Look past cheaper iPhones to feel out new iPod touch
Apple's iPhone price cut this week overshadowed some of the company's most interesting news for the iPod lineup in years. And although the iPhone still hasn't topped 1 million sold, more than 110 million iPods have been sold since 2001. Are these new features cool enough to inspire you to get yet another iPod?
The newest lineup for the fall is definitely worth a look if you need to refresh. I only got cursory looks at the new models this week, but the clear highlight was the iPod touch that has the same screen featured on the iPhone. I haven't been able to stress test these new models, but as far as I can see, you can't go wrong with any one of them.
You can use your fingers to navigate on multiple touch points on the 3.5-inch diagonal screen. Because it comes with WiFi wireless networking and a Safari Web browser, you can use the screen to navigate through Web pages, zooming in or zooming out with ease. An 8-gigabyte iPod touch model is $299 and a 16-gigabyte model is $399.
As with the iPhone, you can use the iPod touch to connect directly to YouTube to see more than 10 million free videos, starting with the most-viewed videos. And you can connect to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store to download songs immediately. The store has 6 million songs, more than 500 movies and 550 TV shows.
You can't share songs via WiFi as you can with a Microsoft Zune. But, by touching the Starbucks button on the phone, you can log in at a Starbucks and download songs playing in the coffee house. Participating Starbucks stores in San Francisco will be online Nov. 7.
No one else offers this kind of music experience and longtime Apple fans have waited for this combination of features for a long time. If you're not ready to go that far, the iPod nano is also a better deal now. Apple knocked $50 off the cost of the 4-gigabyte and 8-gigabyte models and gave them better two-inch color screens. I stared at a movie on the screen and it was surprisingly sharp. The iPod nano screen has as many pixels, or colored dots, as on the larger iPod classic screens. That means these models are now good for viewing pictures and videos. At $149 for the 4-gigabyte version and $199 for the 8-gigabyte version, the iPod nano is a much better buy than it used to be. The only downside is Apple cut the 2-gigabyte model.
The iPod classics, as the original iPods are now called, come with more storage. The 80-gigabyte version is $249 and the 160-gigabyte version, which can store 40,000 songs or 200 hours of video, sells for $349. And with the $79 iPod shuffle with 1 gigabyte of storage in five new colors, Apple pretty much has the market covered top to bottom.
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