Can Pandora replace my iPod Touch?

[gene_kultpower]

I am thinking about this question:
Will the pandora be a proper replacement for my iPodTouch/iPhone?

So let me explain how I use my iPod Touch (and how i cannot use it) and give you my thoughts about the Pandora as well.

1) Playing music
The ipod has a nice interface, iTunes. Good navigation, easy to use. Playlists from my Mac can be used.
How will I play music on the Pandora? I remember the gp2x-Music-Player not to be really cool...
Important question: Will I have to open the Pandora to play MP3-Files? When I close it, will all software stop running or is it possible that some tasks continue to run? I guess the Pandora won't fit in my pocket in opened state...
Result: Well, I guess the ipod wins, but I hope there will be very cool player for Pandora which also runs in closed state.

2) Playing Games
Games on the iPod can be very nice, especially when the touch screen is used. But to be honest, I am not really interested in playing "new" games, more into retro games. So the main question is: Who will do the ScummVM port and will the touch screen be used?
Emulators for old gaming machines will of course be better playable on the Pandora. I think icontrolpad should suck (sorry) against the Pandora Controllers. And a portable Amiga ist one of the biggest reasons for the Pandora. BTW, has anybody seen the Pandora uae4all with sound?
Result: Playing old games is the main reason to buy a Pandora. Other opinions are not accepted :wink:

3) Browsing the web
Both systems have a browser. Safari on ipod and Firefox on Pandora. Safari is a very cool thing to use, zooming into websites is very cool. But there are no plugins for safari How good will surfing the web be on Pandora without a zoom function? 800 pixels are not that much for current websites.
Building web applications for Pandora will be more fun and easier, because there should be no retrictions (Safari is not fully ajax capable) and the development can be tested on any firefox version.
Result: I am not sure about it, but I hope Firefox with full features (Bookmarks, Plugins) will win over safari on ipod. What do you think?

4) Watching videos
Videos on the ipod are fun to watch, once you did get them into itunes in the proper file format. VLC on the ipod by zodttd does not yet run very good in my opinion. But how will a movie player work on the Pandora? I hope conversion sessions will not be needed for the Pandora.
Result: up to now - the ipod.

5) Watching Photos
Photos on ipod are very cool to watch. Scrolling though them is very nice, auto-rotation as well.
In my opinion the photo-viewer on the Pandora must be very good to compete with the ipod viewer. Has anyone seen a preview og the Pandora photo app?
Result: ipod is the winner

6) Applications
Many applications are available for the ipod. Ok, I do not really need twenty flashlight-apps, but with many million devices worldwide there will be more cool apps. I am not sure how many "normal" apps (not games) will be developed for Pandora....
On the other hand, no restrictions from apple... Hmm..
Result: ipod wins for now, but cool applications for Pandora can be created.

7) Coolness factor
For some thousand people on the world (me including), the Pandora is way cooler. But most people in the world will say "whats that , a gameboy?" when they see the Pandora. Including my wife h34r:
Result: for most people in the world: ipod. For me: Pandora.

8) Reading and writing Mails
Apples Mail app works, but I don't like it very much. I would more like to see a port of Thunderbird for Pandora. Is this possible or is any other Mail app "planned"?

What are your thoughts?

 

[Snu]

many of these questions have been asked, repetedly.
keep in mind that this isnt a typical closed source handheld, its a fully capable computer, and pretty much any of the functionality that you see on typical desktop linux will be available at some point.
so, such questions as 'can it still run programs when its closed?' are pointless. it will be fully configurable.
so here are some detailed answers:

1) it probably wont be long before a variety of linux based audio players are ported. unfortunately, the best one i have seen is amarok, which i doubt will be ported (it requires kde, which is pretty resource intensive). however, it shouldnt be too difficult to write a nice gui for mpd (http://www.musicpd.org/) that would take advantage of pandora's features.

3) there are page zoom plugins for firefox, ya know...

4) again, open source console... any features we want can be added, we arent limited to the codecs that the big companies want. i have no doubt that vlc on pandora will be able to play pretty much anything you can throw at it.

5) dunno, i imagine there are some nice photo slideshow apps for linux that would wipe out anything the ipod has... and wouldnt be hard to port. try looking around for one.

6) again, its linux based. many desktop based applications will be easy to port over. also, i dont think you quite realize how active the dev community around here is...

8) im pretty sure i heard that a port of thunderbird is already being worked on (i could be wrong tho). personally, im wanting a port of sylpheed-claws, and if its easy enough to port, i might just try it myself.

 

[Qwertyuiop]

4) I thought mplayer was already ported, as shown in this video.

 

[javaJake]

1) Playing music
The ipod has a nice interface, iTunes. Good navigation, easy to use. Playlists from my Mac can be used. How will I play music on the Pandora? I remember the gp2x-Music-Player not to be really cool...

No music device to date has reached the level of simplicity and "coolness" that iPod software has. (This is debatable, but I'm just sticking to popular opinion right now.)

Also, the Pandora will not play your iTunes music, which is most likely DRM-protected, unless it is the equally-priced "iTunes Plus" music, which is DRM-free, or you burned and ripped it off of a CD (which removes the DRM).

However, the Pandora will play tons more media than your iPod ever could. You could slap a raw DVD image onto your Pandora and the Pandora would eat it for breakfast.

Important question: Will I have to open the Pandora to play MP3-Files? When I close it, will all software stop running or is it possible that some tasks continue to run? I guess the Pandora won't fit in my pocket in opened state...

Think of the Pandora as an ultra-portable laptop. Can your laptop play music while you browse the internet?

The one exception here is you can actually configure what the Pandora does when you close the lid. Your average laptop would probably pause the music and go into standby, but the Pandora can be told to tailor the standby mode so the music continues playing. (This is all thanks to Linux, by the way.)

2) Playing Games
Games on the iPod can be very nice, especially when the touch screen is used. But to be honest, I am not really interested in playing "new" games, more into retro games. So the main question is: Who will do the ScummVM port and will the touch screen be used?
Emulators for old gaming machines will of course be better playable on the Pandora. I think icontrolpad should suck (sorry) against the Pandora Controllers. And a portable Amiga ist one of the biggest reasons for the Pandora. BTW, has anybody seen the Pandora uae4all with sound?
Result: Playing old games is the main reason to buy a Pandora. Other opinions are not accepted :wink:

For ScummVM, see this awesome post (and search for "ScummVM").

No, I don't think anyone has seen uae4all with sound, but I don't think there's any doubt that it will.

Obviously the Pandora wins, and you note this yourself, so I won't ramble too long here.

3) Browsing the web
Both systems have a browser. Safari on ipod and Firefox on Pandora. Safari is a very cool thing to use, zooming into websites is very cool. But there are no plugins for safari How good will surfing the web be on Pandora without a zoom function? 800 pixels are not that much for current websites.
Building web applications for Pandora will be more fun and easier, because there should be no retrictions (Safari is not fully ajax capable) and the development can be tested on any firefox version.
Result: I am not sure about it, but I hope Firefox with full features (Bookmarks, Plugins) will win over safari on ipod. What do you think?

There is no zoom function on the Pandora, but I don't think this is really needed. If you did zoom, you wouldn't be able to read anything.

The Safari on the iPod Touch is not really the full browser experience. If you want the Firefox 3 with the legions of extensions that ride at its side, you want the good ol' Pandora.

4) Watching videos
Videos on the ipod are fun to watch, once you did get them into itunes in the proper file format. VLC on the ipod by zodttd does not yet run very good in my opinion. But how will a movie player work on the Pandora? I hope conversion sessions will not be needed for the Pandora.
Result: up to now - the ipod.

The Pandora, as I said, will be more than able to play just about anything you throw at it, right up to DVD quality. As long as it isn't DRM encrypted, of course. Anything beyond up to HDTV quality is probable - we'd need some optimized drivers - so there's lots of hope.

But, then again, you don't really need anything better than DVD quality, since the Pandora isn't capable of displaying anything better (and neither is the iPod).

5) Watching Photos
Photos on ipod are very cool to watch. Scrolling though them is very nice, auto-rotation as well.
In my opinion the photo-viewer on the Pandora must be very good to compete with the ipod viewer. Has anyone seen a preview og the Pandora photo app?
Result: ipod is the winner

Someone was writing up a really neat application to organize photos, and do some basic organizing on the fly (maybe even editing?). In other words, I don't think there'd be anything at launch, but no doubt there'll be some ports later on.

6) Applications
Many applications are available for the ipod. Ok, I do not really need twenty flashlight-apps, but with many million devices worldwide there will be more cool apps. I am not sure how many "normal" apps (not games) will be developed for Pandora....
On the other hand, no restrictions from apple... Hmm..
Result: ipod wins for now, but cool applications for Pandora can be created.

Pandora is also open-source, has quite a few closed-source developers announcing titles (even up to the point of unique features), and can basically grab any application from Debian thanks to the work of Debian ARM developers.

In short, there's a lot of potential and a lot of good reasons to be optimistic.

7) Coolness factor
For some thousand people on the world (me including), the Pandora is way cooler. But most people in the world will say "whats that , a gameboy?" when they see the Pandora. Including my wife h34r:
Result: for most people in the world: ipod. For me: Pandora.

Coolness, for me, is decided by functionality. For others, coolness is decided by form. Their loss.

8) Reading and writing Mails
Apples Mail app works, but I don't like it very much. I would more like to see a port of Thunderbird for Pandora. Is this possible or is any other Mail app "planned"?

What are your thoughts?

claws-mail is one of my favorites. It's really fast, and has a lot more features to it. (Yea, it has that old Windows 95 look to it, but don't be fooled - it's got some real power under the hood you'd never find in Thunderbird.)

Again, there's a lot of potential here, just nothing for sure. The Pandora can take advantage of nearly any open-source software in the Linux world.

 

[Pleng]

Think of the Pandora as an ultra-portable laptop. Can your laptop play music while you browse the internet?

The one exception here is you can actually configure what the Pandora does when you close the lid. Your average laptop would probably pause the music and go into standby, but the Pandora can be told to tailor the standby mode so the music continues playing. (This is all thanks to Linux, by the way.)

To be fair, you can configure what your laptop does when you close the lid. Linux or no Linux.

 

[javaJake]

To be fair, you can configure what your laptop does when you close the lid. Linux or no Linux.

This is the truth, but then, Linux does let you fine-tune it. With Windows, it's configured to either all or nothing.

 

[ashdjones]

I wonder, does anyone think you'll be able to SSH into the Touch via the Pandora? How about syncing it via USB? Will they be able to interact via WIFI at all?

It's kind of perverse to think of another handheld being the master computer to an ipod!

 

[barnesy]

Yeah, it's easy to get SSH working on the touch - it was just an option in the program I used to jailbreak it. I turned SSH off though - it's handy at times but seems a bit much for an ipod! Not sure about using that to manage the music on the ipod though. But there are a load of linux ipod managers, so maybe something can be ported. I don't feel a need for that, but maybe other people will.

 

[closetwam]

No music device to date has reached the level of simplicity and "coolness" that iPod software has.

Simplicity achieved primarily by a well designed/responsive input device and an enormous lack of features.
Coolness achieved by the fact that "everyone" has one.

Pandora is not a device for your ditsy sister or my neighbor with a technological brain deficit.

Pandora users will actually be able to edit their playlist's/audio collection WITH their Pandora, just as easily as they do on their PC. iPod is completely unwieldy in this regard.

As for watching movies.. the Pandora's screen size/resolution speaks for itself. 4.3" 800x480 vs 3.5" 480x320


IMSnobbyO

 

[j.pickens]

To think that anyone could question whether 800 X 480 browsing is superior to 480 X 320 shows the power of advertising.
Browsing with 2.5 times the screen resolution. No contest.

 

[Bernstein229]

I have an iPod Touch, and I think they have different purposes. If you want an all around computer, get the pandora. However if you want commercial games, then get an iPod Touch. I want both, so I have both.

 

[sold]

Just out of curiosity,what commercial games are available on iPod or iPhone that aren't just touchscreen based clones of classic games or basically mini games using the rather limited controls?

 

[Kyosys]

This has to be the first time I've seen anyone say the the iPod Touch is right for people who want games. The pandora will do a much better job at that, if only through emulation.

 

[gene_kultpower]

Thanks for all your replies.

Well, I am now a bit more convinced, that Pandora is superior to my ipod touch in nearly all points. Software can be "better" on the Pandora, but this will depend on the developers.

So I am anxious to use the Pandora, surf the Web with it, watch my photos and listen to my music. It's a great challenge for the Pandora developers to beat the easiness of the ipod touch, but I am willing to be convinced that Pandora will win against my ipod touch.

 

[hells_dark]

hum..
well, mplayer, vlc, mpd, some emulators (and so, so much more) : i'm done.

But if you're ok with your ipod touch, keep using it, heh.

 

[amnesiasoft]

Last time I checked, every worthwhile browser had a zoom feature...

Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, even Internet Explorer has zooming. Though of them, Opera probably has the best.

...Hmm...must convince Opera Software to port Linux Opera to ARM...

 

[sukhi-2006]

Ipod are good but i wouldn't compare it with pandora.
The pandora has qwerty keyboards which makes writing documents much easier and it has buttons for playing games and has a stylus on the other hand the ipod touch/iphone both don't have stylus,buttons for playing games,qwerty keyboard they are bit of let down, i prefer pandora because it's a mini laptop better than carrying normal laptops.
Pandora was missing a phone which will cause a big problem you will have to carry a phone and pandora well i have better solution i just bought a watch which has a phone and it remains on my wrist i never a miss a call and now i can just put the pandora in my pocket easily rather carrying 2 items at the same time.