After playing with the newest iPod for a few days I’ve grown quite attached to it. There are some features of the 3G that I liked more, but the improvements in the 4G mean my wife can have the 3G.

Good Things

Battery Life

The battery life is, indeed, improved. I got around 11 hours when following Apple’s statement of how they test battery life:

Apple runs a number of tests for battery life using songs encoded in various formats, including MP3, AAC and songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. The songs are played continuously through a playlist without interruption, with backlight and equalizer off, using factory default settings.

Playing music with Sound Check on and a 10 second backlight I hit around 9 hours.

Menus

The menu system is “improved” in that some tasks are a little quicker to get to. Obviously Apple’s pushing Shuffle as the star item that’s easier, but there’s also a new category for Audiobooks you can add to the main menu as well that just lists items from Audible or Audible content from iTMS.

Full USB 2 Hi-Speed Support

FireWire is nice and good and fun and all, but having a cable that works on my Mac and any PC I encounter is also a good thing. So I can now pack the FireWire and USB cables in my backpack and be prepared for use on something other than my Mac

Yet, there’s more. I don’t have to care about which cable comes out as they both work on my iBook at about the same speed and charge it as well. USB 2 has less power on the bus than FireWire, so it will charge slower, but it will charge. If you’re playing music on the computer off the iPod (like I do) then after the day’s done it’ll be charged and the difference won’t matter.

The only time it will matter is when I sync the iPod or edit songs directly on it (I twiddle between full automatic and manual) because USB is half in hardware and half in software whereas FireWire is almost entirely in hardware. This means that while the sync will be around the same speed in theory, the computer will come to a screaming halt if you try to do something else (why don’t you try doing something at 480Mb/s while using interrupts and see how fast you go ).

Gadgets

All my gadgets for my 3G work fine on the 4G without changes. It came with a bigger-slotted dock, but everything else is perfectly fine.

Bad Things

Some bits of the 4G make me want to go back to the 3G, but not enough to actually do it.

Hard Drive

Two things about the hard drive, and neither of which Apple can control:

1. It’s loud when spinning up. Some folks complained they heard it over the headphones but I didn’t have that problem. I just heard it across the room (faintly). Very high-pitched whine that eventually topped off, read the data, and then died out. You know, like a hard drive does.
2. It’s big. Trey big. I mean, for a guy coming from a 3G 15GB it’s big. The iPod is still insanely small for what it does, but it feels a bit heftier in this larger size. I hear the 20GB is still the same small size as the low-end on the previous generation so it’s just the expected result of my choice: get a bigger drive, get a bigger drive.

Click-wheel

This thing takes some getting used to for a guy whose only iPod ever was completely touch-controlled. Granted, the 3G’s touch control was a bit annoying at times when I’d hit the wrong item accidentally by just moving a hand over it, but now I find myself tapping the selection button, checking the hold switch, tapping the button, noticing the wheel looks odd, going “Doh!” and pressing the button.

This will take getting used to.