Apple iPod Touch: 5 things you need to know!

The Gadget Show  Friday 07 October 2011

The new Apple iPhone 4S announcement somewhat overshadowed the other major hardware release from Apple – the fourth generation iPod Touch. The hardware may not have radically changed but peel back the lid on this tin-can and you’ll find a whole host of neat tricks trying to get out! Here we take a look at the tip-top new features and why it’s the best iPod Touch yet!

Game Center

The iPod Touch is now the most popular mobile gaming platform in the world – an astonishing achievement considering the former popularity of the Nintendo DS. The new Game Center integration will let you share your scores online and set up multiplayer games with just a few taps.

You can track scores and in-game achievements on public leaderboards and Game Center will find you someone to play with even if all your friends are offline.

iMessage

iMessage is set to be Apple’s take on the kind of instant messaging that BlackBerry Messenger has made so popular.

You can send text and embed images, video and location data and iMessage will mirror your conversation on all your iOS devices so you can swap between Touch and iPad if you like. All communication is securely encrypted and – best of all – it is free to use.

iCloud

iCloud is Apple’s uniquely Apple-ish take on cloud storage. You can keep copies of your music, pictures and documents online using the 5GB of free storage or pay for more if you need it. These files are then accessible wherever you have an internet connection, on any iOS or OS X Lion device.

iCloud is supported by all the built-tin apps and a growing number of third party apps too and setting it up is a one-tap process.

Retina Display

The display of the iPod Touch has finally reached the same level as the iPhone 4 with the addition of Apple’s Retina display. As the late Steve Jobs explained, “There’s a magic number around 300dpi, if you hold something about 10-12 inches away from your eye, it’s the limit of the human retina to distinguish pixels.”

That number turns out to be 326dpi – roughly the same resolution as the iPad, but in a much smaller screen. It is hard to describe just how good the Retina Display is compared to the old iPod Touch screen – you just have to see it.

iOS 5

iOS 5 is a major upgrade to the iOS operating system and brings with it over 200 new features. Here are some of our favourites.

Notifications have been completely overhauled. No longer will you have your screen taken over my a dialogue box that you need to close before you can do anything else. Now notifications will appear in unobtrusive pop-ups near the top bar and can be ignored until you want to deal with them.

Notifications will ‘stack’ and you can quickly clear them with a swipe or tap to deal with the issue when it suits you. iOS will now let you subscribe to magazines and newspapers with a new features called News-stand. This works like iBooks for periodicals and you can buy issues via the App Store.

The new Reminders function lets you set To-Do lists that are location based as well as time based. You can get a reminder to perform a task when you reach work, or pass the supermarket or whatever you can think of.

The camera app can be fiddly to get into if you want to take a quick snap so in iOS 5 you can jump straight in to it from the lock screen. It’s a small change but it makes a real difference. Oh, and you can use the volume key to actually take the shot and then have it uploaded to iCloud automatically. Nice.