Sorry but a wide screen iPod isn't a technological advancement. Many devices now days have a touch screen. Like I said before in this thread Archos has a DAP with a 4.3 inch touch screen and only cost $349. Apple is going to undercut that.
I believe the iPod Video was priced at $299 when it came out. Don't forget that iPod products share technology which means that Apple can set the price low and at the end they always get their money back. They are a very profitable company since they sell gigantic quantities of the iPods.
It was indeed $299 for the 30GB and $399 for 80GB, because I remember waffling over the price and decided I preferred much, much thinner with somewhat lower battery life for video over $100 more for more storage so bought the 30GB. Then they cut them to $249/$349 with the tiny feature revision last October.
Owning both a video iPod and an iPhone and finding them both useful in a complementary way, I'm beginning to doubt Apple will release a full-sized iPod with iPhone interface this year or even longer. It may be OS X-based, but I doubt the touch interface. First, I love the touch interface for my iPhone, and the more limited amount of media I can carry on it. But I still prefer the click wheel and text-based interface for the 30GB iPod-only iPod. I just think the touch interface is perfect for the iPhone and the click wheel is perfect for the iPod. Apple apparently loves "cover flow" -- it's cute, but I can live without it, surely -- but you can still do that, even on the current screen with a click wheel. Make a wider screen and it's definitely doable, even intuitive, with the click wheel.
Again, having owning both, the only reason I see for a full touch interface for an iPod is if you add WiFi and the networked features of the iPhone (e-mail, Safari, YouTube, widgets, etc.) to the iPod. And I can't image as heavily development invested in iPhone as they are, they'll let you pick up everything but the phone for $299 or so -- $349 being about the highest price point people would tolerate for the new line in the lower capacity model. Without all the extra features, the click wheel is flat better at dealing with large amounts, HDD-sized amounts, of media.
The video-capable nano makes sense, as I can see Apple wanting to sell video via iTunes to as many iPod owners in various models as possible. But I expect to see an enhanced click wheel-based full-sized iPod, probably with a wider screen, possibly OS X-based rather than a phone-less iPhone.
But I do think the days of HDD based iPod are numbered. I've owned iPods since the first day the first one arrived at an Apple Store. The original marketing pitch was "1,000 songs in pocket" -- you know, a lot, but not everyone can fit their whole collection in that. Then as capacities increased and they moved to AAC for equal quality at lower file sizes, the marketing thing became sort of "carry your whole music collection with you everywhere". But now it's not just music, it's media, music *and* video. For many people 80GB won't do it, and even 120GB or 160GB won't leave much room for expansion. And believe me, there is no .5 terabyte iPod coming for quite some time. In fact, in laptops, it's getting hard to store large media collection without moving some of the video off to external hard drive out of iTunes when you don't think you'll want it for a while.
Since the capacity advantage -- when you flat can't make enough capacity for everyone, anyway -- is losing out to battery life, durability and smaller form factors, why keep HDD. (My iPhone, though by necessity longer due to the wide screen, is thinner and less broad the an already quite trim 30GB video iPod. It's smaller overall, and thinner I might have expected, but not entirely smaller.) Not what Apple has done with iTunes for managing media for Apple TV, iPod and iPhone -- the whole paradigm has changed and there are numerous ways to get subsets of your total media collection onto various devices in the easiest way possible allowing manual collection, or more seamlessly with automated filters. I think Apple is admitting that capacity for portable devices will not reliably be able to keep up with the size of rich media collections, that integration with media management software -- always a big deal with iPod -- is the key. So if HDDs are falling behind for devices that are not computers, way switch over to flash memory as soon as you can, increase durability and battery life, make your devices thinner if not smaller, and make up to the capacity loss to your customers with great media management software?
Definitely not a "portable" device at least how I see one to be. But I guess to each their own, I will stick to my portable iPod and leave all that jazz to my laptop.
