Not returning the N800 for an iPod touch
Ever since the announcement of the iPod touch I’ve been having people regularly spin by my office asking me when mine arrives. Oh yeah, it’s because they want to know if it’ll replace the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet I’m test driving. Yeah, forgot to mention that.
I’ve been pretty vocal about my crankiness over how Nokia handled the transition between their first and second Internet Tablets, but to make a long story short (by skipping all of Nokia’s growing-pains and early mistakes with the platform, I did only pay one-third of the price of the N800 when buying the 770 so it isn’t surprising that I ended up with a third of today’s experience. In the end, what I was doing with the discounted tablet was so satisfying when it worked that I just wanted it to work all the time, and I felt I had to give the N800 the old 30-day-retail-test-drive and try it with all those bugs finally fixed.
But back to the iPod touch. Right after the announcement of the iPod touch I felt extremely underwhelmed. It was a iPhone without the phone, as I’d hoped for, but it also was without a lot of other things:
- Camera
- Mail client
- Google Maps
- Widgets
- Bluetooth
- Microphone
- Speakers
And these have left holes in functionality. Sure, the iPod touch still has a Contacts application, but without a Mail client, how useful would this really be? Lots of people knocked the Nokia Internet Tablets for not being able to sync contacts into the device, yet here was the exact flip-side of that situation…an application to view contacts that were synchronized to your iPod, but no way to edit them or integrate them in the web-based client you’re now forced to use.
It really feels like Safari is there only for the reason Steve Jobs said it was there: because you need a web browser to log into most Wi-Fi hotspot services. Contacts — and Calendars and Photos — on the iPod touch are essentially the same as they were on previous iPod models. They are read-only, now-crippled versions of their iPhone counterparts that do not get any advantage to being on a networkable device. Hell, they don’t even get a mention on the website or the guided tour video for the product. And YouTube? Well, you’re offering Safari but you don’t have a Flash plugin, so you have to make up for it somehow. And I’ve had the Tablets for a while now — Wi-Fi access points are just not that plentiful. You need access to cellular data as well, and with no Bluetooth to link your cell phone with to make that data connection (which I do with the Tablets regularly) you’ll be out of luck. Make no mistakes about it, the Wi-Fi is primarily for the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and the Starbucks partnership. Its browsing capabilities are secondary.
So is the iPod touch an N800 killer? No way, not unless you thought the N800 was just a media device, where the price difference alone would decide a winner. And even though it’s not a phone, it’s still best compared to the iPhone because of those missing applications. Still, the iPhone is not the best choice of the two if you care about adding functionality like making Skype calls, GPS navigation, or even just listening to Shoutcast radio, reading RSS offline or viewing 800-pixel wide sites with Flash in Mozilla without zooming. The question is, do you care?
This is all update-able technology after all, so could there be a Mail client on the iPod touch in the future? Probably. Might we see VoIP on the iPhone? Unlikely, but it could happen. But the N800 can be updated, too, and, that’s why I’m not returning it. Relying solely on third-party apps through a modding community is risky and can still be a frustrating experience — just ask the Sony PSP users about their homebrew efforts. Not to forget, the moment the modders cross a line that impacts Apple’s bottom-line (re: Jhymn and iTunes), a new software update will appear to lock them out, and that update will be enforced by an iTunes/device feature update. As long as no official path into the device exists, this is always a possibility.
In the end, I want to vote with my dollar. And maybe if we all didn’t buy the product when it has obvious flaws we’d all prefer weren’t there, those flaws would get fixed sooner rather than later.
P.S. In fact, there’s only one thing that could have turned me around to the iPod touch and made me return my N800 for it — an 80 GB HD edition. As I recently commented on Newsvine, I’m all about the library-in-your-pocket factor:
“Those focused enough on media to warrant the 80GB/160GB anytime-anywhere model will be focused almost solely on that, and consequently need only the Click Wheel UI, instead of the omnifunctional multitouch interface.”
I would have to strongly disagree.
If you have 160GB of media, you’ll want…no, NEED…a few things: Easy search (i.e. a way to actually type-in queries), Quick indexing (i.e. a way to immediately jump from A to X in a list), and Visual browsing (i.e. a quick & precise way to scan contents visually as opposed to textually).
All of these things are limited when channeled through the click wheel. Text input is extremely awkward, you still have to scroll up into letter-mode and even then it’s jumpy and takes time, and using a wheel for Cover Flow is not nearly as fast as using the flick (plus the emulated inertia) or a precise to stop as the tap-to-freeze. Reports have already come in that the wheel just doesn’t feel as precise as it should.
If anything, a scroll wheel is better suited for smaller libraries where there is less material to traverse. Really, this announcement was a HUGE miss for me, and I’m still waiting for a touch HD.
P.P.S. I haven’t gotten an iPhone because I want Apple’s version of a smartphone, not Apple’s version of the Sidekick. I’ve been there before, so I know how amazing the experience of having precisely orchestrated & unified components can be, but a) it gets boring and familiar quickly, and b) even the Sidekick let you install third-party applications on it. Besides, my contract doesn’t expire until July, and as you know, a lot can happen in ten months. A lot can happen in two months as well, right, early adopters?
[Correction 2007-09-16] The Contacts app on the iPod touch does indeed let you add new contacts right on the device. All other apps still remain push-from-desktop-only, however.
