It was with shame last night that I noticed myself scouring the reports from WWDC ‘10 for news of a next generation iPod Touch (there was none, incidentally).
It all began a couple of years ago, someone brought one in to work. I was on the lookout for a new MP3 player, having used one of these since 2001…
Yeah, I got all the ladies.
It was a PDA, to help me organise my busy jet-setting lifestyle, which involved cycling to work, doing menial IT tasks for teachers in an age where floppy disks were still the primary medium of data transfer, and then cycling home again.
It cost me £500, so I made damn sure I used the hell out of it, which mainly involved to-do lists, solitaire, birthday reminders, reading books (yes, I read books on it) and listening to MP3s.
Strangely, by 2008, it didn’t seem all that much of an antique. PDAs still did pretty much the same thing, with pretty much the same hardware and software. Then I saw an iPod Touch and realised that someone had made a PDA that wasn’t clunky to use. It did all the same stuff as my PDA, except it was lighter, had a battery that lasted for days, had a better screen, and made me look like less of an epic geek. And cost half as much.
So, I immediately bought one, and realised afterward that I had finally entered the House of Apple. Two weeks ago I took delivery of an iPad. Last night I was thinking about my next iPod Touch.
You got me, Apple. Using your computers feels like driving a car using only the pedals and gearstick, while wearing a Michelin Man suit. Your little iDevices, though, are exactly what I wanted mobile devices to be like in the 21st Century.
