iPod touch lacks FM tuner but may have BlueTooth
By Jonathan Schlaffer
In my opinion, Apple has certainly outdone themselves with the iPod touch being basically the “phoneless” iPod people had been clamoring for. In fact the only feature the iPod touch doesn’t have is the phone function and bluetooth connectivity, but it might have bluetooth. I don’t want or care for BlueTooth functionality, there are distortions on almost all BlueTooth headphones and data transfers over BlueTooth, namely media files, go ahead, wait all day.
BlueTooth is good for wireless keyboards and mice but nothing more, why do some think this function is needed? To be honest I do not know but these people may yet get their wish. An image that was over on Apple’s German site had the iPod Touch displaying a BlueTooth icon next to the battery meter (which has now been taken down). Look closely:
It could be possible that the image was simply reused from an iPhone but the only wireless indicator is WiFi without the cellular logo. There is no doubt in my mind the preview images in the gallery are photoshopped or mockups and while not a glaring oversight has lead to more Apple fanboy speculation.
I’m not going to say it does have BlueTooth and I’m not going to say it does. What I am going to say is that it is unlikely that the iPod touch has BlueTooth because if WiFi, mobile OSX, YouTube, FaceBook (and several other apps) isn’t good enough for you then that’s your problem. I’d be happy if Apple NEVER supported BlueTooth in the iPod touch because for me it would be a waste of perfectly good battery life.
Then there are the “it doesn’t support enough formats” or “it doesn’t have a FM tuner.” If WMA, AAC, MP3, MOV and WMV support isn’t good enough then I don’t know what would be, that’s of course in addition to just about every standard image format on the planet. If anything in your library is in any other format, something is really very wrong with you.
I’m not much of a believer in FLAC or OGG, just thought you’d like to know.
Yes, I’m aware that there is a FM add-on for most iPods (Touch support is unknown) so if you want FM buy the add-on and stop complaining about the lack of a built in FM tuner. A library of 7GB should keep anyone satiated. One of us around here even has a 120GB collection of music, which makes the FM tuner feature moot (but he is going to buy the iPod Classic).
[UPDATE:]The iPod Touch DOES have a BlueTooth chip, but it IS NOT activated, a firmware update could fix that. This is not a deal breaker for me and you never know, Apple may eventually turn it on.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 9:49 am
under
Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
Stumble It!
September 6th, 2007
if you are not onboard with FLACs then you arent an audiophile. FLAC is the internet community’s standard for lossless compression.
September 6th, 2007
I’m not on board with it because not many player support it. Majority rules and all that.
September 7th, 2007
how many is “many”?
http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware
September 7th, 2007
I’m not much of a believer in FLAC or OGG, just thought you’d like to know.
Are you an idiot? These formats are technically best, free and well supported. (outside the ipod world)
By your logic we should all be Catholic, and the truth should be voted on.
Apple only doesn’t support those formats because they suffer from extreme NIH syndrome.
September 7th, 2007
How about divx or xvid for videos. It’s only the most popular video format. But since I have them there must be something very wrong with me.
September 10th, 2007
Bluetooth would be awesome because a lot of people now have unlimited internet data as part of their mobile phone plan (including me), which can be shared with other Bluetooth devices. I’m not that interested in playing mp3s/divx, but having such a neat web browser that would work anywhere my phone does would be really handy. Most phone browsers suck, and I like really tiny handsets anyway, so a mobile phone + ipod touch connected via Bluetooth would be a winning combination.
October 17th, 2007
hahaha! look at the reflection! it’s not even relfecting the same thing! corr…
January 31st, 2008
I own the iPod touch 16gb and am still hoping that a 3rd party app will come out that will give it FLAC support. Once you listen to an album in mp3 then listen to the same album encoded in FLAC you’ll wonder why you ever bothered with mp3’s in the first place. Sure it’s basically the new standard just like CD’s were in the 90’s but sound quality is very easily noticable once you progress into the FLAC arena.
September 10th, 2008
Good news! The new ipod touch is out and it may have some cool surprises coming! they now have use the Broadcom BCM4325 chip in the touch that can do wifi, blue tooth and FM! All that have to do is enable those functions and it will be amazing.
August 15th, 2009
“I’m not much of a believer in FLAC or OGG, just thought you’d like to know”
what a jackass…