Posted October 24th, 2007
With the release of the iPod Touch, I broke down and ordered the 16GB model the day they came out, to replace my aging iPod Mini. It truly is unlike any other previous iPod; the touch screen, for the most part, is very handy and having Wi-Fi in an iPod really just makes sense. While I get around to writing up a full review, here's some initial thoughts.
Overall
- Multi-touch is awesome, it very much works on an iPod.
- This thing is thin! Photo: iPod Touch vs. iPod Mini.
- It is also very good looking. Even if it's all black with the typical silver back, it turns heads.
- Unlike my iPod Mini, when it's plugged into the wall charger it doesn't pretend it's syncing. Which means it can be used even if it's not charging from a computer. Which is nice.
- The screen may be scratch resistant (I wouldn't know, I refuse to remove the plastic cover), but the back certainly isn't. Despite my absolute best efforts, the back of my iPod is covered in scratches. Very disappointing.
- I don't think it would be possible to break the screen by accident, it's very thick.
- The unlocking slider is fun to play with. Seriously.
- Custom wallpapers are a nice touch, but it'd be nicer if you could also change the back background behind the main icons.
- Makes scouting Wi-Fi networks easy. Also makes me realize Winnipeg sucks when it comes to public Wi-Fi.
Music
- Album art!
- The controls are harder to figure out than on a typical iPod. It took me days to figure out how to set a playlist to replay once it reaches the end.
- Remember how Steve Jobs said you could control your music even when you're browsing the web or doing calculations? Yeah, I have yet to figure out how that works.
- Coverflow is no where near as useful as it appears. In iTunes, I like browsing my playlists with Coverflow, but on the iPod Touch there's only one Coverflow, which shows all your albums at once. Even if you turn the iPod when you're in a playlist. Because it's all the albums on the iPod, it's organized alphabetically (instead of in a chosen order), so it's even more useless.
- Finding what music I want to listen to is much easier than on the Mini.
- The iPod Touch has an on screen keyboard, but there's no way to search your music.
- When you start to play a song, the controls lock up for a couple seconds. You can hit the pause button as many times as you want, it will recognize your touch (it glows), but it won't do anything.
- The volume slider is hard to use, it's to small to be easily controlled.
Video
- Quality is surprisingly nice.
- Easy to navigate menu.
- Shows if the video has been viewed before or not.
- You can switch a movie from widescreen to fullscreen and back with a simple touch of a button.
- Like the music player, the controls aren't always functional. Makes it difficult when you want to pause a video at a specific spot.
- Sometimes if I hit the video menu funny, a delete button will appear on the touched video, but the next touch on the screen removes it. I haven't figured this out yet.
Photos
- Not terribly useful, but fun.
- Zooming in/out and flicking between photos is where it's at.
- The ability to take any photo, resize it and set it as your wallpaper instantly is very nice.
- Being able to just tip the iPod to adjust to landscape photos is very nice.
- No real complaints.
Safari
- Browsing the web seems much improved over the cell phone experience , but it's not a laptop by any means.
- Landscape and portrait browsing is good.
- Often crashes. Safari on the iPod Touch is less stable than applications on my MacBook Pro ... and that's saying something.
- No support for flash, java, etc. No Google Docs. =(
- Automatically zooms onto a chunk of text with a double tap. Works very well assuming that text isn't a collection of links.
- Using .Mac webmail is surprisingly difficult on the iPod Touch...
Other Apps
- Where the hell is the Notes application? Cutting applications from the iPod Touch that are available on the iPhone isn't cool.
- You can't add or modify calendar events. At least this should be changed with the next software update.
- The calculator application is very slick, and actually comes in handy.
- Decent quality YouTube videos? Doesn't make up for the fact that Safari doesn't offer flash support, but it's still nice.
- Web apps are not an adequate solution for custom apps on the iPhone/iPod Touch. It's nice that Apple has figured that out by now, but it's something that should have been released last June, not something that we're still waiting on.
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
- Good interface, easy to use.
- Sampling music couldn't be easier.
- Too bad it's music only.
- Makes buying music too easy. The shopping cart in iTunes keeps me from buying every song I listen to; with the Wi-Fi Music Store, two taps and any song is yours.
- To get you to buy music even more impulsively (or so it would seem), you can't see the current balance of your account if you use gift cards (as I do).
- It doesn't support multiple downloads, which is a bit of a bummer.
Battery Life
- In short: disappointing.
- Apple claims it gets 5 hours of video life, and usually Apple's numbers are very close to actual fact. I got 3 hours 55 minutes of straight video playback, with the first low battery error appearing only two and a half hours in.
- I haven't tested the battery life with just music playback, but as long as the screen goes off it hasn't been an issue.
- The iPod Touch definitely is not an iPod Mini which you can run for a week or two on a single charge. I've been charging mine daily.
Unboxing photos can be found on my flickr account.