Apple iPod touch 32GB (2nd Gen) Comments

"If you don't want one you probably don't want a portable player at all. "

Oh, Hugo, why did you do it? The review was going so well. Not everybody wants an MP3 player simply to pose on their preferred method of public transport. Some want portability or higher audio quality or storage and so on so forth. Some of the great unwashed actually never worry about what the reat of the general populace think of what they are using as an MP3 player. Really, it's true.

I'll sit back and watch with glee as you carefully probe your way out of this minefield ;-)

It still just doesn't push the right buttons for me. It's just another run of the mill Apple product that excels in software design (excluding itunes from that sentiment of course) and just fails at the hurdles of hardware, looks, sound quality and price.

The price it asks demands such simple things as an FM radio, better file support and more. The looks, although subjective, to me is just as bland and boring as an old grey generic computer case that's been given a paint job, and had an Apple logo stamped on it. And if you buy an Apple player, sound quality is obviously nowhere near the top of your list, although sound quality certainly isn't bad in iPods, Apple backs it up with truly terrible headphones and file support, so it might as well be.

I admire the Apple software engineers for what they do (excluding iTunes again), especially considering the stuff they are given to work with. I own a Cowon D2, but I think pretty much everyone can see that the Samsung YP-P2 is so much better value for money then this player, and comes with the arguably better feature of bluetooth, rather then Wi-Fi.

Personally I don't mind iPods (I have what is now known as a "classic" although admittedly only due to my Cowon X5L being stolen and the iPod being the only player that my insurance would get me)

But what I think Apple miss out on (or their users) is the audio quality. I like the touch interface whenever I've tried a mates (although I can never get to grips with the onscreen keyboard no matter how often I try) and it *is* nice being able to browse the web using Safari but, to me, the main point of any MP3 player is playing music to sound as good as possible and on this Apple don't seem to be trying that hard (or not as hard as other manufactorers)

Now maybe to some the quality of the music isn't important (my mum has a nano and is very happy with it - even with stock buds! urgh!!) and if the quality is fine to most of your consumers what's the point of trying to make it better but to me it matters so I'd like it to be as good as possible.

@ Hugo

Ok, I'll try go through your points :P

First, I believe I can criticise the touches hardware, multi touch is a hardware feature, yes. And I agree it is very nice, and a great feature. However in other areas the touch is lacking, we may not see eye to eye on this but I think a radio on an mp3 player is a great feature and considering how cheap it is I don't think the inclusion of one could ever be seen as a negative point. And I love being able to record the odd song of the radio while listening to it with my D2, not a requirement I agree but If I'm paying for a premium player I'd hope it has all the features I may only have a use for once or twice.

For the file support, and I have to heavily disagree with your point of 'only pirates ask for this' since if you wanted to look, you'd see 99%+ of all pirated music is in mp3. As for me I rip all my CD's in .OGG partly because it sounds great, mostly because it all that jetaudio supports ;). Again I have to make the same point as above, if Apple wants me to pay twice as much as their competitors they better give me more features, even those I may not have much use of too often (although a player that can play .OGG is a requirement for me now considering I have about 50+ CD's ripped into .OGG).

OK, maybe I was a little harsh about the design, however I'm a large advocate of design needs to be interesting and look good to catch my attention. For me the general range of Apple products looks bland, and in my eyes it just doesn't look good, and the touch follows that Apple trend and just doesn't interest or pique my attention.

And it's not that Apple bundles the bad headphones in that I'm complaining about because let's be honest pretty much every manufacturer does it, it's the fact that these headphones sound just completely awful yet to Apple seem to be worth a large replacement fee, and the scary thing is people actually buy them...

And I have to disagree that iTunes isn't a bad piece of software, compared to it's major competitor Winamp it is slow and drains a lot of resources. And compared to the organisational skills of MediaMonkey iTunes falls flat on it's face. And on top of this they insist on packaging programs with it that you haven't asked for like Bonjour (which iTunes works just fine without) and Quicktime (which is handy but If I need it I'll get it separately).

And you keep going back to piracy, I'm no pirate but I'm clued up enough on the subject to know that itunes doesn't have any problems dealing with mp3's of which 99% of pirated albums are made up of.

And the on the WiFi vs. bluetooth thing, I think you missed the word 'arguable' in my initial comment. For me bluetooth is the better option, as I like not having wires trailing all over my person, and personally have no need for WiFi as wherever I go that has WiFi already has a computer there of some description. WiFi for me is of limited use you see, whereas for you it may be great. There's no doubt I'd like to have it, but the simple fact is I don't use it enough to justify the extra cost.

And on the YP-P2, I said much better value for money, which it is. It's almost half the cost of the iPod touch and comes with 80% of the features, if you can live without WiFi I believe it's a much better choice.

love ipod touch and love iphone.. the only thing i havn't got my head around this new toy is that black plaster on the top left corner?? wot's that?

Seriously.. you don't buy an ipod because of it's features.. you buy it because it's a fashion statement/symbol whatever.. and you pay a premium price for this... fair enough...

if your an audiophile or need a specific feature, or your an old school winamp user and you hate itunes (or whatever the reason), you'll buy a different player...it's that simple..

i love iRiver and the new products from Cowon look very promising, but they are just not as "hip" as the iPods, according to the masses (apple really knows how to promote af product). imo players from cowon and iRiver are as good, if not better, as the iPods..

it's a wifi antenna, mate :D the original had it, and the original iphone disguised it as that lower plastic half (so you know you've got it the right way around)

i'm still puzzled as to why microsoft refuse to release the zune outside the americas - if anything, it'd stop apple dropping the classic, and hopefully will also offer superior audio quality.

arh... antenna is king.

anyway nowadays, the bigger the size, the better. Let's all develop a complex over it.

I sat next to someone on the train yesterday who was playing a game on his Touch, and it looked great. I was sat next to someone today and all I got was noise through his headphones.
So the message I guess is, if you want a piece of kit that looks good but should sound better, this is for you.

I've also got to question whether the usability aspect is worth so much more cash. I tend not to shift around between tracks too often. If you're listening to a playlist, how many times do you need to glide your fingers across the screen?

Er, time warp? What's this doing coming back?

If i was in the market for a mp3 player then of paramount importance to me is the quality of the music reproduction and secondly its connectivity to a home hi-fi.
As a phone the iPhone is just to big for me to be thrust in a pocket and in my line of work (welding and fabrication) it would not last five minutes. The main purpose of an iPhone for me would be as a phone.
If you look at the Touch from the viewpoint as an organiser it hits all the right buttons for me. The interface simply just works, its smooth, fast, effortless.
For me the Touch walks all over the iPhone which is in truth a Touch with a phone tacked on.
The simple fact is that if the Touch does what 'YOU' want then its a good buy and in that respect it works for me save the price even though i would go for the 8GB version as my Bucks Fizz and Cliff Richard music collection should just about fit on that.

I would hazard a guess that the iPhone and the Touch were designed at the same time or at least the intention was to strip down the iPhone in the future to a music player. I cannot believe that Apple designed the iPhone and then some bright spark thought "hey that would make a good iPod".
I would not carry a Touch around with me at work either, it can be close at hand though, a phone however has to be on my person.
For me the iPhone is not better value because i do not require or want the 18 month contract with O2 or the the minimum price plan which is still to expensive for my needs.
Its horses for courses ....... of course if you bods here want to try a real days work instead of being namby pamby office type bods i would be more than delighted to let you put your iPhones through a day of welding, grinding, blood and sweat at my employment works ......... i will even take you to Starbucks at lunchtime if your good boys so you can flask your (by then damaged) iPhones off, may even let you rip my Cliff and Bucks Fizz tracks to your phones. ;-)

lol. sometimes the comments are more interesting than the reviews.

i've never seen the point of a touch purely as an mp3 player. i think its far too big and expensive and the lack of physical playback controls just annoys me, not matter how amazing multi touch is. i don't want to have to pull out my player, look at it and touch the screen to have to use it.

it'd be great as a pmp but the format support is just rubbish. and i don't see the point of wifi on so many mobile devices. i've had it on my last few phones but networks are always encrypted these days meaning i only use it at home where i could just as easily use my laptop to get browse the web more quickly and easily. to me, taking out the phone part loses a lot of the utility. i'd want permenant connectivity.

*looks for where i used the word crap to describe the iPhone* - nope, cant see it.
No worries anyway Ed, i was giving you a gentle ribbing, you need some smilies for these replies.
Oh ........ Starbucks is crap though, so no lunch there i am afraid ;-) beer though, anytime.

The ipod touch is but a passing gimmick. The iRiver iHP-140 is THE King of the Music players. Had mine for 4 years now and it still has more features and more advanced features than any other player on the market today.

It's battery still lasts for over a days play (user replaceable) , FM radio, optical in/out, 40GB HD (upgradable), support for every codec going, great recording quality from inbuilt mic or line-in, great sound quality...I could go on!

@ED - Off your high horse!

Not everyone wants or needs video on an MP3 player, after all they are primarily for playing music, there are tons of better and cheaper gadgets out there for playing video. Obviously you are a form over function type with more money than sense...£300 for a iPod Touch is stupid. BTW the 'ugly-as-sin brick' (agreed, but what do you want to do - wear it?) can be had for peanuts and is almost 4 years old.

Now how about you go get some perspective? The ipod touch is hideously expensive and has a poor feature set, everyone else has outlined the annoyance with it's link to iTunes. Your way out of touch.

oh and before you go in to another point-by-point defence (as above), i'm not saying that the Touch isn't good for some people, only that there are a lot of better and cheaper options out there for people who care about music quality, feature set and who appreciate non-DRM music & drag and drop functionality.

I'm planning to treat myself to the apple ipod 32GB for Christmas. What i'm wondering is when I was reading the review on the audio formats it says it does not offer support to WMA but says it can always be converted to MP3 format using the Apple iTunes software.

What i'm wondering is, is it easy to do? Reason i'm asking as alot of my files that I have downloaded are WMA.

Hope someone can help,

Sorry if this question has been covered already but I am new to this site. :o)

"Sound quality lacks a little energy"... it's more than that, the fricken EQ distorts on any remotely bassy setting unless you run ReplayGain on your entire library, the trade-off being you lose like a quarter of your volume. This is why I won't touch any iPod. It's an unarguable fault.

That, and there's no custom EQ.

to be honest ive recently bought the new ipod touch and its rubbish!. sound quality is dreadful and all it ever does is freeze. samsung are so much better.
: ^ (

I still don't understand why so many people like the iPod Suck.

iPod's audio quality will never touch that of Sony's/Cowon's/iRiver's solely because Apple believes a buyer can be bought by just gimmicks.

And by the fact that Ed's been brainwashed, I guess Cupertino's brainwash machine was successful.

Well Rickysio, I just saw your comment and I think you're totally wrong and very far from the point too. I'm sick of all this stuff about people saying the iPod Touch's sound is very average and that Sony/Cowon and IRiver are better. That's not right at all, what is the right thing to know here is that the ipod touch sounds very good... if you buy the right kind of headphones for it! It's simple really, the headphones that come with these mp3 players, you don't use them, you use better ones! That's your problem. I was thinking of buying myself a Cowon iAudio S9 the other day but to be honest I don't think I'll bother it looks pretty naff really compared to the iPod Touch 32GB. For one thing you don't even get 32 GB with the Cowon, if you get a Touch with some nice headphones like Shure (what I just bought) you'll find the sound is beautiful, very crisp clear as hell and has the most wonderful bass you've ever heard. I've just been spending lots of time recently looking at info on the net about MP3 players and now I know it won't be anything other than the Touch I'll be getting, sod the rest of those makes, they're years behind the Apple interface anyway. Whoever goes and puts down the iPod Touch, before you open your big mouth and say stuff you don't know what you're saying go and buy better headphones first, take this from somebody who has read masses of stuff already (ME) haha. P.S also put 'good' sounding mp3s onto your iPod too and not naffy sounding ones, go and learn what you're doing with audio first, use something that sounds nice.

Hmm... What makes you think I haven't?

I *do* own an iPod Touch. It's web-browsing abilities cannot be understated, but the lack of flash leaves much to be desired.

And about the headphones part. What makes you think my headphones are stock headphones? Why don't YOU take this from ME instead, try out a Sony S63XF series WITH your NICE headphones that ONLY YOU have.(P.S. I suggest you buy a pair of decent IEM [In Ear Monitor, just cause you probably didn't know that, being what you are.] or a pair of cans instead - Although judging by your fanboyish screams of joy at the Touch's sound quality, you can't afford something like that.)

What makes you think your audio knowledge even skirts mine? Granted, I don't know many things - It can't be helped, but by the way you're going about it I guess you just read Apple's product pages and proclaimed yourself an expert.

Please, when even a moderately deaf person can hear the distinct Sound Quality difference between a Sony walkman and the iPod Touch (For the record, I borrowed a pair of Shure SE530s[A model way out of your budget, buddy. Don't steal them, okay? And make sure you actually get the SE530 instead of the SE102... Not sure if you can even differentiate them.] just for the sake of testing, and S639F>iTouch.), you should really get your ears checked.

Well actually before you started spouting off about your opinion is so great and almighty I actually changed my mind in the end and decided that I'm gonna get the Cowon, but it's nothing to do with anything you said. Personally I wouldn't take advice off someone like yourself who must spend considerable amounts of time going around the net and studying people's posts and comments and then spending even more time working out word for word just how you can make the biggest comeback ever and also make yourself look like a bit of a fool at the same time. So you think that these headphones are out of my price range? Well what would you know about what I can afford anyway, well absolutley nothing! Go and stick your remarks elsewhere cos they don't interest me. I don't need my ears testing you dummy, again some snide comment you've invented to make me look smaller than you so you can be the big head about what you 'think' you know about mp3 players. Well all this time you took in writing your post I am merely just posting this straight back to you word for word cos I'm not a poser like you. Somebody like you is too busy thinking you know better about the ipod and such but if it came to the crunch you wouldn't have the intellect to create these electronic devices. I would probably have more chance myself in understanding these things. Besides everything you have no idea who I am and are merely just turning my words around to suite yourself. In a word, plonker!

You know what?

Whatever.

I could, but I can't be bothered to argue with you any further. Not only is it a waste of time, it also kills my brain cells to attempt to drill some sort of common sense in that impossibly dense skull of yours.

And at least my arguments (Which you are in actual fact twisting and using for yourself, not the other way round.) do not murder the English language.