iPod Thoughts and Why The iPod Touch Isn't an iPod

While it's encouraging to read that even the most hardened Zune fanatics are accepting the rather excellent advance that Apple has made, I'm still struggling to fully 'get' the iPhone/iPod Touch.

I know that the user interface is phenominally sleek, but an interface doesn't make a device, does it?

Maybe it does, because I know that I'm itching to get my hands on one of the new iPod Nanos or an iPod Classic, so maybe it's just personal preference where I don't get my kicks out of touch screen interfaces.

And so I find myself really encouraged at how Apple has actually progressed a 'platform' and put in useful functionality that people can apply to their lives as opposed to functionality that puts a tick in the box but has no practical use (anyone want a squirt?).

And so my thoughts on the range as it now stands begin with the Shuffle which is a wonder of modern media. It's tiny, everybody accepts that it has no special features or functionality but still, there's something about it that makes it desirable. Oh, and I am a big fan of pastel colours.

I see the Nano and the Classic as being of the same ilk now that the only thing that really separates them is capacity. Sure, the Nano uses Solid State memory and the Classic a Hard Drive, but the user isn't going to see that when he (or she) looks to see how much space is available.

The update of the Classic's interface really does give the Zune a kick in the pants because Apple have managed to add elegance without adding the risk of having unreadable text or unecessary 'whizz-bang' waiting. In my opinion, the Classic is the greatest iPod line because it does what the iPod has done since the first days; store loads of songs (and videos, and photos, and contacts, and appointments, and podcasts). I have a 30Gb 5G iPod and I think it's the bee's knees, but the new Classic takes that sleek form factor and adds an interface that makes the user feel special without abandoning the original ideals of what has become an icon of digitial media. It's functional, it's simple, it works.

The iPod Touch is, in my opinion, not an iPod any more than the Motorola ROKR was an iPod. The iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the Phone (maybe it's an 'i' then?). This is somewhere I think Apple may have got the branding a little wrong because if the iPod Touch is an iPod, then why isn't the iPhone a iPod Talk?

As I see it, the iPod Touch may be elegant, but it's not simple and in some ways, it's muddied the water between the Classic and the Nano in that the Nano was a cut-down iPod because of it's lack of capacity and so is the iPod Touch. It can browse, it can buy, it can organise, but the iPod 'part' of the iPod Touch is a cut-down iPod; it's a rather limited PDA with cut-down iPod functionality. I think that this is a bit of a bad thing and I won't be wanting one, not because of some philosophical ideal regarding what an iPod should be, but because I have no use for it an iPod Touch.

The Classic is what I really, really want for Christmas (and the hints are already being dropped). I would really like a Nano in the meantime and a Shuffle is cute... I wouldn't say no to an iPod Touch, but if I had to choose between that and my current 5G 20Gb iPod, I think the 5G would win.