Is that 40,000 songs in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last… um… several hours then you know about all the iPod news. The iPhone has dropped $200 in price to a much more reasonable $399. The iPod nano now supports video in a fat little package with 4GB or 8GB capacities in all new colors. The shuffle gets similar color treatment, but otherwise nothing new. The normal iPod or, as they’re now dubbed, the iPod classic reaches its 6th generation with a sexy all-aluminum casing and capacity choices of 80GB and 160GB.
But the big news over which everyone is abuzz is the new iPod touch. At $299 for the 8GB model or $399 for the 16GB model, you get a touch-screen interface similar to the iPhone that plays videos and has Wi-Fi access and a built-in Safari browser.
At first I was pretty impressed with the Touch, too, but the more I look at it, the less I get it. For $399, I have the choice between either a 16GB mini-computer or an 8GB mini-computer with a built-in phone and internet access via both Wi-Fi and the EDGE network. That seems like a no-brainer to me. Trade a measly 8GB of storage so that the device is more usable for communication? Sure! That’s what I’d get it for anyways - for the internet access. If I can get a phone in the deal and ditch my old Samsung, that’s a million times better. Neither the iPhone nor the Touch are satisfactory as far as being a music device, at least not for this music addict and those like me who have trouble trimming out a choice playlist to squeeze onto my 60GB 5th gen iPod from my far larger music library.
It looks to me like the price drop for the iPhone will kill sales for the Touch before the product even gets out the door. For myself, I think I’ll start counting my pennies for the $349 160GB iPod classic so that I can finally fit all of my music AND all of my photos into one sexy little package.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a good SNL clip from when the iPhone first came out. Funny thing, the iPod Touch actually DOES have “Starbucks.”
