I finally broke down and bought an Ipod Touch (well, actually, my wife got it for me for my birthday). Anyway, given that I am pretty old and set in my ways, I thought the younger generation might be interested in my trials and tribulations with this new-fangled technology.
I have had a Blackberry through T-Mobile for almost four years now, and the e-mail interface on a Blackberry is incredible. I literally could not live my current lifestyle without it. But the problem with Blackberries is that every six months they come out with a new version that is only incrementally better than the last version, and of course you have to buy all new chargers if you buy the new version, a marketing ploy that I hate, so my Blackberry is still three years old, and I’m perfectly fine with it. My company does not support the Apple interface for corporate e-mail, so I am sticking with my Blackberry for the foreseeable future as my primary source of e-mail.
My Ipod Touch will be the supplement to my Blackberry. The Touch is WAAAY cooler than the Blackberry.
Let’s start with e-mail. For my private e-mail account, I use the wifi connectivity on the Touch. My e-mail gets updated automatically incredibly quickly. Then, let’s discuss other web applications — again, the web browser on the Touch is about 20 times faster than the ridiculously slow Blackberry browser, which I have basically given up on (even though it is supposedly wicked fast 3G — ha!).
As everybody has been telling me for the last two years, the apps are really, really cool on the Ipod. I highly recommend the “My Climate” app.
Now, here is a story that Apple enthusiasts will I’m sure find hilarious: I am having a lot of problems figuring out Itunes and how to download apps. I just find the Itunes application very difficult to understand (mostly user error, I’m sure). Anyway, I wanted to get the scriptures on my Touch so I went to Itunes and downloaded a $3.99 app for the scriptures. The quality was not great, there were no footnotes, but whatever, at least I could follow along in class without carrying my scriptures.
Anyway, a friend is visiting and he told me there is a FREE scripture app that is available, and I downloaded it and it is 100 times better than the $3.99 app! Sucker!!! What a rube I am paying for scriptures when I should have known the Church would have them for free.
I have got to get this Itunes problem out of my system. I find the interface incredibly confusing and difficult to use. One small example: I downloaded a video and I simply cannot figure out how to get it into Itunes so I can watch it on my Touch. I spent hours trying every possible way — still no luck. I also spent hours trying to get podcasts to link with my Touch. I finally figured it out. And forget about trying to share my wife’s songs from her Ipod to my Touch. That also took me hours to figure out.
One of the main reasons I got the Touch was so I could watch movies while traveling. But the Itunes movie selection seems very limited — what’s up with that? Probably user error again.
I have become a huge fan of Podcasts, however. I don’t know how I ever lived without them. You can download the WSJ daily report, the NY Times weekly report, endless good stuff from NPR (Car Talk and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me make me laugh out loud when I listen), as well as the incredibly fascinating “60 minutes” and good stuff from NBC’s Meet the Press. I am in information heaven with this Podcast stuff!
I am an exercise fanatic (two hours a day biking, hiking or running), but one of the problems with two hours of those activities is they sometimes become repetitive. But now I can’t wait to get out the door and listen to my podcasts while exercising! Life is great!
Anyway, my advice is: spring for an Ipod. If an old guy like me can appreciate it, I’m sure you can too.