iPod touch and go

I can't believe this. After waiting two years for a suitable and proper sixth generation iPod, I was extremely thrilled with the introduction of the iPod touch. I have been complaining about the apparently stagnation of iPod innovation for a while and the iPod touch has certainly redeemed the bragging rights for Apple.

But ... it looks like the first generation iPod touch is plagued by a number of production quality issues ! There are two issues are early adopters of the iPod touch are complaining about. The most severe one being the poor display quality of the screen when display dark photos or videos. This issue was first broken by PC World in their review of the iPod touch in which they gave it a 5 out of a 5 despite the display problem (weird !). Users on various discussion forums are far less forgiving of this flaw. Gizmodo has a good photo illustrating this problem.

Many users have since reported this issue in their newly purchased iPod touch. But some users are reporting that theirs is fine. I took a look a display unit myself at the San Francisco Apple Store and I was not able to see the problem. This could be due to the fact that the particular display unit was fine or that the lighting conditions in the store made it more difficult to see the problem. Either way, I wasn't able to verify this problem for myself.

One user has posited that this defect could be due to a missing anti-reflective coating in the construction of the LCD screen. Another user has started a campaign to identify the serial numbers of the defective batches. While the data is still in its infancy, a trend has appeared that users with version 3A101a of the iPod touch seem to be reporting issues more frequently than owners of version 3A100.

Video issues aside, some users are also reporting that the iPod touch produces an audible hissing sound that prior models did not have. But it looks like this issue has been drowned out by the discussions concerning the video issue.

So what does this all mean ? What it means is that if you have not yet bought one, it's probably advisable to wait for the situation to clarify itself. It looks like Apple still has not officially acknowledged this as being an issue. I really want to buy one and I hope that Apple will take this matter seriously and look into it.