For information on how to refresh or reset your iPod, have a look at this Apple Support article: iPod 5 Rs Assistant.
I’ve had my swivel head 17” iMac for over 4 years now and it was time for an upgrade. Same thing for my old iPod, which I bought at the same time as the iMac. Both were my first foray into the world of Apple and I never looked back. There were a few things that influenced my decision to switch:
- OS X and it’s Unix underpinnings
- The form factor of the iMac
- Office X (for compatibility with work stuff)
- The iPod and iTunes combo
- And most of the smartest and most influential people on the web used a Mac and it’d seemed like the Web designer/developer’s tool of choice (Zeldman, Gruber, Clark, Benjamin, Allen, Bowman, McLellan, Cederholm, and probably a few others I forgot to mention).
I should probably elaborate on the first and last points. I was immediately taken by the design of OS X, but I had no background in Unix at all. Briefly, during my University days, I was exposed to Pine and FreeBSD, although I didn’t know it was FreeBSD, I just knew it was a command line OS and I didn’t like it. So ironically, it was a company and Operating System known for it’s design aesthetic and GUI sensibilities that exposed me to Unix. Then I read a great series of articles by Kevin Hemenway ( Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X part 1 , 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6). Once I discovered redirection, I really began to appreciate the power of the command line.
The last point is interesting because this is when my interest in the web really took shape and I started reading anything and everything about web design and development. So I think at the same time I switched, my web knowledge started to really mature and grow.
So back to the new iMac. Compared to a 800 MHz G4, the new Intel Core duo is very fast. Almost shockingly so. And the new iPod (I bought the white one) is way ahead of my older one, way ahead, but the old guy served me well (his name is Jorge). Being able to watch video, albeit on a small screen, is fun too.