Apple Event: A Touch-Screen Wi-Fi iPod

By Damon Darlin

(Photo: Paul Sakuma/The Associated Press)The big news of the day is the iPod Touch. It’s an iPod that looks like an iPhone. It has a 3.5-inch screen, the Multitouch interface, Wi-Fi and the Safari Web browser.
The cost is $299 for an 8-gigabyte version and $399 for a 16-gigabyte model. It will be available later this month.
There is also a Wi-Fi version of the iTunes store to buy songs over wireless on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. They can be transferred later to a computer.
The iTunes Wi-Fi store enables an additional function when the user enters a Starbucks store. The customer can push a button on the player and buy whatever is playing that instant in the Starbucks.
Apple also cut $200 off the the price of the 8-gigabyte iPhone, making it $399, and eliminated the 4-gigabyte model, which had cost $499.
Meanwhile, the original iPod is being renamed the Classic. It’s $249 for 80 gigabytes, down from $349. Now $349 buys you 160 gigabytes. That’s enough for 40,000 songs, or 111 days of continuous music.