The iPod meets the iPhone: a review of the iPod touch

Eminently touchable

iPod touch
Manufacturer: Apple
System requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.10, Windows XP SP2, or Vista
Price: $299 (8GB), $399 (16GB) (shop for this 8GB or 16GB model)

The moment the iPhone first saw the light of day, observers wondered how long it would take before a redesigned iPod based on the iPhone form factor followed. The answer, as it turned out, was about two-and-a-half months. The iPod touch, along with a redesigned iPod nano and the iPod classic, was unveiled at a special event on September 5. Apple said that its latest digital audio player would become available towards the end of September, but eight days later reports began trickling in that the 16GB iPod touch was available in limited quantities at Apple Stores.

Five minutes after the local Apple Store opened the next day, I found myself waiting with a woman who wanted to exchange the iPod classic she had received as a gift for an iPod touch. After tracking down a green-shirted Apple Store employee, I handed over my American Express card and walked out the door with a shiny new iPod touch.

Chances are, most of you reading this have at least a passing familiarity with both the "classic" iPods and the iPhone. If you know the difference, feel free to skip ahead a couple of paragraphs, because I'm going to cover the basics of the iPod touch for the uninitiated.

Minimalism, Apple style

The iPod touch takes a minimalist approach to hardware design. There are exactly two buttons on it: a power button at top left that also handles sleep/wake, and a home button on the bottom underneath the screen. There are two ports, both on the bottom. One is for the headphone and the other is for docking the device with your Mac or PC. That's it.

Aside from the power switch and home button, every aspect of the iPod is controlled via the touch-screen display. Tasks such as listening your music, watching your videos, looking through your photos, and browsing the iTunes Store are all accomplished via the touch screen. The same goes for surfing the Internet, watching YouTube, or using the calculator.

Wait... surfing the Internet? Watching YouTube? That's right. The iPod touch is the first digital audio player to ship with a full-featured web browser and support for watching YouTube. You enter URLs (and all other data) via an onscreen keyboard.

The device itself is small. It measures 4.3" x 2.4" x 0.31" and weighs in at a minute 4.2 ounces. In comparison, the 160GB iPod classic is 4.1" x 2.4" x 0.53" and is 1.5 ounces heavier. You can get a sense of the difference between the iPod touch and a 5.5g iPod from the photos below.

In terms of other things the geekily-minded will care about, the iPod touch supports H.264 and MPEG-4 video, with a maximum resolution of 640x480. On the audio side, the touch supports AAC and Protected AAC (natch), MP3 (including variable bitrate), AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless codec, and Audible books. There's also the aforementioned 802.11b/g support, which is able to handle WEP, WPA and WPA2, but not WPA Enterprise and WPA2 Enterprise.

Apple claims that you'll be able to get 22 hours of audio playback from the iPod touch and five hours of video playback. A full charge takes about 3 hours, but you can charge the battery to 80 percent in half that time.

The specs for the iPod touch display match that of the iPhone. Both devices have a 3.5" multi-touch display with a resolution of 480x320. That works out to 163 pixels per inch. Do they look the same? You'll have to keep reading to find out.

Out of the box experience

The iPod touch comes in a box similar to that of the iPhone, but it's not as tall. On the front of the box is a picture of the iPod playing "Put Your Records On" by Corinne Bailey Rae. I've not heard of her before, but she looks reasonably hip and is posing with an acoustic guitar in the background, so I'll assume she's popular with the young people.

Inside the box is a black plastic tray with the iPod touch. Lift the tray out, and you'll be told that, like every other piece of Apple hardware, it was designed in California. There's nothing about where it was assembled, though.

Digging deeper, we find many of the same things included with the iPhone. There are the ubiquitous white earbuds, a USB 2.0 dock adapter (a moment of silence for FireWire dock adapters and iPod FireWire support... thank you), a small plastic stand so that all may behold your awesomeness as you display your iPod touch prominently on your desk, and a dock adapter. Missing from the iPhone package are an actual dock and AC adapter.

The black "Designed by Apple in California" box opens up to reveal a few more items. Apple has helpfully provided a Quick Start pamphlet explaining the basics of operation for those confused by a device with only one obvious button; it's a nice touch from a company that occasionally has a serious phobia about printed documentation. There's also a black cloth similar to the ones that come with the iPhone and aluminum iMac, providing a bit of ammunition for your fight to keep the screen of the iPod touch smudge-free. There are a couple of white Apple stickers included as well. I don't have any use for them, but my three-year-old son likes stickers, so he's excited.

Visually, the iPod touch is quite similar to the iPhone. The iPod touch is trimmed in black rather than the chrome of the iPhone, and as you can see from the pictures below, the iPhone is a lot busier around the edges than the iPod touch.

iPod touch (left) has the docking port and headphone jack next to each other on the bottom

The iPhone has its headphone jack on top

Unfortunately, the iPod touch lacks the iPhone's volume control

The iPod touch has the same glossy back as the other iPods

Powering up

The iPod touch appears to come with a full charge—at least that's what the battery status indicated the first time I plugged it in. Like the iPhone, you need to unlock the iPod with the swipe of a finger.

This is what you'll see every time the iPod touch wakes up

Once you perform the requisite finger swipe, you'll be taken to the home screen of the iPod touch.

The home screen of the iPod touch

You'll also see the above screen each time you hit the home button; it's your jumping off point for all of the iPod functionality. All of the media functionality is found at the bottom of the screen. You get basically the same options as when you press the iPod icon on the iPhone. Touching the Music icon will give you access to the iPod touch's music selection. Videos lets you start watching a TV show or movie, Photos is self-explanatory, while iTunes takes you to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. We'll touch on the iTW-FMS a bit later in the review.

Compared to the iPhone (especially one with a couple of third-party apps),
the iPod touch's screen looks a bit sparse

If you're not in the mood to listen to music, watch video, or look at pictures, the iPod touch has a few other distractions for you. There's the same scaled-down version of Safari (JavaScript, but no Flash or Java) as there is in the iPhone, the same YouTube viewer, calendar and contacts applications, a clock, and a calculator.

Tapping the Settings icon does what you might expect, allowing you to customize your iPod touch experience to the degree allowed by Apple. Again, it's quite similar to the iPhone Settings screen, as you can see below.

iPod touch is on the left

The settings missing from the iPod touch are all those related to the phone functionality of its sibling. The Music and iPod settings from the iPod touch and iPhone perform identical functions, allowing you to change audiobook speeds, adjust EQ settings, and impose a volume limit. The iPod touch does include a video setting missing from the iPhone. It allows you toggle Closed Captioning, adjust TV out settings, and tweak the starting point for a video ("where I left off" vs. "from the beginning").

The Wi-Fi, Safari, and Photos settings are identical, and the only difference between the "General" setting on the two devices is that the iPod touch allows you to internationalize the language and keyboards and tweak the wallpaper; the iPhone also allows you to change your Bluetooth and VPN settings, two functions lacking in the iPod touch.

In short, if you own or have used an iPhone, the iPod touch will be immediately familiar to you. A couple of things are in different locations, but it's not enough to cause confusion. Of course, if you already own an iPhone and are thinking about getting an iPod touch, too, you have other issues.

The first sync

When you first plug your iPod touch into your PC or Mac, you'll be greeted by the familiar iPod setup assistant. You'll be prompted to give your iPod a name and choose whether you want your music and photo library automatically synced to the device.

Setting up your iPod touch

After you finish the assistant, you can then further modify the sync preferences to your choosing. In short, everything is as it was with older iPods, with the sole exception being a new entry on the Info tab allowing you to sync your Safari bookmarks to your iPod touch. If you're a Windows-using iPod touch owner, it's another reason (or your sole reason, depending on your perspective) to run the Windows version of Safari.

You can sync your Safari bookmarks to the iPod touch

Let's go surfin' now, everybody's learnin' how

WiFi, Safari, and YouTube

The presence of WiFi and Safari are big changes from the rest of the iPod family. We covered both of those features rather extensively in our review of the iPhone, and the features appear to be identical on the two devices, so I'll not spend a lot of time on them here.

The iPod touch is able to auto-detect 802.11b/g networks, and you can set it join known networks automatically if that's your desire. You can choose from a list of available networks and will be prompted for a password if the network is protected. Reception appears to be very good, at least on par with that of my MacBook Pro.

The presence of Safari also makes it possible to log onto commercial WiFi hotspots. I took the iPod touch to Starbucks (no Starbucks one-click support in the Chicago area yet) and was able to quickly log on using the T-Mobile hotspot there and browse the Internet on my expensive digital audio player while drinking expensive coffee.

Surfing Ars on the iPod touch

For all intents and purposes, Safari is a full-featured browser. It lacks support for Flash and Java, but everything else on the Internet works. As Clint, Jacqui, and Ken pointed out, you're not getting a dumbed-down or oddly-rendered version of the Internet here. Pages render as they would on a laptop or desktop computer. You see a miniature version of the page and can use the multitouch gesture (think of the opposite of a pinch) to zoom in on the page and move around. There are also "tabs"; you can have multiple browser windows open at the same time and easily move between them by pressing the icon at the bottom right of the screen that looks like a pair of layered windows.

Multiple web pages on the iPod touch work the same way as they do on the iPhone

The only other handheld device (aside from Windows UMPCs) that can give a comparable browsing experience is the Nokia N800. The N800, which uses Opera, takes a different approach to browsing, rendering the web page at full size on its 4.5" 800x480 display, meaning you may have to scroll horizontally to see the whole thing.

Notice the scroll bars on the Nokia N800 display. Click for larger image

In my completely unscientific and subjective tests, the iPod touch was significantly faster than the N800 when it came to rendering web pages. Part of that may be due to the lack of Flash support on the iPod, which means that there's no hanging on Flash-intensive pages. That said, I noticed the difference even on sites without Flash.

I don't want to spend much time on YouTube here, as it's identical to the YouTube feature on the iPhone. Upon touching the YouTube icon, you're presented with a list of the featured YouTube videos. You can also easily select the most viewed videos, watch bookmarked YouTube videos, and search. Once you select a video, the screen aspect changes to horizontal and you can begin watching.

The iPod YouTube experience is identical to that of the iPhone

Using Safari requires using the iPod touch's onscreen keyboard. The text-entry experience on the iPod touch is absolutely identical to that of the iPhone, and for a detailed explanation, I'll refer you to the pertinent part of our iPhone review.

You'll see the same keyboard on the iPod touch

If you're new to the iPod touch/iPhone keyboarding experience, it's really not difficult to master. If your dexterity score is in the single digits, using the keyboard may be a bit on the difficult side, but with a little care and persistence, you should be able to master it. Contrary to my first impressions, text autocompletion is present on the iPod touch. I didn't stumble across it until trying to post on the Ars forums.

Staying in touch and on top of your to-do list

Like previous versions of the iPod, the touch allows you to sync your calendar items from iCal and contacts from Address Book. As is the case with the iPhone, both applications look quite polished. It's easy to scroll through your contacts or check to see what time your doctor's appointment is.

There is one major issue, however. Apple decided to cripple the Calendar application on the iPod touch. You can still review any appointments you have synced from iCal, but that's it. There is no modifying, adding, or deleting allowed. Lame.

I found the deliberate crippling of Calendar to be all the more puzzling once I realized that you can edit contacts. I noticed that I had a couple of old phone numbers listed in Contacts for one of my friends, and to my surprise, I was able to delete them. The next time I synced, the old numbers were gone from Address Book on my Mac.

There is no Notes application either, so it's not possible to use the iPod touch as an expensive Post-It Note to jot down notes. There's no good reason for Notes to be missing and for Calendar to be crippled. It appears to be a deliberate choice on Apple's part to further differentiate the iPod touch from the iPhone.

Silly me... I thought the fact that you can't make phone calls on the iPod touch would be enough.

I hear you can listen to music on this thing

With all of the added functionality, one might almost forget that the iPod touch is also a damn fine music player. When it comes to playing your music, there is very little difference between the iPod touch and the iPhone. If you don't feel like reading the relevant section of the iPhone review, I'll briefly cover how listening to music works on the iPod touch before I move on to a discussion of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store.

Touching the music icon brings up the heart of the iPod, its music player. If your iPod is in a vertical orientation, you'll be able to scroll through your music collection by playlist, artist, song, or album.

Browsing by album

As you can see in the image above, browsing mode is controlled by your selection at the bottom of the screen. Once you come to your desired selection and hit play, the screen is filled with the album art. The slider at the bottom controls the volume, and you can quickly navigate backward and forward via the two buttons at each end of the bar containing the artist's name, song title, and album.

The view is the same on both devices

If you rotate the iPod touch, it switches to Cover Flow mode. Cover fFlow will be instantly recognizable to both iTunes 7 users and iPhone owners. It allows you to quickly browse through your album collection by moving your finger across the screen.

Cover Flow

Once you enter Cover Flow mode, you can select which song you want to listen to by tapping on the album. The album image will flip over, and you'll be presented with a list of tracks from that album.

Selecting a song from Cover Flow

The only downside to Cover Flow is that you can't adjust the volume from this view. If you need to crank the volume to rock out to a favorite, you'll need to turn the iPod back to a vertical orientation so the volume slider is accessible again. If the iPod touch had volume buttons on the side like the iPhone, this wouldn't be an issue.

Speaking of volume, the iPod touch is noticeably louder than the iPhone. When both devices are cranked to maximum volume, the iPod touch is much louder.

Shopping for music from your iPod touch

For the time being, the biggest advantage the iPod touch has versus the iPhone is access to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Put simply, the iTW-FMS is a front-end to the iTunes Store for the iPod touch. It appears to have the same music selection as the iTunes Store you access from your computer, but it lacks podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, and movies. The iPod-centric version of the iTunes Store also lacks celebrity playlists, free download of the week, or spotlights.

If you've got a live WiFi connection, connecting to the iTunes Store is as easy as touching the purple iTunes icon on the bottom row of the iPod touch home screen. After it's done loading, you'll see a stripped-down version of the iTunes Store, formatted for the iPod touch's relatively small screen.

The first thing you'll see is a list of featured new releases. Touching any of the songs listed will take you to the album "page" on the iTunes Store. You'll have the option to buy the entire album if it's available or individual songs. If there is a DRM-free version available, the price will be $1.29 instead of 99¢. If nothing on the Featured or Top Ten lists catches your eye, you can browse by genre and find your favorite artists that way.

Browsing the iTunes Store from the iPod touch

It's also quite easy to search. Simply touch the search icon on the bottom of the screen, and the keyboard comes up. As you're typing, the iPod helpfully provides you with some autocomplete options. Select the one you want, and you're transported to a results screen.

Searching for the latest from The Boss

When looking at your search results or simply browsing through the store, you can listen to 30-second previews by touching the album art to the left of the song. The preview will begin playing, and the album art will be replaced by a slick-looking animation showing you how much time is left in the preview.

The clock is ticking on the 30-second preview

Touching the price button changes it to a Buy Now button. Pressing it again prompts you for your password. Once your password is entered, a Buy Now button "flies" down to the Downloads icon on the bottom of the screen, and the download begins. You'll be prompted to enter your password each time you buy some music—at least I was.

You'll need to enter your password to buy a song. The better your password is, the more
irritating this will be

If you buy some music, the next time you sync with your PC or Mac, the music you bought from the iPod will automagically be transferred to your computer. You'll also see a new category on the left-hand panel of iTunes 7.4. Under the STORE heading, you'll now see a "Purchased on iPod Touch" subheading.

The only glitches I encountered in using the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store came the first time I tried to access it. It was very slow, taking upwards of a minute to move from page to page on the store. It may be that the iPod touch needs to do some serious downloading and processing of data from the iTunes Store the first time it connects. It may also be that my Internet connection chose that exact moment to flake out. Whatever the case, it was a one-time-only thing, and the rest of my experiences using the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store have been smooth.

A quick note about sound quality

While I enjoy music, I'm not a hardcore audiophile. Back in the distant past, I began ripping my music collection as 192Kbps MP3s. Once the iPod arrived, I switched to 192Kbps AACs, and then 256Kbps AAC. When I actually buy a CD these days, I rip it using the Apple Lossless codec. 

No matter what the bitrate, the music is all pumped through the same set of white Apple earbuds. Doing a quick listening test between my 5G iPod video, my iPhone, and the iPod touch revealed no discernable difference in audio quality. After some more in-depth testing (e.g., switching back and forth between the same songs on a 5g iPod and the iPod touch using the same earbuds), I was able to detect some subtle differences over a small selection of pop, metal, electronica, and classical music.

I'm having a hard time quantifying said differences, but here goes. The touch sounds a bit crisper at the high end, but the 5g iPod is a tad fuller sounding overall. Both devices seem to offer similar response in the low end. The difference is subtle, however, it took me several listenings of the same songs to figure out what it was and put it into words.

I also experienced a bit of song skipping when using Safari and listening to music. It didn't occur until I had three rather intensive pages open at the same time. The skips were very short and spaced apart. And by "skips," I mean two skips in about 10 minutes of listening.

A tale of two screens

In the brief time since the release of the iPod touch, there has been a lot of commentary about the quality of the LCD used in the device. The biggest issue reported so far appears to be the negative black effect observed by Apple-Touch.com, also reported on Apple's discussion forum. In a video posted there, you can see that the blacks are not only muddier on the iPod touch, but that the effect is almost that of looking at an LCD from a bad angle.

Negative black effect rears its ugly head. Image used with permission of Apple-Touch.com

The good news is that the problem doesn't affect every iPod touch. After a lot of examination, I have failed to see the negative black effect in any of the images or videos on my iPod touch. That's cold comfort for those early adopters that have a bum screen, however.

There are two ways to talk about the iPod touch display: in isolation and in comparison to the iPhone. If you have never looked at the display of an iPhone, the iPod touch display will look good. The 480x320 pixel 3.5" display looks gorgeous. It's large enough to make watching a video an enjoyable experience. Photos look vibrant, and using multitouch, you can zoom in to see details.

Place an iPod touch next to an iPhone, however, and you end up with a different picture. Compared to the iPhone, the iPod touch display looks a bit duller, dimmer, and has less contrast than that of the iPhone. You can see the difference below in these images from Dave Chappelle: For What It's Worth. In all comparison images, the brightness was turned up, and the ambient light sensors were turned off.

Left: iPhone. Right: iPod. Click image for full size

Left: iPhone. Right: iPod. Click image for full size

In both images, you can see that the display of the iPod touch is definitely dimmer and less saturated than that of the iPhone. There is more detail to be seen in the darker areas of the iPhone display.

Top: iPod touch. Bottom: iPhone. Click image for full size

You can see the difference again in the above pictures. If you look in the upper left of the images, you can see more detail from the iPhone display. I have uploaded the original image at 1200x900 if you want to check it out. Both the original photo of the flowers and the picture of the iPod touch and iPhone were taken with the same camera, a Canon PowerShot A80.

There appears to be a very real difference in the quality of the LCDs used for Apple's two latest touchable handhelds, and it would be nice to see Apple use the same LCDs across both lines. That said, I didn't really have anything negative to say about the iPod touch display until I started doing comparisons; on its own, it's a nice-looking display. If I had one of the units with the negative black effect, I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune, however. It may be worth holding off on buying an iPod touch until Apple has resolved the outstanding issues with the LCDs.

Comparative screen quality aside, watching video on an iPod touch is a much more gratifying experience than watching it on a 5G or 5.5G iPod. The 3.5" screen makes a difference, and the wider format means that letterboxed video is a little easier to watch. When watching video, the iPod touch automatically switches to a horizontal layout. Touch the screen, and the player controls are displayed. You can go to the previous or past video, pause, adjust the volume, or scrub forward or backward in the video via a slider at the top of the screen. The video-watching experience is in every respect identical to that of the iPhone. 

Miscellany

Old accesories

One of the big questions when upgrading an older iPod is "Will my old accessories work with my new iPod?" A couple of generations ago, Apple moved the headphone jack on the iPod from top center to the top right. As a result, a number of accessories designed for older iPods wouldn't work with the 5G iPods.

With the iPod touch, the news is mixed. I had three older iPod accessories available to me for testing—a Griffin iTrip FM transmitter, the iPod FM Radio Remote, and Apple's video out cable. Long story short, the iTrip worked and the other two spit the bit. I was able to use the iTrip to listen to the iPod touch over the FM radio, which means that the touch will be accompanying us on our next roadtrip.

Plugging the iPod FM Radio Remote brought up an oddly-phrased message. "This accessory is not supported by iPod," my iPod touch told me. As a result, there will be no FM radio goodness on the iPod touch.

I was also unable to watch video through the video out cable I had purchased for my 5G video iPod. Apple is offering a new Component AV Cable that will work with all three of the new, screened iPods. But for some weird reason, the iPod touch will only be able to output video at 480i and 576i, while the classic and nano will support 480p and 576p. You can do better than that, Apple.

Headphones

One of the more irritating things about the iPhone is that your non-Apple headphones may or may not work with it, due to the iPhone's recessed headphone port. This appears to be a nonissue with the iPod touch. I tried a couple pairs of headphones I had laying around, and they both plugged into the iPod touch without a hitch.

That's welcome news for those who may have dropped a couple of hundred bucks on a nice pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Me? I'm pretty happy with the iPod earbuds.

Battery life

Apple advertises 22 hours of music playback and five hours of video playback on the iPod touch. By way of comparison, the iPhone offers 24 hours of audio playback, seven hours of video playback, and six hours of Internet use over WiFi (the iPod touch doesn't provide any guidance for battery life when using WiFi).

My experience with the iPod touch was roughly on par with Apple's guidance. After a full charge, I put the iPod touch to work playing through its entire playlist. After 15 hours, the battery indicator showed that it was about two-thirds drained. After a recharge, I spent about 2.5 hours watching episodes of Beavis and Butt-head. The battery indicator showed that it was a little more than halfway drained afterwards, which again supports Apple's battery life claims.

One caveat: having WiFi turned on and using it to surf the Internet will drain your battery significantly faster. Under this scenario, I came very close to draining the iPod touch battery after around 14 hours of usage. Higher battery usage with WiFi is to be expected, so this is nothing out of the ordinary.

Hacking

This section is going to be a lot shorter than it might be had this review been written a month or so later. It took some time for iPhone hacks to emerge from the community of hackers that sprung up after the iPhone's release, and it looks as though the same will be true of the iPod touch.

So far, there's nothing to report. The iPod touch has apparently proven resistant to the kinds of attacks that worked with the iPhone. That may change down the road, and given the similarities between the architectures of the two devices, the iPod touch may be hacked before too long. But don't make your buying decision based on this factor.

Final thoughts

Apple has once again set the bar high for the competition. When the original iPod came out, it revolutionized consumer expectations for how a digital audio player should perform and what the UI should look like. In the years since then, the competition has tried to build a better iPod and make navigation easier. As a result, the iPod's interface began to look a bit dated, and that may be one of the reasons for the drastic UI changes made to the new iPod nano and iPod classic.

With the release of the iPod touch, Apple has taken a giant leap ahead of the competition. The interface is extremely well thought out and navigating between the different areas of the iPod touch's functionality is a snap. Cover Flow is more than a cool visual effect; it's also a way to quickly navigate through your music library. And if you don't like using it, no problem. You can drill through the list views easily enough.

Like iPhone, the Internet rocks on the iPod touch. Apple has come up with the best mobile browser implementation so far, and it's great to see Safari make an appearance on the iPhone as well. Also, browsing through photo albums is a breeze. In fact, with multitouch, I almost prefer looking at my images on the iPhone over my desktop Mac.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is another winner. One of the frustrations with online music stores is that users are tethered to the PC when buying music. Apple has changed that with the iPod touch. All you need is a WiFi connection, and you can browse the iTunes Store to your heart's content and buy that song you just heard on the radio.

The minimalist iTW-FMS interface takes good advantage of the iPod touch's real estate, and the store's entire music catalog appears to be available as well. Purchasing music is as simple as it is on a desktop or laptop, and your purchased music syncs automatically to your PC the next time you sync your iPod touch.

There are a couple of things that I wasn't so crazy about, however. While I realize that the iPod touch lacks the ubiquitous connectivity of the iPhone (seeing as how it's not a phone and all), there's no good reason for the e-mail client to go missing. At least you can still do webmail via Safari.

While I can see Apple's point of view when it comes to an e-mail client, crippling the Calendar application on the iPod touch so that you cannot add, edit, or delete appointments is just plain silly. There's no reason for this functionality to be missing, and the fact that you can edit contact information on the iPod touch makes Calendar's missing functionality all the more irritating. The Notes application is entirely absent as well.

The screen problems bear watching. I found the differences between the iPod touch and iPhone screens to be very puzzling. Chances are, Apple went with a cheaper LCD on the iPod touch to keep the costs down, and if that's the case, Apple should reconsider its decision. Even if you don't get an iPod touch with the negative black effect, the picture won't look as good as that of the iPhone.

Apple could have hit a home run with the iPod touch by including full calendar functionality along with the e-mail and notes applications. Instead, the company chose to go with a common product differentiation strategy: removing some of the functionality from the cheaper device to make it a bit less attractive than a more expensive product.