An Early Look at the IPod Touch

Anyone remotely familiar with music or technology is the past couple years has probably become painfully aware of Apple's iPod and the millions of relating products marketed to accompany it. However, it should also be noticed that a new version of the device comes out fairly frequently. While past generations of the iPod only introduced minor changes at a time, such as the buttons on the second generation, and the picture/video capacity on the newest generations, a revolutionary change is about to take place on the music playback device.

A recent announcement by Apple has the world in waiting for a device known as the "iPod Touch". Straying far from the traditional look and feel of the iPod, the Touch closely resembles an iPhone, but has a bigger screen (said to be 3.5" widescreen) and is somewhat thinner than the current generation iPhone. However, while the Touch may appear to be flashy, and may very well represent the true video iPod that many were waiting for, their seems to be a lot of debate as to what exactly Apple is planning to do with device, as they have ill prepared it for almost everything.

Namely, the technical specifics on the Touch reveal that the unit is available with either an 8GB or a 16GB hard drive. While this may not seem bad at first glance, remember that even the most basic video/music iPod has at least a 20GB drive. Which means that even though the Touch's screen is wide, and its picture quality likely good, there is little to no chance of storing any permanent amount of data on the thing. Even 1,000 songs (and most iTunes users have a lot more in their collection) will take up about 4GB. Meaning that an 8GB Touch will hold only 2,000 songs, and that will leave no room for music or videos whatsoever. While the 16GB is slightly better on space, it still leaves users very, very limited when it comes to storing content on the Touch. One really has to wonder at the strategy Apple is using when it comes to this device. An iPod designed with a screen specifically to watch videos and scroll through photos, yet without the capacity to store either of them?