iPod Touch is Training Wheels for the iPhone !!!!

This seems to explain why the iPod Touch could be considered inferior to the iPhone, as indicated by the ilounge review.

According to Steve Jobs, the iPod Touch is “…training wheels for the iPhone.”

$400 (US) training wheels – Thanks Steve!!!

iPod Touch Not Good for Podcast Listeners

At least half of my time spent listening to audio on an iPod is consumed by podcasts. The iPod Touch is a step backwards for podcast listeners for the following reasons:

• You cannot rewind or fast forward with fine granularity like you can on the click wheel based models. In fact you have to work harder on the touchscreen to do any sort of rew/ff than on a click wheel model even though you’ll get worse results.

• Podcast descriptions are not available. I’ve read this is also true of the iPhone. Its unbelievable that Apple could miss something this simple.

These two items may not seem like a big deal but if you are in the habit of listening to podcasts in an environment where you are frequently interruped and have to do short rewinds then you’ll likely find the iPod Touch interface a big hassle in this area.

Because the display truncates titles after about 25 characters and because most podcasts put useful info in the description, you need to be able to see the description to know the topic of a podcast.   Using an iPod Touch, you have to review this info in iTunes and remember it.   For the cost of this device and its impressive features, its inexcusable to have to lose functionality around podcasts.

Less important to me but worth nothing is that video podcasts don’t play video when accessed via the podcast menus.  They’ll play audio but to see the video you have to navigate to them via the video menu.  This means you can’t quickly play new video podcasts via the ‘recently added’ playlist.  Not sure if this is also true of the video iPod.

ilounge review of the iPod Touch : B-, Lowest Rated iPod Ever

I wish I had read this review before I purchased the iPod Touch. I wasn’t feeling great about its capabilities after using it for a couple of days and this review didn’t make me feel any better about the purchase.

Quotes:

“we cannot in good conscience generally recommend the iPod touch to all of our readers. “

“Wait until Apple (or someone else) gets the “true video iPod” formula right. “

My iPod Touch Gripes

Its easy enough to find info regarding the nice features of the iPod Touch (just check the Apple site) so in this post I’ll list only the issues I’ve experienced.

• Battery life is very short when WiFi is enabled. I haven’t measured this yet but the short battery life is significant when wifi is enabled.
• The device gets very warm when wifi is  enabled.  Cools down quickly when disabled though.
• Play/pause not always responsive to touch. Often have to hit this pretty hard to register the click.
• Safari sometimes stops functioning properly in that links and text entry fields do not function. Need to fully power off/on to restore functionality.
• Inverted blacks on dark videos (or whatever people are calling this behavior).  This is documented in the ipodlounge review, as well as in many posts of Apple’s discussion forum.  This wouldn’t have bothered me so much if this wasn’t a step down from the iPhone.  Knowing this fact bothers me quite a bit.
•  No podcast descriptions
• Can’t precisely fast forward/rewind audio and video as is possible with the click wheel. This may be a dealbreaker for podcast listeners.
• Can’t quickly pause like you can on click wheel iPods.
• Video podcasts don’t work from the podcast menus. You can only play them from the video menu.
• I have one video, a dltv video podcast, that cuts out at about the 36 minute point.  First the audio stops and then the video ends although there is more video to be seen if I fast foward past this point.   The video plays fine in iTunes on my desktop.   I’ve got another video podcast that plays past this length of time so I can’t tell for sure if this is a problem with the iPod but I’m suspicious that it is.

Why iPod (Don’t) Touch?

As mentioned in the about section, the purpose of this blog is to prevent people from owing Apple a 10% restocking fee for returning an iPod Touch. My guess is that many people will have a similar experience as I am having with the iPod Touch and will want to return it for a refund. Unfortunately for us, we are in effect paying Apple for the “privilege” of testing their product and providing valuable market feedback.

More detail to follow as I try to continue to work through the issues with the iPod Touch and see for sure how Apple customer support handles the situation…