Rotten Apple

Did anyone hear of the new iPods launched last week? No? Then you've missed out on some earth-shattering news.

I've become quite the Apple fanboy in recent years. Last week when I heard that Apple was due to announce a slew of new iPods, I almost pee'd my pants. I found a website (Gizmodo, you guys rock!!) that was doing a live blog from the event and stayed with them as they blogged about buying coffee and bagels on the way to the Moscone Centre (where the event was held) till they announced new new iPod line up. Boy was it an exciting morning. Here in Singapore, the event started at about 1 am and I tracked it till about 3 am. Then, I waited some more till the Apple online stores updated their webpages with the new devices. I eventually retired to bed close to 6 am, tired but smiling.

I am in love with the new iPod Touch. It looks exactly like the Jesus phone (which I got to play with a few weeks ago) but without the phone features. It has a full touch screen interface except the home button at the bottom of the device. To watch videos in landscape mode, just turn the device from portrait position to landscape and the screen switches automatically. It comes with wifi so that you can connect to the Internet at any public wifi hotspot. It also has iTunes built-in and from any wifi hotspot, you can buy your tunes then and there. And for the Java (coffee, not the programming languange) junkies, there is even a tie up with Starbucks such that a Starbucks icon pops up if you're in the vicinity of one. You can then check out what tracks Starbucks is playing, listen and buy them on the spot. But I believe this feature is available only in the States for the moment.

Here's where things go very wrong and I truly hate Apple for it. The iPod Touch has a built-in calender that allows you to enter your appointments and alarms via its virtual keyboard. But a recent report said that Apple has intentionally disabled this feature on the iPod Touch, even though it shares the same software architecture as the iPhone. I think this is what they call "artificial product segmentation". So, its there, it works, but Apple won't let you use it. Its like I go to work and my boss ties one of my arms to intentionally make my job harder.

My usually high opinion of the Cupertino-based company has dropped more than a couple of notches.

Nevertheless, the new line up of portable music / video players from Apple is still impressive. I've got the Apple store open in another window and I'm just itching to click "Buy Now".

What else is new, right?