Almost perfect needs some minor improvements
I'd like to make one thing clear from the beginning: this device is the best portable media player I've held to date (I received mine on Sept 25th). *This* is how it should be done. That doesn't mean that it can't be improved (this review shows a number of misses) but in the iPod Touch so many good things come together the right way it's embarassing how clumsy suddenly all the other devices seem (other iPods included). I have extensive experience with a myriad of other players (I own(ed) *lots* of those: Nomad iRiver Zen Rio iPods Zune) and now that I'm holding it it's blindingly obvious how much better the new interface works. I am really happy with this iPod. Still there are some annoyances idiosyncracies and downright silly limitations in this device.
So let's begin:
First - unless you've recently held a new 'Nano' you won't belive how thin the Touch is. The glass surface feels different from my iPod Classic (yeah I'm a *serious* MP3 player addict and have that one too). I can't really put my finger on it (it's hard to resist puns like that) but it feels somewhat softer when tapping it with your finger nail. Surprisingly (for me at least) the Touch does not respond to finger nails - you need to touch the surface with your finger's skin. This can initially be confusing when you are used to pressure-sensitive touch-screens and can become difficult when using the virtual keyboard. The touch-sensitive font plate has (so far) proven to be scratch-resistant (i've been carrying it around in my pocket for the past three days).
In my hand it feels surprisingly hefty (sonsidering it's sleekness) and it is noticeably longer than the Classic. Like most other iPods the Touch has a polished backside that magically attract fingerprints. This backplate also holds the customized engraving that Apple applied free of charge to my iPod.
The headphone connector is on the bottom and accepts any normal headphone jack (unlike the iPhone). The position of the connector would have been annyoing if you wanted to use it upright in a gym (natch iPod nano!). But movies are viewed in landscape orientation and the iPod's interface automatically detects it's orientation. Now that's design for you. The earbuds are the same that come with other new iPods (classic). They are ok but unlikely to be your first choice. I use the those earbuds for running (with my shuffle) but third-party (B&O) earphones with the classic and touch. I'm no audiophile so sound quality usually is good for me (this holds true for all my devices). But then according to some people I'm only listening to trash anyway. I therefore recommend that you look at other reviews if you are in search for a tone perfect device. I like it.
Controlling the iPod is a strange - great when you are looking at it annoying if you can't see it (i.e. if it's in your pocket). As with all touch-interfaces that have no tactile feedback there is no way to 'blindly' control it and sadly the Touch does not have a remote nor real buttons except 'sleep' and 'home'. The Touch desperately needs some hardware volume control.
Looking at the screen I have to say that I am amazed at the clarity of the image. 3.5 inches is still too small for me to comfortably watch a lengthy movie but the 320x480 pixel wide-screen display is stunningly crisp. I re-ripped some TV shows that I originally ripped for the Classic and watched them on the Touch. The problem is that files ripped for the Touch's resolution are roughly twice as large as for the Classic - but the Touch has only a fraction of the available storage. Thus I can't envision myself using the Touch for lengthy movie watching - but it is excellent for watching shorter clips (while I'm no youTube fan I do have a lot of short clips shot with my handheld camera). The Touch's sceen is very bright - I can't confirm initial reports of 'inverse black' or other artifacts. It appears to have a light sensor built-in that dims the screen when in darker surroundings and brightens the screen when in the sun. One small annoyance though: there is no way to control a movie's contrast. The docs claim that the Touch can play 5 hours of video on a single charge. I'm prepared to take this on face value - I'm certainly not going to stare into that small screen for so long just to verify this. It's long enough for one-and-half normal movies but won't last a transatlantic. Nor would my eyes though.
Coverflow is drop-dead beautiful and a real show-off. It requires that you add artwork for all your CD-ripped tunes though. Otherwise missing covers are replaced by generic grey ones. It's a great way to browse your music if you don't know what you want to hear next. It's a silly way to look for a particular album though. For this however you can still (luckily) use the normal artist/album/song browser with the (again drop-dead intuitive) new gesture-based interface. It works reall really well.
Like all iPods the Touch can play a large variety of file formats with the (expected) exceptions of WMA (protected and otherwise) and Ogg. I don't have to add that it plays AAC protected (iTunes). It can also display an impressive array of image and movie formats even though I have the suspiction that some of the listed formats are transcoded on-the-fly by iTunes during sync.
The Touch provides video out signals that can be set to either NTSC or PAL. For Europeans like me this is very important but may be of limited use for people living in the US. What *really* annoyed me was the fact that Apple chose to change the video out cabling and thus forced me to purchase new cables to connect the Touch to TV sets or beamers. On the up side the Touch does work with my (Audi) car integration without any changes.
iTunes integration is exemplary as expected (this is the part that break most other digital music players: integration with your media library). Synching the Touch with a computer works like with any other iPod: Plug it in iTunes starts and you select the stuff you want synched. A strange relict from the 5G iPods: I found out that unlike the newer iPods the Touch can't use playlist groups. Annoying (my best playlists are built from smaller lists).
While synching the Touch I encountered my first big disappointment: no wireless synching. I would have expected this ability or at least the ability to connect to a shared iTunes library on my home network (I have a wireless access point at home). Alas no. The iPod must be physically connected to synch and cannot wirelessly connect to a shared iTunes library. When you synch you can choose to synch music movies photos contacts web bookmarks and calendars. Sadly you can't sync notes (why the heck not?). Synching is done with USB 2.0 (sadly not FireWire) using the Apple-provided USB Dock Connector (no standard USB connector).
When looking for the 'enable disk use' checkbox I was baffled to find out that the Touch can't be used as a mass storage - unlike any other iPod I own and with the exception of Zune unlike any other digital music player I own. Why? (I suspect this is to lock down the device to prohibit tinkering with it. It feels like an arbitrary spiteful limitation though).
The interface is largely similar to the iPhone. It's not as ghastly colorful as the new (G6) iPod interface but still uses a little too much colors for my taste (I *really* liked the G5 color interface). The gesture/finger-based interface is easy to learn and is even more intuitive than using a mouse (it took about one 'pinch' and one 'flick' to convince me). As I mentioned above the drawback is that there is no tactile feedback so you must always look at the screen while changing a setting (e.g. volume skip rewind). The virtual keyboard is OK to use and I'm happy to see that it automatically changed to Switzerland's 'QWERTZ' layout. So far fingerprints on the surface have been a non-issue for me (they do look ugly on the back side though). The keyboard has an optional 'clicker' that provides (very welcome) aural feedback when you press a key (as the other iPods the Touch has a small clicker built in that can produce simple sounds).
As iPods before it there are some additional applications provided updated for the touch interface: Calendar Calculator (this one is new) Contacts Settings and Clock. Calendar holds one the most unfortunate narrow-sighted and arbitrary product decisions Apple has made in a long time: you can't add new Events. The reason this is unacceptable to me is because the exact same application on the iPhone *has* this ability and it was taken out as a concious decision; it was not an oversight. Clearly this is an attempt at artificially differenciate the Touch from the iPhone. Shame on Apple - I really hope that subsequent updates will rectify this.
Another disappointment is that there is no Notes application as this would have been a natural for the gestured-based interface and virtual keyboard. Again this application exists for the iPhone but was removed. Sad sad sad. In the same vein it would have been great if I could load PDF documents for off-line viewing onto the touch -- Safari comes with an *excellent* PDF viewer (presumably the Touch's version of Preview). I'm using this feature through a work-around: convert a document to PDF publish it on my home Mac's web server and then load it in the Touch's Safari (e.g. 'http://mintel.local/myDoc.pdf'). That way I can read this document offline (did so this morning while being driven to a meeting) - but only this one PDF document can be in-memory. I tried to open a second browser window and the first document was not retained in the cache forcing a re-load. So a document viewer (and PDF management from iTunes?) would be a great addition.
Also the games that I had to re-purchase for my Classic (yes re-purchased because the Classic can't use games for the 5.5G iPod) will *NOT* run on the Touch. Arrrgh! It looks as if I'll have to re-re-purchase those games again (I'm addicted to Bejeweled and Sudoku).
Up until here the Touch has been a natural evolution of the iPod -- the first and long-awaited 'true video iPod'. But the Touch offers one more thing that I feel makes it a killer product: productive WiFi integration. I'm not talking about some half-baked song sharing feature (although that would have been welcome too) but actual useful net access.
WiFi
The Touch has 802.11b/g (but not 'n') WiFi built-in that can connect to the internet through normal hotspots. Since you can expect the iPod to be in many different locations hooking it up to hotspots is an important feature that must be easy to use. The Touch can (and will) remember hotspots it has connected to and asks when it connects to a new hotspot very much like your Laptop does. Connecting to open Hotspots is a snap: scan surroundings pick from list (enter password when protected) connect. You can turn it off for airplane travel or to conserve battery life.
You connect to protected hotspots (using the virtual keyboard for password entry). Also you can use Safari for those annoying web-page-to-enter-billing-info based hotspots that hotels seem to like (and every one else hates). Connecting to a closed and secure WLAN is a bit more complex. My WLAN is configured to require any device to be known by MAC address and looking up this info wasn't as intuitive as I thought it would be (I found it in the Info tab). I then entered Network Name and Password and a few seconds later my Touch had access to my WLAN.
But what is so special about WiFi? To me having access to the Web is a killer feature. I'm not talking about music here - but access to Google (but not the Google Apps just yet) Wikipedia CNN Amazon and my web mail account. With just a little tap on the screen I can look at news check my mail track a package fire off a note to someone or answer a silly question that just entered my head. Anywhere anytime (when in range of a hotspot. In Switzerland that's practically everywhere). To repeat: this is a killer feature. It turns this digital media player into a nearly fully fledged PDA.
The Touch version of Safari is great (even though Google Docs does not yet support it and there currently is no support for Flash) and very responsive. Using the virtual keyboard takes some time to getting used to (again the missing tactile feedback is annoying). Navigating the web is quick (provided you have a good connection) and using the gestures to move the obscured parts of web pages into view becomes natural after only a few moments.
The touch also comes with a special version of iTunes the 'WiFi Music Store'. It allows you to instantly purchase a song (very very nice). Strangely once you sync songs purchased with the Touch will appear in their own 'Purchased on Touch' group (what on earth for?) in your main (iTunes) library. The WiFi store's selection does not provide access to PodCasts (lame!) nor any video content. And don't get me started on iPod games again... Still navigating the WiFi Store is natural and the design is intuitive. It's also very robust -- I purchased a 75 track (classic) compilation using the WiFi store. Of course some time during the transfer the connection dropped and I switched off the Touch. Later at home the Touch resumed download as soon as it re-connected to the net. The WiFi iTunes store is also where allegedly the 'Starbucks Thing' is happening. I'm (somewhat) sorry to say that I havn't tried out this feature beacuse a) I don't frequent Starbucks and b) even if I did Switzerland is not yet upgraded for this feature anyways.
So let's look at the remaining applications: I'm (again) seriously disappointed to see that Apple chose to cut Mail from the application list (the Touch would have been a great Blackberry replacement - and arguably might be too close a competitor to the iPhone if it had that feature) but at least I can use web mail as a work-around. Apple does include a dedicated youTube application which I have to admit I never used. I simply don't "get" youTube.
Summary:
The Touch is (currently) the best flash-based media player around with a stunning (even revolutionary) new gesture-based user interface that works. I would have welcomed a significantly larger main storage but it's very good as it is now. As a media player it's main drawback derives from the purely touch-based interface: it could have profited from a tactive rotary controller for 'blind' control. The feature that separates the Touch from the rest is the addition of another killer feature: WiFi web browsing. WiFi based music purchase is a nice bonus.
The Touch also comes with a number of (sometimes artificial) limitations that I hope will be resolved in the future. All in all I'm very very satisfied with the Touch even though the Touch experience can clearly be improved (e.g. by removing application restrictions being able to pull in shared iTunes Libraries sharing songs wirelessly syncing wirelessly etc.).
PLUS
- great "video" iPod
- WiFi web browsing with Safari (killer feature)
- wide range of supported file formats (audio video images)
- great display
- phenomenally sharp images
- drop-dead gesture/touch interface
- both NTSC and PAL video out (important for us Europeans).
- iTunes store wirelessly
- TV PAL and NTSC out
MINUS
- no playlist groups
- difficult to use 'blind'
- no contrast control for movies
- no disk mode (huh???)
- non-standard AV connector (again!)
- artificial limitations on Calendar application
- no Mail Notes Games applications
- can't access iTunes shared libraries on WLAN
- can't share songs with other Touch iPods
- no wireless synching
- 16GB can be awfully small when ripping movies for Touch's resolution
- no WiFi iTunes PodCasts
Things I'd like to see in updates
- Wireless Sync
- Access to iTunes shared Libraries
- Notes
- Off-line viewing of PDF documents
- Games
- Third-party software development kit (SDK)More detail ...
