iTouch Myself

Although I was planning to get one with my upcoming tax rebate economic stimulus check, I decided to give the economy a little foreplay and purchased an Apple iTouch on Saturday.

While still quite content with my current iPod, it was showing its age... almost as thick as 1/2 deck of playing cards (gasp!) and no video capability... even Todd (who has the same model) said it was starting to get embarrassing to be seen in public with it.  While the iPhone got my attention, I am such an un-phone person that it didn't hold any great appeal for me... so when the iTouch, kinda an iPhone without the phone, came out, I knew it was only a matter of time.

I had concerns about the gigs... the first iTouch models were 8 and 16 gig... but, heck even my ancient iPod was 40 gig!   If this was supposed to be showcase for the more hoggy video, I wasn't sure even 16 gig was enough.  So, I waited and a 32 gig model was introduced last month... and while it came with a pretty splurge-worthy price as well... again, I was just trying to do my patriotic duty.

All in all, it is a very impressive product... and ironically enough, most of it is the non-music related stuff.  Oh sure, it's nice to have all the album cover graphics nice and big (well "big" given its a handheld device) and the cover-flow that literally does let your fingers do the walking... or should I say, flipping. 

One of the big selling points for me was the wireless internet access ... while you may think "why the hell would I want to surf the Web on a 3.5 inch screen"... it works better than you'd expect... tapping in to zoom and moving the page around with your finger.  While it certainly won't replace viewing the Web on a PC, it's a nice option to have on the go.  Pictured left, is my iTouch with everyone's favorite website pulled up on the Safari browser. 

There's also easy access to You Tube, which pulls ups and displays video surprisingly quick... and one advantage of the small screen here is all that You Tube stuff looks pretty darn good. 

I should say, we only accessed all this via our own/home wireless network... so no "real world" experience just yet.

I had to purchase a couple of videos.  As mentioned, we never had video capability so the only video we had on hand was Madonna's "Hung Up" that was included in the "bonus" version of her Confessions album.  I quickly found two particularly memorable sitcom episodes... How I Met Your Mother's "Slap Bet"... which, of course, introduced us to the Slap Bet (and its Commissioner), but this was also the episode that introduced us to Robin's past... Robin Sparkles... which you know I was particularly obsessed about.  The 2nd was Scrubs' "My Musical"... which again is pretty self-explanatory... but one of our favorite more recent episodes (and yes, some NBC shows are still available on iTunes... just not promoted or featured).

One BIG caveat and a bit of a scare... we had problems with the video.  They would play for a while, then the sound would go off... and then it would kick back to Video home screen.  After researching the Apple support boards ... and to make a long story short... there appears to be some issue/bug with video (and perhaps audio) files if you are using Windows Vista, which is where our iTunes library resides on Todd's new PC.  Everything plays fine on your PC within iTunes, but something seems to happen in the transfer... and apparently this was not corrected in the January/v1.1.4 software update.  I moved all of our iTunes files (big pain in the patootie!) to my computer which runs XP, restored the iTouch (big pain!) and reloaded all the files (big pain!)... and the videos worked just fine (relief, but whatta pain).  I am sure it will get resolved in a future software release, but it was a bit of disappointing.

But overall, a very fun and very snazzy new toy!   

Lastly, all credit to Todd for coming up with the title of this post!