The iPod Touch: greasy, yet glorious
After months of noble service, striving valiantly against the Lovecraftian demons of UselessSoftwareUpdates-am Sharrathoth and LousyBatteryLife-Brahurgh, my Zune finally developed a headache, and despite shouting some of my finest obscenities at it for daring to die on me (it survived a drop on the road from my scooter, believe it or not), I was forced to retire it.
So there I was, Googling idly for a suitable replacement when Cam suggested the iPod Touch.
I haven’t had the best of luck with iPods. I’ve been through 4, going right back to the first generation ones with the so-so batteries and the crappy parachute game; to my last, the iPod Photo, whose hard drive cable would insist on working loose every five minutes, causing the whole thing to hang, clicking violently, until it was ritually disassembled and reseated. I found my video rental card well suited to the purpose.
Misgivings aside, I went along to Bic Camera in Ikebukuro, and about five minutes after picking it up for the first time I was taking it to the till.
Audio quality is of the usual pretty high standard compared to other personal audio players, and the packaged headphones are good enough that I don’t feel the usual urge to ditch them within about 20 seconds of inserting them into my lugholes.
Video is sharp, but couldn’t quite beat the Zune. Pre-screen smash, obviously.
The touch interface works far more smoothly than I expected, especially when zooming in on web pages with Safari. While possibly a Rog-specific phenomenon, I found my sausagefingers were less than delicate when it came to using the on-screen keyboard; but you can touch and scroll in case you’re not on target first time, and a reasonable typing speed can be kept up. It also has the handy double-space to full stop and space shortcut, a la Blackberry, which is a godsend.
Just bear in mind that to a certain kind of individual, that’s biometric information you’re SHMEARING all over it, and as such try not to leave around anyone from HM’s Passport Office. It’s catnip to their kind. Incidentally, it does require a polish every couple of days to remove the thicker layers of finger grease deposited all over it.
As The Reg pointed out, the polished back is just as scratch-prone as every other iPod ever created, and it would have made more sense (and IMHO looked better) if they’d gone with the iPhone-style matt aluminium finish; although their other gripe, the black Wi-Fi antenna tab in the top corner doesn’t hugely spoil the look for me.
In fact, the whole thing is a dream to use. The only thing that really makes me want to reach for the Jinro is having to go back to sodding iTunes again. Bring on the next version of Anapod.
