What's thinner than Lara Flynn Boyle, sleeker than a new Ferrari, and can upstage Kanye West? Apple's latest iPod offering, the Nano. Although West's recent performance at the product's unveiling received little fanfare, his second billing makes sense in light of the sheer quality of Apple's newest \it"" gadget.
The color screen packs a lot of oomph in a small space, remaining sharp and easy to read. Even though the actual screen size is smaller than that of the iPod Mini, the Nano's high-resolution screen can display more lines of text than its predecessor.
Nano's other key feature is its use of flash memory instead of a hard drive. Flash memory is small, energy efficient and has no moving parts. Replacing the hard drive-based storage, which uses spinning disks to store data, allowed Apple to make such a marked improvement in size and battery life (about fifteen hours on a full charge) over previous iPods.
Apart from its technical prowess, the Nano is also a truly impressive piece of industrial design. Appropriately named, the device's biggest draw is its tiny size. At a volume of only 1.5 cubic inches, it's less than half the size of the iPod Mini, making it small enough to fit in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans.
Like any new product, the Nano isn't free of design flaws. After a week of testing the Nano, the most apparent flaw is the glossy surface's susceptibility to scratches, taking only a day to attain noticeable wear.
While the Nano generally performs well, a few bugs keep it from attaining perfection. The ability to view album art for a given track is novel, but the Nano sometimes displays the incorrect art while playing a song. This may be a sign of Apple releasing the product prematurely, but the issue will likely be addressed in a future update.
The first-rate iPod Nano will only add to Apple's already strong hold over the digital music player market.
