So after a long hiatus (I recently moved, among other things), I'm back with a few reviews.
First up is the iPod touch. I won an 8 GB touch through work, and I love it. While I wouldn't mind more storage, this thing is far and beyond an MP3 player. In fact, I would put it somewhere between an iPod and a PDA (though not below either). Aside from the cool multi-touch interface that's been written about a million times, the screen is gorgeous and it has a bevy of PDA functions. With Address Book and iCal syncing, I have full access to all my contacts and the ability to work with my schedule on the fly. The calculator has become indispensable for my work, and I'm really looking forward to it's upgrade in the 2.0 firmware. The keyboard takes a little getting used to, but it auto-corrects better than I expected (even puts the apostrophe in contractions for you), so it's actually very fast. The sound is on par for an iPod (duh), and the video experience is wonderful. I picked up a dock and composite cables for my 52 inch (non-HD) TV and it's great to watch my movies through it. That big, you would expect to see degradation of the video quality, but since I'm not HD yet, it looks fine. I also picked up the Apple iPod In-Ear Headphones as my $60 Sony buds had distortion on the bass-end. They were a solid investment at $40, and very comfortable to boot. So what's missing? I would have liked to see Bluetooth ,even if only A2DP, as there are now lower-end MP3 players out there with it (Best Buy's Insignia line, for example). Built-in speakers would be wonderful too; there are plenty of MP3 players and PDAs with speakers. I also would have liked to seen a camera; again, there are PDAs out there with it. There are valid reasons for those omissions, most notably that those are draws to the iPhone. And most people would never use those things on an iPod anyway. But it's a great device that has certainly made my life simpler, if not easier.
Next is Apple's aluminum keyboard. Now, I went with the wired version because I can't stand not having a 10-key setup to work with numerically. I thought that I would have to get used to it's low profile (the thing is barely thicker than my iPod touch), but I had no "learning curve" at all. The tactile feedback is perfect; the keys click perfectly with not too much or too little pressure. It has built in keys for Expose and Dashboard, as well as media and volume controls. It also has an Eject key. While it has brightness controls, those don't work for me and my Hacintosh (hardly surprising). It also has two USB ports on the bottom side of the keyboard; in fact, these act as the keyboard stand to give it a little angle. While plugging in my iPod touch gave me a Low Power warning box, I have my tiny Kensington USB Mini Bluetooth adapter plugged in with no problem (it's so small, in fact, that you can't even tell it's there). It is a great keyboard; better than I expected given that I just wanted a non-Windows-key keyboard.
Finally, we have the Wireless Mighty Mouse. I must say, I was skeptical at first of the scroll-ball, but I've come to love it. 360 degree scrolling is wonderful in Photoshop, Pixelmator, Illustrator, and even iTunes and Safari. My last mouse did have horizontal scroll, but this is a whole new ball game. It's funny to think that something like that could impact my workflow so much, but it has. While the Mighty Mouse may look like a 1 button mouse, it's actually got 4. You have your right click and left click, of course, but you also have your 3rd button with the scroll-ball (which takes some getting used to as the whole mouse clicks when you use it) and the 4th as a squeeze to both sides at once (again, takes a bit of getting used to). All the buttons are user-mappable. It's a fairly comfortable design (it is based on their tried-and-true mouse design), but it doesn't quite stand up to some of the more ergonomic mouses I've used in the past. On the wireless side, it uses Bluetooth, so there's not any interference with anything else, and it stays connected very well. Overall, it's a good mouse. It's one-click design, but 4 button functionality, takes a bit of getting used to, but the scroll-ball makes that curve well worth it.
