Even as the worldwide rollout of Apple’s new iPod touch picks up steam for the official September 28th release, the release is being muddied by lukewarm reviews by early adopters, software issues, and sub-par components. Will Apple be able to correct these issues and pull off a successful launch?
Perhaps the biggest complaint early adopters have about the new iPod is about the quality of its screen. The LCD panel in the touch has been reported by many to have very bad reproduction of darker shades. The problem is especially notable during video playback. One user posting on the Apple Support forums claiming to be an engineer with years of LCD experience brings up the possibility that this issue is due to hurried factories skimping on the very important and equally expensive anti-reflective coating for the screen.1 This would also explain the variation from unit to unit: mine looks fine for example. This is not the end of the screen troubles though. There are unconfirmed user reports of users with iPod touchs with screens that will not turn on, display only stripes,2 or have dead pixels.3 Hopefully, as production ramps up, many of these quality assurance issues will be fixed.
The hardware problems are, however, only the beginning of the issues that early adopters are facing with the new iPod. A few users were shocked to find that their iPods had left the factory with diagnostic software still loaded on them rather than OS X. While the use of a Cheerios box as the icon for “Serial” was slightly amusing, it was little consolation for the people that had brought those iPods home.
Even the users that did receive their new devices with the correct firmware have been coming across rough edges. Most of these seem to be related to the porting of the mobile version of OS X from the iPhone to the iPod touch. There are numerous prompts in which the touch refers to itself as an iPhone.
Perhaps the most bizarre vestige from the new iPod’s shared ancestry with the iPhone is the fact that it shows up as a digital camera when connected to both Macs and PCs. It was first reported in our forums and confirmed by TUAW that iPod indeed shows up as a USB Imaging Device despite the fact that it has no built-in camera. The existence of this pointless feature frustrates new iPod touch users that expected the touch to have the ability to be used as a USB Hard Drive device just like previous iPod models. We can only hope that the touch’s identity crisis will be resolved by a future firmware update from Apple.
Further frustrating new users is their inability to customize and install third party applications on their new iPods. So far, the whole ecosystem of native iPhone software remains inaccessible to iPod touch users. Of course, this isn’t Apple’s fault but it does add to the lukewarm reception nonetheless. Also not strictly Apple’s fault is the fact that many Mobile Safari optimized sites, such as meebo.com, do not yet work. This is because they depend on detecting the browser’s User Agent to decide which version of their page to serve to mobile devices, and Apple changed this on the touch. While Apple cannot be blamed for this, they could have warned web developers or kept the User Agent string identical, especially since they have publicly promoted the web as their only supported iPhone/iPod touch development platform. As the launch continues, many of these services will update their detection routines to also identify the touch.
Many people upgrading to the iPod touch from previous models have also complained about the hit-and-miss compatibility with older accessories. While in many cases this is simply due to technological incompatibilities and may be corrected in future firmware updates, in the case of video it is planned. Apple now requires video output cables to have a built-in proprietary authentication chip in order to work. When combining the fact that this renders many old video cables and docks obsolete with the anticipated $50 price of the new cables, it is understandable that customers are getting upset.
One or two days ago on IRC, one user shared a story about his local Apple Store. That store had received 18 units of the iPod touch early and they sold out pretty quickly. A few days down the road, twelve out of those eighteen had been returned due to screen and software issues. While it is impossible to verify the veracity of this anecdote, it is not hard to believe. As a loyal Apple customer (Original iPod, iPod mini, Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPod touch) I truly hope that Apple can get their act together and do this launch correctly. Until then, the touch’s will keep finding their way back to the stores.
Article copyright 2007 by Bobby Georgescu.
1 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1134707&tstart=0
2 #iTouch irc channel on irc.osx86.hu
3 http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1136129&tstart=75
Hello
d’abord félication pour ton article, et d eplus je vois que tu es francais d’origine…
Moi je vis a MOntréal et j’ai commander mon touch le jour de la Keynote et plus j’attends son arriver, plus je suis inquit de la qualité..
d’AUTRES PERSONNES DE MONTREAL
September 17th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Ipod Stuff » Did Apple drop the ball with the iPod touch? says:
[...] OLGn – Gaming News Network – PC Games, PlayStation,… wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptDid Apple drop the ball with the iPod touch? September 17th, 2007 Even as the worldwide rollout of Apple’s new iPod touch picks up steam for the official … launch? Perhaps the biggest complaint early adopters have about the new iPod Posted in iPod touch hacks ( 85 links from 69 sites) [...]
September 17th, 2007 at 11:11 am
What is the “bluetooth” logo doing on the diagnostic screen of the Touch? Does that mean we have a bluetooth in our iPods that will be “unlocked” by some future firmware update? Or is that just another remain of the iPhone system?
September 17th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Yeah, I think they did a little and I think that these will be ironed out ‘very soon’… they wanted this thing out before the christmas rush… they’re very well aware of the ‘blogosphere’… this will be sorted… those who say ‘never buy a 1.00 version product’ from apple are right again…
September 17th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I’m gunna wait a few months for apple to get their act cleaned up, and for it to become Jailbreakable before i buy one.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
After purchasing mine saturday morning, and having a chance to play with it for a day to see how craptacular the screen is, I brought it back today (Monday) for a full refund. At the apple store, they didn’t even mention the standard 10% restocking fee.
September 17th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I’m worried about does recent incidents at apple. I was a Windows user for a long time (12 years now…..), but two years ago I switched to Apple. I immediately liked my new iMac. Apple was always a synonym of good quality, nice prices, a lot of fun and “think different” to me. But with the release of the iPhone and the fact that you must use a very expensive contract with a mobile phone company (and it looks like it will be the same here in Europe), I started to feel a bit negative about the whole thing. And now those quality issues with the Ipod touch’s screen and the only half baked Mac os version , which pops up iPhone errors, I really start to have serious doubts about it. I mean we are paying a lot of money for those devices, and as Apple fans or Ipod fans we expect an excellent quality for what we get (as it was in the past). And this is not the way Apple used to operate, and I hope that Steve Jobs and the rest of his team in California can recover fast from this incidents, and deliver us the quality like they always did, with no compromises.
P.S. : First I was also a bit disappointed when I saw the arrival date of my iPod touch ( Europe :28th september-October the 2nd)when I ordered it, but now I’m actually happy about it, because I hope that they will fix the screen Problem…..
September 17th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Hmm, I wont start complaining until I see problems on or after the actual launch. Why Apple decided to release this early batch before launch I have no idea, but hopefully the launch stock will be updated to a functioning firmware version by then. The screen problems… hopefully it will work out for me, otherwise there is a one year manufacture fault guarantee, right?
September 18th, 2007 at 5:03 am
I purchased mine last Saturday at the Legacy Village Apple Store on the east side of Cleveland. Apparently they had only received 5 to their store and they held one for me until I got off of work. I didn’t actually read anything about these strange issues with the screen until I was actually using my iPod Touch reading macrumors.com’s forum about the iPod Touch. I quickly changed out of the browser and loaded up an episode of the Office, and then Hot Fuzz and didn’t see any problems with mine. I’m guessing either I got lucky, or that the one I have might have these same problems but on a much smaller level. Hopefully this kinda stuff will be sorted out, and not to mention be able to get new applications soon. Fingers crossed for some type of update to both the Touch and the iPhone after this Euro iPhone event.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:23 am
My biggest complaint about the iPod Touch is that whenever I try and use Safari, more than once in any given session Safari decides to lock and close out. Also, I have trouble using the Google online mail. I can’t use Meebo either. I had to go with Beejive for IMing.
My other gripes are small ones. 1) Not having a text editor to write reminders on or keep a grocery list on and 2) Not being able to add or subract from ical directly from the iPod Touch.
I hope those things will be fixed in future issues. I thought, why wait for the iPod Touch 2nd gen because Apple had already released the iPhone and had fixed problems with it. I thought the iPod Touch would have those bugs fixed too. Nope. Safari did and maybe still does, have the freeze and shut down on the iPhone. Maybe I didn’t understand well enough but I thought the iPod Touch was using the same (but slimmed down) version of OSX just like the iPhone. Was I wrong?
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I got my hands on the iPod Touch a few days ago. Here are the downfalls:
1) If you dont have iTunes already installed or you are using version 6 you computer will recognize iPod as an external camera. If you do have iTunes installed, but are using version 6.x then iTunes does not recognize the iPod. It took me an hour to figure out that I needed to download version 7.x; Of course the small box comes with NO getting started manual so your left wondering if you have a faulty pod.
2) The calendar is missing the plus sign so you can add and agenda to your daily calendar. Why have it installed in the iPod if you can use it???
3) The iPod is missing a lot of the software the iPhone has that I want. For instance, the text, camera, stocks, maps, weather, notes, and mail are absent!
4) Internet websites, provided you are using Wi-Fi, are limited. Sites that of which play videos or animations may require you to download a codec which of course the iPod will not let you. You can not download ANYTHING from the internet.
Other than that this new iPod rocks- i was very impressed with the screen quality, despite wide reports of major issues. The internet also is very user friendly and extremely easy to navigate.
I believe that Apple, Inc. is really going to hurt on sales if they don’t add the great features the iPhone has installed on it already.
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Nathan: Text is the SMS Application on the iPhone and requires cellular access.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
iPod touch 1.1.1 update is out says:
[...] of the bug fixes seems to correct the iPod’s identity crisis which we previously reported on. In this new update, the touch is correctly identified as an iPod in [...]
September 27th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
iPod touch officially launches says:
[...] a rocky rollout and early shipments to stores and some online buyers, the iPod touch officially launches [...]
September 27th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I’ve written up an extensive review of the Touch on my blog here: http://www.creativecreature.ca/blog/?p=31. I haven’t run into the screen or iPhone-leftovers problems mentioned in this article, but there are innumerable software issues – some of them bugs, many of them intentional and frustrating handicaps implemented by Apple. I had also assumed that I could use the iPod Touch hard drive as a USB drive, but as pointed out above, OS X recognizes the device as a camera rather than an external drive. And (because of this?) Senuti (http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/) doesn’t work. Arg!
October 1st, 2007 at 9:53 am