iPod Touch Review2
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Video playback at the 3.5-inch screen size is completely new to the iPod, however, and is simply a treat for anyone used to the 2.5-inch iPod screen of other players. Whether they come from the iTunes Store, a personal library, or YouTube, clips are sharp and play extremely smoothly as long as the source itself is clean. In fact, it would be quite easy to recommend the touch to nearly anyone who expects to watch a large amount of video, even if it leaves little room for anything else.
Nonetheless, some potential users will want to hold off on their purchases based on some early reports of dodgy screen quality: at least a few iPod touch units have been plagued by poor performance in dark scenes that can produce a strange inversion effect similar to a film negative. Apple has pledged to fix these units but may need some time to weed out the flawed units from the batch. My test sample was free of this issue, but did show obvious color shifts to blue or orange at moderately sharp viewing angles. This could pose a problem for multiple viewers, so the touch may be better for catching up on TV shows on a subway commute than a family gathering.
Run times are virtually equal to Apple's stated claims. In playing music, I netted almost exactly 21 hours of continuous playback with the touch despite higher-quality songs, a few minutes of Wi-Fi use, and several checks on the iPod's status with the display. The official 22 hours should easily be possible using 128-kilobit songs and leaving Wi-Fi off for the entire period. Time did not allow for a test of video playback, though the very slow drain while we tested suggests that claims of five hours are realistic.
the iTunes Wi-Fi Store and the effect of Internet access
What may be the real game-changer for the iPod touch is not its touchscreen as much as it is wireless access to iTunes. Aside from a long delay the first time we accessed the site, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store really is as seamless as one could expect from any handheld. Browsing is simple, and on a good connection samples will play instantly while full downloads complete quickly. Audiobooks, playlist-based content like iMix, and reviews are off-limits in the current version, however. This is partly compensated by a much appreciated live search feature that has yet to reach even the computer version of iTunes. In many situations, you need only type the first few letters of an artist or a song before you find the right link. Apple clearly hopes that iPod touch (and iPhone) users will be enamored with the store and buy songs on impulse at the coffee shop or a friend's house; we think that hope is well-placed, even if the concept may be years away from the mainstream consciousness.
The effect of general Internet access is almost as important. Whether web browsing will truly take off remains to be seen: not every iPod user needs to update a MySpace page from their media player. Even so, it means that users who want to quickly check webmail can do so on a run without carrying a premium smartphone. YouTube is also surprisingly helpful as a way of filling the gaps in a small video library, though its usefulness is dampened somewhat without the EDGE cellular access of the iPhone.
final words: the future of the iPod
If embraced strictly for its basic concept, there would be no question that the iPod touch is clearly sounding the death knell for the traditional full-size iPod as we know it. Any media player with a large amount of storage should have an interface that can play any format with at least as much grace as music. With only a few exceptions, the iPod touch does this in style. It also signals the end of the player as an island. There have been players with Wi-Fi before, such as the Archos 605 Wi-Fi or Microsoft's Zune, but none of them have made networks and the Internet as useful as the iPod touch does right now. We can only hope that Apple is willing to accept that the touch deserves the same Internet features as the iPhone and that support eventually comes for WiMAX or another "4G" mobile Internet technology that would let users hop online from anywhere.
From a hardware perspective, though, it becomes apparent that Apple is allowing its preference for aesthetics and its perpetual optimism about technology to gain the upper hand. Like the first-generation iPod nano, Apple has stepped back from some smart decisions in favor of meeting some arbitrary goals: when the iPhone was given an aluminum shell and hardware volume controls that were arguably useful, pulling them out appears to be a question of hitting the 8mm thickness mark for its own sake. Also, the choice to move to flash memory is potentially premature. There are convincing technical arguments for durability and responsiveness, but for many users the prospect of spending $399 for 16GB (or $299 for 8GB) is simply too much to stomach when a $349 iPod classic with a spinning hard disk will offer ten times the storage. Audiophiles with whole collections encoded in lossless formats will want to look elsewhere.
That said, after days of use it feels virtually necessary to give the iPod touch a solid four-star rating. As much as it occupies an uncomfortable gap between the iPod classic and the iPhone, this is the best iPod yet for photos and videos, a well-executed first wireless iPod, and a very capable music player. The touch is undoubtedly going to take over from the classic within the next few years, and makes for a superb alternative to the iPhone in countries where the latter just cannot be an option. Apple just needs to be sure that its storage and hardware quality measure up when the iPod classic finally fades away.
