1E-9

For the past year and a half—maybe a bit more—my iPod Photo hadn't been quite working correctly. It would, on occasion, lock up in the middle of a song and restart with a frowny face icon. I discovered that when I put my ear up to it as this happened, I could hear a "click-peeew. click-peeew.click-peeew." sort of noise. And then I found that slapping it horizontally against my hand would cause it spin up properly and keep working.

During this time, it's been working for the most part, but freezing up more often (requiring sharper and even more frequent slaps in the past month or two). Finally, about a week ago, I slapped it and heard the terrible sound of the read/write head gouging the disk itself. And it didn't work again.

So I bought an iPod nano. Every time I look at it, I'm awed by how far miniaturization has come. Seven years ago, when the first iPod came out, I was amazed that they could fit 5 gigabytes of music into something the size of a deck of cards. And now I'm holding in my hand a device that's an tenth of the size, has a bigger video-playing screen, and lasts more than twice as long on a charge. It's just so tiny!