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John Dodge

Apple iPod touch a game-changer

Apple’s iPodtouch is the best electronics gadget I have ever owned. Experientially, nothing has comes close except perhaps my first Silvertone transistor radio in 1960 or thereabouts. 

The iPodtouch is basically the iPhone without some of its bulk and the phone (.31 inches thick and 4.2 ounces versus the iPhone’s .46 inch tickness and 4.8 ounces). In other words, it’s a music, photo and video player packaged with a cool WIFI web browser, direct line to Youtube and an organizer.

There’s nothing in the MP3 world likes the iPodtouch’s navigation…or in Apple parlance a "multi-touch interface." When the iPhone first came out, someone told me the touch screen was hard to describe, but basically you electronically scroll through say a list of artists with your finger tips on the touch screen. It’s the most intuitive/great feel interface since Apple introduced the computer mouse and the notion of point and click. I loved the iPod touch with 20 seconds of taking it out of the box which testifies to how easy it is to use. It’s thin profile and feel in your hand is unmatched by anything I’ve used before (I’m listening to vintage James Taylor as I compose this post).

The video is crisp 480×320 pixels at 30 frames per second which tilts to the widescreen 3.5 inch display for watching movies or web browsing. The selection of movies at iTunes is pretty thin, and I am unsure about the quality and supply at third party sites. Besides the music player, I mostly use the Safari browser to check the news before I go to sleep and when I wake up in the morning. I wish the iPodtouch supported Flash so I could watch Youtube videos from youtube.com.

It’s just a matter of time before I drop my subscription to my local newspaper’s dead tree edition. What’s more a full battery charge promises to last up to 22 hours of continuous music play (or five hours of video). 

How can I read the newspaper on such a small screen? You expand the content with moving you thumb and forefinger out. To make it smaller, you bring them together. It works incredibly well. For split second the content is blurry, then comes crisply into focus. 

I didn’t get an iPhone for several reasons: one is I just signed a new two year contract with Verizon and got four cell phones for the family and I did not want to continue with Cingular, the iPhone’s captuve provider and retailer. And the difference in size end weight while appearing small numerically is substantial tactilely. The iPhone feels a bit heavy and bulky. And the iPodtouch comes with 16GB of memory while the iPhone tops out at 8 GB. 

Mine costs $399 which ain’t cheap, but in the 10 days I had it, it’s been worth every penny. And with it’s novel interface, it’s a game changer but that’s nothing new for Apple. I can only imagine what’s coming down the pike based on the technology in the iPodtouch.