When Apple’s iPod Touch first came out, someone suggested that I write about it, and whether it is a “replacement tool for Windows Mobile and Palm.” They specifically wanted to know whether it made a good PDA.
Note: This post was first written in March 2008, but, because it is so popular, I keep it up-to-date. Current update: June 9, 2011. Although I cut off further commenting in August 2011 (since I no longer plan to make updates to this blog), there are 230 comments on this post, and many of them have great information on apps and device capabilities.
Feb 2012 Update: Apple’s iOS 5 has several features that make the Touch an even better PDA. (Of course, it is far more than a PDA, but this post focuses on its PDA features.)
The new features include a Reminder app, the ability to use Text Shortcuts, a Mail app that supports rich text, an improved Calendar app (ability to show colors for different types of appointments, for example), WiFi syncing, and a notification center that shows all of your notifications in one spot. iOS 5 also enables you to sync Calendar(s), Contacts, Mail, and iWork documents to iCloud. With it I can keep the calendars and contacts on my iMac, iPad, iPhone, and Touch in synch.
There are many, many more updates, but these seemed most useful to me. Note that the Reminder app is location-based, so you can set a reminder to go off when you enter your grocery store. (Just add the store and its address to your Contacts, and then you can select its location for an errand, if you choose.)
iOS 5 will be available in the Fall and will work with Apple’s iCloud service (which will automatically sync all of your iOS devices to your Mac, once your Mac has been updated to the Lion version. (Lion is supposed to be available in July, too, for only $30.)
Now to the original review (which includes several updates):
I’ll give the bottom-line view first: this is one of the neatest devices I have ever owned, and I have sure owned a bunch of gadgets: over 20 Pocket PCs, Palms, and Smartphones. (I’ve also been a Judge in the 2006 and 2007 Smartphone and Pocket PC Software Awards.) The pictures shown herein just do not do the Touch justice: the screen is far more stunning than a picture conveys. And the 4th generation device, released in September 2010, is even more stunning, featuring Apple’s famous Retina display with a 960×640 pixel resolution.
Even though Apple promotes the entertainment and gaming features of the iPod Touch, and it is now the number 1 gaming device in the world, it is also an excellent PDA. You can even use the 4th generation Touch as a phone, via the FaceTime video service and WiFi. And there are a couple of apps that will let you use your 2nd generation and up Touch (or iPad) as a phone.
And, I’ll tell you something else I love: how easy Apple has made it to upgrade the device, and how they are constantly adding neat features to the software and hardware. For example, my first-generation Touch runs the 3.1 software, and my iPhone 3GS is currently running a pre-release of the iPhone 4.2 software. All the upgrades have been easy. Contrast that with this tweet:
- ethank I have bought five android phones since I got my 3GS. All different software versions, no easy upgrade paths. That is why I like iPhone.
I don’t say that to knock Android. In fact, I am glad Apple has some competition: that’s good for consumers. Just pointing out that Apple does a good job on upgrades for iOS owners.
Anyway, in what follows I break the discussion into three parts: built-in software, add-on software, and hardware. And, of course, when we talk about the Touch being a great PDA, the same goes for the iPhone (which has even more capabilites).
Built-in Software
The Touch comes with the following applications, many of which are Mac OSX tools that have been adapted for a hand-held form factor:
- Top Row: Safari Browser, Calendar, Mail, Contacts
- Middle Row: YouTube viewer, Stocks viewer, Maps viewer, Weather viewer
- Bottom Row: Clock, Calculator, Notes, Settings
And, along the very bottom of the screen are the traditional iPod applications: Music, Videos, Photos, and access to the iTunes store (via WiFi). The 2.0 version also added an application for connecting to the App Store.
What’s really cool is
- Everything on the top row syncs to a Mac or PC, as does everything on the very bottom row (the typical iPod stuff)
In fact, the calendar syncs with Microsoft Outlook, iCal, Yahoo!, Google, MobileMe, and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for Enterprise. I personally sync with Google Calendar and sync my Contact data to Google Contacts. And the operative word is syncs: that is, I frequently use my Touch or iPhone to enter new Calendar or Contact data, and the changes are reflected back to Google Calendar and Contacts, almost instantly. The Touch is not a “read-only” device.
- Note: You can actually sync with multiple calendars, as exemplified in my post Gluing Together Outlook, gCal and …
Cool, huh? The sync capabilities alone make the Touch usable as a PDA. It lacks a built-in Tasks handler, but pretty much everything else is there.
- For second generation devices and up, there are plenty of third-party applications you can use for task management. I describe one of them below, in the discussion of add-on software. With this app, you have a complete PDA, giving you everything you would expect from one.
A final note on task applications for those using Microsoft Outlook with an Exchange Server: If your organization provides Outlook Web Access for Enterprise for you, you may be able to access your office Outlook through it on the Touch or iPhone. Because I am retired and no longer have access to an Exchange Server interface, I haven’t tried it. But, when I did have such access and was using a Pocket PC, I could access my office Outlook calendar, tasks, email, and so forth using the browser on the Pocket PC. I suppose one could do the same with the Touch or iPhone. It might not be the best interface, but it should be workable. If any of you try this, perhaps you can discuss it in the comments section so others can benefit from your experience.
October 27, 2010 Update: If you are a fan of the Remember The Milk tasks application, but also need to use Outlook, you may want to look into RTM’s Milksync application. Apparently this app lets you keep tasks in sync with Outlook, and since there is an RTM app for iOS devices, it lets you sync Outlook tasks to your iOS device (iPod, iPhone, iPad). I haven’t tried it on an iOS device, because I prefer other task apps. But, I did try an early beta of Milksync on my Pocket PC and BlackBerry Curve a couple of years ago. It had problems with duplicating tasks and deleting some of them, at that time, but those kinks have probably been fixed in the newer version.
As for other PDA functions, you can even dictate messages on the Touch (or iPhone) and have them converted to text (with the free Dragon Dictation app), there are plenty of apps for taking notes (some can sync with your computer, some sync with DropBox, and some with other online services), the Contacts app is very functional (syncs with Outlook or with Google Contacts, and reportedly with some other services), and on and on.
By the way, I love having Safari on the Touch. Up until I got an iPad a couple of months ago, it was my primary interface for using Twitter, checking my Gmail, skimming through Google Reader, and more. Without moving off the couch I can easily keep up with my daily communications stream. And, the interface for browsing is fantastic. (Now I use the iPad for most of my browsing, but the Touch and/or iPhone is certainly great for it.)
Now, to the middle row: I love the YouTube app. Of course it is just a web interface into YouTube, but it has a lot of functionality, including the ability to search for videos and to bookmark them.
I actually like viewing the YouTube videos more on the Touch than on a computer: The screen resolution and size is just perfect, and, as Thomas notes in the comments below, the Touch uses the h.264 codec instead of Flash for YouTube access, which gives it fantastic viewing clarity. (Some folks are upset that Apple does not support Flash on the iOS devices. I’ve not really found this to be an issue for me: occasionally I come upon a web page that has a Flash video that I cannot view, but almost every web page of interest to me views fine.)
Now, while the Stocks, Google Maps, and Weather viewers just latch into data at Google and Yahoo, they are classy. Leave it to Apple to present simple data in such a classy interface. I use the weather and stocks apps a lot during the days, and it just about eliminates my “need” to watch any TV news.
For the bottom row: the Clock is great, and even has alarms, timers, and stop watch applications. The calculator is very functional, and the Notes app is pretty darned neat. You can use the Touch’s built-in keyboard (on-screen) to leave notes to yourself.
Speaking of the keyboard, it takes a little getting used to if you have been an active user of a physical keyboard, such as the one on the BlackBerry Curve. However, the adjustment curve is not steep. The operating system monitors every key press you make, and its smart algorithms learn what mistakes you are most prone to make, and helps you adjust. Really well thought-out. For me, it works well. However, if you are accustomed to writing long emails on your BlackBerry, you might find it hard to make do with a software keyboard.
One thing I’d like to see Apple improve with its keyboard is the word-prediction software. It’s really not very impressive, especially compared to the word-prediction software used in Android-based devices. When the Apple software predicts a word (it doesn’t try to for every word), it is not a good guess as often as is. And it just gives you one choice. The Android phone I tinkered with recently gives 4 or 5 choices for most predictions, and one of these choices is almost always right. Note that I do not know if the prediction software for Android devices is built into the software, or whether it connects to Google’s servers for the prediction algorithms. If it is the latter, that may be why Apple’s word-prediction algorithms are not that great (since they can’t rely on being connected to a server.)
I don’t want to make too big of a deal out of the keyboard. Most people, including me, get along just fine with Apple’s software keyboard. It’s perfect for entering a Calendar entry, or for making minor changes to documents. And most of us use PDAs for content consumption much more so than for content creation. But, if your PDA use involves a lot of content creation, other devices may suit you better.
As to the iPod functions: they are great. Listening to music is as good as ever, and it is a very practical movie-viewer. If I were traveling much I’d have a dozen movies loaded on it. I also loved using my iPhone and Touch for reading e-books, although I now use the iPad instead. (I prefer either of these devices to the Kindle, although I have not tried the newest Kindle.)
Add-on Software
There are over 250,000 apps available for the Touch and iPhone. I discuss just one today, because it is a To-Do app and a lot of people are interested in such apps: Todo from Appigo. You can see its icon on my first page of apps on my Touch:
There are a lot of things I like about this app. First, populating it with tasks was easy: I easily set it up to sync with my Remember The Milk Pro account. (It can also sync with Toodledo.) Secondly, I love its interface. It is so easy to make any type of change to existing items, and it is easy to add new items or to delete ones you decide you no longer want to do.
Here is a screen shot of its primary editing interface for one of my tasks:
And, if you want to change the date, the interface for that is really slick, too, offering up a pick list of Today through a week later (and all days in between), or this handy “other date chooser:”
By the way, on this date chooser, the Month, Day, and Year spin independently, so you can quickly go to any date desired. It is really slick!
Just to check things out, I made changes to several tasks and re-synced back to RTM: worked great!
And a couple of other things I really like about this app: you don’t have to be connected to WiFi to use it (except to sync), and it is cheap ($9.99). The Toodledo app is very similar, and is only $3.99. Of course it works with Toodledo and not Remember The Milk, but many people now prefer Toodledo to RTM.
Mac users may prefer OmniFocus or the Things app for GTD management of tasks. My brief review of Things is here and my review of OmniFocus is here. Outlook users may prefer Pocket Informant, which has recently been upgraded to sync with Outlook tasks, as well as Calendar. (A separate, inexpensive sync utility is required.)
- I also consider the Kindle app to be essential. Apple’s iBooks and the Stanza app are also very nice for reading selected e-books (in the ePub format, for example).
- Dropbox is also a great PDA utility, enabling you to access files from your Dropbox account. And, a final note on apps: There are a ton of good note-taking, note-reading apps, such as Evernote, Writeroom, Notebooks, SimpleNotes, and so on.
Hardware
Did I mention that the device is stunning? Yes I did, but it bears repeating. The screen is gorgeous.
The device is incredibly thin. It feels very comfortable in the hand and is easy so to use.
The only downside I have found with the Touch, as compared to previous iPods, is that the lack of a scroll wheel. I don’t miss it when I am using the Touch at home, but I miss it in the car, which is where I have typically used the scroll wheel to skip parts of a tune or to replay a tune, and so on. You cannot use the screen-interface that effectively while driving. But, in time I got accustomed to this. And, if it bothered me enough, I could always get an iPod Nano for the car, since they are so inexpensive.
The battery life has been very good in my opinion, and I use the WiFi a lot.
By the way, the iPhone and Touch are similar in many ways, except that the iPhone has even more. So, if you are thinking of getting an iPhone, I don’t think you will be disappointed.
Earlier I mentioned that Apple does a great job of updating software and hardware. Sometimes, though, early adopters get left behind. An example is with my Touch, which is a first generation device: it does not have a speaker or microphone, and so cannot benefit from the software upgrades that added Voice Control and Voice Memos to the operating system, and I also will not be able to upgrade it to the iOS 4 software. I don’t really feel screwed by this: this sort of thing happens all the time with early adopters, as I learned long ago. For another, my iPhone of course has Voice Control and Voice Memos.
Obviously I am pleased with all of my iOS devices (although I hope Apple continues to have competition, as that will ensure even better products for everyone). Feel free to ask about anything I forgot to mention or haze over, and fellow Touch users, please chime in with your thoughts and tips.
Pingback: iPod Touch as a PDA and Entertainer | My iPod
Pingback: iPod touch como PDA | Garota Sem Fio, a tecnologia móvel no dia-a-dia, por Bia Kunze