TECH SPOTLIGHT

Updates to iPod line nice additions, but little need for recent buyers to upgrade

— In case you didn’t hear, Apple released something new.

Yes, there was a phone, but the company also announced updates to its iPod line. Apparently the rumors of the line’s imminent demise were greatly exaggerated.

Let’s start with the iPod Touch. Let me answer the first question you may have about the Touch. (It was the first question I had.) No, there is no Siri voice recognition here. That’s exclusive to the iPhone 4S.

What the Touch does have is a bigger camera, iOS 5 and FaceTime, a feature found in the iPhone.

The star here is iOS 5 and, if you have an Apple account, iCloud. The iCloud service lets you access music, apps, movies and whatever else you’ve purchased from iTunes on any device, including the Touch. If you take a photo with your iPhone, it will download automatically to your iPod Touch the next time you turn on the Touch. One advantage to this is you don’t have to hook your Touch to a computer to set it up or populate it with your favorite songs or apps. You will need to sync it, however, if the music was added to iTunes by importing CDs.

You will need an Apple account to use iCloud. The good news is, the accounts are now free.

The Touch also has access to iMessage, which lets you text other iOS 5 devices over Wi-Fi without using your cellular phone plan, and Face-Time, which lets you place video calls to an iPhone 4 or 4S, an iPad 2 or a Mac computer running OS X Lion. It also adds an 8 megapixel camera capable of shooting high-definition video. Basically, the Touch is updated to match many of the capabilities of the iPhone.

There are a couple of puzzling things with the Touch. The Touch adds the Retina display touted in the iPhone, but I noticed when putting it up against an iPhone 4 that the screen isn’t quite as vibrant. Not to say the screen isn’t lovely and crisp, but it does lack a bit of that oomph of the iPhone.

My biggest complaint with the Touch is the camera. It’s nice to have 8 megapixels, and in bright light, the pictures are great. But in low light, they’re just terrible. Speaking from a photographer’s perspective, the photos in low light are so noisy (full of dots) they’re essentially unusable. And when I say “low light,” I mean anything not involving full sunlight. Granted, most smart-phone cameras have similar problems, but even the iPhone 4 camera is far superior to the Touch.

The new Touch has great new additions if your Touch is 2 or 3 years old. If you just upgraded last year, a new Touch isn’t necessarily a must.

Speaking of upgrades, the iPod Nano also got a few tweaks. The minimusic and video player also is similar to the previous model. However, it essentially has incorporated the Nike fitness features that used to require additional accessories. It will keep track of your running or walking, calories burned and distance covered.

The new Nano also has new watch faces, including Disney and Muppets characters. The watch faces are cute on their own, but they do better in a watch. Several companies make watchbands just for the Nano. I tried the Hex Icon Watchband ($39.95 retail), which turned out to be a rather cheap-feeling band that failed to protect the Nano’s dock connection. Why, I have no idea. Who’s going to charge the Nano while it’s in a watch on the wrist? There’s really no need to have the dock connection exposed.

Like the Touch, the Nano has a few nice new features, but an upgrade from last year’s model isn’t necessary.

The Nano and the iPod Touch have new life with new updates, though admittedly, the updates aren’t as big as expected. You have to give them a bit of credit, though. After all, they were overshadowed by the other device announced that day ... something about a phone.

Where it’s @

The iPod Touch comes in black or white and works with a Windows or Mac computer. The 8GB model retails for $199, the 32GB is $299 and the 64GB is $399. The iPod Nano comes in silver, graphite, blue, green, orange, pink and Product Red. The 8GB is $129 and the 16GB is $149. More information is available at www.apple.com/ipod.

Melissa L. Jones can be reached via e-mail at mljones72@me. com.

Business, Pages 23 on 10/24/2011

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