How's your iPod holding up? If you've been pondering an upgrade, listen up. Apple CEO/Guru Steve Jobs today unveiled a revamped line of the electronics maker's flagship music player, including a new iteration: The iPod Touch.
The iPod Touch is Apple's snazzy iPhone stripped of the phone and beefed up with double the storage. The Touch will be Wi-Fi enabled and have the Safari Web browser built in, allowing users to take advantage of another new offering: The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Long clamored for by the Pod-People, this new iTunes will finally allow users to download songs directly to their iPods and later sync them with a computer.
Jobs also showed off custom ringtones for the iPhone, a revamped iPod Nano (now with video), the iPod Classic (Mr. old reliable, now with better battery life and huge storage), a new partnership with Starbucks (allowing users to download songs at the coffee behemoth's bazillion locations worldwide by the end of 2008), and an iPhone price cut from $599 to $399. The man really knows how to pack in the announcements.
Still, it will be a few months before we know if the new iPods will live up to their aging siblings. Not all of today's news was a home run. The iPod Touch could use a memory boost, Starbucks is the devil and where are those oft-rumored Beatles iPods and albums on iTunes already?
The bottom line: The Touch looks like an iPod lover's dream come true. Expect a new wave of hype and a frenzy of buying before year's end. Merry early-Christmas everyone!
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.
