Tiny Tech Adventures

Sometimes I just don't get Apple. Actually most times, but especially now.

Last week, I picked up a fifth generation iPod Nano at a thrift store for ten dollars. It was a pretty good catch, considering that these things sell for fifty bucks on sites like eBay. Nevertheless, I'm mystified by the technology in this device, which is roughly the size of a stick of Airheads taffy. The iPod Nano's got an internal speaker, a camera, and a microphone, and it needs absolutely none of these things, especially since the camera is set on the bottom of the device, where your hand is likely to cover it. It gets points for ambition, I guess, but loses just as many for being so impractical.

There's the camera, next to my thumb.
Why is this even here? Why, Apple, why?!

In the words of Big Audio Dynamite, I wanted this thing to just play music, but Apple made that impractical too. You can't just plug the iPod Nano into your computer and drag your songs into a folder, oh no... there has to be a middle man involved. Usually, that would be iTunes, but you can use a third party program as a work around... provided it actually does work, and it usually doesn't. Eventually I settled on PodTrans, which does the bare minimum of transferring songs and does it for free. It also nags you to tell your friends about the program on FaceBook, but that's why they put Xs on dialog boxes.

While I'm bitching about impracticality, I should probably mention that this iPod Nano can also play games, just in case you wanted that. (You don't.) I tried Vortex, a circular take on Breakout which has you spinning your thumb around the jog dial to control a paddle at the edge of the tiny Nano screen. I've got mixed thoughts about ball and paddle games with this perspective (years ago, I panned the Acorn Archimedes title Ballarena, which had charmingly dated computer rendered graphics but little else going for it), and the Nano's small display and imprecise touch sensitive wheel does little to endear me to the concept. 

Astonishingly, Apple offered a variety of games for the Nano line of music players... one such title was a little-seen spin-off of Mr. Driller called Star Trigon, which used all of one button for its input. Despite its simplicity and a hefty price tag, a friend of mine bought it anyway, because she's just that big a fan of the Mr. Driller series. (I still say Apple and Namco should return her five dollars.)