72 Hours of iPod

BackAmp Research is commissioning an iPod Touch 4G a Field Research Apparatus (FRA) for use during our extensive travels as well as for local events/missions.  We’ve never been too high on iStuff, but a bargain buying opportunity presented itself to add a unit to our already-too-heavy backpack.

There are at least a couple zillion reviews (here’s a good one), so we’ll just focus on our key take-aways after three days use.

The good:

1. Way, way more than an MP3 player, this is a mini-tablet.
2. The hardware is amazing.  The ‘retina’ display is high resolution and easy on the eyes.
3. Wifi integration works well and the Safari browser is much superior, say, to the Blackberry browser.
4. Apps.  Lots of free apps.
5. The email client integration is excellent, Yahoo’s web mail is better than using a desktop browser.

The bad:

1. The only good thing we found with iTunes was the podcast integration.  Otherwise, it’s bloated, slow, buggy, duplicates tracks randomly and deletes playlists created on the device.
2. Playlist functionality is only available via iTunes (or alternatives), not on the device.
3. Unable to access music tracks via MTP (i.e. drive letter access) or anything else other than photos.
4. No FM Radio.
5. The camera is much inferior to the iPhone 4 camera.  Some reviews suggest that the iPod 4 is the iPhone 4 sans camera.  Not quite, there a few differences.

Our pro tips:

1. Ditch iTunes, if you don’t need/want to buy Apple’s DRM’d music.  We’re using Ubuntu/Rhythmbox for music management, there are some Windows alternatives that work too.
2. Download apps from the iPod directly, again avoiding iTunes.
3. Dropbox provides much easier access to loading/saving photos and is yet another way to avoid the brain-damaged iTunes.