-You change the song. -Yeah. -This week on Always On. The holiday shopping unboxings continue and we've set our sites on all things Apple. Stop her! Plus I enlist some little kids to torture test the iPod Touch. Always On is on. Hey, welcome to always on, I'm Molly Wood. This is the show where we take a look at the tech that's part of your life and your future. We survived Black Friday and cyber Monday, but I'm pretty sure you're shopping is not done yet. So, the unboxings continue starting with the highly requested gadget, the iPod Touch. Time for a much requested Unboxing, the iPod Touch. Now, I have a couple of them here because we bought various versions for various torture tests and I have to point out right away that I'm kind of in love with how the packaging has a little colored Apple depending on what color you buy like we got a red one and a green one and there's a blue one somewhere. They clearly broke it. But we're gonna unbox the black one, the 32-gig model. Now the iPod Touch I wasn't that into when it was announced, but we got so much mail from you guys wanting to know if we would unbox it and specifically torture it. I think because it's such a popular kids' device that I went ahead. It turns out one of our producers is already in love with it even though I thought if you have an iPhone or an iPad why would you want it. Okay. Maybe I was wrong. Simple packaging of course just comes right open. Yeah, there's a sticker here. I think the black is probably also called slate-- whatever. It's actually really pretty. It's kind of more like a charcoal. Oh, that's nice. It has the matte back, which makes the bezel look even smaller on the black one. That's actually pretty fancy. Let's have a look at what's in the box pretty straightforward. Just do a little lightning, charging cable, no brick here. No power brick, just the cable and then of course your ear pods. And then-- And I think this is why and you'll see why when we do our torture test. It comes with a little wrist strap right here and then watch this. There's this like clever little thing on the back. You pop it out like that. Slide the wrist strap on and give it to your kid. Cute. Alright, let's go to the specs on this little guy. The bad news about the iPod Touch I think is that it starts at $299 for the 32-gig model. It's $399 for the 64-gig model, which is kind of what everyone wants since this is basically a media player. It runs iOS 6. It weighs 3.10 ounces. It's just basically really small and light. There's a 4-inch retina display just like on the iPhone 5. It is an 1136 x 640-pixel resolution. It has Wi-Fi only. No built-in LTE because that would make it a phone. It has Bluetooth 4.0. There's that lightning dock connector like I mentioned, the touch loop. There's a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera that takes HD video and a front-facing HD camera that takes 1.2-megapixel photos. Performance wise, it gets a dual-core A5 processor that replaces the last versions A4. So, it should be plenty speedy for playing games, which is another selling point for those who want this for their kids. Now, no question the iPod Touch is a super nice device. The screen is beautiful. The size is wonderful. It's just a weird placement. Now, it's $30 cheaper than the iPad mini and it's not a phone like the iPhone. But apparently, I am wrong about these concerns because people are buying iPod Touches in droves. I do admit it it's a lot lighter and easier to carry than a tablet and the battery life is really good too. So, alright maybe you guys are right about this one. Now, that we've unboxed the iPod touch, you all wanted us to torture it, so here we go. Time to torture test the iPod Touch. Winter is coming so I know there's a chance you could leave your gadgets in your cold, cold car. That's what these 2 hours in the freezer is about to simulate. Oh, look so pretty. Alright, see you later little buddy. Alright, let's get this bad boy out of the freezer, see how it's doing. Note, we have our product red iPod Touch. Of course, you know this does go to charity to help with AIDS research. Okay, so, everything seems to be working. It really wants to get on the WiFi. The home button is a little sluggish, but it is working. So, I would say if you do leave your iPod in the car in the frozen tundra, it's gonna be all right. Oh, I need to change the song. Oh, no! Oh, no! My iPod. Oh, my iPod did not like that, sort things out so I can hear myself talking, yeah. We have damage. We have some little plastic poking out the side. You haven't seen. That was really realistic by the way. I have done that a bunch of times, but just creating that crack, hope that it comes on. Screen comes on, still functional. I'm surprised actually that the home button is still functional because it's coming apart badly at the bottom here, but it goes. The best sets it out. I wish this do a normal drop now. Well, that was dramatic, but I still think we should try it again. Oh, my iPod. Oh, it's so tricky. It fell. Okay, well, that was a little less force. We still have this little screw really wanted to come out. No damage to the camera that I can tell. Let's push that back in. Oh, yeah, screen is all messed up, all lines there. So, now, we have pretty much busted the touchscreen. It's no longer responding to any touch at all. I confess that I hurled it to the ground, but that is not okay for $300 for 2 drops to completely destroy this thing. Well, it is starting to rain. I was gonna dumping this in a pothole for the water test, but I don't think there's any point in that. I think it sustained so much damage in our drop test that it's pretty much gone. We managed too well and truly kill our red iPod Touch, but I don't wanna deprive of the full gantlet of torture test. So, we bought another one and we're about to put it in the oven. Once again, this is simulating what might happen if you left your iPod in a hot car for a while. Now, we do a little hotter. Then, your car is gonna get 200 degrees, but only for an hour, only, huh. Good luck iPod. Time to rescue the iPod, all right. Oh, I hope it's okay. I can smell it, not-- unlike a yummy bread way either and totally toxic. I can't believe I do this in my own home way. I don't see any obvious melting. All right, not even angry temperature warnings. I'm just gonna let it cool off for a little bit. Oh, that was hot, and see if it comes back to life. So, I accidentally bumped it while I was seeing if it was cool and it gave me a temperature warning, but now it looks like it's just coming on and trying to Siri me. I was hoping I will get the temperature warning again. It must have been a relic, but it looks like it is back on definitely on the WiFi, seems pretty responsive after about 10 minutes of cooling, which is not surprising because it's really thin. It's not like it's gonna retain a lot of heat. I would say iPod Touch has no problem with the hot test So, the iPod touch can't really handle a drop. Later in the show, you'll find out whether it can handle rambunctious children. Before that though, I am going to unbox a pretty hot little loptop, the new MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display. Today, we are unboxing the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. You may remember that we unbox the 15-inch model in the first episode of Always On. Back then, we had to borrow that one that the labs guys from New York app, but now we have enough money to buy our own. It has my name on it, packing list. Alright and I'm coming up in the world because I still have 8-leg basket with my name on it. Let's check it out. MacBook Pro. It's a pretty heavy box. I'm not gonna lie, feels pretty beefy. They do packing well. Here's our little box, power brick, little extra cable there, instructions. No CD in the box, of course, why would there be. It o-- This is heavy. I mean it's not that heavy, but it feels heavy compared to an Air because it's a 13-inch laptop and we've all kind of gotten used to that really Air size thing. It's a much beefier laptop, definitely has that pro feel. Ah, yeah, oh, okay. Let's open it up and see if we can come on so we can check out the retina display. While I get it all setup, let's do the specs. The MacBook Pro with Retina display starts at $1699 and it goes up rapidly from there. It has that 2560 x 1600 display, which looks pretty darn good. The base model has a 2.5 gigahertz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with eight gigs of onboard RAM. The base model has a 128 gig solid state flash drive. You're probably not going to want that considering that you're likely a photographer if you are the MacBook Pro retina's target market. You'll wanna update to 256 Gigs for an additional $300. There's also 512 gig option or 768 gig. That one will cost you and additional $1300. The MacBook Pro weighs 3.57 pounds. It has a 720p Face Time HD camera that looks very nice, 2 thunderbolt ports, and USB 3.0, HDMI out and an SDXC card slot for those photographers who might want to use it. It has a full sized backlit keyboard and it ships was not inline. I was curious about the weight of this thing, so I brought on the 13-inch MacBook Air to compare, and I have to say that they actually feel pretty similar in weight, and the MacBook Pro is a little more compact than the Air, look at that. It's like a little bit wider because of all that skinny vessel, I guess. Obviously, the MacBook Pro with Retina display is a super nice laptop. I'm curious about who the target market is because frankly the pro photographers, I know, were hoping for a 17-inch laptop and not a 13-inch a laptop and also that price-- I mean, it's one thing to pay a premium for Apple products, but 1699 is the base, 1999 for, let's be honest, the model that you're gonna want at minimum. The MacBook Air 13-inch and the MacBook Pro 13-inch without retina display starts at 1199. That's a crazy premium for display that frankly is beautiful, but just not that necessary. I'm not saying I'm not gonna totally enjoy using this guy for a couple of weeks and I'm excited to take it at home, but I wouldn't pay for it. Time for us to take a quick break. When we come back, I'll unbox the Mac Mini and the new oddly shaped Slingbox 500 plus the conclusion of our iPod Touch torture test featuring some hopped up little kids. Now, there's always talk about the iPad Mini and the new iMacs, and the new Mac with an app, but hardly anybody talks about the humble Mac Mini or as I like to call it the perfect home theater PC. We have one here and we are about to unbox it. Alright, the Mac Mini is such an interesting little computer. It has pretty good specs and a ton of storage, and I assumed that they're still making it to be kind of a home theater computer, but meanwhile, they kind tell you Apple TV boxes. In fact, look at how they highlight the connectivity on the box. Right off the back, there are like USB, HDMI, FireWire, Thunderbolt. This thing is meant to be plugged in and power anything. Let's get it out here, oh, little brick, pretty heavy actually. It's kind of funny. It's the graveyard of lost connectors, but they're still doing FireWire, only on the MacMini, killed it everywhere else. Oh, look at this. It's like a really big Apple TV. My God, so funny, it's like a computer. Get that. Hold it, kind of a sleeker computer. All right, there we go. Simple, sleek media receiver. Let's find out what we have in the box before we do our specs at our little instructional pocket, daily power, is this really a power brick for this thing? So, little, wow. I have to say, that doesn't seem like a huge feature, but that's a huge feature. There's massive brick here. That is contributing to a tidier home theater cabinet and I approved. You've also got a dongle. It's like DVI to HDMI dongle, which is pretty useful. So, clearly, I mean, as soon as you start taking this thing out of the box, you get the idea that is this meant to be part of your home theater setup, which is so interesting that they don't talk about. They talk about Apple TV when this is so much more flexible. Alright, onto the specs, the Mac Mini comes in versions. There's a 2.5 gigahertz dual-core, Intel Core i5 that starts at $599 or you can get a 2.3 gigahertz quad-core Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge at one 799. It's configurable to up to 2.6 gigahertz by the way on that quad core model. It weighs 2.7 pounds. It's about an inch and a half tall. It's 7.7 inches wide and depth. It's a little square. The $599 model has 500 gigs of storage. The 799 model actually has built in terabyte. It has integrated Intel graphics and 4 gigs of on board memory. That's configurable up to 16 gigs. Let's get to the ports. There is Thunderbolt. You have FireWire 800 port, 4 UBB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot so you could upload your photos onto this device, gigabit Ethernet, audio in and out, and of course an IR receiver. Now, one think you'll note is that there is no optical drive on the Mac Mini. Apple is expecting you to download or buy all of your movies and TV from most likely iTunes. Also note that it does not come with any input devices. No keyboard or mouse, so you're gonna have to bring your own wireless keyboard or Apple $69 gesture accessory if you want to use the new OS X gestures. Now, the lack of optical drive for me is the biggest knock on the Mac Mini. As long as all your media is in the cloud, then I guess, you're akay with this, but to be honest, I was hoping to buy this and then have a Blu-ray drive built, so I can watch movies on big cinema display and not could be a whole TV all on its own. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be doing that, but if you own all of your iTunes movies, download from, amazon, things like that. This is a great web enabled fully functioning computer to make part of your home theater package. Check out our CNET review on that and happy shopping. Also today, I am unboxing the new Slingbox 500. Remember sling box. It's like a title box that you can take with you anywhere and stream your own TV to wherever you are. It's an awesome gift for college kids who wanna share their parents' cable subscriptions, and it's also a big hit with sports fans because if you are on the road, you can still watch the home teen play. Alright, let's check it out. Plus NEC of setup boxes that bring you like a whole bunch of content. This one just brings you your TV at your house, from DVR, from your DVD player. Pretty sleek. Watch your TV anywhere. Good old fashion, not the greenish packaging, bust open our bubble tape. Okay, Slingbox 500. Now, the big change between the old Slingbox and this one is that this one streams in 1080p, so high def streaming, which is pretty sleek. Oh, look at this. Aren't you a funny little shape? It's like infinity or the wave. See, I'm not actually a fan of this. I understand that you want components to maybe standout a little bit or you're tired of building black boxes, but this is a home theater component. Yours is gonna go on a shelf with the bunch of other black boxes, so why don't you make it stackable. Let's get to the specs. This Slingbox 500h has built in WiFi the 1080p high def streaming I mentioned earlier. It can connect to your DVR, your cable set-top box, or your satellite receiver. On the back you will find a USB port and network port, HDMI in and out. Component inputs and composite inputs. It's also compatible with your DVD or Blu-ray player, and this has handy video security cameras. It does not have a monthly fee, and like Apple TV, you can use it to send photos and music on your mobile device to your television, although you cannot stream video. It costs $299. One bomber, even if your DVR has multiple tuner, Slingbox still can deliver only one output. So, if some else's home and watching the view, you're gonna have to fight for viewing rights. The mobile app cost $15, also kind of a bomber. They're available for ISO android. I got so distracted by the unusual shape that I forget to look what else is in the box. So-- because I know it comes with a lot of cables and I wanna dig in here. We have our quick start guide. See what we have in terms of cables, power. That's an easy one. Do you come with HDMI, you do. That's actually pretty nice, but it comes with an HDMI cable. You've got component and composite cables, so pretty much have everything you need plus your remote control, which even comes with batteries, nice touch, over here. Some more audio and optical cable array it looks like. This appears to be possibly an aux cable, maybe I'm wrong, and then your network cable. So, this a pretty impressive little package. You definitely have everything in this box that you would need to get out and running once you download your $15 apps. I will say that 299's are little expensive for Slingbox considering all the set-top boxes out there that deliver content and all the ways to get content on the go via apps. That said, like a I mentioned earlier, any college kid on your Christmas list can love this guy. So, these gadgets are both good holiday gift ideas. Now, let's get back to our iPod Touch torture test and find out if that's gonna make your list. So, it seemed only obvious for the iPod torture test that the wild card should be giving the iPods to children and asking them to not be carefully while they play games and have snacks. So, I have Sam and Ella and Dash and Elli, and you guys are all gonna play games, right? On our fancy iPods. -Yeah. -So, I wanna tell you the rules. -But which [unk]. -I know you're gonna have to share and then there's a rule for today. Okay. So, while you're drinking your juice and eating chips and fruit and pizza and playing with iPod. I want you to not be careful. -Yeah. -That's right. -I remember that rule. -Don't be careful. -Alright, are you guys hungry? -Yeah. -Yeah! -You wanna play some-- And you wanna play some games. -Yeah. -Okay. -Now, don't forget to share. -And you grab this out. -Go, I'm gonna get out your way and let you play -Oh, good job, good job. Follow Elli, go, go, go-- run, run, run. Good job. Stupor. Yeah, towards to the cap. -I will play with this. -All right guys, now, we're gonna play a pretty crazy game. -Hello. -I know. -We're gonna put the 2 iPods on this plastic, and then we're gonna. -I know that kind of plastic, cool. -I know this is totally yours. It came from your house. -Yup. -And then we're gonna spill juice on them. -With that-- -Put them in the middle and let's go get our juice. -We have to turn this off. -We should turn them on actually. It's much more-- Oh, that's a sticky iPod, wow, okay. Ready. Oh, we got the video playing. That's excellent, okay. Run over and spill your juice on the phones. Good job. One more. Yeah. Oh, Dash, you wanna try it? -Yeah, cool. -Oh, disaster, good job everybody. All right everyone, take a break, back up. -They're still okay. -They're still okay. Look, they are still going. Look, super while still playing. Do you think they are pretty tough? -Yeah. -I also too. -Yeah. I mean, you jump on them and throw on and look, they are so cool. Alright, we're gonna get them out and dry them off. You guys can take a break and have some snacks, okay. Great job everyone. -Oh, you can just lie down. -I might have to lie down. I'm exhausted after that. Good job guys. Look at that. We have 2 juice soaked Cheeto encrusted greased covered iPod Touch at least at this second totally still entertaining children. -Oh yeah. -Yeah. Now, we went ahead and scraped off all the Cheeto dust and wiped off the grease, and these things are still strong, pretty impressive. I think you can trust your kids with them because your kids aren't gonna what ours did, come on. All right, let's check out some e-mail. Let's jump right into your e-mails. I love always on and especially Molly Wood. I have a torture test scenario for you. I have seen happen, but fortunately it wasn't me, honest, not me. While I work in the tech field, I live to ride my horses. Unfortunately, you know, the phone must go too. So, here is very real scenario. While fumbling with their cellphone, a rider's attention is focused on an exciting text. A deer leaps out of the woods suddenly sending the horse into a frenzy backing feet, cellphone goes flying as rider grabs leather in an attempt to survive the mayhem and perhaps regain control of the horse. By the time the rider gets the horse under control, they are yards and yards away from the original explosion site. Where is the phone? Under some mud, leaves, debris and suddenly with a nice hoof print. How about that for a torture test? Anonymous. Wow, I'm kind of disappointed there is no horse poop involved, but otherwise, I think we need to recreate that. Also, I've never heard that phrase, grabs leather before, and I did grab riding horses. It's new. Moving on, Neil writes in. I notice that whenever you have an unboxing, you throw everything on the ground. Oh, yeah. Who is picking up after you? I think, this is really unrealistic because whenever I book my stuff, I keep the packaging together for recycling or keeping, from Illinois, Neil Tupberry. Yes, love the show. I watch it every week and would love to be part of the mailbag, really? You think it's unrealistic like when you're watching an action movie and a motorcycle is riding on a moving train, unrealistic? It's okay. We pick it up after we throw the stuff on the ground. Actually, usually, I pick it up a letter. Next up, a lovely complement for Jeff Cannata, kind of. I don't want you overstate this, so I'll be guarded. Is it me or is Jeff the most ruggedly handsome, elegantly muscled, intellectually charming guy in tech news and reviews? I found myself a washed in his relaxed manner in WiDi delivery that I ended up missing the actually content of his torture tests. I think it would be more effective to get a run of the middle tech type guy to perform the test. Jeff is far too distracting for this visual video format. You ain't too bad yourself, sister, from Chad in Orlando, Florida. P.S., please, don't carry about my suggestion. Jeff is an unexpectedly nice addition to the show. I want you to know I forwarded this e-mail to Jeff because assumed it would make his day and it did. Thank you guys and thank you for all of the awesome feedback including the action packed horse riding stories, love it. E-mail me alwayson@cnet.com. You can also find us at Google+, Facebook and of course Twitter. That's it for this week everyone. Newt week on always on, many more product unboxings for you holiday shopping needs including the new Nook HD plus a future tech story about a glove that you can wear to help you get in shape. See next week on always on. It's like a strange lady just ask me if want some candy. I like the Cheetos dust under them, saying that's good. Okay. Nice work. It's looking good, like a disaster when it happened. -We're buying.