I don’t know anything about this doohickey. Grandma is getting each of the kids (10 and 12) one. It’s a nice gift, and certainly out of my price range this year, and the kids are quite excited…but I have no experience so don’t know what to expect.
So, Dopers…advice? Input? Ideas? Thanks!
First thing: get them a good case(s) for them, preferably something water resistant like an Otterbox Defender. They’re expensive, but well worth $40 vs $200+ for a new iPod (trust me on this one; my GF has killed at least 3 iPods by spilling water on them).
They are going to need a computer with iTunes to load them up. They seem sort of young to have their own computers so you may have to share yours. Set up accounts in advance.
Limit them to free games for now - they can find plenty. They will start asking for the pay games fast (“It is only 99 cents!!!”) and that can add up if you are on a budget.
They will start asking for music too, so you need to finally start ripping some music to iTunes as well. Again they will ask to buy a single at times. Again, this can add up. Also, there are EXPLICIT yversions of songs as opposed to the ones on the radio. Decide if you want them listening.
(My 9 nine year old has his brother’s old iTouch - go through this regularly)
If you have a wireless router at your house, and plan to let them use that on their iPods, you might want to set it up so that their devices can only access it at certain times of the day. You should be able to do that using the router’s advanced settings, and the devices’ MAC addresses.
They’ll need one or two iTunes accounts. A single account is nice if they want to share apps / music, but could lead to accidental (or intentional) spending of each other’s account credit.
You can get them iTunes gift cards for small amounts of money - most grocery stores etc. sell them. Typically 10/15/25 dollar increments. They use those to set up the account(s) and then can spend them as they wish. This eliminates the need to set up a credit card on the account, which obviously you do NOT want to do. I think you can also set up an “allowance” which basically charges your credit card a preset amount and credits their account - so they can spend, but not overspend.
A lot of the free games suck you in at first, but to do more stuff you have to buy “bucks” - e.g. Tap Ranch and Tap Fish.
Oh, and finally:
ANGRY BIRDS :D.