I wasn’t going to do it, but the geekier side of me broke down and ponied up the $20 for the iPod Touch January Software Upgrade, and I don’t really think it’s worth the money, $10 maybe, but not $20. I can sort of understand the reason to charge for it, because there is no real revenue generation to apple from adding these features to the Touch, but I am also willing to bet that there weren’t a lot of development costs associated with modifying a few existing iPhone apps. The biggest drawback is the inability to use these when there is no WiFi, and yes I know if I wanted true wireless, I should have got an iPhone. I have a blackberry that is under contract, and at&t coverage sucks here in Southeast Virginia, but when the next Generation iPhone comes out I’ll probably dump the blackberry.
The visible new features added are Customizable Home Screen, Mail, Maps, Weather, Notes, Stocks, and Web Clips.
- The Customizable Home Screen is a nice addition, with the ability to put the things I use where my thumb is more likely to land, instead of where some engineer thinks they should go…
- Mail, the ability to carry around my last 50 or so messages for reference is nice, as well as the ability to generate a message when the need arises is also nice, and when you get to a known WiFi network everything does its stuff.
- Maps, great, but the one big change here, since were not always connected would be the ability the cache or save a certain number of maps for reference while on the road. Really impressed with the find my locations feature, pretty accurate for the most part, but I was messing with it at work, and it would either put me where I was, or about 5 miles away, but it was real consistent when it was wrong…
- Weather, is fairly lame, it will give weather for the cities you add, but it is just a quick summary from Yahoo! without a lot of the details I like. Radar would be nice, more details would be nice, as well as airline delays etc…
- Notes, this is probably my biggest disappointment, the interface is what you’d expect, the ability to type in notes, but my issue come after you create the note. There is no ability to sync the notes with anything, except mailing it to yourself or someone. I have mail, and the ability to create a message, then why do I need notes. What is missing the ability to sync Notes with your computer.
- Stocks, pretty much the same feeling here as with the weather…
- Web Clips, The ability to go to a specific page of a specific site is a ice addition, in the past, to many click to get where you want to go, even with bookmarks….
The not so in your face features rent movies, probably not going to happen on my touch, I’ll just do like always and just buy it… Navigate movies via chapters, great addition, trying to find a specific scene was a pain in the butt. Viewing lyrics isn’t all its cracked up to be, you can see them if you’ve added them to the son via iTunes, my library isn’t that big and I’m not going to bother, it’s data that should already be attached to the song.
Yes I was probably iScrewed, but I’m hoping that Steve comes through again and offers early adopter amnesty… 🙂
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