Crunch Down: iPod Nano Fourth Generation

Apple has toyed with various designs before, some make it to market and others stay locked up in their Cupertino based domain doomed to never see the light of day or an over zealous leak through the Blogo-o-sphere. The iPod Nano on the other hand has gone under the knife transforming from a miniaturized version of it’s bigger brother to donning an aluminum clad enclosure reminiscent of the Mini then being shrunk down taking a subtle shot at Microsoft as a Zune look-a-like. Besides the obvious cosmetic improvements and an  additional splash of color that makes previous Nanos pale in comparison, Apple has started to settle on a single UI structure and work from there. A recent price cut however will have competitors start feeling the heat and force them to cut their prices in order to compete.

Aluminum is an element that’s staying with the iPod for a long time to come whether it’s part of the casing or colored to look it and just because Apple already has itself set on a central design doesn’t mean they’re not going to tweak it. New to the Nano is an Accelerometer and a thin sheet of curved glass covering the screen. The upside to a glass screen protector is there have been little to no reports of any serious light reflection that would prevent you from using your iPod. Of course the curvy goodness comes courtesy of the iPhone’s tapered edges allowing it to appear thinner than it really is. The Accelerometer on the other hand does the obvious, flip the UI to match its horizontal orientation but Apple cooked in a feature to shake things up a bit, literally. If you’ve had the rare opportunity to venture out and look at media players not graced with Apple’s design ingenuity or good graces it tends to look drastically different. One such player, the Sansa Shake seems to be on the other end of the engineering spectrum and actually inspired Apple instead of the other way around. Going along the theme of having fun iPods nowadays, the design team has shaken up how you listen to your music, just shake to shuffle. Yea, just shake to shuffle your music, just don’t be jumping around when you listen to the Doodle Bops. Besides the obscene gestures that could be made randomly picking a song, it’s just another way Apple decided to spice the use of an Accelerometer in a non touch screen iPod without all those cool iPhone Apps like Phone Saber and Super Monkey Ball.

The actual specs of the iPod Nano haven’t changed much at all besides the addition of a 16GB model and a generous $50 dollar price cut. Screen real estate hasn’t been altered in any way despite the 90 degree rotation, it’s still the same 2 inch LCD packing a very dense amount of pixels running at 240 x 320. Last generation Nanos did not require their vertical orientation to be changed just to watch a video but the newest generation rotates the same way an iPod Touch must be rotated to watch a movie. Once titled, it looks exactly the same as the 3rd generation iPod Nano plus an awkward hand position. The interface and UI elements largely remain the same except for the position change of the Cover Flow bar, that’s been moved down below the Menu and no longer remains to the side. Besides that much, all other aspects of the Nano have transitioned over without much change.

However there is no telling what the next generation Nano could hold in store, it seems at this point Apple is just toying with a perfect design and through minor cosmetic tweaks and storage increases they’ve found it reasonable to make it a star item at their annual media events.