Can you get a picture of Maggie O'Connell while you're up there?

2,355 miles? Get some good pictures up there! I'm 6,885 miles away from Seattle in Buenos Aires, so it looks like posting is left up to just one slacker.

So far nothing in Cariboo shoots back.

ZOverLord,

I seem to be bumping into your comments / ads about MyToGo for Skype all over the place lately (we must visit the same sites. You seem to be posting in ZOverDrive.

In regards to MyToGo for Skype. I'm not sure it really helps all my scenarios. For one, you have to buy SkypePro and SkypeIn in order to take full advantage of it. Also using it is not necessarily 'free'. If I use it from my Cell phone I of course chew up minutes which is something I'm working hard to avoid. Not to dis the product but I'm already getting most the skype benefits I need already with the combination of a 30.00 skype gateway connected to my home phone and the use of www.grandcentral.com.

So far I've been listening to tunes (from the laptop) for a few hours on them with no problem. I have also taken two cell phone calls. Everything is sounding good and working perfectly. The switch over from music to phone was seamless.

Oh and I discovered another killer use for this device. Since my car stereo has an audio in jack... Now I have a bluetooth car adapter! The device easily clips to my vent giving me wireless music / audio books from my pocket PC as well as hands free phone calls. Both of the music players I use on the PocketPc (MortPlayer and PocketPlayer support bluetooth play controls so I can play/pause, next/prev track direct from the clippy. No need to un-holster the PDA.

Watch out George, PocketPC is bound to become this decade's newton... so much promise, so little delivery.

Yes, this needs to come to the 360. A media extender without divx is like a music player without mp3 support. Dumb.

I agree. I would say the same about a portable video player. Apple are you listening?

Another thing I really think they should have / will do at some point is the integration of a camera with the iPod. -At least with the HD based iPod. A camera would let you record full frame rate mp4 video in addition to photos. With the Wifi you would be able to upload content directly to Flickr, YouTube or .mac. -This sort of thing seems a natural fit for Apple's new 'consumer' focuse. It also seems a natural complement to the iLife app suite.

The thing that I take away from this announcement is the possibility of what might be. The wifi on the iPod is just the beginning, but it's still missing the camera, larger capacity, trading with others, etc. I guess we'll have to wait until Apple trickles out those features over the next few years.

I was also hoping that they'd announce that The Beatles would appear (sans DRM) on iTunes. I like enough of their songs that I'd probably buy a few albums.

Personally I think they should have gone portrait mode on the nano (ala zune). That would force you to hold it on it's side to watch movies, but at least they could have kept it similar to the old nano form factor.

Here is an interesting factoid:
Old nano:
* Height: 3.5 inches
* Width: 1.6 inches
* Depth: 0.26 inch
* Weight: 1.41 ounces

New nano:
* Height: 2.75 inches (69.8 mm)
* Width: 2.06 inches (52.3 mm)
* Depth: 0.26 inch (6.5 mm)
* Weight: 1.74 ounces (49.2 grams)

3.5 x 1.6 = 5.6 sq in
2.75 x 2.06 = 5.665 sq in

Ok so technically it is the same size. But the new one does way .33 ounces more.

This pricing is just another example of the "myth of the phone subsidy." Time and again we see hardware sold without any service agreement at basically the same price as the supposed subsidized carrier phones. Remember when you could get a VGA width Dell Axim with 624mhz processor for $300, and yet the equivalent phone was over $300, WITH a 2 year agreement? Same thing here with the iPod Touch / iPhone. Won't someone make an unlocked phone that just accepts any freaking SIM card?

Agreed that the ringtone thing is ridiculous, haven't read any reviews that think it's reasonable. It's a freaking music player - just point the ringtone to an existing song! I guess the iPhone hacks already let you do this for free. I wouldn't be surprised if it was AT&T pushing for this additional charge (which Apple was happy to get a piece of).

I like the "classic", it seems like a reasonable update and the 160GB capacity is pretty awesome.

Totally agree that the nano should have been in portrait mode. Much better use of space.

Standard Apple hobbling the iTouch device by (apparently) not including bluetooth to support a headset/mic for VoIP calls. With that capability, I'd consider this a great deal over the iPhone. I use the phone feature so little that the $2K contract is ridiculous for me, but I still need to take that occasional call. I'm fine with using data only in WiFi zones.

I'm fine with the capacity and the lack of camera. I'm a DSLR guy so these minicams just don't cut it for me anyway. I'm most interested in using the iTouch as a mobile web browser. It's the best mobile web experience I've ever seen. I hate to still have to carry around my cheap phone though...

Overall I'm pretty excited about the future direction, and we've sure seen a bunch of other manufacturers planning for doing touch screen phones now too, so the market might heat up.

Do you guys know if the iTouch is going to have a virtual scroll wheel? It would seem strange that the new interface is just a scroll bar, since so many iPod clones had the scroll bar. If it supports multitouch, it should have been easy to do a circular touch wheel that maybe pops up with more than one finger on the screen.

In related news Apple drops the iPod Hi-Fi. This product was about as good an idea as the Foleo... :-)

First: "a bunch of other manufacturers planning for doing touch screen phones...". What you mean is that the 'bunch' of manufacturers that have already been selling touch screen phones for years are finally going to get serious and make them usable. Just because people never noticed touch screen phones before doesn't mean they haven't been on the market for many, many years now.

Second: the iTouch is not going to have a virtual scroll wheel. The interface is exactly the same as the iPhone. Flick to scroll.

Oh John, don't you know that nothing exists 'till Apple markets it? :-)

Flick to scroll may work for the smaller storage size of the iPod touch. But I'm not sure what the resistance has been to doing a virtual scroll wheel.

Check out the guided tour. It will show how they deal with large libraries. Flick is a natural interface. Moving your finger around in a circle is not. -It works well, just not a natural.

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/guidedtour/

Jobs is giving out 100 dollars to all existing iPhone owners! Granted it is in store credit, but again Jobs surprises me.

Desperately trying to fit your entire music collection into a 16G iTouch? A product has popped up that claims to cut the size of your mp3 files in half with no* noticeable loss in quality. (* ok that really depends on a lot of things). Their scheme is supposed to do a better job than most MP3 encoders VBR settings and works on existing MP3s rather than having to start over from the CD source. Wired checked it out here. It costs 40 bucks though! Is it worth it? Would any of you use something like that so you can cram 32G of music in 16G of space?

Somebody really likes the iTouch.

I'm going to pick up one of these dogs with my $100 coupon and employee discount.