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Apple’s new iPod Touch is a phenomenal piece of design. Sleek, sexy and so cool it hurts, this is perhaps the most desirable tech gadget on the market in Ireland this Christmas (with the possible exception of its feature rich sibling, the much-hyped iPhone), and by and large it delivers in spades.

The iPod Touch — has a digital media player revolution begun?

That said, I have several issues with the iPod — not least of which is the fact that you’re tied in to proprietary media formats, and are forced to download Apple’s proprietary software before you can even use the device. Despite a few shortcomings, however, the Touch is a remarkably accomplished piece of kit.

The worst thing about the one I’m reviewing is the fact that I have to give it back to Apple when I’m done!

Review Summary

Product Reviewed: Apple iPod Touch 16GB

Also Available: Apple iPod Touch 8GB

Feature	Rating
Music	8/10
Video	8/10
Navigation/Controls	10/10
Features	7/10
Software (PC)	5/10 (not bundled)
Ease of use	10/10
Overall	8/10 — Highly Recommended

First Impressions

The first thing you notice about the Touch is the classy packaging. No tacky plastic here, just a neat matt-black box about the size of half a house-brick with a picture of the Touch displaying cover art for Corrine Bailey Rae’s album on the front. Even before you open the box this product simply oozes class.

The player inside certainly doesn’t disappoint. It is “shiny” in all the right ways: sleek, black and glossy on the front, with the trade-mark iPod metallic back. It feels solid and weighty in your hand, and is practically all screen. There are only two buttons in evidence — one a “home” button on the front of the player that brings up the main menu, , the other a small button on the top edge that turns the display on and off or, if you hold it down, prompts you to power down the device completely.

It’s impossibly thin (Apple’s figures say 8mm thin, and who am I to argue).

My biggest gripe with the iPod is that it forces you to use iTunes. As a PC user who isn’t an iPod owner, I didn’t have iTunes installed, and I manage my music library using Windows Media Player — which I find very able for the task.

However, before I could do anything with the iPod I was forced to download the latest version of iTunes from the apple website. Like many people in rural Ireland I still struggle by on a dialup connection. The c. 70 MB download took an eternity! Come on Apple — is it too much to ask for a CD with the software you need to use a device to be included with the device?

Once I’d downloaded and installed iTunes I then had to wait for it to convert all of my music files from WMA format into the proprietary iTunes AAC format — essentially duplicating my entire media library and wasting space on my hard drive. It also couldn’t convert protected WMA files — which meant some of my music didn’t make it over to the iPod. Cest la vie!

When I finally got everything working and got some content onto the iPod I got to have a play with Apple’s much-touted “multi-touch” user interface for the first time… and it blew me away!

Navigation and controls

This is the iPod Touch’s piece de resistance. Its touch-based user interface takes the digital media player to the next level, and really is super intuitive. It takes all of about five seconds to learn; in fact, you don’t so much learn it, as feel your way through it instinctively. It’s uncanny.

Browsing through music or photos on the touch is a breeze. When in music mode, just turn it on it’s side and it will automatically switch into the amazing “coverflow”. A flick of a finger and you’re scrolling through all of your music by album cover. Find the one you want, and a tap turns the cover over to reveal a list of tracks. Tap one and it starts playing. Tap the top corner of the album and you’re back in “coverflow” again. Turn the iPod back to the vertical plane and it reverts to the “now playing” screen. It’s simply awesome.

Navigating photos, videos, podcasts and websites is just as intuitive. Hats off to Apple, this is one of the best user interfaces I’ve ever seen.

Music

At the end of the day iPods will mostly be used for listening to music. As you would expect from a device in the iPod stable, the touch performs the task superbly — although it has to be said that, to my ear at least, the Creative Zen had a slight edge in terms of music playback quality. The interface, as mentioned above, is a joy to use, and there are the usual playback options you might expect — like playback by Artist, Genre, Playlist, All Songs and a host of other playback options, as well as the choice to shuffle and repeat the currently playing list.

Video

The screen on the iPod is excellent. Colours are rich and vibrant and it’s incredibly sharp. I was expecting the inevitable fingerprints and marks on the glossy surface of the screen to hinder the enjoyment of video playback, but to be honest, when the device is operating you don’t really notice them. It’s only when the screen is turned off and you look at it on an angle that you notice the accumulated grime.

One of the biggest problems is getting your video into a format that iTunes and the iPod will play. This is no problem if you’re downloading stuff directly from the iTunes store — but you may run into difficulty converting video you get from elsewhere, or that you already have in your collection into an iPod friendly format.

Photos

Outstanding when they work — although sometimes the colours are a little too punchy for my taste. They’re almost too saturated with too much contrast. While this undoubtedly makes the images look more vibrant, it can also make them look less natural too. A few of my JPG format photos failed to display at all on the iPod, despite showing up flawlessly when synchronised to the Creative Zen. Still haven’t got to the bottom of that one.

Perhaps the coolest feature when viewing photos is that the iPod detects which way you’re holding it and automatically rotate’s the image to suit — so if you have a landscape format photo, simply turn the iPod on its side and the photo rotates to fill the screen.

The other really cool feature of the multi-touch interface comes into play here. When displaying a photo, if you touch the screen with two fingers (or a finger and thumb) moving your fingers apart will zoom in to the image, while moving them together again will zoom out. While I guess it’s generally of limited practical use for photos, it’s a party trick that will certainly impress the hell out of your friends.

WiFi and Internet Access

One of the killer apps for the iPod Touch is its built in WiFi, that allows you to hook up to the internet at any WiFi hotspot or through your home WiFi network. The built in Apple Safari web browser (dubbed by Apple as the best browser incorporated into any portable device) lets you surf your favourite websites on your iPod. You can also purchase and download content directly from the iTunes store, and there’s a dedicated YouTube application that lets you watch YouTube movie clips without having to fire up the browser.

Extras

Extras like numerous world clocks, timers and stopwatches are handy features, as are the calculator and the ability to synchronise your desktop contacts and appointments to your iPod. It’s a shame though that there’s no radio option, and no voice recorder for making voice notes, recording interviews or producing and uploading your very own “podcast” from the field.

Future Expandability

It’s also a shame that apple didn’t have the foresight to include an expandable memory slot on the Touch, or indeed on any of its iPods. In a device that’s so suited to playing video, the ability to slot in a media card with movies and other content, and play them without hogging valuable space on your player’s internal memory would be a massive boon.

With a maximum storage capacity of 16GB, the Touch isn’t exactly huge in the memory department, particularly when it comes to storing video, and the ability to add and remove content on flash memory cards would have been very handy.

That said, Apple has announcement that they plan to open up both the iPhone and the iPod Touch to third party developers, so expect a slew of new software, features, gadgets and widgets for the iPod Touch in the not too distant future.

Summary

The iPod Touch is, at the end of the day, a remarkable piece of technology. The huge 3.5″ screen delivers outstanding video resolution and crisp, coulour-rich photographs — but it’s the awesome multi-touch interface that really blows you away. It is simply sublime.

While admittedly the iPod has its flaws, particularly for PC users… these are far outweighed by the latest iPod’s overwhelming “Wow!” factor.

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