I was in the mall this evening with my wife and son and while my wife shopped for clothes and my son played computer games in the Apple store, I fondled er, played around with the new iTouch. My original thought was to buy one of these things immediately– in fact, I called Steve B. and asked him if he thought I should just buy one now or not (he thought no, but it was a moot point since the store was sold out anyway). After playing around with it a bit though, I’m not so sure.
On the plus-side, the iTouch looks great and the screen (when turned horizontal) is something I could see watching video on while on a plane or something. I liked the way the iPod stuff looked, though I couldn’t actually hear any of it. For reasons I did not understand, the store didn’t have any headphones hooked up to these things. I presume the sound quality is like any other iPod, but it would been nice to be able to listen because the controls seem a little bit different from a regular iPod.
There’s an address book where you can add contacts, but the calendar will only synch with a laptop or desktop Mac. I almost wonder if this isn’t something that will get fixed in some kind of update, though that might be a reason to put off a purchase.
The main reason I want one of these things is because of the wifi connection and the Safari browser. Basically, that means access to email, my google calendar, rss feeds, etc., etc., etc. all in my pocket. This is pretty cool, but I thought trying to actually do anything (at least in the store) was a little annoying. The keyboard stuff was tricky, I thought Safari’s performance was kind of poky, and really, would I use this thing or would I still carry a laptop around with me anyway?
So, I dunno. I think I’ll still get one, but I think I’ll probably wait a bit….