iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Stopwatch

The Stopwatch feature (iPod Nano and video iPod only) is just the ticket for runners and other obsessive people who want to know exactly how much time something takes. It not only clocks your time around the track, it also keeps track of your running sessions. It logs times for individual laps and displays your shortest, longest, and average lap times. To turn your iPod into a stopwatch, choose Extras → Stopwatch → Timer.

The Stopwatch screen displays separate sets of numbers stacked on top of each other, like this:

00:07:34.18

Lap 1 00:07:34.178

The top number is the total time of the session in hours, minutes, seconds, and hundredths of a second. The smaller number underneath is the time for the current lap in hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. (The lap time is a subpart of the total session time.) On the video-playing iPods, the screen is large enough for you to see three laps listed at once, but the Nano doesn’t quite have that much screen presence.

The buttons underneath the timer screen are the same controls you find on any stopwatch—Start and Clear. Use the click wheel to highlight the button you want to use and press the iPod’s center Select button to click it. For example, spin around until the Start button on the left side of the screen is highlighted, then press the center Select button to start the timer. The stopwatch starts counting and changes the Start button to Pause.

To stop the timer, press the Select button to choose Pause. When you click Pause, ...