Back it goes. The last straw was the video playback. I made the mistake of looking at The Italian Job clip on a proper iPhone today and noticed two rouge/dead pixels while playing back video on my iPod touch.
Instead I have a very shiny black iPod nano sitting next to me… in fact, I’m prepared to call the iPod touch the loser of the current iPod line up.
Usually, I reserve the loser label for the iPod shuffle because I simply don’t get it – I personally have no use for a screen-less PMP, but this time, the “bad” model is at the high end of the price list. Consider the following:
iPhone vs iPod touch: I wish they simply took the iPhone, removed the EDGE/GSM functionality, covered up the earpiece, and offered it with a 30GB HDD. But, they didn’t do that… they really want you to get an iPhone but felt compelled to offer a non-cellular version.
– Screen: both have a 3.5″ but from what I’ve seen, the iPhone has a far better one. Either the iPod touch I owned and the demo models I’ve seen are faulty or there’s simply a difference. Winner: iPhone
– WiFi: both have it and in equal messure. tie
– Camera: iPhone has one, touch doesn’t. iPhone
– Memory: iPod touch has twice as much at the price point (for now). iPod touch
– Speakers: iPhone has them, touch doesn’t. iPhone
– Dock: iPhone includes one, touch doesn’t. iPhone
– Size: iPhone is thicker than the touch. iPod touch
– Applciations: iPhone have them, the touch doesn’t. iPhone
– TV Out: the touch has it but iPhone is rumored to be getting it. tie
– UI: both employ a multi-touch “must-view” UI. iPhone doesn’t need to be looked at to change the volume – both need to be unlocked [or Home needs a double-press] to move to prev/next tracks, play/pause. tie
The side effects of the above: this “must-view” UI is a neat idea, but it does limit the experience. If you have the option of looking at the device, it’s nice, it’s fun, it’s eye popping at times. However, if you’re driving down the street and you want to change tracks, you’ll spend just as much time looking at the device as you would TXT’ing someone. That’s bad, considering how consistent the iPod hardware has been for the last six years. Also, for video, you have to smear all over the screen to get your video started. Uh. That’s ugly. And what’s more is that I think the glass on the iPod touch is more prone to smudging than the iPhone is – at least that’s how it appeared. More on this in a minute.
iPod touch vs every other [non-iPod-shuffle] iPod model:
– Shuffle by Album: iPhone and touch don’t have it but every other iPod does. And this feature seems to surprise people the world over. Most people don’t even know it’s there… however, it’s my key feature. No one else seems to offer it – Apple always has. If you go to Options, there’s three settings for Shuffle: Off, Song, Album. When you shuffle by Album, the iPod (or iTunes) picks track 1 of a disc at random, plays that entire disc, and then moves to another disc. Very nifty if you like most of the songs of the Album’s you’ve got loaded and it helps for people like me that might flip from Blink 182 to Vivaldi to Rush… it hurts, going through that with only three songs (and three volume levels).
– Crossfading: iPhone and touch don’t have it but every other iPod does.
– Games: iPhone and touch don’t have it but every other iPod does (or will shortly).
– Accessories: iPhone and touch don’t support nearly as many accessories that other iPods do. Bit of a mess, that one: even if the touch didn’t support the radio part of my radio chord, I did expect the on the wire controls to work. Nope. At least it was polite about it and told me so.
– Radio: iPhone and touch don’t have it but every other iPod does.
The side effects of the above: the iPod touch is not a traditional iPod. It’s a very drastic departure from the “known” iPod design. In some ways that’s good – in other ways it’s changed the device and fallen short of the goal of being an iPod. Price wise, it’s the most expensive iPod ever made yet it offers less features than the iPod nano and far less storage than the iPod classic. It gives you WiFi, which is new to the iPod line, but you can’t sync over the air which has traditionally been the best way to get music to the device.
Remember: innovation does not make something good just because it’s innovative. It needs to be good and innovative to be good.
The bottom line:
– The iPhone is a very slick, polished, and feature rich touch-screen phone. It does a good job of playing iTunes stored content but I do not call this device an iPod and I don’t think it delivers a “good” iPod experience – it simply plays the same files that iTunes stores/plays.
– The iPod classic and the iPod nano are very slick, polished, and feature rich personal media players. They offer all of the features that past iPods have offered and added a spiffy new UI as well as other new features that were never before available like CoverFlow, the new Picture slide show, dock support for Component out, and nano-specific video support.
– The iPod touch is smack in the middle of both product lines. In a perfect scenario, the iPod touch would take the best of both sides of the divide and merge them into a perfect PMP. It’s got the right size screen to be great, but it’s not the great screen of the iPhone. It’s got more memory than the iPhone, but nothing compared to the “like-sized” iPod classic. It has the accessory limitations of the iPhone and none of the “typical” iPod functionality. And while some of these could be ignored or accepted, the device way too expensive for that…
This is why I now own an iPod nano. It’s an iPod in every sense of the word. 2″ screen? Yeah, I’ll get over it, but the truth is that I can buy a nano and a 3″ video-happy Zune for the same price as one iPod touch.
Frankly, I think Apple is a victim of their own success: the iPod interface is so ubiquitous now that they “can’t” improve on it or simply change it without damaging the iPod experience somehow.
I have an Ipod Touch (with the controversial bad screen) and your absolutley right…You nailed it with this blog. I own the Ipod Classic with video and it is far superior. Itouch is a cool gadget, not a cool Ipod, for a true and satisfying Ipod experience, I am giving my touch to my kid and keeping the classic.
I already own the 5G 30Gb iPod. I have a relatively limited music/video collection and a decent phone I don’t particularly wish to render useless.
would you still steer me away from the itouch?
It depends on what you want to do with it. I mean, first and foremost, if you’re talking about the iPod touch, your phone doesn’t come into the conversation…
Aside from that, consider the list above – it says what I think the touch does well and does *not* do well… FWIW, I just replaced my 5th Gen 30GB iPod with a 2nd Gen 80GB Zune.
I just got an iTouch, and I’m not sure if you’ve covered this above, but the “Shuffle” does not seem to work at all. It randomly selects a song, but then repeats it endlessly.
Does that mean there is no suffle on the iTouch?
I have an iTouch and the shuffle works fine on mine. I use it all the time.
do you want spam:)
FYI: If you tap the album cover which appears when you start playing a track on the itouch you can turn on/off shuffle, repeat, and genius playlists.
The 2nd gen iTouch has a built in speaker, works with all applications except those that rely on the features it’s missing (GSM/GPS/Camera).
With 2nd Gen iTouch you can also change volume without unlocking device.
I do wish they included the camera and GPS though… (grrrr…)
Apple will NEVER put all features into one device (ie: The iTouch will never have all the features of an iPod Nano). Apple representative: “This would be counter-intuitive to our marketing.” (Translation: You’ll have to buy ALL our products if you want a device that does everything). Until then, Apple has the joy of picking and choosing what features you’ll get in every device you buy. Welcome to Apple, Slaves.