iPod touch : the new PDA?
At their “Let’s Rock” event a couple of days ago, Apple unveiled the latest version of the iPod touch. The already thin iPod touch got a bit thinner, and a bit classier, with a metal body.
New features include built-in speakers, hardware volume controls and built-in Nike+ transmitter. It also has a new firmware update, version 2.1 which brings among other things the Genius recommendation service, which optimises your song groupings.
Apple spent a lot of time at the event doing demonstrations of games, for example Spore Origins, Need for Speed and Real Soccer. While the iPod touch has a long way to go in order to replace the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP any time soon, it makes a pretty decent PDA already.
In terms of software, the iPod touch has a pretty good platform already. You get email and calendaring as default, and these two support synchronization with Microsoft Exchange. The contact list is integrated and quite full-featured, too. The other two default applications that Palm has are Notes and To Do list. While the Notes feature on the iPod touch is nothing to shout about (it doesn’t sync, for example), we now have a big enough base of third party software that we have multiple options for Notes and To Do, and many are available for free.
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