Apple's recent announcement of the iPod Touch amounted to the company offering an iPhone without phone or camera capabilities.

So what do you get, and for how much?

You get a WiFi-enabled video, photo, and music player with a touch-screen interface, a web browser, and PDA functions. That's a pretty sweet, pretty functional piece of technology. Especially for people who've elected to keep their media and their phones separate and want to keep it that way.

My air-travel time has been significantly enhanced by my ability to watch movies on my iPhone during this summer of unrelenting delays and cancellations, and the 3.5 inch viewing screen has provided a rewarding viewing experience.

The WiFi capabilities of the iPod Touch are enhanced by a new WiFi version of the iTunes store that allows you to purchase your tunes straight to the iPod without going to the computer first. Before, you had to download music to your computer and then sync the iPod to the computer to get the songs onto it. With the new wireless iTunes store, you'll be able to add music on your portable first and move it to the computer device later. iTunes will also let you buy songs as ring tones for the iPhone.

Apple has said you'll be able to use free WiFi at Starbucks for a specific menu of music purchases while you're in the store sipping your latte's. Walk in with an iPod Touch or iPhone, and a button will appear on the screen offering the ability to buy the last 10 songs that have been playing in the store, as well as music from featured artists. This kind of deal isn't completely new to Starbucks and T-Mobile, who have also cut free deals with WiFi-enabled camera manufacturers.

Apple officially supports only the third-party development of web-based software for the iPhone and iTouch. This means that non-Apple products would have to run in the Safari web browser and might not run without a web connection. Realistically, though, hackers have already moved forward to enhance the iPhone's capabilities. Touch users will be able to take advantage of the cutting-edge iPhone-crowd's labors. (By the way, if there are any iPhone hackers in the audience, how about a really good Exchange/Entourage client for the iPhone and Touch real soon now? Pretty please!)

The Touch comes in two configurations: an 8GB version that costs $299 and a 16GB model that costs $399. According to Apple, the battery in each will provide 22 hours of audio playback or five hours of video, and both are expected to be available this month.

Apple also sliced the price of the iPhone just two months after early adopters like yours truly bought it. The cell phone formerly priced at $599 is now $399. So if you look at the pricing and features, you've got a pretty nice set of choices: a cool camera phone-media player-web surfing PDA with 8GB of storage or a camera-phoneless version with twice the storage for the same price.

Some iPhone early adopters were screaming in agony over the $100/month burn they took by being impatient. Others accepted it as just an accelerated version of the mild acid reflux that is the congenital early adopter pain. However, Apple recognized its customer insensitivity and 24 hours later announced that it would provide early adopters with $100 gift certificates to the Apple store to ease the pain.

Neither the Touch or the iPhone is storage-heavy enough to satisfy fanatic who need all their stuff in one place. So there's a new "classic" iPod with 160GB of storage, reputed to be able to handle 40,000 songs. It is also, of course, thinner than the previous model and has longer battery life, enough to handle 40 hours of audio. That model goes for $349, and an 80GB version is now $249, a price drop of $100.

The new iPod Nanos are also now available. Apple has added video capability to them as well. The Nano comes loaded with games and Apple's Cover Flow playback interface, which lets users scroll through album covers when searching for music. I'm guessing the screen will likely be seen mostly as an interface enhancement versus a video device. Though I'm ok with the iPhone's 3.5 inch screen, I dunno if I'd be happy with the Nano's teeny 2 incher. The Nano's new configurations are a 4GB version, priced at $149, and an 8GB version that costs $199.

The iPod Shuffle now comes in different colors. To me, this says it all about that.