iPod Touch: First impressions

After hearing accounts of multiple Apple stores receiving small shipments of the iPod Touch today, I was one of the lucky few to snag one before supply ran out. Here is my first impression of the portable media player.

Oddly, sound quality was great. I find this odd because I've been terribly disappointed with the sound quality of all past iPods. The included headphones were crap as usual.

It's very, very, very similar to the iPhone. I've used the iPhones of many friends and have become quite familiar with the device, and this feels just like it.

Web browsing is smooth, but it feels like web pages take a few more seconds to load than they do on my iMac. My Macbook Pro is also acting slow, which is definitely credited to the probable fact that my college network is unusually busy today. If there is a network problem with the iPod Touch, which I doubt, it'll probably be fixed via firmware update sometime in the near future. Regardless of the network issues i'm currently having, I have never had a better web browsing experience on a portable device.

YouTube video looked great on the relatively large screen

Typing takes some getting used to. At first, I was turned off to the touch screen keyboard, but after browsing a few web pages, I found my typing was becoming faster and increasingly accurate.

I'm becoming increasingly familiar with iPhone web apps, and there's lots of them out there, such as Google Reader, iPhone Chat, and more.

As for the iTunes Wi-Fi store. I wouldn't recommend it. Get your music without DRM. I prefer to buy CDs, and I refuse to have DRM on any of my music. However, if you don't happen to care, and you want some music on the go, I heard good things about the Wi-Fi store on PC Magazine's review, which was released today, of the iPod Touch.

Although it could be better and Apple will always hold a little back so they could make it a little better next time, for now this is truly as good as it's going to get in the portable media player market.

On a side note: I heard that Apple stores around the nation will start to receive small shipments of the iPod Touch in order to put them on display. They're not necessarily supposed to be for sale, but if you happen to ask and they're not on display and they have them, chances are they'll give it to you.