James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience of over half a million unique developers. In July '08 James left his job as Head of Development at a digital agency in London to focus his energies on developerFusion full-time.
Although narrowly beaten to the UK's top gadget of the year (which was claimed by the Pentax Optio S), the Apple iPod continues to be one of the most desirable gadgets on the market, and undoubtedly the most popular MP3 music player. Here, we review the 20GB iPod, which includes docking station, carrying case and a wired remote (these are optional accessories on the cheaper 15GB model); 20GB being big enough to hold around 5000 songs! The first thing that hits you when you unwrap the iPod from its packaging is how small and light the iPod really is. Despite effectively being a portable hard disk, thanks to the 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive it really small enough to slip into your pocket and barely notice its presence.
This baby is small - 104 by 61 by 16 mm (4.1 by 2.4 by 0.62 inches)
You control the iPod through five buttons and a scroll wheel, all touch sensitive; the only moving parts is the hold switch at the top of the device. When turned on, you are greeted with the default main menu, from which you can choose music to play, modify settings, or use one of the iPod's additional features. You can navigate through your music collection via predefined playlists (uploaded from your computer), or browse grouped by artist, album, genre or composer - from here, you can choose to play an entire group or playlist, or select an individual song.
Navigating through long lists of songs and artists is simple thanks to the iPod's scroll wheel - you just use a continuous circular motion with your thumb. If you like to choose songs from a range of albums/artists, then you can use the "On-The-Go" playlist: holding down the middle button on a song/album etc for two seconds will add it to this playlist. You can only create one of these, but fortunately once connected to a computer, you can retrieve the playlist and save it as a standard one. You really couldn't ask for a simpler interface.
The view from the top - with headphone/remote socket and hold switch - it's so shiny, my camera kept trying to focus on the reflections!
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