iPod touch

I've had a 1st generation iPod touch for almost two years, so I guess its time to write about it. I'm not sure I would have chosen to buy it on my own. However, how was I to resist when I won it? (I actually had the choice between an iPhone and a touch. Since the iPhone would set me back at least $1440 in monthly costs, I opted for the touch.)

How is it? Well, as an mp3 player, it gets mediocre marks. Trying to quickly pause it can be a pain. First you have to push a button, then move your hand across a slider, and then locate the pause button. The last part can actually be a challenge. One 'feature' of the touch is the ability to 'rotate' the screen. On the music player, the rotated displays have different sets of options in different positions. Thus, the pause control will be in a different place depending on the rotation. Unfortunately, it is not all that great at identifying which way it is rotated. (Sometimes I have to shake it around to get it to really recognize the display.) Thus, pausing can be a challenge.

The other issue with the touch screen is that it requires human skin. Thus, in addition to the three step pause process, you also need to bear some skin. Even in Cupertino, people occasionally wear gloves. On the bright side, I have a glove with a hole in the finger that has suddenly found a new use with the iPod. I've also even been successful at using my nose.

The iPhone OS 3.0 brings in two new issues to the iPod touch as an MP3 player. The first general issue is that it has to spend time "rebuilding the library" after every time you add new songs. This can take in excess of 10 minutes, and seems to stop if you hit the 'screen off' button at the top of the iPod. Just when you get in the mood to listen to some tunes or audiobooks, it hits you with that. Ugghh.

The other new annoyance is the 'unsorting' of smart playlists. Regardless of what steps you go through, it will display the contents of automatically updating smart playlist in a random order. I like to listen to audiobooks that I set up as smart playlists. The major advantage of the smart playlists (before theupgrade) was that old tracks would go off the list after they were played, and I could easily go to the last track I was on, even if I listened to something else in between. With the upgrade, the smart playlists are in random order. You can go to a secondary 'album' display and see the playlist in the correct order. However, you have to make sure it is playing here, otherwise, you may get some random surprises. Also, the secondary display does not 'drop' tracks that have been played, so it can be a challenge to find where you left off. (There is one nice new feature in the 3.0 OS in that it remembers what you were listening to after syncing.)

These issues made me really wonder why I bothered to upgrade, especially since Apple likes to charge for the upgrades. However, on the bright side, the iPod does not seem to crash anymore. (I seemed to be getting ever-increasing 'reboots' with the previous 1.x OS.) Also, Apple gradually had been reducing the price of the upgrades, with the 3.x upgrade going for only $5. Since I had $9 left on an iTunes gift card, I thought I'd give it a shot, in hopes of reducing crashes (and getting apps.) The upgrade had its own issues, some of which I've described in my
adventures in extracting notes.db backups.

Music-wise, the one additional feature with the 3.X OS is the ability to quickly create 'on-the-fly' genius mixes from a given song. This can sometimes come in handy when you are in the mood for a certain musical fix, but haven't created a playlist for it.

What about as a PDA? Well, the iPod touch does have wireless access. The mail application is good (and even allows downloading yahoo mail.) The Safari web browser allows surfing regular web sites - as long as they don't use flash. Some youtube videos can also be watched through a tool. A big problem is the lack of a flash plugin. Apple seems to be against it, so it probably wont happen soon. Typing is not that bad, but not that great. It would be nice if you could use a stylus. However, you can get a pretty decent 'blackberry' like thumbing on the touch screen. Wifi does seem to be a bigger drain on batteries, so I often turn it off if I don't need it.

Apps? There are a huge number of apps in the app store. However, finding worthwhile ones can be a challenge. I've found some language study and ebook applications that are worthwhile. However, I tend to use the 'notes' application for jotting down notes more often than other applications. Many of the apps I've found would clearly go in the 'junk' category.

Video watching is ok. However, it really only works for shorts. (It gets annoying holding up a small screen with headphones for long shows.) Video also seems to drain the battery fairly fast.

Battery-life in general is quite good. Even after nearly two years it seems to work fairly well.

Overall, its a halfway-decent mp3 player combined with a halfway-decent PDA.