I have recently replaced my original 20 GB iPod Photo with an iPod nano*. I got the Photo back in the summer of 2005 and have been very pleased with the iPod experience as a whole. There has rarely been a day that I have not used it. When I first got it, it was before the podcast revolution. I loaded it up with most of my music. I had the poor hard drive maxed out.
I set up a play list that would allow me to randomly listen to every song on my machine before listening to any of them twice. When I was not hankering to listen to something specific, I loaded up that play list and enjoyed the random goodness. I made it through 20 GB of music 4 times. Then podcasts came along.
I had been reading about podcasts, but had not really understood them. This was still before Apple had official podcast support within iTunes. I downloaded a few shows and dropped them onto my iPod. One of the first shows I listened to was TWiT. My fascination with the show was mainly because of the personalities involved. There were fewer than 10 shows at the time. I went back and got all the previous episodes.
Since then I hardly ever listen to music. I subscribe to 80+ podcasts these days. If it weren’t for some weird requirement of the nano, I would not have any files on it that weren’t podcasts. For some reason, the nano will not show you any songs or files on your machine if you don’t have at least one normal song loaded.
In the intervening time between my iPod Photo and nano, I have had two first generation shuffles*. The first one just stopped being recognized by the computer. I took it to a local Apple service center along with the receipt. They replaced it for free, but I only had a couple of weeks left on the shuffle warranty. I suspected that the shuffle died due to my ability to sweat soak anything around me. When I got the replacement shuffle, I also got a water proof case for it. Within a couple of months it died of the same fate. Even with the Otterbox case case I kept it in, it still had rust stains at the base of the USB connector.
I still used the Photo as my main player during all of this. I have probably run 1500+ miles in the last 2 years carrying the Photo.
But the Photo has finally gotten to where it is only holding a charge for 20 minutes sometimes, and sometimes less. I just purchased a new battery for it today and am eagerly awaiting to see if that was the whole problem or if it is more serious. I have to wait a couple of weeks for the battery to arrive.
I have had the nano only about a month. I have a waterproof OtterBox case for it as well. I don’t know how people strap these things on their arms and not sweat them to death. I can’t risk that.
*Why does Apple not capitalize the names of these products? Idiotic.
Categories: Podcasting, Running
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