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Against ip Odds: Size Does Not Count
With Mini's Rivals, More Is Sometimes Less
This month you will be able to choose from four competitors to Apple's iPod Mini, courtesy of Dell, Rio Audio, Virgin Electronics and Creative. How do they compare?
Four great players, each with some superpower that the iPod Mini lacks. It's curtains for Apple, right?
Not so fast. On something that's as personal and frequently used as a music player, little things make a big difference, and it's in the Little Things department that the iPod Mini really shines.
For example, when your player contains a thousand songs, you need a way to scroll through them quickly. You can run your finger around the iPod's famous click wheel fast to jet down to the W's and then slowly to pinpoint "What a Wonderful World."
But the Rio's thumb wheel has no such variable speed; it's four songs per turn, period. Working through any list longer than about 12 songs is an excruciating exercise. The Dell's "rolling log" control does zip farther through a list the faster you spin it, but it's awfully hard to speed up or slow down when you're basically twirling a section of a drinking straw. The Virgin's up-down buttons scroll at two different speeds, but that's still more frustrating than the Mini's "any speed you like."
Each player comes with its own disappointments...
The backlighting of the Dell,...
The Virgin's buttons are recessed too far, its backlighting is even dimmer than the Dell's, ...
On the Creative Zen Micro, the iPod's wheel has been replaced by a touch-sensitive vertical strip. In theory it ought to offer variable speed scrolling, but in practice it's a sticky, balky nightmare...
The sculptured Rio Carbon looks cool on a tabletop, but it's all wrong for your palm...
...All right, so the iPod Mini's rivals aren't as elegant or as polished, they're not as thoughtfully conceived, and they may not fill you with as much pure, overwhelming technolust. Apple's message seems to be, "Perfection has a price."

posted by Jerry permanent link