(This is the conclusion of yesterday’s post about my new fourth-generation 32GB iPod Touch. This first part is being written as iTunes loads my music and applications onto it for the first time.)

Kid in a candy store… GoddessJ didn’t sleep well last night, so she was taking a nap. When she got up to feed the cats, at around 1pm, she found me sitting in front of the living room window, with half my attention on the road outside. She asked me if I was waiting for the new iPod, and I answered by asking her just how sad it would be if I said yes. 🙂 I admit it, I’ve gotten essentially nothing done so far today, and probably won’t for the rest of the day either.

When it showed up, it was delivered by a UPS driver with the same unusual first name that I have, only the third I’ve met in my life. He asked me how old I was, and when I told him, was very happy to say that he was four years older, and the oldest person with that first name he knows. I’m not sure if he’s older than the other two that I’ve met, but I didn’t burst his bubble. 🙂

Unpacking was interesting. I couldn’t help but compare it to the first one. There was no helpful inclusion of a plastic adapter for the sync/charging base, like there was with the first one (not a big deal because I ordered a three-pack of them, delivered yesterday, since I have both a dock and a set of portable speakers that needed one). There was also no iPod-shuffle-like controller on the headphones, like there reportedly was with the third-generation one, just the same plain old white ear-buds that I got with my original one (also not a big deal, I ordered a Belkin adapter with remote too, delivered two days ago). There was just the iPod Touch itself, the ear-buds, and a sync cable. Oh, and (of course) a pair of Apple logo stickers. 🙂

It feels very weird in my hand, compared to the first-generation one. Thinner. Lighter. It’s not as curved as I’d been led to expect, it sits very nicely on it’s back.

The first sync took a little while. iTunes asked me if I wanted to restore it from my first-generation Touch’s most recent backup, and when I told it yes, it proceeded to put everything back onto it. Beautiful.

Here are my thoughts while using it for the first time:

• Power button is on the upper-right instead of the upper-left, and is fairly recessed. Works fine if I’m holding it in my left hand and use my left index finger to press it though.
• It was almost fully charged out of the box. Nice, I hate waiting for new electronics to charge before playing with them.
• There’s a sound when turning it on or off now!
• There’s a BACKGROUND PICTURE behind the icons!
• TONS more alarm sounds — good thing, I was very tired the half-dozen that came with the old one, only two of which I found worth using.
• Screen feels weird. Almost papery. Don’t know if that’s just because it’s new, but I like it. (Later: seems to be just the new-screen feel, once I’d used it for a little while it felt the same as the older one.)
• Very noticeably faster, both in processing and downloading. Animations are much smoother.
• Hm, not quite everything auto-loaded onto it. I had to enter my wireless network password separately, but from a security perspective, that’s fine by me.
• Microphone and speaker work beautifully. Skype (over the local wireless network) is very clear through them. Dragon Dictation works extremely well too.
• I love the ability to “stack” programs (like sticking them in folders). Had to play with it a while before I figured out how I wanted them, but I’ve got all the ones that I want to see on a single screen now, with some room to spare, thanks to a “games” stack and a “useful” stack (programs that aren’t used often enough to be on the main screen, but are still used commonly enough that I don’t want to banish them to the dark and seldom-visited recesses of the later screens).
• The screen really is a lot better. I don’t notice it under normal circumstances, but when I go into a program like Read It Later that shows web pages, I can actually read the text without zooming in first — something that just wasn’t possible with the older one.
• I used it almost continuously for three hours, and the battery meter has barely moved!

And later:

• The eReader app didn’t restore properly either. Every time I tried to start it, it crashed and dropped me back to the home screen. Reinstalling it fixed that, but of course, wiped out all my books. Fortunately I was able to re-download them with no problem, and I had a record of the credit card number I used when I bought them so I could still decrypt them.
• It seems noticeably louder than the older one, though the different set of ear-buds that I’m using might contribute to that. Previously, when I was out walking and got to a busy street, I could have it turned to maximum and barely hear what my podcasts were saying when a car passed. This time I could hear them with only minor problems with the iPod set to just three-quarters power. I’ll have to experiment further with that.
• The new camera apparently isn’t sharp enough for the Key Ring app to read barcodes, either that or something else went wrong. Bummer. Of course, the fact that it has a camera at all is still a big improvement.
• I’m ambivalent about the user interface for the multitasking system. We’ll see how it works out in practice.
• There’s nothing to attract your attention to the voice control option. If I hadn’t noticed mention of it in the Wikipedia article, I’d never have known to look for it. It should come in handy when I’m driving.

That’s all for now. I probably won’t post about it again (I know this kind of thing can be boring), unless something particularly interesting comes up.

UPDATE: I just tried my Think Outside folding Bluetooth keyboard with it — the one that I bought to use with one of my last Palm PDAs — and it worked! AWESOME! If I want to travel light, but still have the ability to quickly take notes, I can just take the keyboard and the iPod Touch now!