iPod touch - not good enough

Steve Jobs just announced the iPod touch today. I don't like it, because...

1. 16G ?
For a 80G iPod user, I am already filled my 5.5G iPod with over 60G of Apple Lossless audio files. How could I accept an brand new iPod with 16G space? OK, the new iPod Classic has 160G. But we need a better PMP. Only the new iPod touch can deliver this. So should we buy both iPod touch and the iPod classic together? Hey Steve Jobs, I want an at least 80G iPod touch!

2. WiFi?
May be in States this is practical. But in HK, only having WiFi is not enough! Give me bluetooth for both network access and A2DP!

3. iTunes WiFi store?
Where is it? (in HK)

4. Starbuck?
All I can see the plans for implementing "Starbuck" music feature is in the States. Where is it?



As iPod get more functionalities builtin, I am more tempted to perform a comparison with my Dopod U1000.

a) Both can play music
iPod has better UI and audio output quality. But U1000 can play much more variety of audio types. (ogg, flac, wma...)

b) Both can play video
But U1000 can play more video types (DivX, Xvid, wmv...)

c) Both have WIFI

d) Both have browsers
May be the user experience in Safari is more pleasing. But Opera Mobile is not that bad!

e) Both can play YouTube

f) Both is touch screen, and wide screen
Just that iPod is multi-touch, and U1000 is argh...single touch. ;)

g) a2dp?
U1000 only.

h) gps?
U1000 only.

i) HSDPA?
U1000 only.

j) Camera?
U1000 only.

k) Install new applications?
Urgh...as iPhone will soon be able to easily to have this. I think iPod touch will have the same chance. But installing new application for Windows mobile is just a piece of cake, plus there are so many applications out there...

l) Storage size?
iPod touch has 16G. U1000 has 8G (microdrive) + 4G SD = 12G.

m) price?
Oh....iPod completely wins in this category.

So as I have an U1000, I don't need iPod touch. :)

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Why I leave Palm and Uses Windows mobile

Actually, for this topic, I don't need to say much, because the Engadget team has say it all. But below is my Palm's experience.

I started as a early Palm user from Palm IIIc-> TRGpro -> m505 -> Clie NR70V -> Clie NZ90 -> Treo 650 + TX. In fact, I would claim myself as a mobile gadget freak, as I spent most of my $$ to mobile gadgets. I like Palm at those days, because Palm OS has many advantages over other platforms (Symbian, Pocket PC 200x/Windows CE). Applications are plenty, and I can achieve many things on the go. When I bought my Treo 650, I hope the next Treo will have Wi-Fi, HSDPA, native a2dp, bluetooth 2.0, better camera resolution, bigger screen, supports more multimedia codecs. I die for a bigger screen (consider I have been a user of NZ90/NR70V), but unfortunately Palm TX is not a phone. I wait and wait and wait, and eventually I loose my patience and buy the TX, hoping it's a good companion to my Treo. Believe it or not, the TX can't use Treo as a phone modem! The phone list driver in TX, no matter how I try and look for any updates from Palm site, has no entry for Treo 650 at all. I sent an email asking for this to Palm support. Well they are so helpful, that, after months of emails back and forth, the major answer I have is that their Palm engineer is (still) working on the issue. OK, Palm doesn't announce any better Treo device, and they don't provide updates to their existing Treo 650 to solve my problem. I am totally disappointed.

Sometimes later, I keep getting news from Palm that pushed me further away from Palm:

1. Palmsource is acquired by Access.
2. OS 6 is dead
3. ALP won't be released shortly. (Consider as of now, Sept 2007, we still don't see any device with ALP released yet)
4. The Treo 750V is released!

For some period, I am actively looking for a replacement for my Treo, still thinking that, hey, let's wait for Palm longer to see if there is any better device it could come out. I don't want to switch to Windows mobile, because of the past bad experience. There is not much option available at those time. So I switched to use Nokia E70. Now my Palm TX can go online. That's good. But the limited memory of this device really drives me crazy. Eventually, I settled with Dopod 838pro (Or HTC Hermes/CHT9000 or whatever it is called).

Switching to Windows mobile, initially, is really a painful experience. Compared with Palm, it's slow, required reset much often, and worst of all, it really needs an XP machine to work with (my major OS is Mac OS X) But after fighting with the device for about a month, I finally start to enjoy it. But do note, that kind of experience should be about the same for whatever a new platform we are using. It took me about the same to get familiar with Palm when I first play with Palm IIIc.



Now I am using HTC U1000, wm6. This is the best mobile device I ever have up to now. Windows mobile 6 provides a much stable and responsive user experience. I especially like the Opera Mobile that comes with it. It has multiple tabs, good javascript and html/css standards support, not to mention good unicode support. BTW, bad browsing experience is my another major complaint on Palm's platform. Blazer can support UTF-8, but it's painfully slow and buggy (or stupid). Other Palm browsers doesn't have good unicode support.

Recently TCPMP flash video plugin, which enable watching all YouTube videos, really makes my U1000 the ultimate entertainment device. Imagine you can watch practically anything you want in a 5" widescreen device on the go. With recent purchase of a Sony BT stereo device (Sony BRM1), and some registry hack, a2dp becomes a much enjoyable experience with WM device. In fact, I think it sound already better than most Sony Ericsson/Nokia a2dp mobiles.

The HSDPA plus the easy shoutcast support in WM media players allows me to listen to my custom made icecast server on the go, in 128kbps bitrate. Together with they Sony BT dongle, I can just put my U1000 inside my bag, and listen to my home streaming server freely, including volume up/volume down, skipping song.

So until ALP platform devices can provide me a better experience, I will stay with windows mobile then.