So, I got an iPod touch
It arrived last Friday, and in between, you know, finishing up the newspaper, raising a child, spending time with my parents, spending time with my wife and doing the Brewfest quests, I’ve been playing around with it ever since.
My last iPod was a monochrome 20 GB one, so there’s a whole lot of upgrades I’m getting at once in this new iPod (a mere 16 GB, and with the addition of video files and baby photos, a lot less space at the end of the day for actual music).
It’s a pretty amazing piece of hardware. The video screen is brighter and sharper than I could have imagined (and the brightness level automatically adjusts based on the amount of light in the room, saving battery power), the Internet access is astonishingly good over wi-fi (and, boy, are there a lot of unsecured Internet connections in Hesperia) and it is astonishingly small for what it does.
My old iPod was about the same size as my Treo 650 — about the size of a pack of cards — and while I love my Treo — I could barely do my job without it — next to the wafer-thin iPod touch, it looks like a product from another era, which I guess it really is.
That said, the iPod touch isn’t perfect. Not yet, anyway.
It gets confused sometimes when dealing with smart playlists, failing to update properly or loading the wrong files in general, even when the same playlist copies just fine to my old 20 GB iPod. This will presumably get patched in the future — there’s already been a new version of iTunes since I received the new iPod on iFriday.
I also don’t find the touch screen keyboard nearly as good as the built-in keyboard on my Treo, and I suspect, even after I’m fully proficient with the touchscreen, my typing will never be as fast as it is with the Treo. (I would buy an add-on keyboard, if such were available.)
The touchscreen aspect also means that I can’t pause, advance or change the volume on it without looking at the unit while driving. Since I’m using a tape adapter to work in the car, I don’t hold out a lot of hope that anyone will create an aftermarket device to help with this, since the number of cars with tape decks is rapidly declining.
And finally, the damn shiny metal back is a scratch magnet. Whatever soft metal it’s made out of has already gotten scratched, since no iPod touch cases are available yet (both ifrogz and iskin will e-mail me when this situation changes). I don’t know why Apple wanted to stick with the goofy old metal backs, when even their new standard iPods don’t have them any more, but it’s sort of irritating. (If a case also allowed it to be propped up horizontally to show videos, that’d be great, too.)
All that said, this was a huge leap forward and the new iPod is like almost nothing else (other than, you know, the iPhone). If the above problems are addressed, I can definitely see upgrading to a second or third generation iPhone in a few years. In the meantime, I’m really going to enjoy this new iPod.
