Well today I decided I would buy another mp3 (or should I say "media") player. I mulled over the Sony Z-1060 64GB and the iPod Touch 4 all week. I was pretty hot on the idea of getting one of the Sony Z's,, very hot on the idea. I had one set aside for me to come in and look at this afternoon, but alas, things went sour and I could not make it into the shopping mall some 25km (approx 15 miles) away,, incidentally, the only place I could locate one - unavailable or very popular and all sold out,, who knows...!!! Anyway, I decided I would have to give in to circumstannce and go local and buy the iPod Touch.
Oh, while I mention "iPod Touch 4",, for those of you who believe there is a Touch 5, think again... I contacted Apple this morning via phone, to verify whether this was fact or fiction and they told me there is No Such Thing as an "iPod Touch 5". I wanted to ask why all the models here seemed to be "4" while the 5th gen's were out there - why??? The helpful guy "Adam" was even surprised when he googled iPod Touch 5 and got zillions of replies, but he assured me - No Such. So there we go...!!!
I tripped down to the local electronics store and got myself the Touch 4 and found it was surprisingly smaller than I thought it would be. Vey compact, no bigger in footprint than the iPod Classic 160GB I have, except a lot thinner. Smiles on my face...
Now, how to wipe the smiles off in minutes... First I powered up and it asked for user input - language, country, etc, then asked to connect to either the internet wireless (picking up all the neighbourhood wireless connections) or iTunes. I chose iTunes,, but nothing happened. It sat there with a screen showing it was trying to connect. iTunes was on the desktop of my PC and NOTHING.... It still worked flawlessly on the Classic 160GB but not the Touch 4. No way, no how... I spent the next 3 hours trying to make a connection and trying to get the Touch 4 to configure and let me at least see the opening screen and all its icons. Not a damned thing. Talk about frustration... I had visions in my head of retruning it and making a mercy dash into the Sony Store 25kms away but I stuck with it, browsing the web and apple.com trying to find the answer. Then after ages of browsing, on some webpage, I caught a phrase out of the corner of my eye which read "if you have Windows 7 64-bit and are trying to use the normal 32 bit iTunes, it will not work"... Ahhhh hahhhhhh...!!! I have Win 7 x64... But now, that's got to be a load of B/S as it works fine on the Classic,, but it may be worth a try. I downloaded v10.6.325 64-bit and installed it. The Touch 4 was still USB plugged in to the PC and as the iTunes finished installing, the Touch 4 made a weird sound and appeared to be operational and more inportant - rcognized by iTunes... Yipppeeee...!!!
In a matter of less than 2 minutes of messing around on iTunes store, I had the Touch 4 up and running, but the personal details I had to give to register and get it going was not welcomed... At this point I have to say that if you have to have iTunes connected to the internet to actually get the iPod Touch and/or any other iPod to even work then this is not a nice way for apple to introduce you to a piece of its technology. To me it's intrusive and underhanded. Anyway, it's working now...
I've never had any touch type gadgets before but the Touch 4 was super easy to set up and get going. I re-arranged the icons the way I like them and copied over my 5 or 6 hundred songs and about 20 movies and began to listen and view in relative harmony. Setting up the graphic EQ was a bit painful as unlike in the Classic 160GB, I just coundln't quite find the better setting to grace my ears but settled for , oh I can't remember, one of them, and away I went. The sound is very similar to the Classic, reasonably good and the videos like District 9, Alien (1 & 2), No Country For Old Men, Jeepers Creepers (1 & 2) seem to work well. Nothing oustanding but certainly well enough for my eyes and ears...
I still wonder what the Sony Z would have gone like. I might have to find out in the future...!!!
Oh, while I mention "iPod Touch 4",, for those of you who believe there is a Touch 5, think again... I contacted Apple this morning via phone, to verify whether this was fact or fiction and they told me there is No Such Thing as an "iPod Touch 5". I wanted to ask why all the models here seemed to be "4" while the 5th gen's were out there - why??? The helpful guy "Adam" was even surprised when he googled iPod Touch 5 and got zillions of replies, but he assured me - No Such. So there we go...!!!
I tripped down to the local electronics store and got myself the Touch 4 and found it was surprisingly smaller than I thought it would be. Vey compact, no bigger in footprint than the iPod Classic 160GB I have, except a lot thinner. Smiles on my face...
Now, how to wipe the smiles off in minutes... First I powered up and it asked for user input - language, country, etc, then asked to connect to either the internet wireless (picking up all the neighbourhood wireless connections) or iTunes. I chose iTunes,, but nothing happened. It sat there with a screen showing it was trying to connect. iTunes was on the desktop of my PC and NOTHING.... It still worked flawlessly on the Classic 160GB but not the Touch 4. No way, no how... I spent the next 3 hours trying to make a connection and trying to get the Touch 4 to configure and let me at least see the opening screen and all its icons. Not a damned thing. Talk about frustration... I had visions in my head of retruning it and making a mercy dash into the Sony Store 25kms away but I stuck with it, browsing the web and apple.com trying to find the answer. Then after ages of browsing, on some webpage, I caught a phrase out of the corner of my eye which read "if you have Windows 7 64-bit and are trying to use the normal 32 bit iTunes, it will not work"... Ahhhh hahhhhhh...!!! I have Win 7 x64... But now, that's got to be a load of B/S as it works fine on the Classic,, but it may be worth a try. I downloaded v10.6.325 64-bit and installed it. The Touch 4 was still USB plugged in to the PC and as the iTunes finished installing, the Touch 4 made a weird sound and appeared to be operational and more inportant - rcognized by iTunes... Yipppeeee...!!!
In a matter of less than 2 minutes of messing around on iTunes store, I had the Touch 4 up and running, but the personal details I had to give to register and get it going was not welcomed... At this point I have to say that if you have to have iTunes connected to the internet to actually get the iPod Touch and/or any other iPod to even work then this is not a nice way for apple to introduce you to a piece of its technology. To me it's intrusive and underhanded. Anyway, it's working now...
I've never had any touch type gadgets before but the Touch 4 was super easy to set up and get going. I re-arranged the icons the way I like them and copied over my 5 or 6 hundred songs and about 20 movies and began to listen and view in relative harmony. Setting up the graphic EQ was a bit painful as unlike in the Classic 160GB, I just coundln't quite find the better setting to grace my ears but settled for , oh I can't remember, one of them, and away I went. The sound is very similar to the Classic, reasonably good and the videos like District 9, Alien (1 & 2), No Country For Old Men, Jeepers Creepers (1 & 2) seem to work well. Nothing oustanding but certainly well enough for my eyes and ears...
I still wonder what the Sony Z would have gone like. I might have to find out in the future...!!!
