Reply #23: You know, I hear some variation on this argument

[Kelly Rupert]

every time Apple releases something new and shiny. "Oh, it'll grab people's attention at first, but it's not that special and they'll realize that." And yet every time they get a fantastic consumer response, break profit records, and consolidate their stranglehold on the personal music player market.

This is yet another frankly astounding breakthrough in consumer-oriented design, and the importance of design is something most tech analysts are only now beginning to design. Yeah, Wifi is old tech. Yeah, touch-screen is old tech. But nobody has yet successfully implemented wifi in a music player (clunky startups like the Gremlin aside). Nobody has yet successfully implemented a touch-screen interface. With this round, they've made a major leap out ahead of their competition with the iPod Touch (while finally bringing the other lines up to speed).