IPod Touch looked like the right device when I was looking for some impressive gizmo to hold all my music in one place and can be hooked up with any music system USB/AUX-IN to start playback. Another requirement was to be able to keep the family entertained when on a long drive. Something that will engage kids with educational and fun games (age group below 5), play movies, skim though photos and not to mention integrate with the car music system. iPod Touch was also giving sleek user interface and internet surfing abilities as a bonus. It also has a thriving app community.
The 3rd generation launched in Sep 2009 added improved processing power and voice recognition abilities. For complete tech specs, see: https://apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html. I decided to get one for 14K (Dec 2009) from abroad. If you get it from Apple store, engraving is free i.e. you can imprint your personalized message on the back of the iPod.
The packaging and box were surprisingly small and subtle (a little too subtle for some people tastes I guess). It took a while to realize you basically have to pull out the stickers, in order to unpack it. To load it up, get latest version of iTunes on the PC and connect the iPod to it via provided USB cable. Basic chores such as iPod/iTunes handshake and device registration are very simple and quick. I being new to iTunes, took some time to figure out how everything works in it. (I was a ’WinAmp classic’ fan so far)
When frequently heard music was added to iTunes, I proceeded to add free movies (trailers mostly, available from apple.com, QuickTime format only) and some free games. There are a modest amount of free games suitable for kids on iTunes Store. Age groups are clearly marked which helps. I am especially keen on physics based and touch based games, very innovative and interesting for kids. Finally I downloaded some of my Picasa photo albums, and gave the folder path to iTunes to import those photos. Meanwhile the iPod was getting charged through the USB connection. (Out of the box the battery showed 75% juice). Then I sync’ed music, apps, photos and videos with the iPod. Data transfer was quick enough. The Apple website for iPod touch (https://apple.com/ipodtouch/features/) explains all the features extremely well, and also the device is very user friendly, so I was up and running in no time.
When all was explored and the novelty started to wear out, I was left with two issues:
After a while, I noticed games would no longer start, also device became sluggish.
Only the currently playing songs’ album art would show up on the iPod even though iTunes would show all album art properly (This is not related with the first problem)
Another small thing is the glossy shiny shell is a fingerprint magnet. Gets dirty very soon.
The first problem really pissed me off. After couple of hours of struggling, I concluded to restore the iPod, which is like reinstalling the OS. After that, and discarding the backed up settings, things returned to normal. This time I added content to iPod one by one, every time making sure things are all working. I discarded large (10MB+) games. Since games/apps are tested prior to be made available on iTunes Store, this glitch somewhat shook my high expectations about Apple and iPod quality. I am sure a non-technical person would take much more time and require support to fix such issue. To Apples’ credit however, the restore process is simple enough and the problem did not recur. Lesson learnt: When adding software or changing settings, do it one by one, make sure things works before you add another.
For the album art problem, I found out that for cover flow to work best in iTunes + iPod, the easiest way is:
Select all songs from an album
Right click > Click ‘Get Info’
Fill the Album, Artist, Genre and Artwork fields
It is optimal to use 300x300 jpg images for artwork (quality/storage)
This will help iTune and iPod to categorize your songs correctly and the jazzy cover flow thing starts working perfectly. The learning was worth it because once it starts working, the ability to flip through your albums via a touch is awesome eye candy. Note: if you are serious about maintaining your music collection, I suggest exploring MP3Gain and MP3Tag software. They ease up the manual labor involved in organizing music.
I have used a few touch interfaces before (especially the HTC Touch extensively) and I can see that the touch interface implementation in iPod is one of the best. It is smooth and perfectly functional. Just remember to operate slightly slower than you would use physical buttons (because of the processing overhead). The pinch (zoom), swipe and flip (prev/next) gestures are butter smooth. Also apps (especially games) leverage the new input mechanism beautifully. The accelerometer on the other hand is not as responsive as you would expect. When I use ‘shake to shuffle’ or ‘turn to switch horizontal/vertical display’, it does not always work. Sometimes I have to repeat the gesture. Also one must note that not all screens have both horizontal and vertical views.
After the first day adventure, I gradually added more content to the iPod, including full length movies (Converted using the third party Videora software) and multiple GBs of music. Did not notice any scalability problems. Also all family members started to use it. Everybody is pleased about the audio, video, display and games quality. These are the four things I bought the device for, and I am happy on those fronts. Battery life is as claimed. Everything runs and feels smooth. There are more features such as wifi browser and voice rec which I am yet to explore.