Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Think twice if you plan on jogging with it...
The Apple iPOD is a great device with a couple of severe drawbacks.1) The iPOD device portion of the MusicMatch software is [not good]. Updating my 20g iPOD with about 9g worth of data has taken over 1hr and is necesary each time you make even the slightest change to your library. Fortuanantly I was able to sign up to Beta Test the new XPlay software that supports this unit and it works great. 2) This unit will not work well for anyone hoping to jog or bike etc. with it. My wife and I have been running with it and it basially freezes up 90% of the time. Apple product support told me that there is no fix and confirmed that others have experienced the same issue. The bottom line is don't get an iPOD if you need a unit to run with.
----------------------------------- I returned my unit to Apple and recieved a new one in the mail in about 3 days. Great service... But this new unit locks up when I run as well...
Rating: - Great MP3 Player Overall
Just a little background... I've owned a couple other MP3 players before this one. One being a hard drive unit (nomad) and the other was a smaller solid-state type from creative (can't remember the name). Both were really bad from a number of standpoints, but I won't go into that.Anyway, I've got to say in Apple's defense, I don't find the price excessive. Apple went out of their way and appear to have selected\built in some very nice quality "user interface" features. This isn't a cheap plastic molded device that cost apple $40 to make. Being in electronic design, I can tell ya the LCD screen is top notch...I would guess they pay quite a bit for that alone. EVERYTHING else follows suit. So although it's not cheap in comparison to other "similar" products, you DO get what you pay for in hardware and software. I will agree with everyone that musicmatch isn't great. In fact, I went ahead and invested in 3rd party software which I REALLY like. IMO, it's worth it! Also, to those that are not satisfied with the "load time" between songs, especially when your trying to play cross\beat mixed tracks, I suggest you buy or download some freeware that takes the multiple tracks that you want and makes ONE MP3 file. Problem solved. My ONE single complaint about this is the lack of an FM receiver and or voice recorder. This is the reason for the one missing star. Should have been included...it's cheap to build-in and wouldn't affect the power\size at all. If you want the best and can part with the money, this is DEFFINATLY the one you want for now.
Rating: - Finally! An MP3 player that delivers
At this point I have had my iPod for a week. I went with the 10GB model, but now I think I might go and buy the 20GB model.
It is just that good.Pros: The iPod itself is a great product. I have owned three previous MP3 players, inlcuding the a RIO, and a Compaq. I always felt shortchanged, I gave them away or sold them, because I didn't like them. The iPod is what all MP3 players should be like. I had no hitches installing the software, and getting songs loaded. Can't say that for the my previous 3. Something important to me was that other MP3 players don't seem to be able to drown out outside sound sources. The iPod gets loud enough to drown out sound and more. I have nothing bad to say about the iPod itself, it is sleek, small, has tons of space, and the Firewire connection downloads at blazing speed compared to a USB.
This is an outstanding product, although pricey, but well worth every penny. Cons: To find something wrong with the iPod you'll have to look at the software it comes bundled with. MusicMatch has made a decent attempt at software for the iPod, but it does fall short. It doesn't download the tag information for MP3's correctly. Therefore you will see misspelled artists and repeated names on your iPod screen, even when they don't show that way on the computer. To fix this, I found deleting the tag completely (just editing it doesn't always work), and then re-creating the tag for each song fixes the problem. However, be warned when you delete the tag information for a song, MusicMatch will place it at the top of the list in your Music Library screen, and file it under Miscellaneous. All you have to do is go there and re-create the tag and MusicMatch will place it in its proper place. Also MusicMatch will truncate band and song names for no apparent reason. Fixing this isn't too bad for one song, but since the iPod's can carry thousands of songs, this is a real problem. I must say though, that MusicMatch does allow you to edit and re-create tag information for multiple files at once. So this helps a little when editing entire albums. But the software developers at MusicMatch have let the public down by letting this one slide through. Don't you guys test your software before you put it on the shelf? How could you guys have missed that? (I develop software by the way). There are other bugs in MusicMatch, but I won't go into them here. The one described above is the real annoying one. MusicMatch would be well advised to take care of this soon.
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