Back in the early days of this decade, I got my first PDA. Well, actually, I got four hours for pda plus being in the girl’s lounge from Dr. Eason in 1987. But sometime in the 00’s I got a Palm Tungsten E, and I loved it. It was somewhat novel because of it’s color screen. I put tunes on there, and watched some short videos. There was some sort of device that downloaded RSS feeds, and that was cool. All in all, it did everything I hoped it would when I bought it. Then I started to see potential for more.
Somewhere along the line, I got a Gmail account. I wanted that on there. And I wanted the inboxes to sync. I also wanted to be able to add appointments and such from more than one computer. The RSS feeds were fine, but I wanted to do more real surfing. The Palm platform was pretty good, so I was not ready to leave that. So, around 2007 I got a Palm Treo 700p. It worked fine, I reckon, and did everything the Tungsten did a little bit better. Plus it was a phone. But it did not really sync well. I had to use the browser to go to Gmail and that interface was sloppy. My calendar was still tied to a desktop, and the whole thing was just very difficult to get working together. The added stress of knowing that my boss knew that I could read his email on Saturday was not so hot either.
When my life changed and the data plan got to be an expense worth reviewing, it was not too hard to decide giving it up. I was relieved in some ways not to be trying to keep up on the gadget train. I went back to a paper calendar, kept the contacts in gmail, and generally went on my way. But I did miss the days of the trusty Tungsten, and even considered getting a T/X at one point. Little did I know that Apple makes a killer PDA: the iPod Touch.
Having been hooked up through a contest held by the good folks at Botany Buddy, I started my iPod experience this weekend. Can I just say that, for all of it’s positive design attributes (which are many), the most remarkable thing about the Touch — and I’m assuming the iPhone — is that it simply works. It works. My Gmail is synced. My Google calendar is synced. (It just reminded me of a meeting in 15 minutes.) My contacts are synced. My tasks are synced. On top of all of this, my iPod tells me I am T-Pain, or will be soon anyway.
All of this was accomplished with plenty of good ole goofing off with the new toy as well as numerous other obligations this weekend. The thing about technology is that it is only as good as the end user. Yes, it looks good. Yes, it is hipster approved. But the thing about my iPod Touch is that it simply works. Because its software is as well designed as its hardware, I will use this device much more than its predecessors. I might also get a boat.