Sunday, November 04, 2007

Dear iPod Touch...

Dear iPod Touch,

We've know each other only a few weeks now and I thought I'd write and tell you how I feel. I must say I really love your interface, and the way you seem to be just the right size and weight. I also love some of your little idiosyncracies like the fact you understand enough to stop whenever I pull out your earphones, and oh! your glorious flick scrolling and pinch resizing. That really touches [sic] me.

(It's in fact so sweet that I'll forgive you making me scroll for hours and hours to find 'United Kingdom' in the countries list on (badly designed) website registration pages... oh, and the fact that your cousin; 'Old Shuffle' herself, had a really handy play/pause button always there when someone interrupted us while we were in full swing... and then there was that night when the clocks changed and you got so high on your own moonshine heaven knows what time you thought it was until my laptop reminded you. But no matter, nobody's perfect)

But it's not all sweetness and light. Why oh why can't I have Flash in your browser? And why can I only access paid for content with your iTunes and not also my lovely free podcasts? (your evil nemesis Zune can do just that by the way) And when will I get access to the lovely mobile gmail that others waxlyrical about? But most of all why wasn't your SDK published from the very beginning? I feel like you're holding back on me.

I must admit that I was eleated when you showed me Remember the Milk's lovely ode to you (even better than Facebook's but don't let them know that) but your browser doesn't support Google Gears yet so I can't go offline; and that, to be honest is my real problem with you. Where we now live (the UK), ubiquitous and free internet is just a little bit too far away to make you the rounded package I thought you would be when we started this relationship.

Perhaps, yes, it was the crazy insanity of that night in New York when we first met that made me forget there were such practical issues to consider. But I, in my crazy, over optimistic way thought we'd soldier on, and perhaps we can. But it'll be on slightly different terms. I'm home now and despite what you melodiously sing to me each day, we aren't in Silicon Valley any more and we're going to have to wait for the full power of the new age to reach us over here. I'm hoping we can have good fun doing it. Lets try shall we?