The iPhone Mail app seems to be missing on the iPod Touch too. Will be interesting to see what other differences there are from the iPhone...

An iPod that is perfect for video, and it only holds a wopping 16 GB? Can we get a hard drive in that thing please? If it had the capacity of the classic I'd buy one tomorrow, but 16GB is a joke.

Honestly, this does not impress me. 400 dollahs for 16gb? You are having a laugh, right?

...

Having said that, I bet the iPhone users are feeling pretty stupid now - how long before the 16gb iPhone is announced? And didn't most people buy the iPhone for the exact things that the new iTouch provides?

yes, but will it run Plan 9?

I was holding out for today, and now i hear it, I'm a bit disappointed. I'm not bothered about flash memory, and was really hoping for the iPod Touch but with 80gb HDD. 16gb isn't big enough for me.

Despite the 8gb difference, I think people will go for the iPhone rather than the new iPod for the convenience of just carrying one device.

Or maybe that's what Apple planned. Either way I'm faced with a dilemma, go for the new iPod Classic or find one of the others that supports OSX as the platform.

if the touch had the same capacity as the classic, who on earth would buy the classic? or it'd have to be twice the price and then you'd complain that it was so freaking expensive

50 bucks dearer than something that has 144GB more capacity? I was expecting the Ipod Touch to have a hard drive, not flash. Its too small a capacity for too much money.

Nuts. Apple have dropped the ball on this.

I sold my 30Gb iPod and kept my iTunes library on an external drive because I outgrew the 30Gb. I was going to get an 80Gb but I held off to see the new models. Now that I see that the top tier iPod has HALF the storage of the last iPod I outgrew, it doesn't impress me. I don't want bells and whistles and useless utilities. I want an iPod to listen to music on the go and 16Gb comes nowhere near close to cutting it for me. If there's any consolation, it's that I might just pick up an 80Gb after all and get it nice and cheap now that new models have surfaced. Not a smart move Apple, IMO.

There's no way the Zune (if they ever bother to launch it here) can compete with Apple.

So, you're missing the "killer(?)" feature that's apparently taken them 2 years to develop - wander into a You-Ess Starbucks and you can identify the song playing there on your new iphone/touch/pod and buy it.

Am I missing what took 2 years to do that and why it's so amazing?

Kenny - don't think of the Touch as "top tier" - it's not. It's a side grade to the iPhone, to meet a pent up demand for those, especially, in countries that won't see the iPhone for a while. It also allows more time for Flash to come down in price (it's still nowhere near cheap enough) before they homogenise the product lines again.

Lemme get this straight...basically its an iPhone without the crap bits? but still a insane price tag...considering flash memory is so cheap currently, the differance from the 16GB Pod and the 8GB Phone seems to hint more of either Apples continued excessive charging, or of them looking for some way to pass off a load of bits they seem to of kicking around off the Jesus phone.

Sad thing is it will probably still sell just like the iPod...fashion first and foremost.

If it has Wi-Fi then as long as you're in a zone then you could in theory simply get a list of your songs from a web site or from your home pc and the device could download the song just before it needs to play it.

So the device would have in effect unlimited storage....

16GB is a lot of buffer space... :-)

Having large storage in a portable device is only a stop-gap feature until they work out how to get the song or video downloaded into the device just before you need to open it.

Hmmm... Not that I'm all-for closed operating systems, low-resolution displays, or non-replaceable batteries, but this rather kicks the Nokia tablet series into a cocked hat, doesn't it? Considering the Nokias really work as WiFi-surfing LIfestyle devices, the iPod Touch does that, and also does music, video, and Apple white, at the same time.

Which is a shame, because I love my Nokia 770.

@Stuart Halliday

You're not serious, right? You buy a portable music player to just sit within 100ft of an access point? Sounds a bit weird.

@All the knockers

I don't see why this wouldn't sell, there are plenty of people who seem to have bought the phone primarily as a 'cool' ipod. So now you get the choice of a 'cool' ipod or, for $100 more, a 'cool' ipod + phone (that also does PIM/mail directly - rather than webmail). You can sneer all you like about ridiculous Apple prices (even though it is often untrue) but the company seems to have a pretty good handle on its demographic - more money than sense ;-)

The iPhone hasn't gone on sale yet in Europe, yet the iPod Touch is going on sale very soon.

For £199 (the applestore listed price), you get an iPod that does 90% of what the iPhone does, without having to take out a expensive telephone contract.

Imagine when O2 or whomever launches their iPhone 'exclusively' - for £270 - with the monthly fee and an 18 month contract, and people realize they can just get a free contract phone elsewhere and buy a cheaper, comparable iPod touch?

I guess the inclusion of a power supply and dock make up for the difference?

Personally I am tempted by the 8gb version, if only because I never need more than a few gigs of music with me and synching up is no problem for me each day. Plus work have a discount scheme with Apple, so I get it for £186!

Why have an email app on something with web access? I never use email applications on any platform any more - just Outlook at work, and that rarely. Webmail is so much simpler and more efficient.

Jim is right about the knockers and price - Apple products have always been about brand (just look at the pointless Nike tie-in). People happily pay a premium for brand. Geeks might not, but geeks aren't Apple's target audience - they've got more business sense than Creative and the ilk, and have successfully targeted the much larger mass market audience - just by making pretty, simple, easy-to-understand devices.

if this thing had even an SDHC card slot it'd be half way useful, but a sealed unit (non-changeable battery), with fixed memory, for *how*much*??

and as for the comparison...

the Nokia n800 has much higher res display, has bluetooth, two card slots one of which is SDHC, can run a huge number of applications including Skype and SIP voip, has a webcam... no comparison, it's entirely different.

so, this new ipod is really just a way for apple to get another product out of the door for minimal effort - remove the phone, make the case smaller.

I've used an iphone and yes, it is good, but until a proper 3G one for the UK is around I'll not even consider it. I'm happy with my Nokia E65 (quad gsm, 3g, wifi, bluetooth) plus a proper PDA to do the PDA bit.

It's more DOLLARS than sense.. dollars, cents (sense)... geddit?

Never mind.

The odd thing is, with this new model the iPod can do everything the PSP can (apart from the not-so-high-quality games) much better for £80 more. And with 8 or 16gb built-in memory.

I think this iPod is positioned to those who wanted a player to do everything on the move instead of having to carry 3-4 gadgets around with them. Although I think they have also done a bit of a Michael Spindler by compromising it in features compared to the iPhone.

But saying that, the iPhone is compromised, by not allowing you to run its Music library on iTunes, along with other issues (including only working on AT&T officially). Its quite the deadly cycle, but not as serious as Spindler's "Cheap, Compromised Macs" strategy. Please Apple, do not release another product comparable to the Performa 52xx/53xx series.

But to me, iPod touch brings the Newton-ish parts of the iPhone to users without having to sign up to the worst phone contract ever. And for £200, its reasonable enough.

I swear some people must sit at their computers for months on end waiting for Apple to release a new product just so that they can slate it.

The iPod touch is an iPod that looks cool it's got a touch screen and it's going to sell like hot cakes and you all know it. The competition can't match it, and they don't have the brand. Only Sony have the brand to come close with Walkman but they don't have a product like Apples. That's it end of story. Get over it.

So it only has 16Gb Flash memory? Err do I care? No. Will models with more capacity follow? Err Yes.

Oh it doesn't have email!! It's a frikkin MP3 player not a laptop. Doh!

And if you actually have a record collection of 40,000 tunes that you absolutely must have on a portable device go get an 80GB iPod classic and stop whining because most people don't need it.

"And if you actually have a record collection of 40,000 tunes that you absolutely must have on a portable device go get an 80GB iPod classic "

I'd like to, but I'm in the market for a device that doesn't suck monkey balls...

I used to have an ipod, but the POS broke after a year... So much for Apples superior yada-yada. And with the new ipod-nano-fatso, it looks like their highly hyped design also went out the window...

The iPod that people really want would be a Touch with a hard drive. 16Mb isn't enough to take advantage of that screen, so you have to get a smaller-screened Classic if you want to store and watch video. Of course Apple will get the fanbois to buy the not-that-useful flash touch now, AND buy the hard disk version they'll inevitably bring out in a generation or two...

coming in two months at half the price?

Why buy an iPhone when you can have all that cool stuff in the iPod Touch? Apple seems to have killed the market for a 2.5G iPhone in Europe. I think until the 3.5G iPhone is available, the iPod Touch is a much better proposition.

There are other vendors building high-quality multimedia players : iriver, cowon, sandisk, meizu, creative labs ... some of them support lots of more formats including FLAC or OGG (as well as Audible) and Rapsody stores. As quality goes, all are built in Chine anyway.

Check the next big Software Update carefully, it will probably open a branch on your hard drive.

Even when the iPhone reaches the UK, the selling price is no big deal. It's the cost of the contract with the phone company (O2?) that is the killer and will quickly make the hardware price look like peanuts.

EDGE/G3, who cares. EDGE is fast enough for casual Web use without draining the battery.

People are saying there is no mail on the iPod touch. There is a Safari browser and a touch keypad so there's nothing to stop you using GMail, Yahoo, FastMail etc.

Does anyone really need 40,000 songs in their pocket?

I have had a 20GB iPod for years - one of the ones with the touch wheel, not one of those new-fangled click-wheel things. It has all the music I've ever bought on it with space spare (we'll ignore the rumours that I have a portable HDD with backups of a few other people's music collections that periodically have to be tested). So I'd say 16GB is a sensible capacity for a music player - in fact I probably would have bought a nano if the capacities were double.

So a fancy iPod, with touch screen and WiFi and web browser as well as the ability to display photos and video... sure I'm bound to upgrade, right? And I'm not a real fanboy but I do rather like my Mac (I still use linux for most work though)... I'm surely going to run out and buy one?

Well no. Firstly, based on the iPhone, it looks like I should wait a couple of months for a sudden and large price reduction. Secondly, the device is essentially a PDA. It's kinda pricey and for that I'd expect an e-mail client really. And I'd really like to have things like an SSH client. And bluetooth. And the ability to install extra software.

Yeah they look nice but, for me, no thanks - I'll wait and see what comes out next. Maybe there will be a nice cheap nano with higher capacity?

Like a lot of people, I was also hoping the touch would be hard drive based. Apple should realise what with the ipod classic still selling so well that people need storage. 16gb for a video device? absolutely pointless in my opinion. I was holding out on buying my next portable player for this announcement, now Archos 605wifi here I come.

@Ross Flemming.

I can already tell you what tune they're playing in Starbucks. It's Norah Jones.

Just wait 62 days, and they'll drop $200 from the price tag ..........

..a couple of months before buying any of this new kit - if the iPhone is anything to go by expect prices to drop by a third.

OOI - does the new touchy-feely iPod support bluetooth stereo? The review is a bit sparse on detail.

As I'm soon to be in the market for a new iPod (yes I want an actual iPod) due to my v3 40GB being full I was looking forward to see what the big announcement would bring.

I could have been swayed with forking out a fair swadge for an iPod Touch, but 16GB storage? No great loss I was going to get an 80GB iPod Video for $349 (or more importantly ~£173 given those nice exchange rates). So as I held off for a bit I can get a 160GB iPod Classic instead. Which makes me very happy, aside from the fact that nowadays they don't come with a case, remote or dock like the top-end models used to...

Presumably the device is closed for 3rd party software developers like the iPhone.

Jobs' fanboys will buy it in enough volume because of the apply symbol and the ability to touch things is new. (my nearest ATM has done that for decades BTW, my pocket pc for at least 4 years) jobs will get more money, think he has done the right thing and selling the same thing under a different name for half the memory capacity at record prices will be seen as the right thing to do. AGAIN

And in six months it wil be cheaper but they won't complain, going on about market forces then the next one will be released with double the memory capacity and be sold as "a revolutionised design allowing more music or videos" which you will think is novel and new because you forget that the old ipod had that amount in the first place and that this version was pants.

God some people are sad.

Why hasn't Apple put some expandable memory into these new iPods? So when you outgrow four, six, eight, whatever gig, you can put some more in?

Oh yeah, the whole 'No, you've got to buy a new one' thing...

that a cheap windows mobile can't do for ages? Besides the shiny screen and the flashy ui? As long as you can make phone calls, watch videos, listen to mp3-s, run a gps app, connect through wifi with any cheap chinese phone why would anyone want an iphone or an ipod touch? Just for the nice design?

Personally I would really hate it when I couldn't change batteries on the in my device, because sometimes i get through several batteries between chargings and I like to charge batteries while I'm using one of the spare sets, so I don't have to wait for the device to charge. And yes, I use flash storage because it's physical shock resistant, but I like to swap flash cards, so I could use more storage than the cards currently can offer. (16 Gb is ok for music, but you want another one or two for your films)

But yes, the iphone and the ipod touch are the best looking unix boxes out there, so they look better than their linux or bsd based couterparts. I wonder if any company wants to resell them unlocked and linux preinstalled?

Too expensive, crap capacity. Another example of a stupidly expensive object which is inferior to most of the competition, but sells because it has a shiney touchscreen.

Fanboys will love it.

well, I hate to point out the obvious, but why would apple include this on the ipod touch? They are planning to sell the iphone over here, so it would kind of dumb to include the "killer" apps of the iphone in the ipod touch wouldnt it?

A lot of people seem to be slating the product, fair enough. But I think people are missing something more interesting here, well a few have touched on it.

El Reg here suggested that the iPhone was a move to make users comfortable with the possible new iPod design, and this seems to be true.

What if this new iPod Touch is also a "leading" leading to the day when the iPod becomes a PDA like device?

I think that, that is likely to happen, people are going to start trying to install apps on the iPod, apple (much like is happening with the xbox 360 and going to with the Wii) has a store so the ISV can put out software (probably with iTunes taking a cut). The iPod touch is the start of an Apple PDA.....long live the Newton?

The other thing the slaters are messing, is choice, you want a big ipod for music, get the classic, now with 160gig. I have a shuffle, I love it, does exactly what I need, I still dont have it full, its half full and has 7 hours of music on it!!!

I quite like the touch, but I would want it to be another OS X platform I can create applciations for, run the applciation I want on the move, not a closed box like the iPhone. Its a bit expensive, and yet again Apple seem to be unware of what the actual exchange rate is between the US and UK (and no its not due to shipping, cos it all comes from china!!).

If O2 are not subsidising the iPhone, then surely their contracts should be cheaper for iPhone users, as this is payed for by the monthly contract fee's. Also the users should not be locked into a minium term contract as this is also about the network getting their money back.....lets see how 02 treats the inteligence of its customers.

networks?

I would like to know if the

Now if I could run something on my HTC Tytn to allow it to bridge the 3G connection to a private wifi hotspot that the touch could connect to, who then needs to give a crap about the iPhone?

Anyone come across a hack for WM6 to let that happen?

But in typical Apple fashion, generally useless and way overpriced. Doesn't even have a SD slot! The whole point of this contraption seems to be to generate impulse sales. The product specs don't mention any way to connect it to my computer to move my songs to it, nor does it mention if it will work with any non-DRM infected media not purchased through that nasty iTunes thing.

I find it hysterical that an Apple product is integrated with Starbucks. Nah, no stereotyping there, eh? I think I just figured out why I don't go to Starbucks.

(Actually, for me, 16GB is enough...but iTunes? Haha...right)

When you run out of space you buy a new bigger (more expensive) iPod.That is why it doesn't have a memory slot.

What does this do that a Palm TX (or most of its Windoze competitors) does not do?

Please tell me.

-K.