I finally broke down and purchased an iPod Touch so I could have music and stream movies to help drown out the noise factor at my new cube location. Unfortunately, the local WAN team blocks streaming so I've only been using it for music, but it does the job. Luckily for me though, my team has been granted the ability to work from home several days a week now to allow us a quieter environment to concentrate on our tasks at hand. And to take conference calls. Lots and lots of conference calls.
One problem with that...I don't have unlimited minutes on my family cell plan, so I began using Google to make calls using my little AlienWare laptop. It works great, but I'm tied to a wired headset attached to a fairly heavy device which means I can't really do anything but sit while on conference calls. So I started researching, and found I can make my iPod Touch into a cell phone. Yep, as long as I have wireless access I can make free calls via Google Voice on my iPod Touch.
Apple did this one pretty well. I can't use my bluetooth headset that works for my Android phone however as Apple, in it's proprietariness, Applehas made that impossible. And as I found in researching potential headsets, there's a big difference between a 2nd Gen iPod Touch and a 4th Gen iPod Touch and what worked for a 4th Gen iPod Touch won't work on an Original iPad (which also will not run anything higher than iOS 5) or on a 5th or 6th Gen iPod Touch. I managed to find a Sony that fit the bill though and I am now using my iPod Touch as a phone - as long as I have wifi access where I am. Pretty cool, but still not yet enough to convince me to go to an iPhone. My Galaxy IIS has withstood many, many drops that an iPhone would probably not have survived and I'm still not thoroughly convinced that I want to "live" in any single cloud environment. If I truly had my druthers, I'd still be on my beloved BlackBerry Curve that is still running and that I still use for apps. (Always the rebel!)
The apps for using Google Voice on an iPod are free, one provided by Google and another called GV Phone which I like better (except for the annoying ads). It's only been a day so far, and I've had one misdialed number (using the Google app) but people seem to be able to hear me okay and the sound quality is really good as long as I don't get it too close to my Galaxy or my bluetooth headset.
So for now, I'll grudgingly accept that Apple has done something cool by providing a feature to access a service provided by one of their main competitors. I've been in the industry long enough to remember the days when that would never have happened, so it's nice to see, even if I have to throw a bone to Apple regarding their overpriced music box.
