Unified Theory

When the iPhone was announced, I got excited, and immediately wanted to own one.  That feeling dwindled somewhat as time passed, mostly because the iPhone has not been officially released in Canada, yet, and I have grown a little weary of waiting.  Shortly after the iPhone shipped, Apple revamped their iPod line, adding a "fat" nano with 4 and 8 GB of Flash memory, updating the hard-drive iPod with video, and renaming it the iPod Classic (80 or 160 GB storage), and introducing the iPod touch (8 and 16 GB) - think iPhone without the phone.

The response from the Apple blogging community was mixed.  The touch topped out at 16 GB of storage - too small for the amount of video you would want to watch, given the size of the display.  The Classic had the storage, but a small screen.  The nano was seen as more of a 'gateway drug' into the world of iPod with video.

For the most part, I find I agree with these assessments for myself - none of these iPods are what I want.  What I really want, I have decided, is an iPhone with at least 30 GB of storage.  If one does not become available in Canada anytime soon, then I may consider the Touch with the same amount of storage. Given that my current iPod is approaching the 2 year mark, and I have used it pretty heavily, I expect the battery to begin to die sometime this year, assuming I'm in the statistical average.  I watch a lot of video, so it would be great to have more storage, but I can juggle 30 GB pretty well.

In the midst of all these musings about which iPod would be best choice for me, I think I have missed the point.  There is something even more significant going on in the world of Apple, which at first will seem pointless, I'm sure.

The iPhone runs OS X.  So does the iPod touch.  This isn't some other operating system with an OS X-like interface, which is what Windows Mobile is compared to Windows.  From the lowest levels, these iPods are running the exact same OS as the computer on my desktop.  And on the Apple TV, as well.  As a software developer, this has some very interesting implications, the least of which is that I will be able to develop, from one place, applications that will stretch from the small computer in my pocket, to my desktop and possibly into the enterprise.

I can think of at least a couple of very useful applications I would like to have so that I can gather information on my iPod touch or iPhone, keep the data synchronized with my desktop and possibly a workgroup or two.

The iPod touch and iPhone are Apple's future.  That means that the 'nano' and the Classic are probably going to be replaced before too long with something else running OS X.  I'm sure the form factor will be similar to existing models, but I think the days of hard drive-based, non-OS X equipment from Apple, Inc. are numbered.