iPod Touch
I was in attendance at Steve Jobs' keynote presentation at Macworld in January of 2007 when he announced the iPhone. An iPod, email client, web browser, and a phone all in one. I even snapped some pictures of it as it went on public display for the first time:
I wanted one right then and there, but there were two things stopping me. The first being that they weren't going to be on sale for about another 6 months. The second being that AT&T was going to be the service provider for the phone. I use Verizon, and had just signed a two year agreement less than two months prior. And, personally, I like Verizon, and I like the Razor phone I have. So I thought, you know, can't they just sell me the iPhone with all of the features except the phone part? Wouldn't that be cool?
Well lo and behold, about two months after the iPhone goes on sale to the public, Apple announces the iPod Touch. It's exactly what I was hoping for - all the features of the iPhone without the phone. This was something I knew I must have. And it wasn't long before I purchased one.
What can I say about it? I love it! Front and center is the whole touch screen interface. This will never stop being cool to me. Navigating on this thing is incredibly smooth, and, dare I say, fun too? Scrolling down the list of artists to choose the song I want by flicking my finger and watching the screen scroll never gets old. But that's just one of the things I love about it.
If this thing were just an iPod with the touch screen feature I would be thrilled with it. One of the coolest things I did was add the album art for all of my albums.
You can search through your music in a variety of ways, but there's just something enticing about doing it by scrolling through your album covers. It's kind of reminiscent of thumbing through a box of old vinyl albums (although now I've just dated myself). And I'm a collector by nature, so being able to see my entire album library all in one place and in the palm of my hand is just satisfying.
So, like I said, if this thing were just an iPod with the touch screen interface, I'd be thrilled. But there's so much more. I can upload pictures and videos, which I haven't actually done yet (with the exception of my album covers). And I can surf the web. Just like the iPhone, the iPod touch has the Safari web browser installed. And it works pretty well. It's pretty cool to be sitting in Beaver stadium during the halftime show and checking ESPN.com for other football scores. The web pages load at a pretty good rate if there is a strong wi-fi connection. There's no email client on the Touch, however, but I don't consider that a big deal as I use AOL for my personal email, and I can just log onto their site and check my mail that way.
I haven't even touched on the link to iTunes, mostly because I haven't used it more than once or twice. I think I am old school in the sense that I prefer to buy CDs rather than download music. It goes back to the collector in me. I like having the entire package - all the songs on an album together to listen to as a whole work by the artist. Although, downloading shows and movies is another story. But I haven't done that yet, so I think I'll hold off on talking about this feature until later.
Suffice it to say, the iPod Touch was money well spent. I went with the 16GB model, and I have a little less than half of it filled - just with music. The next thing I plan to do is to get some photos uploaded. I've said it about a half a dozen times already, but I'll say it again. I love the thing. I take it with me wherever I go, and I would recommend it to anyone.