iPod Touch – My review

I got my iPod touch this Christmas and I cannot stop saying that I love it. It is an amazing piece of technology just as I dreamed many years ago. The reason is that for me, this piece of hardware is a full Unix box that can also play music and videos.

With a good design to be expected from the fellows in Cupertino California, this beautiful piece of multi-touch hardware still lacks some desired capabilities as SD memory slot or GPS device, but in general it earns my thumbs up.

I really don’t think that the iPod touch makes a good productivity tool as the Blackberry does but this is not it’s main purpose, but to keep me happy on the hours I spend packed in a Tokyo train.

Applications I have installed

• VT100 – Now I have local access to the Unix (Darwin) inside, and let me tell you that it really looks like a full OSX to me.
• OpenSSH – So I can connect and transfer files from my PC. But please change the default root password (alpine) for something more creative.
• VNC Client – Yes, I just installed this because I can! And because I can remotely manage my downloads on the go.
• Mail App – It is very convenient for writing mails in the train.

My wish list for future iPods

As many people have realized, this piece of hardware has an incredible potential. If I might suggest, my perfect iPod touch (hopefully by 2010) would have:

• Digital Camera (as the iPhone but with video capabilities).
• GPS device and navigation system (with Google?).
• e-wallet RFID – It is very useful here in Japan to pay the train, restaurants and convenient stores.
• WiMax support – Once available
• Memory Card – Come on, it’s just common sense.

The most interesting characteristics of the new iPod are the possibilities it brings. I really recommend it to you if you can “jailbreak it”, only then you can utilize it properly.

My experiments on the iPod touch.

The iPod makes an excelent stumbler for war-driving or drive-by-pharming. With Darwin capable to support Perl and Ruby, I am trying few scripts to store wireless logs and later I am planning to add a WEP cracker on it just to see how capable is this device.

For more information on third party applications, please visit www.jailbreakme.com. This guys have done an excellent job with the InstallerApp.