Well, I received one of these from a relative for my B-day a couple weeks ago, and just got around to messing with it last week.
My entire life I've HATED Apple and their supporters. All through High School having a C64/C128 we made fun of Apple people and the lack of good flight sims like F19 Stealth Fighter and Airborne Ranger etc for the Apple, or at least how they were crappy compared to ours. Then the mighty 286 came along, and the gap of gaming grew ever wider. Then fast forward to the Pentium years, games like Rainbow6, all the Microprose and Janes Simulators, and then Warbirds and Air warrior...the laughs on Apple were really on then. Silly geese and their "application only" computers. So limp wrist-ed, and who the eff is this Steve Jobs guy anyhow.
Well, after a week of using this Ipod Touch, color me converted. What a truly amazing and powerful little gadget. All I wanted was a decent MP3 player - I was expecting the 100$ Sony Walkman - but the Ipod Touch completely blows it out of the water. SO MANY apps, WiFi wireless internet connection, video player that plays back every movie I've tried to convert so far, YouTube app that's as simple as it is fast. A touchscreen that is actually easy to use and actually WORKS, even the tiniest little dots for dragging the time lapse bar for movies and mp3 tracks is a one shot deal 99% of the time. I'm still a little skittish being out in public - one glimpse of "those" obvious loudly white colored earphone cables, and you've been outed like Liberace. But after day 5 or so of running on the indoor track here, I started holding my head high and proud...yes!, I'm one of "those" guys, and proud of it dammit! Let's see your crappy little walkman store 15 of the latest eBooks, and let you read them with the same functionality of my 2 dedicated e-readers sitting on the desk. HAH!
The only weak point I've found so far is the battery doesn't last nearly as long as advertised, they claim that you should get 40 hours of mp3 and 7 hours of video. With brightness turned up to a level that you can actually see clearly, I've found these numbers to be about 200% embellishments. But, with a car charger/fm trans costing only 15 bucks, who cares. For long plane and train trips (we're going to Europe after Xmas to tour around on the rail system and see all the WW2 places I've read about for the last 30 years), I purchased a little backup universal power unit for 75$ that 'll charge phones, Ipods, laptops, etc.
As a review, I'd score this little unit 9.5/10, I'm that impressed with it. I also got the latest version that came out in Oct 2011 with the "new" IOS 5 operating system apparently. Not having anything apple previous to this, I cannot comment on how much better this OS is, but from all reports I've read, it's supposedly not a leap forward, but a couple of good long steps. If you're considering a new Mp3 unit, and already have a phone you like and don't need the Iphone, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Ipod Touch.
