Oh iPod.

They’ve revamped it yet again, much to my chagrin. Every single category experienced changes:

• Shuffle: Received the new color pallet of white, seafoam green, sky blue, the (PRODUCT)^red Red, and periwinkle. Short of that, it’s basically the same, most insubstantial-feeling MP3 player on the market.
• Nano: Has once again been retooled (as with each past incarnation), now into a chubby/stout/more-poorly-proportioned version of its older sibling; This is due largely to the included video screen. This basically makes it the same as the previous video iPod, but with more limited capacity and a goofier looking click-wheel. I dislike it. Additionally, and tragically, it is not available in the new periwinkle color, but instead the added option of not black, but dark grey.
• Classic: This is the standard model, which really isn’t a lot different from the previous iteration; they appear to have just softened the edges and extended the battery life. Same color options: light or dark.
• Touch: The newest member of the iPod family, it is essentially the iPhone, sans phone. It is also not full-blown OSX so far as I can tell either. The issue here is that all the guts of it are wasted on the screen, and so its capacity barely outpaces the Nano, though it costs double. It is WiFi capable though.

So there you have it. Apple has graced Western consumers with yet another slew of gadgetry to waste their money on. I guess I’m just a little bummed because I don’t really feel like any of these changes were for the better. The Shuffle is still too small, the Nano is too ugly, the Classic wasn’t really changed at all, and the Touch is useless; for me. That’s not to say these are bad products, they’re just awful for me.

In truth, I think it’s time to merge the Nano back into the Classic line. They are the same thing, one is just an inch shorter than the other. You can’t stick that video screen in there and still try and bill it as the slim-and-sexy member of the line. A better improvement would’ve been to skip the video screen, and work on improving the volume of data it could contain.

Why I’m not so keen on the iPod Touch: I don’t see the utility. It’s caught in this terrible limbo of devices; you can surf the internet, but you can’t read an e-mail or make a word document. It’s not a computer! However, you can also only cram 3500 songs onto it, which is hardly a robust music library in most cases. I guess what I’m saying is that when you pit it against a MacBook, it sucks, and when you pit it against the iPod classic, it sucks. Maybe I’m the only one that doesn’t pee themselves with excitement at the sight of that multi-touch screen though.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just bitter that my ‘Pod is finally obsolete.