Life is grand

The iPod Touch launched today and in short it is an iPhone without the phone bit. I’m not going to regurgitate the technical specs, you can read these on pretty much every site out there.

What is important is that this is the second hand-held device that runs OS X, includes Safari and has Wi-Fi. At €299 for 8gb it is more affordable too. It goes a bit further than the iPhone in that it allows you to buy songs from iTunes right on the device over Wi-Fi. You still can’t sync with your computer over Wi-Fi but it shows that iTunes works just fine over Wi-Fi on a small device.

Where I think this really matters though is that this is an introduction to multi-touch OS X for a lot of people. Many people are not going to buy the iPhone. With the 2 year plan it is expensive. Even with the $200 price-drop today it is still an expensive gadget. An iPod Touch on the other hand is a once off €299 fee. A whole lot more people are going to be happy paying that once off and putting it in a Christmas stocking. And then a whole lot more people are going to be blown away by multi-touch. By coverflow and flowing, scrolling lists and panning maps and zooming photos. It is what makes me smile everyday I use an iPhone. That wonderful multi-touch interface. It truly hurts to revert to a keypad or even a stylus on other hand-held devices. I reach for my MacBook Pro screen and wish it had multi-touch.

The iPod Touch is the gateway drug to the iPhone. The drug that will convert a lot of people to stump up for an iPhone.

To avoid being a complete Apple fanboy I will say I think they have not only not nailed it with the new iPod nano but that they have fallen further from the brilliance that was the 1st and 2nd generation iPod nanos. The 3rd generation didn’t do it for me either. I own a 1st generation iPod nano and adore the little critter. Sure, the video in the new nano is handy to have, people just seem to love seeing postage stamp video. I don’t get that but a lot of people do. To fit that video in though the new nano is one awful looking device. Thin but wide and weird as heck to look at, they had to widen it for video but they couldn’t lengthen it or they’d get into iPod Classic terrirtory.

So now the fat-nano will be squatting on peoples desks all over the world. I’ll be hanging on to my 1st generation nano.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.