nad_masters's Full Review: Apple iPod touch 1st Generation (32 GB) MP3 Player
As all gadget freaks go, we couldn't let the iPod Touch left untouched. My brother bought the first gen iPod Touch 32GB mostly as a pocketable Internet surfing device. The smooth and slick touch interface won him over. It shocked me that he ask me about it in the store and then minutes later, he have it in a Best Buy bag. I thought he'd at least want to read up on it or something.
While he already owns a Zune that still works, he still bought an iPod Touch. Yikes! Well, at least he will have a myriad of accessories available to him (a few of which I will review soon).
Once at home, the iPod Touch box was torn apart and the fun begins.
Packaging As it is typical with Apple, the packaging is very meticiously put together. It is always a joy to unpack an Apple product. The box is surprisingly small. In fact, it's too small to even include a software CD. Nowadays, Apple does not even include their required iTunes software on CD any more. Instead, they instruct you download it from their site.
Included in the box, you get the iPod Touch 32GB unit itself, along with a small booklet that describes the limited warranty and a bit about getting the software off their site. There is also the trademark white ear buds, a USB sync cable, a dock adapter, a small plastic stand, and a small microfiber cloth.
iTunes When you first turn on the iPod Touch, the screen shows a graphic that is obviously instructing us to connect to a computer that have iTunes running (USB connector going towards an iTunes icon). It won't let you get past that screen until you do.
So, we went to Apple's site and downloaded iTunes 7 (at the time). We had to create an iTunes account along with payment info for the iTunes Store.
I won't go into iTunes too much since this is a review for the iPod Touch, and getting into the particulars of iTunes is outside the scope of this review. It is only mentioned that it is required to get the iPod Touch to work the first time.
When we DID connect the iPod Touch to iTunes, we were shocked to find that Apple wants $10 to upgrade the firmware out of the box! To upgrade to version 2.0, which adds the Apps Store, required some money on our part! I just couldn't believe that Apple would dare to ask for more money to upgrade the firmware (which is mostly bug fixes) when their customer already put down $500 for the device! Not only that, but to pay for a firmware that adds an app that encourages us to buy things on the App Store is insane! Isn't it better for Apple to give the firmware for free to entice people to want to buy from the App Store? It just left a bitter taste in our mouth.
Instead, we found a way to upgrade the Touch to 2.0 and beyond for free. Just use Google for the info you need if you find yourself in this predicament.
Interface Once you're in, your finger is in for a treat. When you first turn it on, it takes a bit to boot up. However, once that is done, you'll rarely ever have to go through the boot process again. The power button located at the top puts the Touch to sleep, which is as good as "off". This gives the Touch an "instant on" feel to it. Once it comes on, you see your wallpaper graphic and an unlock slider. You slide your finger to let the Touch know that you are intentionally turning it on much like unlocking a phone when you turn it on. Not coincidently, this is how you unlock the iPhone.
The touch control is very consistent once inside. You can flick your finger back and forward to flip through pages of installed apps. The response is so quick, it feels natural. The forward momentum of a finger flick causes the page to continue to move until it looses momentum or until you touch the screen to stop it. This control scheme is consistent (especially with the built-in apps).
Music Lets talk about using the iPod Touch as an iPod. Sounds weird that I even have to mention it specifically, but you have to realize that the Touch is more than just an iPod, as you will read later on in this review.
The Music applet allows you to use the iPod Touch as an music player. It recognizes ID Tags and not file names, much like the other iPod products (Classic and Nano). It allows for you to navigate your music using these categories: Artists, Albums, Songs (individual songs), Playlists, genres, Composers, Compilations, Podcasts, and Audiobooks.
You get four categories that are easily accessible on the bottom of the screen (Albums, Artists, Songs, and Playlists). You can click on the More icon to access the other categories. You can also go here to customize the bottom bar with your most used categories. For example, I would remove the Playlist icon and replaced it with Podcasts, since I watch and listen to a variety of tech-related podcasts. In fact, I did. I own a 2nd gen iPod Touch 32GB (my brother got it for me for my birthday).
Depending on how well you keep your ID tags, it can be a dream or a nightmare to use the iPod Touch. The interface itself makes browsing through a huge collection really easy. You can use your finger to slide on the side to slide through the alphabet for quicker navigation. Turn the iPod on it's side and you get the famous flowing album cover interface that allows you to flick left and right through your album collection complete with cover art (as long as you ripped your CDs in iTunes or Windows Media Player).
While the Touch only supports MP3, AAC, and protected AAC, the iTunes software is able to convert WMA files into AAC so that your iPod Touch can play them. This is nice, but does add additional time for the conversion. It leaves the original WMA files alone, which is good.
To fast forward through a song, you can drag your finger along the progress bar. You'll have to change the volume the same way as the first gen iPod Touch does not have a dedicated volume dial or buttons.
The sound quality is very good with the included headphones. There isn't much bass, but I didn't expect any with the included buds. When I used my pair of Sony ear buds (the ones you can find with a wind-up case for $10 at most electronic stores), I found that I had to turn up the treble for it to sound natural.
Video The Video applet doesn't organize by ID Tags, unfortunately. It's strictly a list of your videos by filename, and organized in alphabetical order. Thus, navigating through your videos is pretty straight forward. You can swipe your finger through a video to delete (you can't delete music on the Touch itself, though), which can be nice if you want to delete a space-hogging video and your computer is not within reach. Of course, you get a confirmation button and message so you won't delete your videos unintentionally.
To play a video, you just tap the video and it comes up. All videos play in landscape mode. You can flip your iPod Touch one way or the other and the video will follow the new orientation. This is good if the headphone jack is in the way in one direction but not the other.
Just like with music, you can fast forward or rewind by dragging your finger through the progress bar, and the volume is changed the same way (the bar is located on the bottom near the playback controls).
The nice thing about the Touch is that when you stop, pause, or turn off the iPod in the middle of playback, it will start where you left off!
Internet Access One of the biggest feature of the iPod Touch is the ability to surf the net on the included Safari web browser. All of the Internet-related applications seem to be a carry-over from the iPhone. Instead of using the cell carrier for Internet, you will need to connect the Touch to a WiFi signal. This limits the iPod Touch to places with hot spots. I strongly believe that if Apple would strip the WiFi radio and all Internet-related apps, put a 120GB hard drive in, and make it the size of the iPod Classic (just replace it even!), and Apple would have a great music player. The touch interface really is the superior way to control than Apple's original click-wheel.
Internet related applets such as Google Maps seem to be better suited for something with mobile access to the Internet, such as the iPhone. It just doesn't make sense on an iPod. It's a cool applet, though.
Surfing with Safari is a very nice experience. You can pinch and expand your fingers to zoom in and out. It's a great experience to surf the Internet on a small appliance-like device like you do on the desktop. The pages doesn't get formatted in a weird way like you'd fine on the Palm Blazer browser, or even on Internet Explorer Mobile. Adding bookmarks is a cinch, as well as opening multiple pages, since Safari have a tab-like concept down. You can switch between multiple web sites, which is a surprising feature on an appliance-like device.
Other Stuff You also get trivial stuff (that adds to the ooh and ahh effect) such as Weather, Notes, Calendar, Mail, Contacts, YouTube, Clock, Stocks, and Calculator.
You can sync your Calendar, Mail, and Contacts to your work Exchange server or to a local install of Outlook. You can also use your iTunes to keep this information.
With the Mail app, you can set it up to get your Gmail, Yahoo, Exchange, Mobile Me, and AOL emails. There is no way to set up a Hotmail account, however. Per the message we received when we tried, Hotmail requires a paid-for service for IMAP access, which is what the iPod Touch uses to get access to your email. Instead, you can get your Hotmail email through Safari, just as you would on your desktop web browser. Surprisingly, you can open and view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF attachments!
YouTube is a really cool application that allows you to search through YouTube in a much friendlier way than through their web site. The videos play only in one orientation, unlike playing videos stored on the Touch itself. However, the playback and volume controls is the same. Again, if you are at home or a friend's house, you'll already have access to a laptop or PC, so I don't see the point! However, if you find yourself out and about but able to gain access to a public WiFi signal, then by all means, this is pretty cool. But I find that it makes more sense on an iPhone.
It's still a very cool and functional app. You can bookmark videos so you can show it to your friends. However, you cannot view comments left by the YouTube community like you can on their full-blown web site, nor can you leave your own comments. In fact, you don't ever have to sign in to use the app. You just view videos anonymously.
Of course, if you are connected to the internet, the built-in iTunes app allows you to browser all of the iTunes store on your Touch. Since you already signed up with your credit card info (or PayPal), you can buy things right on your Touch! You can listen to samples of music before you buy. Unfortunately, you can't search and download podcasts. In fact, you're pretty much limited to just music (no videos or TV shows here).
Battery Life The battery life of the Touch is impressive! Despite hours of use with the WiFi on and the backlight set in the middle, I was able to get a full days worth of use (8-10 hours) before I was getting an error message that said I have 20% battery life left! When this happens, playback of media stops. However, you can resume playback of the media (music or video) and the Touch will remind you of your battery again in about 5 minutes or so.
Charging requires you to hook up to a PC, XBOX, or other device that provides power over USB. It takes about 3 hours or so to fully charge from the 20% battery life warning. Of course, you can always buy an AC Adapter to charge the Touch, but Apple didn't include one so I didn't test charging with a 3rd party charger.
Overall, I am impressed because I was expecting the display to eat up a lot of energy, which would sap battery life quicker than any portable multimedia device! I was pleasantly surprised.
The Upshot This is a very expensive gadget - even more so than the iPhone! What you get is a great interface to navigate your music and videos. You can also use it to surf the Internet around the house or near hot spots, but since you cannot take WiFi signals everywhere you go, you're limited to what you can do with the cool Internet-related apps.
I honestly don't think it's worth the money for just the interface. If Apple would scale down the features more, but keep the touch interface (and make the price more reasonable - such as an iPod Classic replacement with the touch screen), I'd buy it! However, there's a reason why you see more iPhones out there in the wild than iPod Touches.
I would lust for one myself, but will never actually buy one.
This player is the iPod touch, not the Apple iPhone Upgrade your player with the iPhone 2.0 Software Update for iPod touch via iTunes for an additiona...More at Amazon Marketplace
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