* This article is: Royce Barber's review of his 64GB Apple "iPod Touch" 4th Generation.

* This article was created for iOS 4, but is being adapted for iOS 5.

* Similar articles at roycebarber.com: None thus far, as I own no other Apple product.

* Notice: My 4th Generation iPod Touch will soon be outdated, as is the nature of Apple products. But this page will remain about 4th Generation iPod Touch, as it'll be usable for years.

* Notice: This article is very new (as of Sept 2011) and is still being written!

* Contact Royce Barber.

* Basically: Apple created a well-made cell phone sized gadget which surfs the internet and allows you to install hundreds of wonderful apps, including internet radio and internet tv shows. It does not have GPS nor Adobe Flash. 

* Technically speaking: 

* Personal assistant features such as calendar and taking notes.

* Recording audio, video (not really HD though), and photos. (Flip Mino video recorders, and Kodak Zi8 video recorders, take far better video, but are a little more bulky).

* Photo Blog of your ideas and adventures. 

* Update your Social websites, or make your own website.

* Browse the Web (News, Youtube, Research, Play, Learning, etc).

* Take Video for YouTube. Your audience loves to see you!

* 3D Video Games.

* Many Amazing Apps.

* Much More.

* Literally write a book, if you get a Bluetooth keyboard.

* Control your desktop computer, if you buy a Remote Desktop app.

* Image: JPG, PNG

* Audio: MP3, WAV, Apple Store AAC, AAX, AIFF, Audible, and protected audio.

* Video: H.264, MPEG-4 as m4v/mp4/mov, m-jpg. 

* Text: TXT, 

* Possibly more formats.

* Important formats it does NOT read: Adobe Flash. QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality). 

* Visual appeal: iPod Touch 4th Generation is visually beautiful.

* Apps: The default apps are extremely useful. Hundreds of useful apps, and thousands of 'other' apps to experiment with. Apps install quickly and seamlessly, with no dialogues to click through. Do anything else while an app is downloading/installing itself.

* Size: Put it in your pocket! Exceptionally light weight and thin.

* Stable OS, rarely ever crashes.

* High quality battery. 

* Screen: High sensitivity, multi-touch screen, for pinching photos. Screen resolution is crystal clear at 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 pixels per inch (PPI). PPI says how tiny the pixels are. Fonts show up perfectly.

* A4 processor is fast enough for beautiful 3D games.

* Hundreds (not thousands) of extremely high quality apps. The rest of the apps are so-so. 

* Product is 100% silent, and stays cool in your hands.

* Blutooth keyboard support. 

* Apps allow for all kinds of fun such as text-to-speech, reading more file formats, 3D games.

* Apps seem to be sandboxed, meaning they won't harm the iOS.

* Very quick connections to WIFI wireless internet. 

* Little to no annoying aspects to iOS.

* The Safari internet browser is great, and renders this website quite well. 

* iTunes software allows you to download iPod Touch apps, and store your music collection, and discover many internet TV and Radio shows. 

* Many great apps are free because they have tiny advertisements you can easily ignore. 

* There are many speaker/alarm/radio gadgets available.

* Senses: Front and rear camera for photo taking, movies, and Skype Video Calls. Other senses include a great Microphone, Three-axis gyro, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor.

* iPod Touch and iPhone use the same apps. Many of these apps work (although awkwardly) on an iPad (tablet).

* Spell Check from hell: Disable it and burn it and chuck it into space. It murders your correctly spelled words and replaces them with gibberish.

* The onscreen keyboard is high quality, but it's unlikely you'll type a full paragraph at a time with it. 

* It's disabled out of the box, until you install iTunes on your computer and sign up for free iTunes. No Linux support. (iOS5 might address these!)

* Expensive for a luxury product which is outdated in one to three years. I doubt you can trade it in for a newer version. 

* No GPS. The WIFI triangulation isn't enough for the many location-based apps.

* Apple wants your money, and like the Dollar Store, they'll nickle and dime you to death for all those apps you want, until you realize you spent $400.00 on dollar apps.

* No cellular signal, thus no cellular internet. (Obviously, as that's the iPhone's job). 

* Battery won't last the whole day if you're actively surfing the web. 

* Spendy Accessories: Once you buy the iPod, you will likely then buy expensive accessories. Screen protector. iPod case. Three more cases. Car charger. (Buy it all from Meritline.Com for one tenth the price and free shipping, but read reviews because a lot of it is Chinese junk.) MonoPrice.Com also has amazing prices, but not free shipping.

* Many apps must be bought to try, as they rarely have demos. 

* Some apps are of low quality, and or crash often. Seemingly 1 in 5 apps are poorly made. 

* Touch screen has only 1 level of sensitivity, so you can't use it as a professional drawing tablet.

* Easily stolen.

* Your friends will want to play with it, and drop it, which will break it.

* No hole for a lock or lanyard. 

* Slippery, non-rubber shell.

* Screen doesn't look as good from an angle. 

* No memory card support (like SD).

* Not real multitasking. 

* iOS interface isn't yet consistent through all menus. Many finger-swipe actions and menus are hard to find the first time. 

* Camera: Very low resolution, with no auto focus. As opposed to the iPhones higher quality auto-focus camera. No auto-focus means iPod Touch can't take photos of tiny text, nor scan small bar codes. But, the small photos turn out well.

* Doesn't open some popular file formats, unless you experiment with apps. Opens the very basic file formats.

* It comes with no coupons, no deals, and no interesting business offers. 

* Many Apple apps require individual, complicated logins, rather than the universal Facebook Login or Google Login.

* Too many apps require wireless Internet access, which is generally not available at most places you go. 

* The external speaker sounds pretty good (not amazing), but isn't very loud. Not loud enough for a conference room unless you plug in a speaker gadget.

* I uninstalled an app from my iPod Touch, then plugged the ipod into my laptop, and iTunes re-installed the app. I figured out I have to delete the app from iTunes first.

* No File Viewer or Manager, no Task Manager, no Memory Manager, no Battery Details, no Sub Folders on the Desktop.

* Name confusion. iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, i-software etc. Very clever naming, but it does confuse people.

* iTunes: Poorly programmed software. It's hard to learn, hard to use, has many common problems. Apple needs to junk it and start from scratch. It takes too much computer memory, and has an abundance of weirdly-named inter-connecting Windows services which each take more memory. It's does a lot, and crashes a lot.

* iTunes will find a way to duplicate all your contacts, so you'll have to spend a dollar on an app to fix them now and then. The default address book is very primitive.

* Drop it once and watch your precious money shatter into oblivion. I seriously recommend tying a lanyard necklace or ribbon to the case, and hope the case doesn't rip off.

* Photography: No tripod mounting hole. No flash. No auto-zoom. No optical zoom. Possibly no image stabilization(?). 

* It's confusing to sync photos. You have to make folders and set weird options. 

* Stylus Pen: Some people have said stylus pens don't work with screen protectors. I'm investigating how this happens. A stylus is important for using tiny website buttons.

* Expensive but understandably. It'll last four years, if the battery lasts (doubtful) or is replaced. So if you paid $250 (ish), I think that's roughly $5.00 a month for 4 years..? Not bad for a long term product. But the thing is, you'll lose it or buy another one in 2 years.

* Music Player which allows adjusting the playback speed. Same with a video player.

* File Manager (Viewer). Like Windows Explorer.

* Task Manager. Like the one in Windows.

* Process Viewer. Like in Windows.

* Security: Tracking, remote camera usage, push messages. "FoneHome" might work for me.

* Photoshop alternatives.

* Download manager: Allow me to download any file I see on the Internet. 

* Ebook Reader for All Formats.

* Movie Viewer like VLC.

* Free Demos of all sorts.

* Remote Desktop to my Desktop PC. I'm currently researching "Log Me In Ignition". For most users, the free version works well enough, not allowing filesharing/printing. 

* Recipes in which you can type in your current ingredients. 

* Simple typing apps, for taking simple notes. Perhaps a full office app, but it's not necessary for me yet.

* Timetabling Software. It would be nice to create a timeline of my life, and have it auto-sync to a public and or private website.

* Security: Remote alarm, for when I misplace the device.

* Capacitive (?) Stylus Pen.

* Retna Display: 

* Storage Capacity: 

* Tap: 

* Swipe: 

* Location Based App: Uses satellite GPS, Cellular Tower triangulation, or Wifi triangulation to determine your location. 

* Push Notifications: Alerts showing up on your screen as they happen.

* Apple's Gadget Names (some of them): iPhone. iMac. iPod Touch. iPod Classic. iPod Shuffle. iPad. Apple TV. iOS. Mac OS.

* Google Android Tablets and Cell Phones 

* Ubuntu Linux Tablets and Netbooks

* Windows7 Tablets and Netbooks

* Apple iPhone

* Apple iPad

* HP WebOS Tablets: Discontinued. 

* Audio Speed: Play any audio or podcast. Notice the 1x logo near the top right. Tap that to speed up the playback.

* Background Apps: Double-tap the physical button on your iPod Touch. All your running Apps will show up. Hold your finger on an app to make all those icons wobble; noticing the red dot. Tap the dot to close any app. Swipe through those apps and notice a volume control, music control, and Screen Rotation Lock. The main point of this trick is for closing bugged up apps.

* Download a Task Manager: Download a memory/services/battery monitor, to get to know your iPod more intimately. I personally use the free SystemLite.

* Voice Command: Hold down the physical button for Voice Command. Works well, but I'm unsure the extent of it's commands, if much.

* Transfer photos from iPod to PC: In iTunes look at the left of the screen, it says your iPod name in the middle of the far-left of the screen. Click that, then click Sync Photos From, then choose any folder you like, then click Include Videos. To have access to this photo folder, disable auto-sync from iTunes, and this will make your iPod show up as a hard drive under My Computer. On your iPod, "Photo Library" is all your photos. To move photos from your pc to your iPod, Assign a folder in iTunes (YourDeviceName>PhotosTab). Create new folders there if you wish. To move photos from your iPod to your PC, go to My Computer and right-click your iPod, and click Import.

* Headphones.

* Docking Stations: Alarm clocks.

* Cases: Rubber, hard plastic.

* Anti-glare screen protector (sheet of clear plastic).

* Nike Pedometer. 

* For the girls: Glitter, paint, buttons, plastic diamonds.

* Control a remote-video toy helicopter (very expensive).

* Cars often have iPod connections for playing music.

* USB to CigLighter for charging.

* Headphone jack splitter.

* Stylus for drawing (Capacitive?) 

* Wide angle lens (more for the iPhone which has a better camera). 

* Swimmers: Waterproof Headphones. h2o audio ($27.00). I've not used them. Surge? Perhaps waterproof iPod case..? 

* Wikipedia about iPod Touch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch

* Official Apple Site: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

* iPod Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_managers

* Wikpedia about iTunes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes

* CNET list of iPhone (thus iPod) apps: Link.

* The official Apple tech specs page.

* Wikipedia for iPod Touch.

* My own experience, installing apps and seeing what works.

* The endless ratings/reviews sites.

* YouTube video examples.

* Magical unicorns covered in glowing glitter!

* President Obama's flaring nostrils. 

* That glow from under the bedroom door at night.

* Teletubies.

* Fourth dimensional space whale.

* The future. The future's future. The day after the future's future's past future present's Tuesday's catterday at 1pm.

* My cat license has micro print about iPod Touch's. My goldfish license does not.