I'm sure you may have seen my last post, all giddy about the new ipods. I was just leaving, so I saw the iPod touch Introduction, thought I had it figured out, and left, unknowing of the price or capacity.
There I was, in class, all ready to drop 600 on my 80 or 120 or (gasp!) 160 gb top end wide screen iPod!

Then, what do I see? Oh. My. God.
16 GB

Are you serious?! You FINALLY made the widescreen, BEAUTIFULLY displayed picture we've been asking for, and you crapped out and put 16 GB in therE?!
Great, that's like, 20 movies? Not bad, excluding my 40+ GB of MUSIC!

What the hell?

Well, I guess I'll be saving some money, buying the 160 gb iPod Classic.

I thouroughly enjoy that one too, but you know, I wanted multi touch and widescreen!

Oh well, I'm still VERY happy with the product refresh, just syaing that after years of begging on our parts, Apple's first stab into the widescreen video market comes with pathetic storage space.
The people who have been begging for this upgrade are also likely the "hardcore" users, who wanted GOBS of space.
I think we'll still be sticking with the classic now.

And, 40 HOURS of music playback in the 160 gb is freaking insane.

I'm with you on this one.

I headed straight to the Apple website and was all ready to order but as soon as I saw the 16GB capacity, I called to see if it was a misprint.

It wasn't.

I laughed at the lady on the phone.

16GB. I had that much in lost clusters before and didn't other to recover it.

I'll be a tad ticked if Apple doesn't ship Touch with a wired remote. Not a la iPhone, though, limiting the remote to Apple earphones was a dumb move. I'm hoping for something like the current remote/FM radio (this is assuming that the current does not work with Touch).

I'm in the same boat with you regarding capacity. I was reading the iLounge updates and saw "iPod Touch"and ... well, I crapped my pants. Then, as I refreshed I saw the 8/16GB capacities and my heart sunk. Don't get me wrong, I'll own one (having something that thin is just too enticing, along with web browsing and wide-screen movie moving), but I too hoped for a higher capacity.

No Touch for me. If it had had even 80 gig, I would have bought one. As it is, I'm sticking with the "Classic" 160 gig. There's really not even much of a choice for me since I already own an 8 gig iPhone. No reason to shell out that kind of scratch for a PMP with such a pathetic amount of storage when the Classic has a huge drive and a nice price. I don't really care about thinness.

Apple has really torn us consumer this time. No product in the line up it perfect, except the Nano. As for the bigger ones it's either: lots of capacity or lots of features. I want sometime in between.

The nano? I would say that the new nano is far from perfect, really.... The screen is too small to be practical for any realistic video playback, and the size and form factor are more awkward than the previous nano. Further, it hasn't had any realistic capacity increase -- merely a price drop.

I'm in total agreement... and personally, I feel that Apple's really taken a wrong turn with this line-up. I mean, what's the point of having that great, widescreen for videos with those pathetic capacities?

At this point, the vast majority of those people who invest in the upper-end iPods wouldn't be able to fit a 10th of their music collection on 8GB... to say nothing of any videos they may have. Clearly, flash storage shouldn't yet be used for high-end iPod models if Apple can't even offer 32GB while keeping it affordable.

And even more dissapointing, the Touch seems to have the same limited bitrate tolerances that all other video-enabled iPods have had. They could've at least pushed the H.264/AVC max up to 2000 or 2500kbps.... if only to compensate for the VBR transcoding used by pretty much every program which seems to produce watchable videos. IMO, this aspect of the original 5/5.5G iPods was one that needed some work. I've only really found 2 or 3 programs (Nero Recode, Handbrake) that consistenly produce high-qualtiy H.264/AVC videos without constant audio-sync or video glitch problems. Unfortunately, though, you can't encode anywhere near 1500kbps for many videos with fast motion due to the VBR... I can't recall how many times I've had stuttering videos on my iPod due to this. At this point, I've given up having reasonably high-quality H.264 videos on my iPod at all.

Apple has become far too obsessed with making their products thinner and thinner. Personally, I'd rather not own something that feels like I could snap it like a twig, were I so inclined. IMO, the depth of the 80GB 5.5G is thin enough for something with its general dimensions. Any thinner borders on the ludicrous. I would've gladly accepted a little more depth to the Touch model in exchange for the use of the 80GB HDD used in the 5.5G. That capacity, at least, would've made it worth consideration. From the looks of this, I'll be sitting this generation of iPods out... unless Apple releases a HDD-based Touch model in another 6 months. Though I'm probably just going to start looking at alternative products to suit my needs.

I don't know what to do. I have 38 GB of music and that collection is constantly growing. Obviously I can't listen to all of that at once, but I'm a completist and like to carry everything around with me. Up until a month ago my iPod Photo was working fine, so I hadn't already converted to putting videos on my iPod. I've been using a 2G 4GB iPod nano since then and was planning on making the switch. At first I was deadset on just getting higher capacity, but the iPod Touch is beautiful and more reliable with flash-based storage. I was thinking about ripping DVDs onto my computer, but I won't be able to fit any videos if I get the 16GB. But the YouTube feature means that most of the TV shows I watch will be on there, albeit illegally.
Should I just go w/ the disappointing in interface iPod classic in order to get the high-capacity or go w/ the disappointing in capacity iPod Touch and just uncheck over 1/2 of my music collection?

Quote: (Originally Posted by manders4001)
I don't know what to do. I have 38 GB of music and that collection is constantly growing. Obviously I can't listen to all of that at once, but I'm a completist and like to carry everything around with me. Up until a month ago my iPod Photo was working fine, so I hadn't already converted to putting videos on my iPod. I've been using a 2G 4GB iPod nano since then and was planning on making the switch. At first I was deadset on just getting higher capacity, but the iPod Touch is beautiful and more reliable with flash-based storage. I was thinking about ripping DVDs onto my computer, but I won't be able to fit any videos if I get the 16GB. But the YouTube feature means that most of the TV shows I watch will be on there, albeit illegally.
Should I just go w/ the disappointing in interface iPod classic in order to get the high-capacity or go w/ the disappointing in capacity iPod Touch and just uncheck over 1/2 of my music collection?

I'm in the same seat as you. I will buy an iPod classic 80GB and buy a 32GB iPod touch when it comes out next year. There is no way I'm going to shell out 400 dollars for a 16GB device which doesn't satisfy you one hundred percent.

The touch is not really dissapointing in my view, it just doesn't warrant a purchase from me. I'm sure they'll go hard disk based one day, but I am in agreement with the first post in that I was surprised Apple went with flash for the iPod that has been hyped for well over two years now.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Surf Monkey)
No Touch for me. If it had had even 80 gig, I would have bought one. As it is, I'm sticking with the "Classic" 160 gig. There's really not even much of a choice for me since I already own an 8 gig iPhone. No reason to shell out that kind of scratch for a PMP with such a pathetic amount of storage when the Classic has a huge drive and a nice price. I don't really care about thinness.

That really caught me. It's £159 for an 80gb classic or £199 for an 8gb touch... I realise that the touch has a lot better interface, but still...

Plus I'd go for the 16gb anyway, and that's like £260-270.

Shame, I really do like the Touch.

The Touch should have been and easily could have been just as revolutionary as iPhone only in different ways. It could have been a highly focused media player that took everyone in the industry out of the game. But Apple delivered what amounts to a neutered iPhone. They didn't even tweak the physical design much. It's practically indistinguishable from iPhone in most respects. That's lazy, disappointing and down right insulting if you ask me. Apple is capable of better, but coupled with the drastic iPhone price reduction it's clear to me that the money is more important than the innovation right now. That's a sad thing to have to say about a company that has never failed to inspire me for the last 18 years... until today.

IMO Apple should have waited with Flash in the iPod touch until next year when they will be offering 16GB and 32GB flavors. In the mean time they should have offered hdd based iPod touch

16GB totally sucks.
They should have canned the iPod Classic and put a hard drive in the iPod Touch.
A very stupid move in my opinion.

For some people, this is going to be tough. From what I've seen, those people are very vocal. But here's my situation. I have two iPods, a 30GB Video and a 2GB Nano. If I had to, I could use the 2GB nano as my main iPod. How? Smart playlists. Just make a series of playlists of your 1000 most listened songs and you're good to go. 1,000 songs anywhere is really quite astonishing. We take what we have for granted. I have about 13GB of music, plus a good amount of videos, and for me, the 16GB is ideal, but I may even end up going with the 8GB. It wouldn't be a big deal for me at all really. Smart playlists are the feature in iTunes, seriously.