Ipod Touch - More than just a Media Player (Apple iPod touch 16 GB)

Member Name: boboshady

Product:	Apple iPod touch 16 GB
Date:	11/10/07 (254 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small, well built, packed with functionality with more to come

Disadvantages: pricey, gets greasy quickly, too hard to put down

I'm quite into my photography, so the ease of use by which the new Ipod Touch suggested you could browse through, and zoom in/out of pictures was all the justification I needed to place an order for a 16GB version of the latest toy from Apple.

The Ipod Touch is about the same size as my old 5G ipod Photo, although considerably thinner (at 8mm thick, it's also thinner than any large capacity Ipod, fullstop). It's front is dominated by a large, 3.5" touch-sensitive screen, with the only other feature being the single control button.

The first thing you have to do when you get the touch is 'activate' it. This was a bit annoying, because it was delivered to work and I wanted to play with it. Luckily, a couple of minutes plugged into a nearby computer (loaded with itunes, which is a requirement) and I was free to play away....not that you can do much because it doesn't come pre-loaded with anything...not even dummy content.

Once you've sync'd your touch (over USB2 only - another small annoyance), it takes about 3 minutes to fall completely in love with the touch-based navigation. Everything is driven either by touching various, clearly positioned buttons on the screen, or by pressing the single button on the front which nine times out of ten acts as a 'back' button.


I found myself feeling familiar with the navigation very quickly - everything you want is accessed via the front screen, and individual options for each section (eg, Music) appear at the bottom, within easy reach of your wandering fingers.

One of the selling points of the touch, other than it's touchscreen, is the very nifty way you can view photo's in portrait or landscape mode. I've currently loaded about 6,500 pictures onto my touch, and not only does it create the thumbnail lists very quickly and let you scroll through them without any hassle, but the transition from portrait to landscape is also pretty much instant. Indeed, I've yet to notice any of the lag some users have mentioned.

The only qualm I have about the photos is that, when you zoom in, you're only resizing the image - it's not redrawing a more cropped picture from the invariably much higher quality original image - so you do notice the pictures getting a bit blocky at full zoom.

Music playing is as good as you'd expect from an Ipod - effortless and easily accessible. I personally think the provided headphones are better than previous offerings from Apple, but as always they're no substitute for a decent pair if bins. 'Album Art', whereby you can view thumbnails of all your albums and flick through them, is a nice touch...but nothing more. I can't see it being very useful for anything other than showing off to your friends.

A nice touch is that, even when your Ipod is locked, doubleclicking the front button will bring up a menu on the screen which allows you to skip tracks, pause/play and alter volume.

The integrated iTunes is not something I thought I'd like or use, but I have to say, after sitting there last night and seeing a couple of albums advertised I wanted, I was nice to have them on my Ipod and pumping out 5 minutes later. Assuming you're connected to the internet via a Wireless Network, you can search the entire iTunes Music Store library right on your Ipod Touch, preview all the tracks individually if desired (each track has a 30sec preview option), and then buy individual tracks or complete albums.

My iTunes Music Store account was brought over when I sync'd the Ipod for the first time, so all I needed to do was confirm my purchase and enter my password, and heypresto - the songs hit my download queue. You can even continue browsing around, and just stack up your purchased downloads - the Ipod will handle it all with ease.

It's worth pointing out that the Ipod also handled my dodgy internet connection without problem - patiently waiting for my modem to re-connect and then carrying on downloading as if nothing happened. I'm not sure what would happen in the case of a sustained connection failure, however.

When I plugged in my Ipod to my computer after buying a couple of albums, the whole system just sync'd it'self back up (some additional pictures one way, my new albums the other).

Another great feature of the Touch is the Safari browser, which again I didn't think I'd make much of, but have actually found myself using extensively. The browser loads pages very quickly, allows multiple 'pages' (the same as tabbed browsing, effectively), and with a combination of landscape browsing and pinch/stretch zooming, makes browsing actually usable.

The only bugbear I had with my whole browsing experience is that there's no way (that I found) to scroll down a page other than using the normal finger-on-screen method. This isn't too much of a problem until I loaded a page with possibly 50,000 lines of text on - it took a whole to load, which is fine, but I simply didn't have the time to push scroll all the way to the bottom to see the end of it. Admittedly, it's not very often you'll load pages that big at all, nevermind when browsing on the go.

I did have one problem with browsing, which was trying to use sites that were scripting or form heavy (such as autotrader) - it just didn't want to recognise my textbox inputs. Other than that, I happily left the laptop on sleep for a lot of my random browsing.

Of course, with both Safari and iTunes, you're required to have access to a Wireless Network, without which both applications just say 'no'. Each app will automatically scan for Wlan's when you load them up, and present you with a list of all accessible ones, showing a padlock where applicable to indicate WEP protection. Once you're connected, it's a very zippy experience.

Throughout most of the Touch's applications, you'll find yourself using the onscreen keyboard. This actually works OK once you've used it for a short while, but when you first start you'll find yourself constantly hitting the wrong letter. It's all about finding a fingure position that suits your style of typing.

Each key, when pressed, temporarily enlarges above it'self to act as confirmation for what you've just hit, so once you're used to looking for that, it's easy and quick to correct any errors.

OK, so I've been going on for a while now...but there really is so much to say - this isn't just a music player. I'll now summarise the default installed apps and sum up the review before you all fall asleep!

Safari - Covered above, it's surprisingly handy and usable

uTube - of limited interest, mainly because you'll probably want to use it to pass the time when you can't do anything else, which is the time you're most likely to not have Wifi (required for uTube access).

Calendar - This would be great, but you currently can't update it on the Touch it'self - you need to sync your calendar via iTunes. If you could add and edit from the Touch, this would actually add value to the Touch as a full on PDA. Shame.

Contacts - I use my mobile for this personally, but you have the ability not only to sync your contacts from your computer, but also to add and edit on the touch.

Clock - standard clock, except it will let you stack up multiple timezones on the same screen. Handy if you travel a lot, have family / friends in other countries, or are just interested to know the time in New York and Manchester.

Calculator - works well. nuff said.

Settings - Access to all the settings of the Ipod, including (in General > About) the Mac address, which you'll need if you try to connect to a Mac-protected Wlan

Music - access to your standard Ipod music functionality.

Videos - I've not been able to play with this yet, as you're currently unable to download video content from the Touch-iTunes store, however I'll grab some content from my PC's itunes soon and let you know!

Photos - access to the libraries you've chosen to keep on the Touch

iTunes - the surprisingly wonderful online-only instant music store.

Overall, I'm delighted with my purchase - I would have bought one anyway, and to find that it's actually more useful than I ever imagined is a great plus. I'm not worried about the 'meagre' 16GB storage - I've always been quite selective about the music I listen to, so 16GB is more than enough. Besides, I currently have over 6000 pictures on there with 9GB left, so plenty of room for music yet!

Whilst the outer case of the Ipod gets greased up very very quickly, it polishes up just fine and doesn't seem to be prone to scratches like the nano's and Ipod Video's of old.

Some may baulk at the £269 price tag, especially when there's a myriad of cheaper Ipod and non-Apple devices available with far more storage space, but remember you're not just buying a music player here...it plays video, acts as a great mobile photo library, allows you to effortlessly get new music and browse the web (assuming you are connected via Wifi). I also fully believe that, once the iPhone hype has died down, Apple will open the doors for software development on the Touch and make it a fullon PDA / Mobile communications device.

Plus, it's sexy as hell and will make all your mates jealous :)

Summary: Unlike most fashion statements, this one has the bollocks to back itself up

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