iPod Touch Bugs

[theanimaster]

Here's a list of the downsides and the bugs I've found within just a week of using the iPod Touch:


Stopwatch has no data saving
The ol' 5th gen's stopwatch was so much smarter! It had the ability to record different sessions and display it on the iPod or download it to your mac in text format. The iPod Touch's Stopwatch seems like an unfinished implementation without the ability to save this data. You can only view one session or reset it for another session.

No Song Lyrics
All that screen real estate and no support for viewing those hard-searched for and copied and pasted lyrics!??? Was that even a question to Apple's designers "Umm.. you think we should just leave this out or what??" Sure, Album Art is great at that big size... but do you think people think you're doing something by staring at your iPod's album art?

No disk mode
A real biggie. You can no longer store anything on your iPod without punching in unix commands. The iPod doesn't show as a disk volume whatsoever on PC or Mac. Plus side of this is that you can disconnect it from a PC or Mac without ejecting it on your desktop - provided it's not in the progress of syncing.

No Apple Mail
What? WIFI and SAFARI but no MAIL??? Cmon... it LOOKS like the iPhone... and WORKS like the iPhone. Why no MAIL?

No music library search function
You've got the ability to type at a nominal speed through a software keyboard -- yet there's no ability to search your library of 3,500 songs through a search function. Is it coz it's already easy to flick n' find? Aww, c'mon.

On the Go implementation is still stupid
What if I hear something I like and I want to press something to put it "on-the-go"? How many steps does that take? Well, ONE is not the answer to that question. Rather than just press a little bookmark button for music, you still have to go to the "on-the-go" section, and then press a couple of buttons more.

Cover Flow Bug
I found this cool bug (irritating when you're trying to use cover flow properly) that goes FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP.... all the way through all your albums in coverflow until it gets to the end of the list (or you tilt the iPod back into portrait position to interrupt it). To make it happen you need to press a certain area at the edge of the screen on either the left or right side.

Unresponsive Scrubber
While quickly navigating the controls of the iPod I managed to make the timeline scrubber unresponsive. I got it back to normal by pressing and holding the skip back button.

Volume Limit previews TERRIBLY (and dangerously)
In the older 5th gen iPod the Volume Limit settings let you preview the volume levels wherever you scrolled on the volume bar. On the iPod touch it only previews the LOWEST volume setting! If you drag the slider to a lower volume it sticks to that level, and doesn't increase the volume when you try dragging it back up! This is VERY inconvenient when you're trying out higher level caps (which most of us will be doing duh). So say you drag the volume bar down in the Volume Limit settings, but then drag it back up. It won't preview a louder sound, but when you go into your music with your earphones (or my iPod HIFI in this bad instance) it goes BRRRRADOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!! If I blew out my HIFI that way I'd definitely be suing Apple over this.

Music NOT Playing
In some cases, when you pause a song abruptly (how can you NOT pause it abruptly??) that song will play a little bit more when unpaused and then *BAM!* it stops and skips to the next song on your list. When you try playing that song again, it will do the same thing again. Reset the iPod by holding down the sleep/wake and the home buttons for 5 seconds...

Static
When skipping songs, you'll hear a prominent static 'pop'. Fortunately this 'pop' isn't there when the iPod goes from one song to another by itself... just when you manually go to the next song. It can be annoying.



Flippy album mode
I managed to get Lemar's face plastered to the album view in music mode instead of a nice black background. But yes, I know Akon is black too, har-har.

Accelerometer is a bit lazy/quirky
One of the most complained about thing on the internet is true. Sometimes it flips when you don't want it to, and it doesn't flip back when you want it to. What the-??

Quick controls initially don't work
If you haven't read my introduction, then you better, otherwise don't be wondering why the double-click home button controls don't work for ya.

Ambient Light sensor?
The iPod has an ambient light sensor near the top-left of the iPod. You can see it as a small little circle under the glass face with the correct lighting. I've had little experience with these sensors (my iMac has one), but probably enough to tell you that if you cover the sensor with a finger or any other opaque object, the screen should dim down, thinking that the light outside just got darker, and it should go brighter if you shine a light onto it. I wasn't able to test shining-a-light at it (I don't have my nice, small maglite with me now) but when I covered up the sensor with a finger, I didn't notice any change in the brightness of the display. Whether it works or not, I dunno. You do get some feedback when you turn "auto brightness" in the settings menu on and off.

Flickering?
In the dark and connected to my iPod HIFI I noticed the screen flickering between dim and bright. Either this is related to the ambient light sensor or it's just the dodgy power fluctuations and ungrounded circuit in my home.

Live Updating Not Working
In iTunes I've made a Smart Playlist called "favourites" that includes songs with 3 or more star ratings. On my 5th gen iPod this updates itself on the iPod if I play around with the star ratings on the iPod (or iTunes). It works. On the iPod Touch however, it doesn't work quite so well, and to get it to behave you need to either reset the iPod or turn it off, then on again. With the said playlist on the iPod Touch, songs aren't removed from it when I reduce the stars down to below 3, and although songs are added to the playlist when I turn the stars up, the songs don't play (and the iPod skips to the next song in the list). This is VERY irritating, and mind you, I don't fancy resetting my iPod just to refresh a smart playlist. This wasn't necessary on the 5th gen iPod, why would it be necessary here?

Despite the all the bugs and buggers though... I'm still very happy with my iPod Touch I just hope Apple gets an update to fix all the problems soon!
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250GB HD / 20" / 2.0Ghz / 2GB / iMac G5