Tim Gideon says so at pcmag.com:

When the iPhone came out in June, many people (including me) loved it, but wanted it without the phone—and that pesky two-year contract with AT&T Wireless. I’m no Luddite, but I don’t want my personal media player to ring in the middle of a song. That said, the multitouch glass display was beautiful, Cover Flow was a great way to navigate tracks, and the Web browser was better than any other portable player’s before it. The touch is a thing of beauty.

Now let’s talk about the really good stuff. How long have we been waiting for an iPod that not only has Wi-Fi but lets us buy music wirelessly and quickly? It’s here, and it is awesome.

Tap the 99-cent icon next to a song and it becomes a Buy Now button; tap it again and the button appears to jump into the lower right-hand corner tab, Downloads. If you click on Downloads, you can monitor the progress of your purchases. If your Wi-Fi signal is strong, the whole process, per song, does not take longer than about 15 seconds. When the signal is weak, the player may inform you that it couldn’t complete the download. No worries; it’ll save the progress it made and download the rest when a strong enough signal returns.

Browsing the Internet on the touch is a glorious experience. The “pinch and expand” motion for the multitouch screen is more useful here than anywhere else on the player, as it quickly zooms in on the headline you want to read or photo you want to see in detail. Web sites can be viewed in vertical or horizontal mode, and the switch happens automatically when you turn the player sideways. Safari comes preloaded with a bunch of useful bookmarks, organized into sections such as Sports and News. Of course, you can easily add your own bookmarks or edit the ones that come with the player.

iPods have been evolving quickly in their short existence on this Earth. The iPhone and the iPod touch, however, seem to be several leaps ahead of the excellent iPod nano or, for that matter, any other player on the market. These are not cheap devices, especially considering the storage limitations. Still, when you factor in the slick interface, the elegant Web browser, the beautiful glass display, and the seamless integration of the Wi-Fi music store, the Apple iPod touch is worth the price. No portable media player has ever done this much so easily, or looked so good doing it.



  1. Brian says:

    Funny. This thing is being touted as a revolutionary media player (or the iPhone, is…..whatever), and yet it doesn’t have any value added over my 4 year old Palm Tungsten T3. I have a media player on it that plays videos in realtime 16:9 format with sync’ed audio (I’ve watched movies and TV shows on car and plane trips). It’ll play any format, thanks to upgradeable codec packs, and it’ll play a wide range of music formats, too. All without DRM. Oh, and did I mention it is infinitely expandable through the use of external cards? And it’s a fairly powerful little pocket computer, to boot! Oh yeah….. And it cost half as much, too.

    screw the iTouch

  2. ECA says:

    I still like the Archos. Its a full fledged DVR and has wifi.

  3. Lauren the Ghoti says:

    If you’re satisfied with 214x480x16 bits, at maybe half the brightness, with a mono soundtrack – I say ‘enjoy’…

  4. Angel H. Wong says:

    #23

    OR you could be one of the early adopters who bought it first and one or two months later got suckered when Apple slashes $200 off the original price for its crippled iPhone.

  5. doug says:

    me, I wonder if it was battery issues that kept a HD out of the Touch, or this obsessive desire for thinness that Steverino seems to have developed. the best video iPod should probably have the capacity to hold lots of video. 32gb of flash would probably push the price point up into (original) iPhone range.

  6. pedro says:

    #25 are you nuts? HD on a 3″ screen? what the hell are you talking about!!!!!!

  7. doug says:

    #26. read again, a bit more carefully – that is “a” HD. as in “a” Hard Drive.

    I may be nuts, but not about hi-def on that small a screen, pedro.

  8. J says:

    I am viewing this blog right now with my new iPod touch and it works very well. There are only a few issues so far. One is the screen contrast ratio. The blacks take on a washed negative look. I hope the is a firmware fix that will allow contrast control. The other is a small bug. Some videos take the icon from other videos and use them as their own.

    Not a perfect product but still pretty dam close.

    Oh and I like the keyboard. I can type much better than on my dash.

  9. ECA says:

    http://tinyurl.com/3dhh93
    FULL DVR and player.

    Photo viewer***: JPEG, BMP, PNG

    PDF Viewer: Reads PDF documents (may not implement all PDF features)

    Video Recording6:  Via the optional DVR Station/ DVR Travel Adapter. Records NTSC/PAL/SECAM in MPEG-4 AVI format with stereo sound, VGA resolution (640 x 480) @ 30 or 25 f/s

    Audio Recording:  Via the optional DVR Station/ DVR Travel Adapter: Stereo line-in, WAV (IMA ADPCM or PCM) format

    Interfaces: USB 2.0 High-Speed Device (compatible USB 1.1): Mass Storage Class (MSC) and Media Transport Protocol (MTP) 
    USB 2.0 Host: Mass Storage Class (MSC) and Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) with optional Mini Dock, Battery Dock and DVR stations

    Connections: WiFi (802.11g) connection. Optional Internet plug-in (Opera® Web browser and Adobe Flash® Player) for Web browsing (for purchase on http://www.archos.com)
     3.5 mm mini jack for headphones 
    Docking connectors to connect DVR Station and other ARCHOS accessories

  10. Mister Mustard says:

    >>are you nuts? HD on a 3″ screen? what the hell are you
    >>talking about!!!!!!

    Hey, I’ll bet it would look great in case you wanted to watch the movies under a microscope. You just never know when you might want to do that….

  11. pedro says:

    #27 ah. D-uh! That’s what happens when things share initials and one gets bit too jumpy.

  12. doug says:

    #29. I agree that the Archos has an impressive feature set. Probably the thing to have on a long airline flight, especially since it includes a kickstand, which most PMPs are conspicuously lacking.

  13. ECA says:

    32,
    AND archos has been focusing on 1 style of product…
    THIS is the top.
    SCREW Iphone and such…
    For the price it has ALL the options.

  14. Glenn E says:

    Looks like a great excuse to get mugged for. I mean, unless you have the luxury of playing with it at work, unobserved. You’re probably going to want to use it on the bus, or train, or in the park. And wham, someone mugs you and takes it. You’d probably be safe on a jetliner. But they wouldn’t let you use it because the WiFI might interfere with the plane’s navigation.

    I think the reason for the cover art display of albums/CDs is this. This encourages only paid music on the thing. Because P2P music probably isn’t going to come with cover art. At least not for some time. But it’s just so much eye candy after a while. And you’ll be back to list mode, which is quicker than fingering albums by their covers. It only comes in handy when you can’t remember the song or band by name, to save you. But you can spot the cover art.

    As for playing movies. Hopefully this thing has a plug for adding a battery pack to keep it running all the way thru “Ben-Hur”.



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