can also use the command key + right or left arrows to play forwards or backwards respectively. That reminds me of one of my favorite things about macs; there are a lot of "right" ways to do things. Some may be easier to execute, others easier to remember, and others still that are just the most logical. Part of my work for apple included training individuals in iMovie and other applications, and one of the most common comments was something like, "I got it to work this way, but is that the right way to do it?" My response was always some variant of that it may not have been the most efficient way to get it done, but if it's done and it's the way you want it, you did it correctly. Alright, end of random mac fanboyism.

There are also many many other keyboard shortcuts that aren't fully spelled out in the finder, but there is documentation on apple's website for full finder keyboard shortcuts as well as lists for individual application's keyboard shortcuts. One last note, iTunes visualizers also have keyboard commands, check 'em out!

TechTelic Tip: Make you computer sleep more quickly

When you shut the lid of a mac notebook, the display immediately turns off, but the computer does not instantly go to sleep. This is because the machine is preparing for what's called "safe sleep." 

Safe sleep allows you to switch out to a spare battery while the machine is asleep without having to shut down or lose your place in whatever you're doing. The way this works is, when a computer goes to sleep, it powers down everything except for the RAM. 

The RAM holds information about anything and everything currently running on your machine so that when you wake it back up, you can continue right back where you left off. The RAM doesn't take much energy to run, but requires battery power to remember what was running when it was put to sleep. 

The difference with safe sleep is that the computer first writes the contents of your RAM onto the hard drive, which does not require power to store data. The problem this causes is that your machine can take up to 30 seconds to go to sleep during this process, and if during this time you throw the machine into your backpack or laptop case, you can rattle the (still running) hard drive enough to crash it. I made it a habit to wait until I saw the sleep light going on and off before putting the machine away so as to avoid causing damage to the hard drive, but because I don't even own a spare battery, safe sleep is not necessary for me. 

To avoid having to wait the half a minute or so that it takes to put the machine into safe sleep, there is a terminal command to disable the feature.

$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
$ sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=false

Once those commands have been issued, you will need to reboot your machine for the new commands to take effect.  Once that's done, you will notice that your machine sleeps significantly more quickly.  However, if you experience a power loss, whatever you were working on will be erased.  If you do decide you need safe sleep back again, you can issue these commands to reverse it.

$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
$ sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=true