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An Apple Review

When Apple Computer first introduced plans to develop what would become their new iPhone, I, like millions of other geeky people, was very excited. I just knew that if anyone would really get it right, it would be the folks at Apple.

But then they got it all wrong.

Just months before the heavily anticipated debut of the iPhone, Apple announced that they had entered into an exclusive agreement with AT&T to market and service the phone.

It is 2008 and AT&T still cannot provide DSL service to my home! We are talking about the Chicago area here, not the Okefenokee swamp! And if AT&T doesn’t have the resources or incentive to compete in a major metropolitan area for something as basic as DSL service, I don’t trust them to provide me with cell phone service throughout the United States.

So, I passed on the iPhone and I have no regrets about that decision.

Then Apple debuted the new iTouch which is remarkably similar to the iPhone, but without the phone. And, by the strangest of coincidences, I happened to have arrived in Jacksonville, Florida to cover a feature story and found that my iPod Nano had been smashed into oblivion during my flight.

So, $399.00 later, I took possession of a new iTouch. And so I have fiddled around with this new contraption for about a month now and felt it was the right time to write a review of what I found.

To begin with, the iTouch is just plain sexy. There is no other way to describe the feel and touch of this little gadget. It is also extremely fun to use as you simply use your finger to scroll through various menus or music albums or photographs or web pages. Like I said, it’s one sexy gadget!

But the iTouch also leave you out of touch on many things that you would expect from a device of this caliber and cost. The iTouch comes preloaded with just four applications - Safari, the Internet browser application, iCal, a calendar and appointment application, Address Book, a contact manager application, and a calculator.

You might certainly expect that a PDA would come with a program to handle your email. But no, Apple decided not to put their mail application on the iTouch. It is available on the iPhone, but apparently out of concern that putting too many applications on the iTouch would dissuade people from buying the iPhone, Apple decided to leave it out. Which in turn leaves owners of the iTouch out in the cold when it comes to easy retrieval and administration of email.

I am not the only one upset about this glaring omission. Blogs are filled with angry owners of iTouch PDA’s who feel that Apple has turned a blind eye to their loyal customers and basically delivered them the shaft. Apple apologists have been trying to cool down the rhetoric by announcing that Apple will soon make a mail client application available for the iTouch. Frankly, at this stage, it may be too little, too late.

I, like every other owner of the iTouch, found a work around to the email problem. There are a couple of things iTouch users can do. Fist is to hack the iTouch using jailbreak software and then load it with all the applications available on the iPhone. The second option is to use a web based email client like SmarterMail or a third party application for mail service.

In what might be seen as a small token of atonement, Apple provides information and links to SmarterMail directly from their own iTouch download website.

With the exception of this glaring application omission, the iTouch is one of the best tech gadgets I have acquired in a long, long time. Gone are the days when I never felt confident to travel without lugging my laptop with me. With the ability to access the Internet and administer to my email, the iTouch has become my best friend when it comes to staying in touch with home and office.

I was able to seamlessly download all my contact and calendar information from my Yahoo account, and now that information is always synced when I plug my iTouch into my G5’s DSL port. Buying new tunes and listening to thousands of songs is a snap but I recommend purchase of better earphones for comfort and noice canceling. I bought a set of Jplugs for $39.00 at Amazon.com and highly recommend them.

I also love the ability to show photographs of family and friends to folks with the ease of the iTouch. The screen is large enough for even my tired old eyes and if you tap the screen at most points, it will immediately enlarge what you are viewing so that even Mr. Magoo would find it readable.

Besides the email, the only beef I have with the iTouch is the same one I had with the iPod. That is the inability to sync with more than one computer. I happen to buy and store music from iTunes on my computer at work and my computer at home. But Apple only allows you to sync with one computer. This means I have to make CD copies of tunes I buy at home and load them into iTunes at work in order to put them on my iTouch. It’s a waste of time and resources and is totally unnecessary. I hope that someday Apple can do away with this silliness and allow folks to sync with two computers.

All in all, I would recommend the iTouch to anyone. Its sleek design and incredible ease of use far outweighs the advantages to be found in any other PDA’s I have seen on the market. Apple has invited developers to create programs for the iTouch and already hundreds of new applications - mostly games - have been developed and can be downloaded from the Apple site. The future can only be brighter as more applications become available making the iTouch a PDA that can never be left behind by the advance of technology.

The iTouch is available with 8 gigabytes of memory for $299.00 and 16 gigabytes of memory for $399.00. The screen is 3.5-inch widescreen and it is just 8mm in thickness.

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