OTHER TECH

And though a Nano has very few moving parts, both of them are affected by the designs of the protectors. The Smoke's opening for the Nano control-hold switch (which itself is too flush with the iPod body) practically covers the switch, which has to be clawed at through a small hole in the leather. The Jam Jacket's control-hold access is, by comparison, free and open.

What the Jam Jacket gets "wrong" concerns the Nano's other moving part: the mini-jack's gripping action for the earphone plug. Although the Jam Jacket's plastic skin is fairly thin, it is thick enough around the earphone jack that a plug with too wide a base cannot be inserted all the way into the jack - connection is made, but the plug is too easily pulled out since it doesn't fully engage the internal catch. Both my Shure and Etymotic earphones had this problem when used with the Jam Jacket.

I have been known to open up pieces of misbehaving audio equipment and do what needs to be done with my soldering iron and a bag of resistors, capacitors, and transistors. So I had no fear of correcting these minor design faults using the various cutting implements in my Swiss Army Knife (now that is a tool). While cutting away some of the leather flap getting in the way of the Smoke's control-hold switch and carving away the area of the Jam Jacket around the headphone connector may have violated their warranties and (slightly) disturbed their fashion-statement prettiness, I managed to bring both of these products up to full operational status. And it was certainly easier than setting up a multichannel speaker system.

Chips Ahoy! The most fun I had shopping for these iPod accessories actually occurred on the Circuit City checkout line. I provide, verbatim, an excerpt from a conversation between the young couple behind me:

[after a short pause in the dialog, and seemingly out-of-the-blue] He: I love electronics. [another short pause] She: I love junk food.

Although they didn't realize it, they were talking about the same thing - modern electronics have become the hardware equivalent of fast food. Just think of iPod protectors as high-tech Baggies!

See the previous David's Dartboard entry.

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