I got myself one of those “retina display” (960×640) 5th gen iPod Touch for the New Year. First impressions are that it’s rather well integrated, responsive, and has a number of fun applications. It’s even usable as an X/SSH thin client with a 10$ App.
With Permissions of Emily Carroll
But then you try to see how far you can push the use of the device with Linux (my primary operating system) and find that the support is dismal. The support is already not that impressive with Apple‘s iTunes running on Mac OS X. iTunes is really slow even when running native (i.e., without virtualization) and also does some very stupid things such as preventing you from copying a PDF you downloaded from the web back on the computer even though it has no DRMs—a behavior defective by design. Another limitation is in the iPod itself: the video formats supported are very limited.
Posted by Steven Pigeon 
