‘Twas the night before Macworld Expo and you could almost hear all the mac-macs and tech geeks holding their breath, waiting for what Steve Jobs will reveal.
As I also wait breathlessly, I thought I’d review the iPod touch. As soon as the iPhone was announced, I told myself, ‘When they put out an iPod with the touch interface, I’m getting one!’ Well, I waited until Christmas to get it and it was worth the wait.
I’m not much of a cell phone person (though after playing with the touch, I would love it if someone dumped an iPhone with a pre-paid lifetime contract in my lap), so I couldn’t justify the price of the iPhone. But I loved that interface, it looked so cool.
I read several lukewarm reviews of the iPod touch (dark video, not as nice as the iPhone), decided that since I didn’t have an iPhone, that comparison wouldn’t matter and I didn’t have any other handheld video device to compare it to (I had an old, white nano), I would go for it.
I’m very happy I did. The iPod touch interface is as much fun to use as I’d hoped. I could spend a few minutes each day just flicking through my photos. It’s actually fairly easy to type in the little keyboard (make sure you turn it sideways so the keys are larger) for things like web addresses. Being able to surf the web off this little device is awesome.
Oh and it’s very easy to read the display. My eyes aren’t as young as they used to be (no parts of my body are, when it comes to that) and reading that little nano screen could be hard at times. The text on the iPod touch is fairly large and very crisp.
In fact, I was standing outside an Apple Store, waiting for it to open (my MacBook Pro battery was bulging, oddly enough, on the day I went, there were about 10 people waiting for the store to open, is that normal?) and I could pick up their free wi-fe. I was so engrossed with surfing the web, that I almost didn’t notice when they opened the store.
Is it the perfect device? Not yet, but I have high hopes that some of the hiccups can be fixed with software updates.
Here are the nits I have to pick with the iPod touch:
- The sleep timer doesn’t work correctly. Okay, this is a big one, it’s a testimony to how much I like the iPod touch that this isn’t a deal breaker. When I set the iPod touch to have a sleep timer, it resets itself to play an alarm when the timer goes off if I go to any other menu (for example, to change the volume of what I’m listening to). So, instead of fading to silence, an alarm goes off, not good.
- I’m faster than the interface. I notice this mostly at night when I’m futzing with the sleep timer (maybe because I really want to just get the timer set and go back to sleep). This happens with almost any interface, so not sure what they can do about it.
- It’s hard to pause the music. When I’m washing the dishes and someone wants to talk to me, I have to take the iPod touch out of my pocket, click the home button, move the slider across, then hit the pause. Once again, not sure what they can do about that, but having a one button pause on the headphones (like the iPhone) sure sounds nice.
- I can’t see the text info on my podcasts. I often use that to see if I’ve listened to the whole podcast or not. I don’t see it anywhere on the iPod touch.
But, all in all, I love my iPod touch. I can’t wait to use it at Macworld Expo. I can surf the web without lugging my MacBook Pro around! Sweet.
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