iPod Touch

I've been playing with an iPod Touch for a while now and thought I'd touch on a few points... First, the touch interface is nice and very usable. I've adjusted to the keyboard and can type almost as fast on it as I can on a regular keyboard (a couple words a minute). I've used it for days without charging it and the battery has only got down to about 20%. I have a lot of stuff on it and I only have about half of the 16GB full. The iPod Touch is similar to the iPhone, except it doesn't have the phone part, or the camera.

I have a few little issues. I know you can't always get what you want, but you can try sometimes.

1. I had to Jailbreak it to allow 3rd party apps to be installed. The stock iPod Touch came with only a couple applications.


2. The alarm on Apple's clock program doesn't have the ability to play a playlist as the alarm. I think the original iPods would do this. It will only play a couple built in sounds for the alarm. I would like to be able to hook it up to my stereo and have a playlist start playing in the morning to wake me up.


3. The built in speaker is not loud enough for me to hear when the iPod is in my pocket, making the calendar alerts pretty useless.


4. The Calculator program will not do trig or other functions you would find on a scientific calculator. With the power the iPod Touch has it should be able to emulate an HP-48. Until then I'll have to kept carrying around my slide rule.


5. It would nice to have the option of reducing YouTube and other videos size when going out to a TV. I have the cable that allows me to it up to a TV, but the people tend to make YouTube/Internet videos that have titles all the way to the edge. In the settings, under Video, under TV out, in addition to the type of TV signal it would be nice to see something like reduce video: 5%, 10%.


6. A flash plugin will be needed eventually.


7. When tapping on an address in Contacts, it would be nice if it sent the address to Safari and opened the GoogleMap page with it.


8. Someone has to figure out how to get NetHack to play in the vt100 terminal app that someone made.


9. It's missing a good screensaver that shows a big clock, any countdown timers or pending alarms, and current song playing.


10. When playing music to a TV it would be nice to see the track info and album art on the screen.

I've thought of a few others, but then forgot them...

I remember the other one...


11. The text in the music playlists is way to big. This is especially a problem in podcasts or audio books. For example I have a bunch of Sherlock Holmes old time radio shows. In the playlist they show up as "[DATE] - Sherlock Holmes:..." It truncates the name. I can't tell which episode I listened to last, because the name is missing, (the Red-Headed League, the Hound of the Baskervilles, the Adventure of the Speckled Band, etc). The text is also shortened when you start playing. In iTunes, longer song names will scroll. On the iPodTouch there is no way to see long song names. It would be nice to either adjust the text size in the preferences, or be able to scroll a truncated name (perhaps by swiping a finger to the left).