iPod touch
Here are some initial reactions to the iPhone touch based on the guided tour. I have not personally tried the device, so please forgive and let me know of any errors!
(By the way, anyone else find the guided tour a bit creepy? Something about the jovial, disembodied face and flailing hands…)
- The iPod touch is not highly optimized for playing music. It has poor capacity for a full-size device (8GB) requiring users to spend more time managing music. You cannot access key functions like pause and volume up/down from the outside of the device. The buttons are on a touch-screen, so you cannot just feel for the buttons. You must look at the device to do these fundamental tasks. The device has to be in the right mode for you to pause music or turn the volume down. A music-optimized device would have physical buttons for these topmost tasks on the exterior. The big screen drains battery capacity, so you have to concern yourself with turning on and off the display. The touch-screen is easily pressed by accident, so you have to be concerned with locking and unlocking input. Despite some nice interaction design, this device is not a great conceived-from-scratch music player; it’s the design of a cut-back iPhone.
- The iPod touch is also not a great video player, again because of the limited capacity. What a waste of a large, sharp display. Would it have killed Apple to include a flash memory slot?
- The consolation is that the iPod touch is only $50 more than the iPod Nano of the same capacity. You get a lot for that 50 bucks. (Who will buy the 8GB nano?)
- Is it just me, or is Cover Flow a crappy way to navigate a music collection? The concept seems to be based on the vinyl & CD world of albums, where browsing a collection of music could be done visually. However the modern world of MP3s is largely a world of singles. This results in a stack of album covers, many of which represent one song. It’s pleasant seeing album covers, but flicking album covers back and forth is a pretty poor interaction model for finding music. While Cover Flow demos well, it strikes me as gratuitous eye candy with little user benefit. Such UIs tend not to hold their own over time. I expect that sooner or later a more functional paradigm will be invented for visually navigating music.
- Now that the iPod has a way of entering text, can you search for songs by typing? Or must you navigate a huge scrolling list? Navigating list of hundreds of items was always a major pain in the click-wheel iPods. (Good riddance, click wheel!)
The iPod touch will make a sweet PDA. It has a calendar app and a contacts app, the two core apps of the classic PalmPilot PDA. iPods have had applets for these functions from the beginning, but they were nearly useless due to the lack of proper input on the iPod. If you think of the iPod touch as a PDA with music and internet surfing, it’s suddenly a much better product.But boy, could Apple have downplayed the PDA functions any further? It’s subdued in both the UI and the marketing. Calendar and contacts are highly frequent tasks for a PDA. Palm devices have always granted these tasks top-tier status, devoting physical buttons to them. On the iPod touch, these same tasks didn’t even make the cut on the iPod touch’s little dock. (Is this dock configurable?) There is scarcely a mention of these capabilities on Apple’s site, and it didn’t make the demo.[Update 9/11/07 Apparently they could have downplayed the PDA functions further, and may have: by crippling them. The word is that Apple disabled entering new calendar events on the iPod touch. Readers are, rightfully, screaming bloody murder at the prospect. Say it isn't so, Apple!] [Update 9/13/07: It is so.] [Update 11/26/07: It is not so any longer. Apple added calendar editing back to the iPod touch. Steve Jobs was somehow involved.]- We welcome the era of mobile, WiFi web browsing. When traveling it will save us many pilgrimages to Internet cafés. (Too bad the Palm Foleo got cut. Hopefully they will incubate it further and introduce an inexpensive, light laptop alternative.)
- iPod touch is crippled as an Internet device. It has a web browser but no maps or mail or widgets. It’s hard to see a good reason for these to be omitted, other than to protect the iPhone’s thunder. Pity. It’s unlike Apple to hold back on making a product the best it could be.
- Doesn’t the YouTube app require an active Internet connection? We’d hope that it would automatically pre-cache subscriptions to YouTube content to have available offline. The service is far less useful if only available when you are within WiFi range.
- Connecting to Starbucks for free access to iTunes store? Ho-hum. So much has to line up for this to give benefit to Apple or Starbucks or the user. It seems scarcely worth the investment or complexity. Perhaps if Starbucks threw in a free hour of surfing for buying one of their tracks it could get some traction.
- Wouldn’t it be interesting if the iPod touch could connect to any Bluetooth phone and use it to access the Internet? You could have the iPhone goodness without foregoing your tiny, inexpensive cellphone and your carrier of choice. Apple will probably never do this since it would cannibalize iPhone sales and the lucrative monthly contracts.
PIM features of the iPod touch
Despite its beautiful industrial design and truly innovative UI, the iPod touch is, ironically, not very well optimized for media playback. It is derivative of the iPhone, and a transitory product. Greater capacity, and physical, tactile, modeless buttons for controlling volume and playback would vastly improve the product for its stated purpose.
[Update 9/13/07 - We are also hoping that the device will subsume the role of PDA by restoring existing editing functions into its hobbled calendar. Further we hope that it fulfills its mission as mobile Internet device by restoring the Internet capabilities culled from the iPhone.
Most of all, we are hoping Apple does not squander its considerable goodwill by overplaying its hand with such consumer-unfriendly practices.]
[Update 8/13/08 The iPod touch did get calendar functionality. It's just a shame it's so much less efficient than the PalmPilot. It's also a much better music device now that it can stream from Pandora!]
Could it be true? Is Apple crippling the PDA function of the iPod touch by disabling entry of new appointments? Readers are, rightfully, screaming bloody murder at the prospect. Say it isn’t so, Apple!]