This just in – My iPod touch has arrived! It’s absolutely fantastic, overall. Ripping open the shrink-plastic, I saw the little black box, staring up at me, containing: headphones, a dock adapter, a data cable, a data cable clip, and a little wallet of documentation.
So I plug it in, and what do you know it, my shiny new friend refuses to work with my current iTunes setup (I already had my old iPod connected to that library). So, I had to create a brand new account on my laptop, all for the little guy, updated to iTunes 7.4.3.2 and copy my entire media library across, and only then did it want to play nice with my iTunes library.
Okay, so it works. It came charged, it was synced up, and ready to roll.
The interface is simple, clear, and responsive, and there were no ugly lag smears on the screen at all, or “freeze-loading”, where the whole device freezes to keep up with what you’re doing.
The screen is roughly twice the resolution of a standard computer screen, and is allegedly the same screen as the iPhone.
Music - browsing through your music library on the iPod is incredibly simple; you navigate through lists of artists, playlists, or songs, by “rubber-banding”. This is where you touch, and drag, and sort-of throw the lists up and down, as if they were sat on wheels below. To choose an item, simply tap.
At any point during listening to music or searching through your music library, simply turn the unit sideways – either left or right – and up pops cover flow, then all you have to do is drag your finger across to scroll through the album art in your library.
Internet -for many, this is the”killer app” for an iPod, music (And of course phone functions) aside. The iPod touch comes with a mobile version of Safari – Apple’s internet browser. I found the interface simple, allowing me to do what I wanted, fast. Safari for the Touch sported Bookmarks, a refresh button, Back/Forward keys, and multiple page support. I did find that opening more than two substantial pages meant that every time you jumped to another open page, the iPod would re-load the page (as if you had pressed the refresh key), which can become tiresome, fast.
The iPod touch supports Wifi, the only iPod (8 and 16GB editions) to do so. The Touch, unfortunately, does not support flash, or java applets. It does, however, support JavaScript.
Youtube - this is one of those ‘applications’ I’m still on the fence about. You can enter a search term, watch the video (in wide-screen landscape mode only), and go to a separate page with the description, tags, and other related videos. Whilst you can browse and view video content on YouTube using a separate application, I’d much rather the Safari browser supported flash content, and browse the YouTube website myself.
Aside from the fact it feels like this is more or less an excuse for apple not to build Flash support into the Touch, to stem the tide of users crying out for YouTube support, the problem I have with a YouTube-only service is that when you give the user no choice of providers, be it for video content or carrier services, this limits the diversity that makes Internet communities so rich. What if users don’t want to browse YouTube, they want to browse MetaCafe, or Revver, or VideoJug, or any of the hundreds of video sharing communities out there?
If you belong to an internet community, video or non, I would appreciate any input, or feedback on this, what do YOU think?
Videos – a feature inherited from previous iPods, but also from the iPhone. Video works more or less exactly the same as music on the iPod, the only difference being that there is no cover-flow style interface for flipping though your videos, and videos play in wide-screen, or not at all.
You can touch the screen to show the play controls, and again to hide them.
Photos – the iPod has featured photos since way back to the iPod photo, but the iPod touch really pulls of displaying your photos and images with glorious, wide-screen class. You can flip through your photos by finger-dragging, or hit play to go for a slide-show, with a whole list of changeable options of transition.
iTunes Store – I haven’t had the chance to test this out, but if you have, please let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Over all, the iPod Touch is a wonderful device, but I can’t help but feel that it is limited somewhat by the lack of 3rd party applications, or an SDK of any kind.
Final word: I’d wait until you can pick one up and fondle it in stores, before you jump like I did. I have no regrets about my decision to buy the 16GB model, but then, I have a small iTunes library with only about 700 songs. For those of you with full albums, Internet radio rippers, or a love of high-quality codecs, you may find yourself endlessly rearranging the iPod, which is frustrating. Not for everyone, but a great device for some.
If you do make the jump, let me know.
Hit the comments section for discussion, and any comments, questions and feedback are welcome.
Graham ;-P
