The iPod touch Coming Up Short? A Thorough Analysis.

The iPod touch has created a remarkable schism in the Apple community. There are those who feel certain that the device is as compromised as a Pontiac Aztek, something trying to be good at everything while failing in every regard (though the touch wins the looks battle inasmuch as it does not resemble a geometry proof regurgitated by Jabba the Hutt). There are also those who are wondering just where all the consternation is coming from, the iPod touch is a freaking iPod after all. Those people have a good argument; the touch didn’t receive six months of hype like the iPhone did, it isn’t Leopard or even a breathlessly cool iApp, the iPod touch is just another gadget.

Software Woes

Perhaps the most bewildering omission of the touch isn’t a physical limitation but seemingly arbitrary software limitations. One huge complaint: where is the e-mail client? It seems to be a valid point of contention, since the iPod touch has Wi-Fi and a browser for web use. It isn’t too much of a reach to think that if the iPod touch can hop on a Wi-Fi network to download data to display web pages that it should also be able to download the data necessary to display e-mail messages.

For the true Apple fans there are a myriad of reasons that the iPod touch lacks an email client. The omission is usually forgiven as a move by Apple to differentiate the iPod touch from the iPhone. This is a difficult reason to stomach, as generally when a product is capable of doing some obvious thing with no inherent drawbacks, purposely limiting the functionality really pisses people off. In fact, it is that kind of thinking that makes the iPhone appealing. Where Verizon (and others) go out of their way to make sure you use minutes to get files from your computer to your phone, the iPhone seems to make the process very easy. As Apple should know from mistakes with desktop machines, building in differentiation where none exists (like putting a 32 bit processor on a 16 bit bus) is a recipe for failure. If the equipment is able to handle the task, let the equipment perform it.

Once the “differentiation” issue is dismissed as, at best, a mistake by Apple, the workarounds start. Explanations run from “you can use Gmail to check all your accounts” to “hacks will surely come and you can use those to run an email client,” and so on. All these answers are great for the technically hip, the Linux users out there, but not so good for Apple’s target market. Most people want their device to work without resorting to hacks and such. The final explanation is that it simply isn’t Apple’s fault, the fine folks at Apple wanted a client on the thing but the music industry stopped them. That makes a lot of sense, you don’t want people e-mailing songs back and forth while they are out and about. Think of the piracy, think of the children! The argument stops making sense as soon as you try to mail a file with an iPhone. Go ahead, try mailing a file with a non-hacked iPhone.

At least one Apple Matters writer seems intensely irritated by the lack of an editable calendar on the iPod touch. Thinking the iPod touch would have an editable calendar when it doesn’t have e-mail is like wondering if the car you just bought that doesn’t have seat belts has airbags. The lack of an editable calendar is actually easily understood for two reasons. First, the calendar app on the iPhone is so weak you’re better off using a web-based calendar. Second, the iPod touch provides a smooth writing surface for all your analogue calendar needs.

No Wi-Fi Sync

As maddeningly hard as it is to comprehend the lack of an email client for the iPhone, it seems equally hard to imagine why Apple wouldn’t allow you to sync the iPod using Wi-Fi. You have a Wi-Fi router, your computer has Wi-Fi, your iPod could be updated with nary a cable! And Steve Jobs hates cables almost as much as he hates buttons. A win-win, right?

Turns out there is a very good reason for this, it just isn’t apparent until you give the matter a little thought. Most tests put the iPhone (and presumably the iPod touch) somewhere in the 3500 Kbps range for Wi-Fi throughput. Performing conversions we find that it would take around 5 hours and 20 minutes to fill an 8 GB iphone. Obviously a 16 GB iPod touch would take over ten hours. A mythical 160 GB iPod with Wi-Fi? More than four days. To sync your iPod touch over Wi-Fi, you’d have to make sure the thing was plugged in. If you’re plugging it in…well, you can imagine the derision heaped on Apple if the company created a device that had to be plugged in to complete a sync over Wi-Fi.

But these are one time deals; if you are syncing for the first time, waiting ten days for a sync over Wi-Fi might put you off a bit, but what if you only add a movie and a few songs? The question makes sense, after all most folks aren’t completely refilling their iPod touch every time they sync. Imagine you’re just adding The Life Aquatic and enough songs to round out the transfer to an even 2 GB. Wi-Fi sync speeds will give a transfer time of about two hours. If you used USB your iPod is ready to go in under ten minutes (theoretically a 2 GB transfer could take as little as 35 seconds but the real world is different from stated specs, count on waiting a minute or two).

Clearly, this is a case of Apple deciding what is best for the consumer by not enabling in easily added functionality. If you’re wondering how other cell phones get away with using the slower Bluetooth protocol for file transfers, remember that a Motorola RAZR V3x tops out at 512 MB; feel free to do the conversion yourself, but the reason that most handheld devices can do a Wi-Fi sync and the iPod touch can’t has more to do with storage than Apple trying to force you to add another USB card to your PC. With the Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth) file transfers demystified, it is time to turn our attention elsewhere.

Why is the only hard drive in the iPod Classic?

The iPod nano is flash and comes in 4 and 8 GB versions, it is deliciously small and wide. The iPod touch tops out at 16 GB and the iPod classic stores an order of magnitude more data with an upper data limit of 160 GB, and while both tower over the nano in size, few would argue that they were a burden to carry. But how much storage is enough?

The original iPod, the hard drive with a headphone jack that sparked Apple’s resurgence, had 5 GB of storage. For music, given the listening habits of most, 5 GB is plenty. Perhaps Apple had hit the ideal storage capacity right out of the gate? Why that notion may hold true for audio (more on this later), the new iPods don’t just do audio, the little wonders still won’t toast bagels but they all do video. Video requires more storage than audio and thus one would expect larger storage to accommodate video files.

Take a look at the choices:

8 GB nano:
7,000 photos
2,000 songs
8 hours of video
Battery life: 24 hours for audio or 5 hours for video

For the nano owner the game breaks down as follows:
they can listen to 480 songs per charge
they can look at (assuming 5 seconds per photo) 3600 photos per charge
they can watch 3 movies and 2 thirty minute inane sitcoms

The iPod nano’s storage exceeds charge ability each time. In other words, in every instance you’ll have to head back to the computer to charge the device before you exhaust the library (since stand-alone chargers are a thing of the past).

If this pattern holds with the Pod touch (we’ll find out in one moment), you can see why Apple has the idea that maybe it is okay to eschew the hard drive.

The iPod touch fares a little better than the nano:

16 GB iPod touch:
14,000 pics
4,000 songs
16 hours of video
Battery life: 22 hours for music and 5 hours for video

The interested reader can figure the ratios out for themselves, but it is obvious that the iPod touch’s storage far outstrips the device’s battery life.

The picture doesn’t change with the shuffle or the iPhone. Every current iPod (and likely every iPod) can hold more media than a single battery charge can play. The obvious conclusion is that as long as storage exceeds battery life, the issue isn’t really with the amount of data an iPod can hold.

Surely there is some comfort in carrying your entire library with you, you want every piece of media you own in your pocket, right? No shame in that, you never know when the urge to listen to the complete works of sloshy might strike with the irresistible urge equal only to the unstoppable (and unignorable) aftereffects of a salmonella burrito. Except if you’re charging the iPod anyway, a few smart playlists and all…

Which is an overly technical solution to a largely nonexistent problem. How many people really want to be bothered with setting up a playlist? Let alone setting up one that will actually transfer the data they desire? The answer is “not many.” Luckily that isn’t necessary, if your media library outstrips your iPod’s capacity iTunes will take care of that chore for you and it will do the task in a surprisingly intelligent manner.

But wait, even Apple’s built in solution is overkill. We all know someone with 40,000 songs in their library or someone who has shelves full of DVDs they’ve ripped into their computer. You might be one of them. Here it is necessary to decouple ourselves from the world of iTunes and think about the larger picture. For that we need to look at the specs of the iPod classic.

iPod Classic:
160 GB
140,000 pics
40,000 songs
160 hours of video
Battery life: 30 hours for audio and 5 hours for video

This is a device that bears no resemblance to people’s actual viewing and listening ability, let alone habits. Even if you could watch all the video on a single charge you would have to devote 6 days and 16 hours to the task. Want to listen to every song on an iPod classic? Prepare to devote nearly a month to the task. Somehow having enough media in your pocket to occupy yourself until you died of dehydration seems to be the equivalent of planning a little light reading before bed and grabbing the Oxford English Dictionary. Maybe you’re different, so just for fun, review your personal listening and viewing habits. Go to your iTunes library and count the number of songs and movies you’ve actually listened to and watched. Compare that to the specs of the iPod classic.

Once that exercise is completed most people will argue that they use their iPod to transfer files and such. Fantastic, but then you’re not really after a media player so much as a portable hard drive. As far as portable hard drives go, there are better options than an iPod.

Others will argue that a hard drive iPod and the touch screen interface of the iPod touch can never be married because the resulting device would simply be too large. This is an interesting argument if for no other reason than that it is wildly fanciful. Apple could, with little effort, cram a hard drive in the iPod touch. On the other hand, it might not be the svelte device some think it would.

Some facts to get out of the way:
Flash requires lower power than hard drives
The screen of the iPod touch requires more power than a hard drive based iPod classic
Batteries are only magic to the denizens of the 17th century
Just because you think something isn’t overly bulky and ungainly doesn’t mean Steve Jobs agrees with your assessment

How big would a hard drive based iPod touch be? It won’t share proportions with a Lego brick but it will be substantially bigger than the current iPod touch. Just how much bigger? Glad you asked!

There are two easy paths here: you can take the iPod classic and try to cram a touch screen onto the thing or take the iPod touch and shove a hard drive into the gadget. But wait, there is more to it than that. As mentioned before, the iPod touch has a big screen and a big screen uses more power. Some of the increased power requirement is offset by the use of flash memory, but that offset isn’t enough to make up for all the electricity the screen is gobbling up. So if you’re going to jam a big screen on the iPod classic you’re going to have to add some more room for the battery.

So just what is the result of marrying the iPod touch screen to an iPod classic? First let us consider things we can get rid of. Obviously the small screen can go; this is going to be an iPod, not a Nintendo DS, so one screen will suffice. The scroll wheel can also jump straight into the hopper. From the iPod touch we can ditch the Flash chips. Not surprisingly, these deletions don’t add up to much in terms of volume.

Which leaves us with the things we have to add to the iPod classic. Of course, we’ll have to Krazy glue on the screen assembly (use electrically conductive Krazy glue). The battery will also have to be beefed up. I struggled mightily trying to find a relationship between battery size and milliamp hours (mAh), with little luck. My mistake was lack of specifications for the newest iPods, making a relationship difficult to establish. Fortunately, Wikipedia reveals that, as expected, there is a relationship between battery volume and mAh. Since we know that the iPhone features a 1400 mAh battery and the iPod touch’s battery is 81% of the volume of the iPhone’s battery, we come up with a mAh rating for the iPod touch of 1134 mAh. We further know that the iPod classic uses a 430 mAh battery (according to iLounge). Which is a long way of saying there shouldn’t be any problem meeting performance specs if we use the iPhone battery in the first version of the iPod touch classic.

All that is left to do is add the increase in size up. My calculations reveal that using the standard parts used in the current iPods, the iFranken touch would be about 5 mm thicker. So the iPod classic with the new screen and better battery would clock in at 18.5 mm.

The other option is to jam a friggin hard drive in the iPod touch. Things that can be lost? Not much. Things to be added? A bigger battery and a hard drive. Things are worse in this case; sure we don’t have to add the screen (a substantial source of bulk), but we do have to add in the volume occupied by the bigger battery and the hard drive. Realizing that the hard drive alone is 8mm thick, calculations reveal that the iPod mutanttouch will likely be about 18 mm thick. Give or take.

What, both the iPod classic touch classic and the iPod mutanttouch turn out to have about the same thickness when made into a hard drive based device? The answer shouldn’t be a surprise (those things are crammed pretty tight) and the things being added aren’t easily fiddled with. There could be some space saved by rearranging things, but the reality is that a hard drive based iPod touch would be much thicker than any of the other current iPod offerings.

If you’re wondering if the iPod Beeb (the name for the collective models of our imaginary iPod) exceeds some mythical Jobsian limit for iPod thickness, the answer is no. The thickest iPod was a non svelte (in comparison to current models) 19 mm. The hard drive based iPod Beeb is, obviously, a completely achievable device. That is, the device is doable if you don’t mind comparatively ungainly looks. Does ugly design bother Steve? Who is to say, but unconfirmed rumor has it that he once had someone beaten and tossed in a dumpster for wearing a shirt where two buttons had been unbuttoned.

When all is said and done, the only real question is: is Apple’s offering a decent product or not? If you look at the specs carefully, the answer is yes. You can twist the iPod logic to conclusively prove that the iPod touch is awesomeness with a capital A. the trouble is that going through the above calculations and logic, while valid reasoning, doesn’t really matter. You can’t possibly expect a consumer to be bothered to calculate how long a Wi-Fi sync would take or how much bulk an iPod touch classic Beeb silver edition would require. You can’t even reasonably expect a consumer to realize that because of charging requirements, carrying around 16 GB of music is not so different from carrying a moped in your trunk (and on the moped would be a powered skateboard).

Hence, the answer is not the slam dunk it should be. In a world devoid of the iPhone and useless GB creep of the average iPod, the iPod touch is the best iPod ever by a ballistic missile shot. In a world populated by the iPhone the answer isn’t quite as clear. Are you getting the most capable iPod ever or are you buying a crippled iPhone? A space limited classic? Both answers are correct, and that is the problem. Apple, the company that promises easy no-brainer solutions and clear differentiation of products, has failed to come up with a product that doesn’t seem lame when compared to other models.