Why No Fries with the iPod touch?
After nine months of anticipation, Apple finally released an iPod based on the iPhone form factor and interface. But for reasons unknown, Apple chose to leave off one or two essential applications, and according to the latest rumor, has neutered others.
You get the feeling that if Apple bought McDonald’s they would cut the fries from the combo meals. I hope you didn’t want fries with your new iPod touch!
The iPod touch is a lovely device, and I have to out myself as being wrong. I was among those who said Apple wouldn’t release a device like it within 12 months of the iPhone.
Hindsight is a great thing, and now I can see why Apple might have done so. Certainly there’s a big market for it, but the two devices could cannibalize each other. Which, at the end of the day, matters not to Apple, as they still get a sale. And Steve said as much in a recent interview with USA Today.
However, in markets still waiting for the iPhone—such as Europe and Asia—it will be interesting to see how the iPod touch sells. Personally, I’m having a dilemma over whether to get an iPod touch or wait for the iPhone. And a young woman I spoke to at an electronics retailer said she’d be waiting.
Actually, the more more I find out about the touch, the more I lose interest in it.
I saw one reader comment on a web forum last week that the iPod touch is a PDA. I suspect, though, he’s in for a big disappointment. Apple isn’t pushing it that way, so it’s hard to know if it really is. In fact, Apple’s demo video didn’t even mention iCal or Address Book, two key apps on a PDA. And rumors have it there’ll be no ability to input calendar entries—which is upsetting a lot of people who pre-ordered specifically expecting that feature.
But the big thing missing—the fries if you will—is email. Its absence is the deciding factor in my not buying an iPod touch.
For a device that has internet access, the lack of an email client leaves one speechless. So what if you can do it online through Safari? An offline reader is essential in a portable, internet-connected device. Plus, using a browser, you have to manually check your email. Also, if you have multiple email accounts, using a browser really starts getting cumbersome.
In my part of the world, wireless hotspots are rare, so I wouldn’t be able to use the browser or email much anyway. But if hotspots were available, then I’d be eternally frustrated at having an internet device without email.
Say that again a couple of times: “an internet device without email.” Have you ever heard of anything stupider? A car without seats? A combo meal without fries? A computer without a mouse? A house without a bathroom? An internet device without email?
Possibly, someone will port the iPhone’s email client to the iPod touch, and hopefully that will force Apple to include it.
Unfortunately, this adds to the dilemma. Do I wait for the touch to get an email client? Or just get an iPod classic? And do I then forget about the iPhone?
But if the rumor of the inability to input to the calendar and address book proves true, the decision is easy. No touch. Without those PDA abilities, the difference between a touch and an iPod classic narrows too much to justify the touch.
The interesting thing is, the lack of PDA type functions, such as calendar entry and email, stops me buying an iPod touch in preference to an iPod classic. But the absence of those from the touch wouldn’t influence my decision to buy an iPhone.
I’d buy an iPhone because it’s a phone with iPod features. But I would have bought a touch if it was an iPod with email and PDA features.
With the touch having no compelling features, and already owning an iPod, albeit sans video, I expect I’ll just buy nothing.
Steve was happy to appease the angry mob over the price cut; hopefully he’ll appease the rowdy rabble over the lack of email and calendar entry.
Come on, Steve, mate, give us the fries with that iPod touch.
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Slashdot
StumbleUpon
Comments
...that’s the iPod beeb you refer to.
Me? I want an iPod [blah, blah, and more blah], and all at the price of an iPod touch.
I suppose you are waiting for the Touch Oz edition.
When that comes out, I’ll take a long 19-hr flight to Sydney just for the opportunity to have one of those babies (and a couple of nice, full-edition “widgets”).
Dream on!
If the fanboys had their way, there’d never be any advancements in Apple products because it’s asking the impossible to dare want improvements or suggest in any way that an Apple product isn’t the best that is physically possible.
A hard drive instead of a flash drive is hardly asking for the world. It would add MAYBE a milimeter to the thickness, which the Touch can more than spare.
Neither is wanting more capacity (capacity that exists, btw) the same as asking for more features, like an FM tuner (although that would be nice) or voice recognition (which a more appropriate feature for the iPhone).
Yet again the fanboys ironically betray their lack of faith in Apple engineering to accomplish even the most mundane of tasks.
Chris, before you head uptown for a Classic, here is an excerpt from Cringely’s latest Pulpit:
Besides, Apple has enough trouble on its hands with the new iPod classic, which doesn’t work very well at all and is going to shortly create some PR problems for Apple. Rather than actually being a legacy device as the name implies, the iPod classic uses new innards and the software is creating headaches for early users.
The complaints I am hearing about the new iPods classics are (in no particular order):
* VERY Slow menu switching response
* Display of clock rather than song info when “Now Playing”
* Inability to use existing AUTHORIZED 3rd party dock products (including Apple-advertised)
* Audio skipping during operation
* Slow connection to Macs and PCs
* Inability to disable “split-screen” menus
* Lagging and unresponsive Click Wheel
* Camera connector not working
* Inability to use EQ settings without skipping and distortion
This product was clearly shipped before it was ready, so we can expect a significant firmware upgrade Real Soon Now, especially since the iPod classic is now Apple’s ONLY solution for users who want to store more than 16 gigabytes worth of songs, pictures, TV shows, and movies.
Now, if only Apple had just combined the Classic w/ the Touch’s charisma. That would really be a knockout product for this Xmas and the next.
Sadly, why doesn’t this surprise me of Apple? It does have quite a record of butchering quite healthy products.
So looks like we stick with our 4G’s, Robo?
So looks like we stick with our 4G’s, Robo?
I’m so there, mate! Although I might get the Touch 16GB anyway this Holidays to supplement my multitouch web craves.
And a confirmation that the Touch indeed has NO Bluetooth.courtesy Gizmodo.
Sigh…
If you’re too lazy to click on the Giz link above, here are other findings by iFixit re: Touch.
- Audio chip is identical to the iPhone’s
- Samsung memory (like the iPhone’s)
- Processor similar to the iPhone’s
- Display is attached to the iPod with 16 screws (iPhone uses adhesive)
- Display is scratch-resistant, like iPhone
All true because it is a phone-less iPhone. So, Steve, for the love of the Great Zen - give us the iPhone net widgets!
And there is a long thread at Apple Support’s Discussions forum regarding our gripes and shortcomings of the Touch.
Feel free to add yours. Who knows, Steve or his clone might be reading those threads quietly.
Robo, suggestions bluetooth is there but not used. See what you make of this:
iPod touch without OS X but with Bluetooth
heheh - I just read the Gizmodo, so I guess there must be other bizarre reasons for the engadget discovery.
In the latest Engadget counterpunch to Giz’s:
What a tease. The ifixit tear down we’ve all been waiting for on the iPod touch fails to specifically exclude the existence of Bluetooth silicon or even point out which chip is providing the WiFi. After all, Broadcom, Marvell, and CSR all offer single-chip solutions with combined WiFi and Bluetooth radios. Hell, they’ll even integrate an FM radio if you ask real nice.
T. Ricker is absolutely correct. Embedded RF ICs can and do include multiple RF technologies - all to save on COST and give a potential customer reasons to give them their business.
Broadcom, Atheros, and Marvell do this all the time. That is why the iPhone RF chip is a single-IC solution from Broadcom with WiFi B/G and BT. Marvell does the same. CSR is the foremost BT promoter and originator.
Another, Apple purposely makes their IC vendors to wipe clean any serial number nor any labels to pinpoint their actual sources (except for some etched identifiers from the IC packaging company, I suppose).
I for one hopes there is BT in there. I do have plans to use the Touch as a Skype-client and a BT headset would be the only way to input voice in this thing.
The source of all these BT rumors is from a guy named David Films
In this image, one can see BT is “X” off. Now, does that mean BT is disabled or missing? That question depends, again, to the RF IC being used in the RF front end of the Touch.
I am leaning towards the “disabled” side for I am hoping it is there for a software update to add one day.
I doubt hackers can make this work with OSX. RFICs are hardware-level and makes up the PHY layer. Only the embedded firmware can access these for the APIs and OSX apps.
Finding BT and enabling it is one thing. Making it work with OSX and the widgets will be another matter.
Hmmm…just a thought, some unfortunate QA/QC layman is perhaps sent to the slammer for this mistake by now. The Touch hacker community is just empowered by this - and David Films is now getting good bids.
Or, some disgruntled but loyal Ó Inc. employee must have deliberately leaked the POST key combos. All cellphones and portable devices have a “secret” POST combos.
I have mine.
A hard drive instead of a flash drive is hardly asking for the world. It would add MAYBE a milimeter to the thickness, which the Touch can more than spare.
That is plain wrong, wishful thinking, as I’ve explained in the other thread.
If the fanboys had their way, there’d never be any advancements in Apple products because it’s asking the impossible to dare want improvements or suggest in any way that an Apple product isn’t the best that is physically possible.
There is a type of philosophical/mathematical disproof of an argument called “reductio ad absurdum” “where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result. It makes use of the law of non-contradiction — a statement cannot be both true and false”.[*]
We see here something analogous. This logical conclusion is so patently absurd - Beeblebrox claims not only that we do not desire things we pantently do desire, and are in some way “pathologically satisfied” with the status quo, but that he alone has the vision to aspire to an iPod with greater storage capacity.
It is unbelievably ludicrous.
I too want a terabyte of storage that i can balance on my thumbnail. I however also have some practical sense and the decency to acknowledge the engineering facts of the matter, and am prepared to wait for good solutions that are currently unfeasible.
———-
I’d like to ask which iPods if any people are thinking of getting in the nearish future?
Personally I’m thinking a red nano. I have an old 30GB photo which still does me well for carting about my whole library, and I love my 2nd gen shuffle, but I’d like to have something in between with a video capability for train journeys/flights etc and this is the first iPod that fits those criteria.
I’m loathe to get an iPod touch, even though I could use 16GB over 8, and the nano is a better, economy-class solution. Also if I eventually get an iPhone it’ll just be left sitting around.
I’d like to ask which iPods if any people are thinking of getting in the nearish future?
None. I can’t justify any of them. My iPod photo gives me music and portable storage and it’s <b>FireWire</i>, which I really like.
The classic is the only iPod I’d consider at the moment because of storage. But when the touch goes to 32GB and adds email, calendar entry, and notepad, I’m sure I’ll think up some false-justification.