Well today the
web is a buzz with rumors of Apple adding in a camera to the iPod Touch (and perhaps other iPods) product line. This really isn't anything surprising given the history of the relationship between the iPod Touch and the iPhone, but it truly makes me happy.
Given the fact that I have a work cell phone that has to go through Verizon because of our corporate contracts I haven't gone out and gotten an iPhone even though I really would like one. I did get the iPod Touch after the 2nd Gen ones came out and I love it. Other than a minor annoyance with it dropping the wi-fi connection every time I put it into standby since the 3.0 software update the thing has worked flawlessly.
Given all of that the one thing that the Touch has always lacked that I really, really wanted was a camera. The microphone, the GPS, the always on connection.... I could leave all of that if I had to if I could just have a camera.
I love being able to take quick, spur of the moment pictures with my cell phone. I don't need those quick pictures to be high quality. I have the Nikon D40 for that. But when you're at a party, or the baby does something cute, or when you simply want to remember the name of that kick butt beer you had at a buddies house, it's great to be able to take a quick picture with something you have in your pocket.
But the problem with that for me (mostly due to the wonders of Verizon) is that it's a pain in the neck to get them off the cell phoneand do anything with them. If I took the pictures with my iPod I then immediately could do a great deal with them directly from the platform itself. I could post to Facebook, upload to Flickr, send out a Twitter message with the picture linked, or go completely old school and just email it to friends. How sweet is that???
When I also heard about the rumor of these doing video like the new iPhone 3GS does it made me immediately think back to the launch of the
latest version of iMovie. There was a mention in there (it was subtle at the time) of the ability to take shaky video like that shot with a hand held camera and do some software magic to it in order to make it more stable and give you less of that sea sick view. At the time I figured this was geared to be working with the Flip video camera in the most part and so that actually
convinced me to get one. Now it appears that Apple was thinking ahead all along for the day that they knew they'd have enough horsepower in the iPhone to do exactly what they wanted and imbed all of that into one device. I've got to think if this rumor is true
Cisco will be kicking themselves pretty hard in the morning.
With this addition I may actually rethink my getting an iPhone later this year. I had been thinking I would suck it up and pay the money every month for it as I use my iPod Touch all the time and would love the additional things that the full iPhone would give me. But now with the possible addition of the camera (and who knows, perhaps GPS at the same time????) then I may be conservative with my cash and save for my daughter's education and make due with just a new iPod Touch. I'm sure my wife would be happy with my old hand me down model.
