Tuesday, August 19, 2008

One Minute Review: the iPod Touch

This summer I bought a new macbook, which is fantastic. What is even more fantastic is that when I went in to buy my macbook, I was informed that I would get a free ipod touch.

I have since used it profusely and have come to the conclusion that I have really don't know whether to love it or hate it. Here is my list of the pros and cons of the iPod Touch

Pros:
Beautiful resolution
Crisp glass touch screen that stays clean
Amazing interface with lots of polish
Applications to manage calendar, get on the internet etc
It is small and slim
The videos come out in widescreen and are watchable

Cons:
Audio issues - for some reason the controls on music are horrible - to scan ahead in a song you have to drag your finger on some microscopic song bar, it doesn't let you shuffle the songs without hitting the shuffle song button, it puts podcasts off in a different section of the menu, the touch controls don't react the first time you touch them.

Storage issues - obviously, Apple was aware that their first batch of ipod touches were not worth the money - so they gave them away for free. The 8 GB hard drive is abhorrently insufficient. You can't even have any music if you want to have videos, or vice versa, or so it feels at least. In a day and age where hard drives are growing to gargantuan proportions, it is hard to have patience while they digress a decade in flash drive storage space. I say bring out the big guns and you will sell some crap.

Application usability - yes the ipod has a bunch of applications, but they are almost impossible to use. The keypad is such a pain to use, you have to sit there and punch each letter like a doofus; even more you have to concentrate like a ninja to not get a wrong letter. The internet application works, but it is weird to scan pages in microversion and then inflate small chunks of the page at a time. I guess you have to get used to it, but I'm not that desperate to get on the internet. Probably the biggest limitation of the ipod touch is its dependence on an outside network to connect to the network. That is why you buy an iphone - it unleashes all of the maps, mail, calendar, and browsing potential of the device.



Bottom Line: Its a good thing I got one for free, cause I still could never conceive of shelling out the money they want for an iphone or ipod touch. Apple just has to offer more to make it worthwhile.