GoddessJ and I were with some friends at a mall yesterday, and we decided to stop by the Apple store. I wanted to see the iPod Touch in action; I was considering replacing my aging Palm TX with one, and at all the other stores that carry them around here, they’re never charged and running.
I was very favorably impressed. The touch screen on it is ridiculously good, and the software seems very well thought out. But I also discovered a fatal flaw: there’s no external speaker on it at all, so it can’t duplicate the most often-used function of my Palm, which is sounding an alarm to notify me of upcoming appointments.
It also tops out at 32GB (at least 10GB too small for my entire music collection), still doesn’t have cut-and-paste capability, and Apple is keeping a stranglehold on the applications the company allows to run on it. So I’m sorry to say that I won’t be buying one. Maybe the next generation will remedy these lacks. If so, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat.
UPDATE: As described in the comments, it seems that the Touch does have a working external speaker, at least for notifications of events and such. Rumor has it that there’s a hardware refresh on the way, but I’ll probably be picking one up today anyway. One of the less expensive models, so I won’t feel so bad about replacing it with an updated version in a year or two. 🙂
You’re wrong about his one HG, I was very surprised to find out that after the 2.0 firmware was installed the iPod Touch makes a little series of “wake up” beeps when it gets something from Mobile Me, even when you don’t have earphones on. It isn’t loud though.
Since Mobile Me is appointments too, either it could be done with a hack or it actually has that feature for appointments. Let me test it…. (If worst comes to worst, there’s a setting in iCal, “mail event”) Hmm, Mobile Mess isn’t syncing my events at all right now, maybe it’ll take a while, 15 minutes or so – there’s a reason why Apple had to stop advertising “push”. 🙁 Anyway, you can “mail event” too.
The iPhone, of course, has a fully functional external speaker.
By something I meant email. Maybe events too, but Mobile Mess isn’t cooperating. Of course, calendars and email sync in iTunes also.
Events make a sound too!
Great! In that case, maybe I will be buying one, perhaps as early as tomorrow. 🙂
Watch out, iPods are the Macintosh gateway drug. 😉 Don’t worry though, you’ll enjoy it. 🙂
Um, when are you going to update the blog entry? You’re a citizen journalist now, you have an obligation to Tell the Truth to your readers. 😉
There aren’t so many comments that someone couldn’t see them. 🙂 But yes, I’ll update the entry now.