and it is the first Apple product I have used since I bought the first Apple sold in Nebraska in the summer of 1978.
(My daughter-in-law stood in for Santa -- totally blew me away!)
I've had it now for a week and have some experiences and formed some opinions about it and my plans for getting an HVO Android to replace my 12Mb Earthlink and Verizon cellphone contract (combined they cost $150/m).
With OS version 4.2.1, it has 8GB memory, with 6.5GB available for storage, but unlike the iPhone it does NOT have a 3G (or 4G) phone connection, so without a local free or accessible wifi connection it is useless for apps that need Internet access. My wife and I just got back from Walmart. I took it with me but discovered that Walmart does not supply a public wifi in their store, so I could not use the bar code scanner app to compare their prices. Also, I could not use the Police & Emergency scanner to listen to the cops & robbers, nor could I listen to classical music on streaming radio while I shopped. I could not use Skype to communicate with friends and family, nor could I use the FaceTime app to do the same. YouTube and other videos were not available, and neither were the news and weather sites, Google, NASA, nor the GPS capability. My favorite math site, Wolfram beta, was not available either. With the Internet available all of those apps are available and ready to use. I installed about $25 worth of apps and several free ones, leaving about 5.2Gb of available space left.
But, my daughter-in-law couldn't gift an iPhone because she didn't know about our current phone contract and its costs for termination. More on this later.
The iPod has THREE HUGE weakness -- the first is the virtual keyboard, the primary means of entering textual data. My fingers are barely small enough to hit a single button on that virtual keyboard, and if the button is close to the edge of the display I have to use my little finger to press it. Also, a slight tremor makes brushing the screen turn into an accidental tap, activating an option I wasn't wanting. VERY frustrating. Entering a Safari URL can be agony, so the principal method is to put in a Google shorthand search and pick the desired URL out of the list, if you are lucky enough to have it in the list. Entering a Google search is made easier with "Dragon Search", which is a free Dragon powered speech to text converter which is AMAZINGLY accurate, and which fires up safari with what ever search engine you chose from an icon menu bar. To enter large blocks of text there is the Dragon Dictation app, which is equally amazing. After you speak one or more paragraphs (a whole document? May try it sometime...), and edit out any corrections, you tap the copy button and then switch to your web page and activate the insertion bar, then tap the "Paste" button which appears. So, Dragon makes text entry easier, but not painless.
The SECOND major weakness is the small size of the screen. Most of the apps make good use of it and the text isn't too small to read IF your glasses are good. The finger gestures to expand the screen work nicely but while it makes reading parts of the screen easy, it makes moving around the screen difficult and iffy. Also, many websites I've encountered do not have a "mobile page view" option. Fortunately, my paid subscription to Undergroundweather does. In fact it is very nice and easier to use than the regular UW page!
There are a REMARKABLE number of free "apps" for the iPod (iPhone, iPad as well). Many of them have paid versions, a lot which cost only 0.99 cents, or $1.99. Some cost $5 or $10 and a few cost $35 or more. Angry Birds, at 0.99 cents, and with over 5 million downloads, has made their developers millionaires. I've already "cleared" all 15 sub-levels on the 5 major levels, including the addition Egg level. It's addictive but after a week it gets boring.
BUT... without a phone connection, the iPod Touch 4G, is nothing more than a streaming radio & YouTube player. Without the Internet it is not even that, unless you've downloaded a bunch of mp3 tunes beforehand. The only way to communicate to it without a wifi connection is via USB to your regular Windows or Apple powered laptop running iTunes.
The THIRD weakness is the battery. It is rated for 400 recharges. However, there is no way to replace the battery so when it can no longer be recharged the only way you will be able to run the iPod is with the power cord. When will that be? A year? Two? Then, there is this problem. The stainless steel case, which she engraved with "Grey Geek Christmas 2010", has no screws or way of removing it to access the battery, which is soldered in and probably can't be replaced without risking heat damage to the circuitry. (Wave tank soldering keeps the heat away from the components)
One of the free apps I installed is "Battery Magic", which clocks the recharge process and indicates, for a given remaining charge, how much time you have left for various activities. The fully charged iPod Touch boasts about 300 hours of standby time.
ActivityTime
3D Game play1hr 40min
Game play3hr 20min
Recharge time40min
Wifi Internet9hr 00min
Video playback7hr 00min
Audio playback40hr 00min
Kindle app10hr 00min
Read-write email6hr 30min
AOL messenger5hr 00min
FaceBook6hr 40min
YouTube4hr 20min
Take photos2hr 20min
Record video1hr 50min
Song capacity569
Oh, one other problem. My son and daughter-in-law have iPhones. The camera in the iPhone gives much sharper photos and movies than the camera in my iPod. My pictures, no matter how firmly I support the cable, have slight fuzziness. That may just be my phone but others have reported the lower photo quality as well.
My plans for a future 3G phone have changed as a result of my iPod experiences. Using the iPod Touch 4G for a week, along with the new FCC rules making the Internet "neutral" for ISPs but expensive for users, has put my Internet use in a new light. I had planned to drop my 12Mb/s no-cap Earthlink Internet connection when my Verizon contract expired and use the the total cost (around $160) to purchase a two year Verizon unlimited contract which supplies two free EVO Androids (iPhones are still too expensive for my blood) with 3G Internet (no true 4G exists... yet). But, with the new FCC ruling Verizon has droppped their unlimited data plans. They claim:
So, when I purchase a plan which "gives" me 2 or 5 GB/mo I am a "hog" for using all of it? Ya, right. That's their excuse for over booking their equipment. Anyway, while researching this problem I discovered that Verizon (and probably others) have a neat trick with "unlimited" plans. If you reach an arbitrary "cap", say 5GB, they throttle your bandwidth down to 200Kb/s up and down for the next MONTH! Let's ignore the fact that Verizon ignores their customer's problems, but claiming "unlimited" but throttling bandwidth is classic abuse. Or, what about allowing "data sipping" with a pipe that can be a fire hose?
Most plans have 5 or 10GB data caps. A single download of a Linux DVD ISO can blow through your data cap in an hour. After that you get charged exorbitant fees for each additional GB, or you get throttled to 200Kb/s.
There is an interesting article about the affect of the explosive growth of watching videos on the Internet. Add to that the distinct possibility that with the new FCC rules ISPs can charge a "per-site" fee for each Internet site you frequent and you have an environment which is ripe for rape of the consumer, with the FCC (and the Supreme Court) giving approval.
I don't know about you, but I think being charged $50/month for 5GB of data per month is outright gouging, even at $25 or $10/m for 5GB is gouging.
I read of a newly released device from China that adds wireless phone to an iPod. It is called the Apple Peel 520 and sells at Amazon for $119, but you'd have to get a contract from an ISP, which would make a contract phone more affordable than an iPod with a Peel 520. And, one person reported that the 520 wouldn't work on his iPod Touch without jail-breaking it.
I will probably continue with my current $72/m plan which gives our phones 1600 minutes and anytime free with other Verizon cellphones, but no texting or Internet. I will retain the no-cap 12Mb/s Earthlink cable connection, unless they, too, decide to play the throttle game. As far as on the go mobility my wife's new Acer Aspire One A051 looks more appealing than ever. It has a keyboard and with straight Internet browsing runs between 3 and 4 hours on a charge.
(My daughter-in-law stood in for Santa -- totally blew me away!)
I've had it now for a week and have some experiences and formed some opinions about it and my plans for getting an HVO Android to replace my 12Mb Earthlink and Verizon cellphone contract (combined they cost $150/m).
With OS version 4.2.1, it has 8GB memory, with 6.5GB available for storage, but unlike the iPhone it does NOT have a 3G (or 4G) phone connection, so without a local free or accessible wifi connection it is useless for apps that need Internet access. My wife and I just got back from Walmart. I took it with me but discovered that Walmart does not supply a public wifi in their store, so I could not use the bar code scanner app to compare their prices. Also, I could not use the Police & Emergency scanner to listen to the cops & robbers, nor could I listen to classical music on streaming radio while I shopped. I could not use Skype to communicate with friends and family, nor could I use the FaceTime app to do the same. YouTube and other videos were not available, and neither were the news and weather sites, Google, NASA, nor the GPS capability. My favorite math site, Wolfram beta, was not available either. With the Internet available all of those apps are available and ready to use. I installed about $25 worth of apps and several free ones, leaving about 5.2Gb of available space left.
But, my daughter-in-law couldn't gift an iPhone because she didn't know about our current phone contract and its costs for termination. More on this later.
The iPod has THREE HUGE weakness -- the first is the virtual keyboard, the primary means of entering textual data. My fingers are barely small enough to hit a single button on that virtual keyboard, and if the button is close to the edge of the display I have to use my little finger to press it. Also, a slight tremor makes brushing the screen turn into an accidental tap, activating an option I wasn't wanting. VERY frustrating. Entering a Safari URL can be agony, so the principal method is to put in a Google shorthand search and pick the desired URL out of the list, if you are lucky enough to have it in the list. Entering a Google search is made easier with "Dragon Search", which is a free Dragon powered speech to text converter which is AMAZINGLY accurate, and which fires up safari with what ever search engine you chose from an icon menu bar. To enter large blocks of text there is the Dragon Dictation app, which is equally amazing. After you speak one or more paragraphs (a whole document? May try it sometime...), and edit out any corrections, you tap the copy button and then switch to your web page and activate the insertion bar, then tap the "Paste" button which appears. So, Dragon makes text entry easier, but not painless.
The SECOND major weakness is the small size of the screen. Most of the apps make good use of it and the text isn't too small to read IF your glasses are good. The finger gestures to expand the screen work nicely but while it makes reading parts of the screen easy, it makes moving around the screen difficult and iffy. Also, many websites I've encountered do not have a "mobile page view" option. Fortunately, my paid subscription to Undergroundweather does. In fact it is very nice and easier to use than the regular UW page!
There are a REMARKABLE number of free "apps" for the iPod (iPhone, iPad as well). Many of them have paid versions, a lot which cost only 0.99 cents, or $1.99. Some cost $5 or $10 and a few cost $35 or more. Angry Birds, at 0.99 cents, and with over 5 million downloads, has made their developers millionaires. I've already "cleared" all 15 sub-levels on the 5 major levels, including the addition Egg level. It's addictive but after a week it gets boring.
BUT... without a phone connection, the iPod Touch 4G, is nothing more than a streaming radio & YouTube player. Without the Internet it is not even that, unless you've downloaded a bunch of mp3 tunes beforehand. The only way to communicate to it without a wifi connection is via USB to your regular Windows or Apple powered laptop running iTunes.
The THIRD weakness is the battery. It is rated for 400 recharges. However, there is no way to replace the battery so when it can no longer be recharged the only way you will be able to run the iPod is with the power cord. When will that be? A year? Two? Then, there is this problem. The stainless steel case, which she engraved with "Grey Geek Christmas 2010", has no screws or way of removing it to access the battery, which is soldered in and probably can't be replaced without risking heat damage to the circuitry. (Wave tank soldering keeps the heat away from the components)
One of the free apps I installed is "Battery Magic", which clocks the recharge process and indicates, for a given remaining charge, how much time you have left for various activities. The fully charged iPod Touch boasts about 300 hours of standby time.
ActivityTime
3D Game play1hr 40min
Game play3hr 20min
Recharge time40min
Wifi Internet9hr 00min
Video playback7hr 00min
Audio playback40hr 00min
Kindle app10hr 00min
Read-write email6hr 30min
AOL messenger5hr 00min
FaceBook6hr 40min
YouTube4hr 20min
Take photos2hr 20min
Record video1hr 50min
Song capacity569
Oh, one other problem. My son and daughter-in-law have iPhones. The camera in the iPhone gives much sharper photos and movies than the camera in my iPod. My pictures, no matter how firmly I support the cable, have slight fuzziness. That may just be my phone but others have reported the lower photo quality as well.
My plans for a future 3G phone have changed as a result of my iPod experiences. Using the iPod Touch 4G for a week, along with the new FCC rules making the Internet "neutral" for ISPs but expensive for users, has put my Internet use in a new light. I had planned to drop my 12Mb/s no-cap Earthlink Internet connection when my Verizon contract expired and use the the total cost (around $160) to purchase a two year Verizon unlimited contract which supplies two free EVO Androids (iPhones are still too expensive for my blood) with 3G Internet (no true 4G exists... yet). But, with the new FCC ruling Verizon has droppped their unlimited data plans. They claim:
“The problem we have today with flat-based usage is that you are trying to encourage customers to be efficient in use and applications but you are getting some people who are bandwidth hogs using gigabytes a month and they are paying something like megabytes a month,” he said, adding, “That isn’t long-term sustainable. Why should customers using an average amount of bandwidth be subsidizing bandwidth hogs?"
Verizon's new 4G LTE network is so fast that you can use up your entire 5GB, $50 monthly allotment in 32 minutes.
There is an interesting article about the affect of the explosive growth of watching videos on the Internet. Add to that the distinct possibility that with the new FCC rules ISPs can charge a "per-site" fee for each Internet site you frequent and you have an environment which is ripe for rape of the consumer, with the FCC (and the Supreme Court) giving approval.
I don't know about you, but I think being charged $50/month for 5GB of data per month is outright gouging, even at $25 or $10/m for 5GB is gouging.
I read of a newly released device from China that adds wireless phone to an iPod. It is called the Apple Peel 520 and sells at Amazon for $119, but you'd have to get a contract from an ISP, which would make a contract phone more affordable than an iPod with a Peel 520. And, one person reported that the 520 wouldn't work on his iPod Touch without jail-breaking it.
I will probably continue with my current $72/m plan which gives our phones 1600 minutes and anytime free with other Verizon cellphones, but no texting or Internet. I will retain the no-cap 12Mb/s Earthlink cable connection, unless they, too, decide to play the throttle game. As far as on the go mobility my wife's new Acer Aspire One A051 looks more appealing than ever. It has a keyboard and with straight Internet browsing runs between 3 and 4 hours on a charge.
and (here comes the best part) windows cannot detect the device. It is an old pda from the times of windows 2000 and cannot deal with windows 7 64 bit. 
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