Alright, my first impressions of the iPod Touch.
As I mentioned, my company gave them out as Holiday Gifts. Our CTO is a huge apple guy, so it's no huge surprise. We got the 16 GB version.
First, the good. It has an absolutely gorgeous screen. The resolution is fantastic, and the brightness of it perfect. It's very sharp, and looks very good regardless of lighting conditions where you're at. It's a 640x480 screen and is such a large upgrade over the 320x320 on the treo it's not even funny.
The interface on it is equally amazing. This is the one area I've always (well, the last 7 years, at least) given apple props. Not only is their interface visually appealing, but it's not just aesthetics. It's an incredibly functional interface.
The two of those combine to make it one of the best browsing experiences I've ever seen on a phone/pda type device. It's completely rendered browsing on my treo obsolete. I absolutely despite having to try to view pages on my treo now. The Safari browser includes is fully functional, and views full web pages. You don't sacrifice ANYTHING browsing on these devices, and they've successfully implemented tabs. The way the whole touch screen works with the browser is a truly innovative approach, and one that will (have to be) copied in future phones.
The picture viewer on the device is top notch as well. I have one complaint in that it doesn't do subfolders, and I'd like some sort of a tagging mechanism (i.e. I should be able to get to this picture by going to "family" as well as "vacation"), but these are minor complaints. Frankly, I think browsing through catalogs of photos on the phone is easier than doing it through windows explorer (or through Thunar/Konq/etc). It gives you thumbnail images of every photo, that's large enough to view and very clear, and makes browsing through hundreds of photos with ease.
Viewing movies on the touch/iphone is, again, unparalleled. It does 30 fps with ease. I watched the demo of how I met your mother that comes with it, and it's high quality. I'm not sure I'd pay $2 per episode, but if the price ever comes down, and I go back to traveling on trains more, the touch does that well too.
16 GB's isn't huge (my mp3 collection is currently 149 GB), but it's enough for on the go. For me, I'd rather have 16 GB's of music along with the other functionality it provides than 80-160 GB of music. And you're not going to get 160 GB on flash memory at this point.
I also like the fact that it's BSD based. I've got a terminal client on here, with ssh keys setup. That's nice. And the wifi on it works very well. Nice interface to add, and does a good job of connecting, and is easy to turn on and off.
The rotation of the screen is nice as well. It really helps for viewing certain webpages and photos, and is executed well.
Now, the downsides. From what I can tell, you can only have 1 "on the go" playlist at a time. What? I don't want to run to my computer, create a playlist there, and transfer it over every time I want to create a distinct playlist. That should be something I should be able to do on the go.
The keyboard. I love the fact that the screen is so large, for me it's the defining feature of the device and the best part of it. But I'm just not as good typing on it as I am with the Treo's keyboard. Maybe a slide out keyboard? Not sure. But (personal preference), I'm just not as accurate with it.
Their stance on developer applications is patently absurd. The fact that I have to downgrade the firmware and take advantage of a safari exploit just to install blackjack is ridiculous. Apple's got one commercial where a guy's talking about how "you don't know what part of the internet you'll need when you're on the road, so take it all with you". Well, that's exactly my point of view on phones/computers. It's not so much of a big deal now, but it's one of the thing's preventing me from getting an iphone. What I need from my phone now might not be what I need from my phone in a year. I should be able to adapt it to what I need. That means embracing 3rd party applications. How customized I have my palm is ridiculous, and I should be able to do the same for the next phone I get. It's necessary for me to always have something with an ssh client on it. The fact that I would have to hack an iPhone to get one stinks to me. Apple, while being great at designing devices, is never going to know what all of their customers need, both now and in the future. Why try so hard to prevent others from filling needs?
Also, I'm not in love with the iTunes interface. When I need to add music to the device, I want to connect it via USB, and copy files directly over to an Audio folder. I don't want iTunes to 'sync' my device. This may very well be possible with the device, but I haven't explored it enough.
I considered returning it to the apple store, and trading it in for an 8 GB iPhone, but I don't think I'm going to do that. First of all, right now my contract with my current provider extends for another year. I don't want to pay to cancel my contract. Plus, my entire family's on sprint, so I like being able to call them for free. But there are two things on my treo that I'm not sure I'd want to give up. First, I like typing on it better, which is big for me because I do a lot of input into my phone (both as a PIM and from text messages). Second, I find the calendar/todo/contact management in the treo/palm to be far more refined than apple's. Apples is prettier, but this is one area (and one of the few) that I absolutely love PalmOS for. That's my primary use of a smartphone, and I'm not sure I'd be willing to downgrade at this point.
Right now I'm using my iPod touch primarily to:
- carry around my family photos. I can store pretty much all my photos on there, and when I go to family functions, it's much easier to pull that out and show them if I want to then carry a laptop with me
- When I'm on the road, it works great as a wireless pda to access the web easily, for when I don't feel like using my laptop
- my CD player in my car has an auxiliary input, so I play songs in my car off of it.
It's a really nice device, that does a tremendous job as a browser, while proving good experiences with videos, pictures and music. I do think it's a bit revolutionary in this way, as browsing and videos on other devices I've tried simply don't match up. I'm not comfortable switching to an iPhone as my primary phone, though, for the reasons above.
