COMEDGETS

Apple and Creative have a chequered past. Lawsuits fly between these two technology giants as fast as neutrinos between nuclear furnaces, and they battle it out with competing audio players as well as in the courts.

Creative has a history of producing highly featured portable audio players that easily rival the iPod in terms of functionality, although some have lacked in the looks department. Thankfully, the Zen Vision:M sports pleasing curved lines and is not much thicker than an iPod. It also comes in black, white and a cheeky lime green.

The Vision:M is overflowing with features. The 2.5-inch (6.1 cm) colour screen is bright and vibrant, with more clarity than its iPod equivalent. It has a 30 GB hard drive, enough for up to 15,000 songs. It also sports an FM tuner, voice recorder and can handle an impressive range of audio and video formats.

The interface is easy and intuitive. The vertical scroll bar and surrounding buttons are well placed and the menu logical. It might not be as funky as an iPod, but for features, the Vision:M is up with the best.

Apple has recently unveiled one of the most exciting versions of its renowned music player called iPod Nano 3G TV.

Unlike the traditional shape of iPod Nano series, the new Nano 3G TV has been designed to accommodate a “mini-wide screen” 2-inch LCD display which is perfect for watching videos.

Meanwhile, the design of this device allows its manufacturer to fit it with a bigger QVGA display or with a 320 x 240 image resolution.

And unlike the previous models, the picture quality on the new iPod is outstanding considering its small LCD. Though one question users may ask when confronted with a small screen is: “How exactly are you going to watch videos with this?”

According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the inclusion of video support to the device is only for occasional TV or video watching.

The iPod Nano 3G TV hosts the newest split screen interface, also a first to all iPod models. The split screen works like a “start” button on the computer, the list of tracks and options are listed on the left side of the screen, while pictures, images, and icons are displayed on the right side.

But according to sources, the company still has to perfect the new split screen design to this device as it also hosts a list of major problems. One of the glitches cited is the slow animation of the art/album cover. (Users might need extra seconds just to see what the album cover looks like.)

Also, the CoverFlow interface option which is unique to the iPhone, is also slow. But the new iPod has more than 24-hours of battery life for audio, and five hours for video playback.

The iPod Nano 3G TV also has gaming feature, but only three out of 20 iPod games will be available, which include Ms. Pac-Man, Sudoku, and Tetris.

The 16GB model is available in many colors but the 4GB version is only offered in silver. Meanwhile, the iPod Nano 4GB and 8GB cost $149 and $199, respectively.