by: George Starcher, Associate Editor

Ok I am a geek. It has only been out a few hours and I already installed the update on my 16GB Touch. Heck I updated my iTunes from remote before I left work. Just so it would be waiting on me to get home.

You can select your Touch in iTunes, click Check for Updates. Now here is where it gets a little confusing. It will update your iPod Touch to v1.3. Yes Apple will charge you $19.99 for the update (that is pre-tax). But you don’t get asked about that until after you first resync the iPod after installing the update. You can choose to “Remind me Later” or click to go to the Software Upgrade. If you choose to Remind Later then you just run your Touch as normal with a slight appearance change. Just none of the new features. Once you choose to click the Software Upgrade it will take you to a page in the iTunes store and you buy it like you would a song. A quick restart of your iPod and before you can even pull it out of the dock all the new buttons appear.

I love the update. But then my wife was surprised I even went to dinner the other night without sneaking it in my pocket. The update makes it the iPhone minus the phone. Finally! The ability to add new buttons web clipping a page viewed in Safari is nice. I put a Remote Buddy button on my Touch desktop to control my iMac. Tossed on another for PocketTweets (a twitter client).

One thing I don’t like about some of the web applications like PocketTweets and the Facebook app is that they run straight HTTP not HTTPS. That means they are not encrypted. Someone could grab your login information at a wireless hotspot. So I was concerned about the new mail application. However once I setup my various mail accounts I found that in the Advanced settings it does support SSL encryption. Matter of fact it is on by default when you setup a new account. It might even be auto checking for it during setup. But I would have to do some network traffic sniffing to confirm that. And yes I said various accounts. I setup my dotMac IMAP mail and several POP3 accounts. All work like a charm. You can easily change which one is the default for use when writing new email.

The google maps location feature. Just plain scary! It drew a circle around my corner of the street almost right away. And there is not but maybe one neighbor with open wireless nearby to be a location beacon. I promptly dropped a new pin labeling it Home on the Map. I dropped it right in my driveway after zooming in on the satellite view.

Sure some folks are going to fuss about the $19.99 upgrade cost. But think about what you are getting. Likely this cost covers the licensing of the various technology and software behind the update. Like the location feature. I can hardly wait to see what folks do with the SDK coming out next month.

Now if Apple will just get the rental button showing for everyone in iTunes and my AppleTV software update showing for download.

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