First Impressions - iPod Touch
Monday, November 5th, 2007
After a fairly long wait, I finally got hold of an iPod Touch. I know a lot has already been written about this device, but here are my first impressions. It was interesting to note the initial comments I got from 2 independent sources who both thought it looked like a bottle of perfume! However, I soon managed to break through the packaging to get my hands on the goods and yes, it was an iPod not a bottle of perfume.
What is it? - essentially an MP3 player, Photo/Video Viewer and general organiser. However, the major difference, with the iPod Touch, is the incorporation of wi-fi that enables users to browse the web (using the supplied Safari based web-browser). The ability to connect to the internet also enables a direct connection with the on-line iTunes store and the You Tube web-site
The somewhat unique, multi-touch user interface allows a user to interact with the device in a completely new way. The device also has the ability to recognise the orientation of the screen which helps when viewing items in either portrait or landscape modes.
To enlarge an area on the screen (zoom in) you simply use 2 fingers to stretch (pull apart) the required area, to reduce the area (zoom out) simply move 2 fingers together. Its actually more difficult to describe in words than to achieve in practise.
Input from the keyboard was OK, although I had a minor quibble with the fact that the keyboard doesn’t change visually when entering lower-case characters - why not? this would have been an easy item to have implemented in the same way that it switches to a different keyboard for numeric (non-alphabetical) input.
It proved no problem to connect to my home networking system and the wireless connection in the office. After connecting, it is possible to browse the web using the supplied Safari web-browser. Some web-sites are set up to recognise the type of device being used, for example I thought Google web-albums worked somewhat better than Flickr in this respect, and I found no problem accessing my email on Google and Yahoo. It would be good to have some off-line browsing capabilities so that I could download my news feed articles and browse them off line at my convenience, or when I don’t have a new connection.
(Although it may become easier to obtain access to the internet via wi-fi if the recent annoucement from BT (in the UK) promoting the concept of people sharing their broadband connection gets public acceptance see the article at BT and FON launch the world’s largest Wi-Fi community ).
The other item that I found myself using a lot was the ability for viewing YouTube videos, and many an hour was spent browsing the videos available
Apple are on to another winner here with a well presented, must-have designer gadget.
It will be interesting to see how Apple will open up access to developers. Currently, there is the iPhone developers center at
https://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/
and there is a plan to provide an iPhone Developers toolkit in February next year. This could make both the iPod Touch and iPhone even more popular as developers produce exciting new applications which cater specifically for this device.
For starters, however, check out the growing list of web-apps referenced at the apple web-site
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