2.21.2008

Thoughts on the 32 GB iPod Touch

My new toy arrived yesterday. I had downloaded the latest version of iTunes, which I needed to run it, so when I hooked the iPod Touch up to the computer with the USB cable, it synched my entire music collection to the new iPod. All of a sudden, I was carrying around almost twice as much music as my 8 GB iPod Nano could hold, and the iPod Touch was less than half-full. It's actual usable capacity is 29.96 GB after the operating system is subtracted out.

You might know that a while back, there was a big flap between Apple Computer and the surviving Beatles and their heirs' company, Apple Records, over trademark infringement claims. Due to this problem, no Beatles music was available to be purchased via the iTunes store. Recently, however, the two sides came to an agreement, and all is now peace and love between them. How lovey-dovey is it? Well, on the cover of the black box that the iPod Touch came in, the illustration shows the cover of Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon, with Lennon himself in his trademark shades looking at the buyer.

The iPod Touch has a nifty sensor in it. When you turn it horizontally, it shifts to show your album covers, allowing you to flip through them until you find the album you want to play and then tap on it. When your turn it back to vertical, you can scroll through the songs on the album.

It's called an iPod Touch because the controls are all on the touch-sensitive glass face plate. The only real drawback is that it does have a tendency to get streaked with fingerprints, but you don't really notice it when it is lit up.

The back supposedly can get scratched fairly easily; it's not anodized aluminum like the iPod Nano, which was comparatively tough. If you buy one of these, you really need to get some kind of case or holster to protect it. I got a DLO Leather Hip Folio for it, which has a clip which can go on a belt or back pocket. It has holes at the bottom for the USB cable and the headphone jack.

I've been busily ripping CDs this morning, and I added 30 of them, plus the cover art for each one, to iTunes. Once I finish doing my ripping for the day, I'll synch everything up again. I still have a lot of CDs to rip, and I'm not yet up to 15 GB. Rome wasn't built in a day, and this task won't be finished today, either. It's a process.