Music at your finger tips: First impressions of an iPod Touch

After much deliberation, I finally laid my hands on to Apple’s newest offering, although it stays with me only for a few days. I really would have loved to own the iPod Touch, but Apple announcing the launch one month after I had replaced my stolen White 30 Gig iPod with Black one (There goes the 30 day refund policy) ensures that I hold on to it for a while. Nonetheless, I have the iPod Touch for the next few days before it flies out with Nandu to reach the safe hands of Ashu, who undoubtedly would be delighted with this new gadget instead of a regular iPod.

In the recent years, Apple has leapfrogged it’s nearest competitors by introducing socially influential uber cool gadgets which has changed general perception of digital music. Honestly, a few years back, before the introduction of iPod, I considered MP3 music as pirated music as I had never seen a legitimate store selling compressed music in digital formats. iPod arrived and conquered the digital music world’s changing myths, owing much to the fact of delivering content using it’s proprietary iTunes software.

Although there are numerous portable music players available in the market, which are as intuitive, user friendly and colourful as iPods (Players such as Zune, Creative etc), iPod seems to have helped capture people’s imagination in a much wider market. The evolution of the iPod Range from the 1st generation to the all new iPhone has been equally sleek and innovative. Since its arrival as the 1st generation music player, iPod has slimmed and shed weight while adding numerous intuitive features. Any new product by Apple is sure to create a buzz and this is evident with iPod Touch and the iPhone.

The iPod Touch is more of a stripped down version of an iPhone, albeit it’s dazzling interface and innovative design makes it a killer among all the iPod products. In terms of exterior, it is the usual smudge prone chrome and glass exterior, now a common feature among all iPods, which ensures that the player definitely needs a protective film. However, the oddity of the iPod Touch is in the black top corner plastic casing, which looks unimpressive with the Chrome plated finish on the back. For a company of Apple’s standards, which relies heavily on design, the casing is a bit incomprehensible. On the top left edge of the player is power button to activate/deactivate the player and a button below the touch screen interface to call the menu on screen. The touch screen navigation is the USP of iPod Touch and with the large screen makes it worthy enough for crispy video, pictures and browsing through the added Wi-Fi compatibility.

Like all other iPod products, the iPod touch comes with minimal accessories, laid out behind a black plastic cradle on which the iPod touch is packed in a flimsy plastic film neatly packaged in an attractive box. The box also packs a user guide, a USB cable, a cleaning cloth, a dock adaptor, two Apple stickers, and a pair of the now popular iPod earphones, along with a small bit of plastic which acts as a viewing stand for the player.

I had very little time to sync my iTunes to the iPod Touch, but I assume it is bit of an ordeal as my library has more than 15GB of songs as against the paltry 8GB iPOD. When I tried syncing this morning, it only copied recently purchased songs and failed to show my library under the syncing options to select and add songs. I guess, it needs a bit of investigation in this regard. Anyway, I will explore this in detail this weekend.

All images courtesy Apple.