The Verge reviews the iPod touch, and it’s as good as ever. “This year’s iPod touch is the best one ever, without question – Apple updated all the right things, and by giving the touch a big screen and good camera has made this mini tablet a more versatile device than ever. As a gateway drug into the iOS ecosystem, it does a great job of showing off all the iOS 6 features and apps, on a really solid piece of hardware. It’s also a great way to get into the huge iOS ecosystem without putting an expensive data plan on your account – and thanks to iMessage, FaceTime, and Skype, there’s a lot of communicating you can do just over Wi-Fi.” The iPod touch rarely gets the spotlight, but I think it’s actually one of the best and most clever products in Apple’s portfolio. Not only is it simply a fantastic product, it also has zero competition. My best friend is pretty much in love with her iPod touch, and it gives her everything a smartphone has to offer without the burden of expensive contracts. For people like her, who do not want a smartphone and prefer a sturdy Nokia feature phone, the touch is a godsend.
if only it came with GPS.
You need only spend $100 for a bluetooth unit sprinkled with magic pixel dust derived from the Jobs’ burial ash-hole which will be allowed to commune with your magic iDevice.
Or buy a Samsung Galaxy Player.
If wouldn’t cost 50% more than a good 7 inch tablet.
Since most touch users seem to use it as a media player, gaming device and, with the recent update, a camera. How does that cheaper 7 inch tablet compare in those areas?
Google really needs to release a Tegra 3 ‘mini Nexus’ that is around this size. The Nexus 7 is great, but not exactly a pocketable device. The Galaxy Nexus is a bit too expensive to be used as an iPod Touch-like device, and not as powerful either.
How come no one has brought up the Galaxy Player 4.2 ?
If they had released the Galaxy Player 4.2 back in 2010, it might’ve been compelling …
Well, they did release player 5.8 quite recently and 5.0 is not all that old. They might be an alternative to the iPod touch for some people, especially given the price difference.
The iPod touch + “a sturdy Nokia feature phone” does seem like a fairly reasonable combination, in many cases. Except, it doesn’t offer the convenience of occasionally accessing the internet from the iPod, when outside the range of WiFi.
~Technically, it could be easily done, the required tech is onboard both devices for a long time: while a typical “Nokia feature phone” often doesn’t have WiFi (and if it does, being able to act as a WiFi hotspot is even rarer in such phones), it typically has Bluetooth, with the ability to act as a “modem” for, say, a laptop …or a portable media player. However, last time I checked, iPod touch was barred from utilising its BT chip as a data pipe – Wifi only.
Has that changed? (I kinda doubt it did, this “incentive” to buy the higher-priced iPhone must seem attractive to Apple managers; but I hope it did…)
Bluetooth is locked down and now also the USB. You can’t even sync it to a computer without the magic apple drm-ed cable. I’m only surprised that they allow analog audio.
The cable is hardly DRM’d. The cable is proprietary, but it is not a DRM mechanism. iTunes is inconvenient, but iTunes match has removed iTunes from my sync regime completely.
Good for you, but last I checked, iTunes Match won’t help me with my collection of Audiobooks (all books I own and that have been hand-done into AAC with chapter marks at high quality by my own hand). And no, buying my books from Audible or the iTunes Store is not an option. I refuse to pay equal or higher prices for a product that is inferior in sound quality, not to mention that audiobooks are not included in the iTunes cloud re-downloadable list anyway. Nor will it help me with my collection of movies and tv shows (again, see above for why I won’t purchase from iTunes). So unfortunately, for those who actually go outside of the iTunes store for non-musical content, we’re still stuck with that monstrocity.
Bigger – usable screen, TRUE GPS, drag and drop, use micro SD (including SDXC!), wifi transfers, many browsers, things loke Torque to shut off your check engine light. UnDRMed bluetooth. Google maps. Different mp3 players (astro player that pitch corrects from ultra slow to 6x!). Firefox or Chrome with sync…
Still 2.3.5 but works really well. The 5.8 is coming soon.
Or you can lock yourself into Apple’s prison-farm (wallled garden with guard towers and razor wire) closed ecosystem. And that carbonized atrocity called iTunes.
I have an iPod. I haven’t turned it on in months.
Actually, under Ubuntu (12.04) it’s easier to get music on my iPod than it is to get music on my Google Nexus.
Banshee and Rhythmbox see the iPod out of the box and can remove files from the iPod and add them to it.
When I plugged the Nexus in, nothing happened. Apparently it doesn’t show up as a standard Flash storage device, it uses MTP and you have to do a bunch of “fun stuff” to get it to connect and automount.
Also, wasn’t the latest Galaxy Player actually a downgrade from the older model? If I remember, it had a significantly worse camera.
Install WebSharing on the Nexus, and never use a USB cable again.
Any browser on any station becomes your “sync agent”.
There are others like WifiExplorer that do similar things.
Basically, it turns your Android device into a browsable network share over wifi.
If you have 802.11n, it’s not much different in throughput compared to USB2.
That is… unfortunate, considering that iPod support is a reverse-engineered hack, and MTP is an official standard USB device class for half a decade.
MTP should be the proper way for OS and applications by now.
Fear Apple!?! Haha. The company you have all been declaring dead since 1986 is now the one to fear? Please. Apple got to their position by delivering tech that millions of people want, will pay for, and then enjoy and feel they were given good value.
Apple has a philosophy when developing a product that goes beyond the bottom line. Only recently has that philosophy inflated their bottom line so handsomely.
Monstrosity? My iPods haven’t touched iTunes or been plugged in for about a year now. I buy my music and apps from the store, play music all day, and other than that leave iTunes alone. It’s no longer needed for iOS management.
Razor wire? My sound files move wherever I want them with dropbox and soundcloud.
My mac laptops have been consistently better than mainstream PC hardware for over 10 years now. I live a mobile life, I see all kinds of kit, and the macbook pro is still the best for general use computing (including development).
So fear the “prison farm” of Apple all you want. I call it a nice neighborhood in a nice town in a nice country. I can leave whenever I want, if i want inferior products made from plastic with security and usability issues.
What you don’t understand is that people who rely on and enjoy Apple products would buy most things with an Apple logo, because the logo generally means quality and design these days. Knockoffs are always knockoffs, ‘free and open’ or not.
How about the Cowon Z2 or D3? If you just want a media player, and not the applications the C2 with outrageous battery life. How about the Samsung Galaxy Player 5?