4.15.09: I Will Take One iPhone… Minus The Phone, Please.
The iPod touch is the perfect device for me: with all
the advantages of a cutting-edge mobile OS and a wireless mobile device that is not dependent on a costly, long, cell-phone service plan to provide the one thing that I actually do not care about with this small, mobile, computing device–the telephone! I wanted a mobile smart device for many reasons, browsing the internet, email, music, pictures, voice recorder, general reading, a tiny bit of gaming and all the other mobile computing possibilities that are realized one new app at a time, but I did not want an awesome, modern computing device to talk on the phone. I have an “econo” pay-as-you-go cell phone that I try to use as little as possible and that I purposely wanted to remain a separate device with its single, only function (besides texting) of talking on the telephone. My home office, and its land-line telephone, function as my telephoning hub when I must have actual telephone conversations at all!
For me, an iPod touch is about getting “my foot in the door” with the iPhone OS, and the 8GB iTouch was the most affordable route in. One thing that is great about the iPod touch and the iPhone is that you can purchase them at Walmart. With Walmart you can receive instantaneous gadget gratification, even if the jones hits you at 10:45 in the evening! After getting the Ok from the chief accountant at DougitDesign (my wife, Angela), I was at the closest Walmart to my house, which is quite close, late in the evening on a Tuesday night–up front parking, no lines, no waiting, iPod touch in my shaking hands at 10:57pm. The first iTouch pulled out of the case I had to hand back because it had a visible blemish on one of the rounded corners of the unit. The second one to come out of the case and into my hands was perfect. I also grabbed a cheap silicon protector made by Griffin and was back at home to begin my adventure with the iPod touch, and, more importantly, the iPhone OS.
I am not a “phone-person,” I am not particularly fond of conversing on a telephone. I am not a big fan of cell phones, or phones of any kind. I personally prefer the written word for many types of communication, if I have to communicate with you at all! I love email! Email reinvented the act writing for a generation of people who had that skill-set removed from their toolbox by a number of factors, including rampant telephone use, even in situations where a written, and (back then snail) mailed, letter would have served better. It went something like this: pre World War II times–everyone wrote to communicate with anyone outside their immediate area, post WWII up until the mid 1990’s, most everyone chose to communicate with the traditional (land line) telephone and the spoken word. Then the era of email hit us–we learned, either by force or willingly, how to type and how to communicate with the written word once again! During the later 1990’s and early 2000’s, when we were all using typical computers with full-sized displays and standard keyboards (even if portable), the act of letter-writing among common, averagely-educated people once again flourished. That era did not last long. With today's small smart-devices, which are almost always also cell phones, and their small screens and their tiny keyboards that you use two thumbs to type with (if you are lucky enough), the art of prosaic, long-winded, complete communiqués with your pals has taken a back seat to a new form of written communication: say as much as possible (or as little as possible) in as absolutely few characters as humanly possible. Not as few words, no, we break it down even further to as few characters, or pieces of words, as possible. (Cue image of Homer Simson in kitchen screaming: “Isn’t there anything faster than a microwave, Arg!!). Mobile phones have also brought us full-circle back to our complete obsession with the act of talking on the phone. I see (and hear) people all the time talking on their mobile phones having conversations that seem virtually meaningless–on the phone simply to be on the phone, maybe they are servicing an addiction? One thing I can be optimistic about is that as all the smart phones become more and more sophisticated and emerge as the true computing devices that they are–with their apps, their wireless connectivity to the WWW, their new-founded processing power and their sophisticated software operating systems–that the average user will use that power of the modern mobile computing device and its software to do more than say, “Where you at?” and watch videos of hot chicks/dudes.
Lets be honest here, most of the headaches of the iPhone have to do with the telephoning aspect of the device. Some of the more common complaints about the iPhone (which is an iPod touch + a telephone, lol) include, dropped calls, bad reception, poor overall service from AT&T, expensive service, how the phone switches between the fast G3 network and the slower EDGE network, telephone contract that is too long a period of time, lack of choice of telephone service provider, etc. This is not to say there are not some non-telephone complaints about the iPhone/iPod touch. However, most of the non-telephone complaints about the device are eventually addressed with software updates. For example many have complained that typing with the touch screen keyboard while holding the device vertical is very difficult. Apple has addressed that issue with an upgrade in the mobile operating system to allow a horizontal keyboard in all its standard apps., this issue and many others including the ability to cut & paste will be addressed with its soon to be released iPhone OS 3.0, due sometime this Summer.
I love the wireless simplicity of just wifi on the iPod touch, no contracts, no extra costs of any kind, just find a hotspot! Sure, if you have become addicted to your mobile phone and its virtually-everywhere cellular network, finding wifi hotspots would seem like a burden; but to me it is fun. Walking down my neighborhood sidewalk to pick up my son from school it is fun picking up the WiFi devices of almost every house I walk by, only approximately 1 out of 5 are not password protected these days. Everybody has a phone, only select group of people have a hand-held, mobile, personal computing device!
I am really trying hard to not use the term PDA, or Personal Data Assistant anywhere in this writing to describe the iPod touch. Even if, technically, the iTouch is a PDA–as are all modern smart-phones–the term conjures up decade-old images of large, unfriendly, under-powered, “devices-of-fail” (I just coined that quoted phrase this very instant). Smart phones, being phones, have dodged the term PDA for most of their existence. It is mostly the tiny group of non-telephone, mobile, smart devices like the iPod touch that get the term PDA pointed their way because one cannot call them smart phones. The iPod touch is much more than a “PDA,” it is an extremely powerful computing device with some of the most cutting-edge hardware and software technology available today, and it is the size of a credit card and a half!
I do a lot of reading on the internet. I have a keen interest in all types of subjects and am a voracious reader. The iPod touch has opened up an entire new way for me to read–completely untethered–free of device constraints in a way that even a very small notebook computer or a netbook could not satisfy. My eyesight is poor, and reading anything with small type over a distance more than just about 12 inches requires me to put my eyeglasses on or contact lenses in. Both laptop and desktop displays are too large and or too awkwardly positioned to comfortably read text off their screens at less than 12 inches away. So, until recently I always needed to wear my eyeglasses to do any sort of internet reading. With the iPod touch (and iPhone) I can comfortably hold the device about one foot away and, for the first time in a very long while, browse the internet and read other digital content with just my unaided eyes alone–no eyeglasses. This one benefit alone is worth the price of the iPod touch.
My iPod touch has made Facebook fun again! Just when I was getting a bit bored with the entire concept of Facebook, the iTouch has added some newfound novelty to the activity of “Facebooking.”
With my home WiFi network and my iPod touch I can comfortably, wirelessly with 802.11b/g speeds, browse the internet or download and read a long text or book with the app Stanza, and do it anywhere on my property–in the house or in the yard. If I am comfortably browsing the internet on the recliner in the great room and one of my children requires a snack, me and the tiny gadget can quickly hop up and trek into the kitchen. Set my mini device down on the counter next to the PB & J and keep reading while I am crafting a yummy snack–this would be hard to easily accomplish even with a netbook. Or, I am out in my backyard shed tooling away on the rear hub of my mountain bike. Having a feeling that I might have a technical question about said rear hub, I bring the iTouch out to my grungy, cramped bicycle workshop/shed, a place I would not even want to bring a cheap Acer netbook to. But, my tiny silicone-sleeve-protected IPod touch could sit right on the shed’s windowsill, just about the only clear bit of space in the place!
This is a good time to talk about messy fingers, touch screen displays, and sometimes using a stylus with your iPod touch/iPhone. I have not actually used a stylus with the iTouch yet–there is a highly rated Pogo stylus on a slow boat from Hong Kong headed my way at this very moment–only $6.50 including shipping via Ebay for
an item that usually goes for $20 is worth the 10 day wait. I have however, experienced attempting to use the iTouch with messy hands and the two do not go together. My generalized stylus familiarity is quite high as I often use a Wacom Bamboo tablet and pen combo for both creative Photoshop stuff and also just simple cursor control on the occasion that I have grown tired of holding the bluetooth mouse, and desire a change of hand position. Hence, I cannot wait to try out the Pogo when it arrives. I am somewhat particular (OCD) about having that touchscreen very clean and even an apparently clean index finger will leave all sorts of grease marks on the iTouch/Phone screen after just a bit of use. I may end up using that Pogo pen/stylus more than I imagine, if it works well ergonomically.
Some of the less-informed out there say that the iPod touch is simply an iPhone without the phone (and camera). This is not really true. When compared to the iPhone 2G, the iPod touch 2G is smaller in size, lighter in weight, thinner, has a sleek, rounded, polished metal backing that gives the device a substantial feeling of quality (as opposed to plastic on the iPhone), yet has the same size screen and more processing power than the iPhone. Yes, the 2G iTouch is supposedly much more responsive in generalized use and apps launch much quicker on the iTouch, which runs its main chip at 532mhz vs the 412mhz CPU that all generations of the iPhone, including the current one, run at. Here is a great article that happens to mention the differences in processing power between the iTouch and the iPhone. I admit I miss having a camera on the iPod touch. However, I am not much of a snap-shot taker, and prefer to pull out my Nikon SLR and attempt to create nice images, when I am in the mood, or need, to take photographs. Again, the only thing missing on the iTouch, when compared to the iPhone, is the service I do not want–the phone. It is a win/win for me because I enjoy using Apple products, especially their OS’s but also the hardware, and virtually no one else makes a device like Apple’s iPod touch: all the very latest smart phone functions as well as unique additional computing functions the Apple iPhone OS bring to this device–without the phone.
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