Livin' the life...

OK! About two weeks ago I took a trip to Birmingham with a couple mates just to check out the shops and such. Now, because I'd been to Birmingham a couple times before, I had a basic idea of the city centre so I quickly got us from the train station to the closest mall (in the Bullring). When we walked in, something strange, that I had never seen before caught my eye... it was a big.. white.. apple (click to see picture of what I saw).

Well! To be honest (even though I'm a Windows fan), I was quite excited at this illuminating apple and what it meant so I immediately broke away from the group and walked into this .. apple.. store.

The first gadget to greet me was a small thing that looked somewhat like a laptop but, a "wee" bit cooler, probably it was the sleek white exterior or the playful looking interface and GUI on the screen! So, naturally, being the Computer Person I AM, I hopped over and browsed it for about 2 minutes BEFORE!! I heard the term.. something'-touch' mentioned behind me!!!

When I turned around to feast my eyes on this device, I heard slight singing in the distance, and bright, bright, lights coming from its direction.. then.. oh then... I saw.. thee iPod touch. ( <- If I were an emoticon that would be me! ) .. And guess what!? I could PLAY with it!!!! Oh it was fabulous! The first thing I did was try to check out some music and videos, but sadly there were none! so next up - the browser! (One thing I always wanted to know was if it really works as seamlessly as the portray in the adverts! With the zooming and typing etc. Also, it's worth noting here that the device uses Wi-Fi access.)

First, I started typing in a URL, and it even had a drop-down of options to choose from and I think a history! After getting the hang of that (I think typing aspect is the biggest -ve, unless you have tiny fingers!), reality set in and I surfed directly to www.jasonnurse.com ! The site loaded pretty quick and was easily viewable and navigable! Next, I tapped once to zoom, used my finger to drag around the page a bit then accessed the blog link with a touch of my finger. Interestingly the blog page loaded great as well! (I did not do a full test obviously though because as I'm sure you can imagine, there were other people were waiting to give Apple's newest device a go.) After accessing one of the posts, I wanted to zoom back out to access another link, so, what do I do? Just.. 'pinch' the screen! Ouuuu. (forgive me but this was just plain cool.)

Drawback? Probably the biggest thing to note is that there's only one button off the screen, so probably 92% of contact will be with the touch screen interface. A problem can arise here simply because the keys are a bit small or because your fingers are too big! Many times I had to retype URLS because I pressed the wrong key!

Otherwise though.. and probably in general, I was/am totally wowed by the iPod touch. If I had the £199 (lowest price - 8GB), that would probably be on the list of potential gifts to myself for Christmas! Alas, at that price.. woo.. I think I rather stick to something less extravagant.. Probably the Resident Evil trilogy on DVD??

By the way.. when viewing a web page, if you turn the iPod touch horizontally, the page turns as well and you can view it landscape.. To return to the normal view, simply return it to its vertical position, even though, for me this didn't work sometimes and I had to get help getting it to work!

Anyway! Nice apple, macBook, iMac, iPhone, iPod touch.. nice.