The New iPod Order: Click Wheel Dethroned, Touch Screen Crowned

I remember my first iPod very well. Shockingly, I was a little late to the party, waiting until the fourth generation iPod (now called the ?iPod classic?) in 2004 to join the revolution. And I only bought one because I was planning to drive out to California (from Ohio) and I wanted enough music storage to last me the entire trip. I remember unboxing it and thinking: ?wow, I can store all my music on this tiny device??

Today, six years later, I still have that old iPod. But I no longer consider it ?tiny.? In fact, it?s more of a ?brick? both in size and weight. It held 40 gigabytes of my music on its miniature hard drive platters. Today, the latest high-end iPod touch holds 24 more gigabytes and is a sliver of the size and a fraction of the weight. And it plays music for 28 more consecutive hours. Oh, and it has a color screen. One you can touch. One you can multi-touch.

APPLE COMPUTER APPLIED MATERIALS ARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT