Yes … I touched one! When I was skiing on Sunday at Park City Resort I started down one of the runs and happened to see something laying on the slopes. At first I thought “Uh oh … someone lost their iPhone!”, but instead it was an Apple iPod touch.
Woohoo! Finders keepers? No … but it was my chance to take a look at an iPod touch. I have to say that I am very impressed with the UI. Amazing. It has the Jobs touch.
I dropped the iPod in my pocket and figured that I would notify lost and found when I was leaving. In my rush at the end of the day I got home and remembered that I had the iPod … so I figured that I would play with it and give the lost and found a call. The UI took me only a few minutes to learn, and it really was smooth, and operated like I would have expected … and beyond what I expected. The main menu provided access to the core features, and scrolling with my finger was simple. I really liked being able to ‘flick’ a long list of songs and see it scroll smoothly and quickly down the screen at the proportional speed. You could even attempt to scroll in the wrong direction and you see a strange, almost natural looking, “stretching” against some simulated elastic stop.
The unit that I found was an 8GB iPod … far too small for what I like to carry around with me. I’m still using my 80GB iPod video which is $50 less than the $299.00 price tag on the iPod touch 8GB. I do have to admit that the UI was truly impressive though … an amazing experience.
Well … I looked through the music collection, which was quite varied, and then hit the Settings button where I found the owners name. I then went to Contacts and found there was a record with the full details of the owner – cell phone, address, etc. I called her Sunday night and left her a message … one that I’m sure she never expected to get.
Yesterday I met the owner of the iPod touch up in Park City and returned it to her. It was fun to see her happy to get it back. She gave Andrea and I a little gift, and a card with the following paragraph:
Karma: usually understood as a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing, or will do. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present, and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to them and others.
It got me thinking about another post that I’m going to write. It was fun getting to play with the iPod touch … nice experience. It was more fun surprising the owner who had lost it!