The iPod nano: So perfectly tiny
Just a thought from 8 September 2005 about Apple, Design, Geek, iPod.

On the Cartoon Network there's a brilliant show called Harvey Birdman that recycles old Hanna-Barbera characters into a modern courtroom setting. One of the wilder side characters is Reducto, a little green man with a passion for all things small (voiced by none other than Daily Show's Stephen Colbert). Reducto is known for obsessing over tiny things, shrinking objects and people with his shrink ray, and using phrases like "perfectly tiny" and "wonderfully miniscule" and "magnificently dainty."

Why am I babbling on about a bit part on an obscure show? Because I'm the proud owner of an iPod nano, and this is an iPod Reducto would love. In fact, I'm convinced that it's going to turn perfectly sane people into raving Reductos.

The thing is small, people. The photos do not do it justice. Think of a pile of, say, 10 business cards, only less wide. Think of two compact flash cards, sitting side by side. This thing makes my second generation iPod look like it's retaining water. It makes my HipTop look like a HumVee. It makes my Canon XT look XXXL.

And, yeah, it also plays music. I opted for the 4GB size, which'll hold two days of tunes and a shoebox full of digital photos. It sounds just as good as my old iPod, weighs less than half of the weight, is less than half the size, and is more than twice as woo-worthy.

On the design side, I'm happy to see Apple get back to my favorite defining characteristic of the original: the flat front. On the current crop of regular iPods, since the 3rd version or so, all the corners are rounded off. And as a result, the design lost some of its edge (literally and figuratively). The iPod nano takes us back to the cool clean edges of the original, just much much smaller.

So perfectly tiny. So wonderfully miniscule. So magnificently dainty....