I’ve been an iPod Touch user from day one, and simply love the little devices. With the various updates and the App Store they really have evolved into small pocket computers. The touch interface is fantastic, and although it has been imitated by other vendors, it has yet to be equalled. On Friday I switched from a very old Nokia cell phone and an iPod Touch, to an iPhone. I want to have a look at how the iPhone compares to the iPod Touch, and in particular, how it is as a phone. The iPhone really is an iPod Touch with a phone, so all that’s really new to me is the phone, SMS, and the ability to access the net when away from WiFi.

My old Phone and my iPhone
My iPhone next to my old Nokia Brick

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Normally with a Mac keynote you don’t get instant gratification. Sure, you can surf right over to the Apple site and pre-order immediately but you won’t get hold of the goodies for weeks. This keynote was different. My iPod Touch feels like a whole new device today. That’s what I call instant gratification! When the iPod Touch was announced Apple made it very clear what the device would and would not have. The Touch was a very shinny iPod, not an iPhone without the phone, and not a PDA (a point I re-itterated strongly in my initial review). Yesterday Steve announced that from now on all new iPod Touches will literally be iPhones without the Phone, and that those of us with old Touches can upgrade for $20 (or just under €18 in Ireland). That’s $20 to turn an iPod into a PDA. Needless to say I grabbed the upgrade as soon as it became available via Apple’s software update system 🙂

[tags]iPod Touch, Apple[/tags]

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Another one of my iPod Touch gripes has been fixed by Apple with the release of the new 1.1.2 firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch. You can now add calendar events from the iPod Touch. For some insane reason the calendar app on the Touch was re-only before. Since the iPhone has had a full calendar app since the start it just never made sense to me why Apple had removed that feature from the Touch. Maybe it was an oversight or something. What ever the cause was, it’s fixed now anyway.

[tags]Apple, iPod, iPod Touch[/tags]

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At this stage I’ve run the Touch through everything I ever do with iPods and have found three additional annoyances to the ones I described in yesterday’s article. Two can be fixed by simple software updates, one cannot. None of these are show stoppers and don’t affect my over-all conclusion that this is a great iPod and a taste of the future.

  1. Poor Support for Older iPod Accessories – I recently bought an iPod compatible stereo thingy for the kitchen and the touch only half works with it. It charges and the sound comes out but the remote does not allow you to play/pause or go forward/back a track. Not the end of the world, but a bit annoying. I believe the iPhone suffers from the same problem.
  2. Long Names Don’t Scroll – On my previous iPod when ever it encounters a name that is too long to be displayed the name scrolls so you get to see all bits of it. This works in the menus and on the now-playing screen. The Touch does not do this and it’s a real PITA for audio books in multiple parts.
  3. No Sleep Timer – This probably only affects a few people but I normally fall asleep to my iPod so I set a 15 minute sleep timer on it. I can’t do that with the Touch so my old iPod now has a permanent place next to my bed 🙂

Update (26 October 2007): As Jon has pointed out in the comments below, you can get sleep functionality, just not in an immediately obvious way.

[tags]Apple, iPod, iPod Touch[/tags]

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iPod Touch – First Impressions

Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 13, 2007 | 14 Comments

For people living in the states the iPod Touch is old news by now, but for those of us this side of the pond we’ve only gotten our hands on them this week. What Americans may also not realise is that we don’t have the iPhone over here yet, so for us, this is not just our first taste of the iPod Touch, but of the whole Apple multi-touch thing. I ordered mine the day after the ‘Steve Note’ that announced it and it just arrived today. I’m a little grumpy that it made it in to shops in Dublin before my pre-ordered one arrived but mine is engraved which it wouldn’t have been had I bought it in a shop. Perhaps the engraving makes up for the two or three day delay. Anyhow, for us here in Ireland this is not old news at all, it’s big news!

This review is going to take and odd form. The majority of it is going to be dedicated to pointing out the short-comings of the iPod Touch. That may inevitably lead people to assume I’m not happy with it, or worse still, that I hate it. I’m going to pre-empt that right now by saying that this device is superb. It rocks. It’s the most revolutionary piece of technology I’ve ever held in my hands. This kind of touch-based interface is the future, and man, what a future it is! Before today I thought I probably wanted an iPhone whenever they finally make it to Ireland, now I KNOW I want an iPhone! I’ll come back to some of the good stuff nearer the end of the review, but first I want to start with the not-so-good stuff.

[tags]iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple[/tags]

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