Hands on with the new iPod Radio Remote

So, yesterday was my birthday, and just like any other good Mac user, I had to drag my wife to the Apple Store before going to dinner. A pre-celebration celebration, if you will.

In any case, they didn't have the new iMacs in yet, but they did have the new Radio Remote for the iPod, so I quickly bought one. I've posted a bunch of pics of the device and its packaging over on my Flickr account, so make sure you check out all the pics.

So far, I've only done minimal tinkering with the device, but here's my mini-review of cool bits I've noticed:

• If you haven't run the latest iPod update, the Radio Remote will work as a remote, but not as a radio.

• Clicking on radio and tuning is a snap. Hitting play temporarily "turns off" the radio.

• The top headphone jack on my 5G iPod continued to work even when I had headphones plugged into the Radio Remote. So, it's not just a radio, it's not just a remote, it's also a way to share your tunes with your friend or loved one by plugging in two headsets (one to the iPod and one to the Radio Remote). Very cool.

• Station information shows up underneath the station number when listening. As I had it tuned to 92.3 K-Rock in NYC, the text FREE RADIO and BOOKER kept scrolling underneath the radio frequency.

• The remote is identical to the controls on an iPod shuffle, so I imagine it will have the same easy to control while wearing gloves quality.

• The included headphones have the smaller stereo plug that comes with the nanos.

• The headphones plugged into the Radio Remote act as the antenna, so you cannot listen through the top port on your iPod with no headphones attached to the Radio Remote. There's audio, but it is all static.

I'll post more on this later after I really get a chance to put this sucker to the test. I wonder how the battery life is if you are just doing radio 24-7...