by Kris Krizzle

Created on: January 24, 2009

Apple has moved from a plastic, white iPod design to an anodized aluminum design while adding a breakthrough product, the iPod touch.

The new aluminum design creates a much, much sturdier product. And, the glass screens on the iPod nano and iPod touch are much less prone to scratches and cracks. The iPod classic has mainly seen storage capacity revisions. The iPod nano now has an accelerometer for rotating the display and viewing content horizontally. However, the biggest breakthrough for the iPod line-up, and clearly where the iPod is going, is the iPod touch.

I would consider the iPod touch as Apple's current "netbook". It's small and portable, but feature packed. Not only can you do everything you could do on prior iPods, but you can do it better. Album art and cover flow is phenomenal, the touch screen is extremely easy to use, videos are simply gorgeous on the high-res 3.5" display, and even Nike+ support is built in. But the key to the iPod touch is the fact that it's a wireless device. This allows you to, in addition to checking stocks, weather, and mail, browse the entire web! Browsing the web on the iPod touch is simply phenomenal and there has never been another portable device that makes the web so intutitive and easy to use. Plus, Youtube support brings millions of videos in your palm.

But, the App Store is the biggest revolution. Allowing you to download over 15 000 applications, from business to productivity to medical research to games, it's packed with something for everyone. The possibilities are endless and Apple is just getting started. The App store has already received tremedous sucess, with over 500M applications downloaded, and growth does not seem to be slowing down.

So, what's in Apple's pipeline for the iPod? As flash drive capacities increase, the iPod Classic will be diminished in favour of a 128GB flash iPod touch. The iPod nano will also be transformed into a touch based iPod, but perhaps with no wifi, speaker, and a smaller display. The iPod touch will be discontinued, and we will only have the iPod(128GB flash) and the iPod nano.

What about the iPod shuffle? The iPod shuffle's future is looking very uncertain. For the past 3 years, the only changes that have been made to the iPod shuffle, in addition to refreshed colours, has been a price drop and an additional storage capacity. The Shuffle is a very niche product and has a small target audience, so I believe Apple will either EOL it, or create a new device with a similar form factor, but with a touch screen display.

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