iPod Touch

[tongodeon]

I just ordered a 16GB iPod Touch. I like the iPhone but I don't like the evil 2 year contract, and it will also be nice to double my current Nano's storage space.

One disappointing feature: the Touch doesn't appear to be so iphone-like that it's got an internal microphone and speaker. Whether it's hackable or whether Apple just starts allowing

Comments

[tongodeon]

I understand that the exclusivity deal applies to the iPhone, but the iPod isn't an iPhone right? It's not like the deal forbids Apple from selling *any* devices that are capable of telephony. Apple sold me a MacBook and I'm pretty sure it will work with Skype.

Or maube you're telling me that Apple will never allow third-party applications to be installed on any handheld system because one of those third parties might some day write an app capable of transmitting sound. That would be disappointing.

[mister_borogove]

Or maube you're telling me that Apple will never allow third-party applications to be installed on any handheld system because one of those third parties might some day write an app capable of transmitting sound. That would be disappointing.

You'd need to crack the unit, and add compatible mic hardware, and deal with a crappily written 3rd party app cobbled together out of 19 open-source libraries, and then and only then would you have a VOIP phone usable anywhere you want as long as it's near an open Wifi access point. At that point wouldn't the AT&T deal look pretty attractive by comparison? ObJwz: "Linux is only free if your time has no value."

[tongodeon]

You'd need to crack the unit

That's explicitly what I *wasn't* talking about. Of course it's possible to cobble something together and force it into the product, but I was hoping that Apple would realize that people buy hardware and software because it's useful, and would release SDKs to allow third parties to develop and install software to make the products they sell as useful as possible.

Unfortunately if what dr_strych9 says below is true, Apple would rather dominate a niche than expand that niche into domination of a burgeoning market: the mobile computing industry. I don't see compact mobile computing going away anytime soon, so I guess some other company will get to be the Microsoft of compact mobile applications. Microsoft, for example.

[mister_borogove]

I'm with strych9 on the probable scope of the AT&T contract; IOW, Apple won't allow unapproved 3rd party apps, and won't approve VOIP apps, til the AT&T exclusive goes away.

[tongodeon]

Microsoft are. I was kinda hoping that Apple was interested in taking some of that marketshare by rolling out competing products that don't suck, and I'm frustrated that they have developed exactly such a product which they are simply choosing not to sell.

It's like when a pharmaceutical company develops a new anti-malarial drug and then decides to only market an isomer that works as a boner pill. You've already done all the expensive R&D. You sell the products you've developed, I give you American Dollars to purchase them. Why is this a problem?

[mister_borogove]

The iPod line of products are not general purpose computers. What little I know about how they're engineered tells me they are almost certainly never going to be.

The iPod line and the iPhone line converged today, and the iPhone is, under my definition, a general purpose computer. (Even the older iPods aren't far from one, actually.)

[crisper]

You can define it however you want, but you ain't the one making it, of course. I'm using my iPhone every day, but it's not a general purpose computer - for the simple fact that we didn't make it one, not for any other reason.

[mister_borogove]

It's also "divine."

[mister_borogove]

See tongodeon's "hackable" link above. "Anything that isn't nailed down is mine; anything I can pry up isn't nailed down."

[haineux]

Dude, iPod Classic allows, via the Dock, you to attach stereo audio-in. I'll bet that the iPod Touch provides this same electrical connection, and either already has, or will have, software to record audio.