You’ve probably guessed that I am an iPod Owner. It’s true. Although I don’t currently have a Mac (“Hi, I’m a Mac”) I do my part for Cupertino by owning and enjoying my old iPod.
Well guess what? No, you first; guess what? OK, I’ll tell you. Those lads down in California invented a whole new phone called the iPhone. They followed it with a new iPod called the “iPod Touch” following the Übercool interface as the iPhone.
The concept of a touch screen was developed a number of years ago and pretty much mimicked a pointing device. In a portable “Pocket PC” one could use a stylus and point at what you wanted by actually touching the screen. You can do that with the mouse on a PC screen.
But that’s all it did. Mimic a mouse click.
The iPhone presents a whole new array of pointing using one’s fingers to make things happen. Look it up on hundreds of web sites. Just watch an ad. The biggest problem with the demos and ads is that you can’t feel the action. A lot of people say “So what?”
Well it’s more like reality is “What so.” In about 20 seconds with an iPhone or iPod Touch you get very good at understanding that touching the screen and having the expected action is really cool. And it seems so natural.
But why? Why would a perfectly sane but really old bald guy want a kids’ toy like an iPod Touch??? Answer: Apps.
Apple has a thing called the App Store. You can connect your iPod to the PC or Mac and buy music. But if you have the iPod Touch or iPhone you can get applications for it. Hundreds.
One particular application helps you identify birds. OK, maybe I’m the only one who cares, but that’s the really cool thing about the App Store – I can get stuff I think is neat and maybe only a few others. There are also applications that millions of people want, like the Stanley level.
Anyway this bird identification program allows you to use your fingers to select attributes of a bird you see or hear. It includes where you saw it (state or region) what colors it has, how big, what month you saw it, what it’s doing, body type (gull, crane, dodo) and several other things you might notice. Then it comes back with a list of what it might be.
Sometimes the list contains 100 birds, so you go back and choose some other feature and that may narrow the list to 6. Or it may come back with only one. Cool, that may be the bird you’re looking at. Then there are some actual photos of that bird and that may prove it’s not the bird you’re looking at. So you go back and review the things you thought you saw and change them.
One issue I already found is that it’s territorial. For example if I see a particular bird in Washington state that the books all agree does not occur here the program won’t find it. Unless I leave the “location” field blank. So the user has to work with the logic some and not let it run you.
But I’m getting off the point. This kind of interactive parameter search construction is pretty much magic. It’s enormously enjoyable and the thing I can’t stress enough is that it only takes a few minutes to become completely comfortable with the iPod Touch. Try that with a Palm.
So at this point I guess I’d have to say I’m shilling. One of my major frustrations as a human being in the 21st Century is the failure of technology to actually perform as advertised. A lot of it requires huge amounts of tweaking to get marginally improved results and some others never get there. Some of it just plain doesn’t work, so you have to return it a store that’s no longer in business. But the iPod Touch goes so far above the “expected” that it deserves a little shilling.
But not now, I have to get back to my iPod Touch. There’s an app about transit systems, I hope. I just have to search the App Store. There are apps about New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Sydney transit systems. I bet in a week Seattle will be there.
Al
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