Why I’m Not Buying the iPod Touch
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007160GB Classic, 16GB Touch, 8GB iPhone. With Apple gift-card money to burn, I’ve been agonizing over which to get since I left work today. They all pretty much cost the same so that’s not a differentiator.
The iPhone by far has the coolest feature-set. Built-in speaker, built-in camera + everything the Touch has (not to mention that I could use it as a phone if I wasn’t so afraid to break-up with Sprint).
The Touch is almost everything I was hoping for, but it fell pretty far short on space and it doesn’t have Bluetooth syncing or headphones. I was all about it at first ’cause I think the interface is so cool, and then I saw the accessories that the Apple Store proposed…
One of the accessories they show is the “FM Radio Remote”. You plug your earphones into it and you plug it into your ipod. It lets you control your iPod (fast-forward, rewind, volume, etc). This made me start to think about how I will use the iPod most - to listen to tunes. I’m the guy that will need to skip a song or pause often - how easy is that to do on a touch screen? I don’t see any buttons on the side of the thing. So maybe I’ll get that remote too - oh, it’s not compatible with the iPod Touch.
Now that I already started to think about what I use the iPod for most (listening to tunes), I started to doubt how much utility I would really get out of having a web browser on there or a wireless iTunes store. I’m sure they’d be really cool for a second, but I probably wouldn’t use too often. Watching videos? Maybe, but it’s still a relatively small screen compared to my laptop and TV, and not a ton larger then the iPod Classic screen.
I checked out the demos of the iPod Classic interface on Apple’s website. It looks really slick. They did a very nice job with the Coverflow interface, the search interface and even the games. I bet it will prove more durable in the long run as well. The touch screen is still new. Will you have to touch it 5 times to get it to do what you want a year from now?
So the space thing is what really tips the scale for me now. I have over 80GB of music. I’ve owned 5 and 10GB iPod models before and I’ve always had to pick and choose what I take with me. The idea of being able to automatically sync my whole library is very appealing to me and I’m psyched that I have that option.
I’m sure I’ll look at all the iPod Touches on the subway and wish I had one. Just like I wish I had the iPhone. I guess I just need to wait for those devices to be a little more practical.
Apple, if you read this, here’s what would have swayed me to embrace the touch:
- Wireless synch with my iTunes library
- Wireless remote so I can skip songs, change volume or pause the music while moving about
- At least double the current space offerings
- Physical Skip/Volume/Pause buttons on the device
Oh yeah, and I swear this wasn’t part of the decision 
- I can get the Classic tomorrow!