the new nano just sucks!
Without trying I know that, why? It has no tactile buttons for the basic controls anymore!
Ever since the first walkman, all mobile music devices offered tactile controls the basic functionality of their primary task: play/pause, next/previous, fastforward/rewind, volume up/down. After quickly learning the controls one could easily use a musicplayer (discman, walkman, mp3player)
blindly! Why is that important, well:
- I'm in bed and I wanna skip that song, rewind a bit etc. etc. without having to blind myself by having to look at a shiny LED screen that would disrupt my falling asleep! --> useless device
- I'm running and I just want to adjust volume or skip a song without having to hold that thing in front of my face and having to stare at the screen. --> new nano = useless device
- I'm walking in the rain and have my iPod in my hand, in the pocket of my rain jacket and now I want to skip, fforward, etc. --> again: new nano = useless
I can think of loads of situations where I depend on a tactile interface for such a device. The iPod nano was the perfect portable Music-Player, now it's not! Shuffle is the only one left that can be controlled blindly, yet you can never handpick a song on that, WTF! An iPhone or iPod Touch is a different class of device, much more powerful and those are not intended as dedicated music players, people usually look at the screen anyways, but the PURE iPod?!? Come on! All this crazyness about touch-displays,
does Apple not have a single employee who is intelligent enough to grasp that pure touch-control may not always be desirable, maybe even render certain devices useless in like half the situations they're generally operated in?
The best iPod is now DEAD! Apple had better dedicated music-players five years ago! Shame on you Steve! When my 3rd gen nano (=phatpod) dies I'll be looking for a clickwheel one. If I can't find one then I sure as hell have to purchase an mp3 player of some competitor, great move, Apple, you just rid yourself of one (or maybe millions) of (so far) happy customers, laughable!