Emptying the Pantry: First thoughts on an iPod and my Lifedrive.

*** This article was written on April 11, 2007, I forgot to release it. It was written before the new iPods were released last week. ***



So Christmas was a good time of the year for me. I received an iPod and was somewhat concerned because I have been relatively happy with my Lifedrive for all of my multimedia needs, particularly podcasts.

However, after using my iPod daily for 3 months now, I cannot believe how I have been able to live without this device for so long. The Lifedrive is no comparison to the iPod when it comes to multimedia. There are a few positives that make the Lifedrive worthy, but the advantage in terms of simplicity is something to behold.

First of all, iTunes is an unbelievable piece of software. Unlike some of its predecessors, such as MusicMatch, the iTunes music player is not a collecting ground for spam nor does it burden you with having to make categories and editing.

What is nice, is the fact that all of your podcasts are located in a podcast aggregator in iTunes, thus several very good medical podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis, are easily updated without my having to go to the websites to download them. The old episodes are immediately erased from the iPod once they have been listened to or I can change the rules in iTunes.

There are small nuances with the iPod itself. First of all, when the headphone is pulled out of the iPod, the iPod pauses, so you do not miss the podcast or song that you are listening to. To add to this, the form factor of the entire ipod series is essentially flawless. It is easy to carry, light and aesthetically pleasing.

So, how does this compare to the Lifedrive. Well the Lifedrive cannot match the iPod in physical weight. It is a heavy device that is tempermental. But it still has a lot going for it as a multimedia device. First and foremost, it is not tied down to one piece of software for its multimedia data. In fact you can obtain multimedia data from just about anywhere that can store something on an SD card or wirelessly. Secondly, it can play many more formats of movies and even podcasts without being converted. The addition of a 4gb SD card means that you can use a usb/sd card combo (see my previous writings about the card that I voted as the best Lifedrive gadget/software accessory for 2006) anytime and any place.

Picture storage on a Lifedrive would have been excellent if Palm had remembered to release the promised stand alone Memory Stick convertor for Sony cameras. It was one piece of vaporware that never made it. The SD card memory cards are quite good and the Lifedrive software does a good job in transfering that information to the device itself.

Of obtaining data, the Lifedrive excels beyond the 5th Generation iPods in that movies, readable data, music etc. all have three entry points for download. Accessed via the wireless web, data can be obtained via bluetooth, infrared or 802.11. The latter being by far the fastest method. There is also the SD/usb card option mentioned above. This is something that is quite adorable in the Lifedrive and has saved me on many occasions. The Lifedrive, like the iPod can also be used as an optional USB disk drive. BUT I CAUTION YOU NOT TO DO THIS. You will invariably run into a reset loop when you return to run your normal programs.

What of crashing? Well this is where the iPod has been overrated. You may remember many months ago I posted an article wishing for Apple to make a PDA because of the fact that Apple knows how to utilize the memory etc., without causing crashes. Well, I would like to take all of that back! The iPod does crash! But it crashes silently. The iPod doesn't do resets, in the true sense of the word, during song or movie playbacks. No, it will do it when you turn off the device after watching a movie or rummaging through several playlists. When you turn it back on, you are met with a dark screen. You almost swear that the device is broken, but looking very closely, almost requiring a tilt of the screen is a small silver Apple Logo in the center of the screen. What's going on? A silent reset that takes about 15 secs max for a 30 gigabyte iPod. It's almost predictable. However that is acceptable given the Lifedrive's woeful 3-5 minute soft resets, which often occur during critical moments. The question here is whether this blip in the Apple device accounted for the reason why Apple may turn to complete flash memory as they appear to be doing. See the iPhone and Nano series.

So, it all boils down to what you want to do with a device. As noted by Ed Colligan, the Palm CEO, the company has recognized many of the mistakes that have been made and they are taking a page out of the Apple playbook by using Linux (Apple's OS X and presumably the iPod and iPhone are running various versions of Unix) for their next offerings later this year. But let's not forget that the Lifedrive was meant for not only multimedia play but for serious use, ie. Spreadsheets, Database entry etc. and the Multimedia wizadry is something new for them. Apple has not ventured into the Handheld arena since the Newton. But they have learned and I think that Palm will take into account the need to get rid of the Hard drive solution and venture to the flash memory option to save battery life and provide a good user experience. For now, the Lifedrive remains a distant second when compared to the iPod, despite the many on-paper advantages that it has, including its own set of speakers. The out of the box quality and attention to detail and user experience appears to be in Apple's favor right now.



LDD