Apple iPod Touch

The new iPod Touch is a beautiful, beautiful object. It's also got simply the best control system on earth. Honestly, once you've used Apple's two-finger, thumb-friendly touchscreen, you'll wonder how the hell you got along for so long just prodding buttons.

The Touch is the easiest iPod ever to navigate, has a drop-dead gorgeous wide screen for video, lets you leaf your way through Cover Flow album artwork with a thumb, browses the web gracefully via Wi-Fi, and even makes YouTube videos look good. It's a superb, if pricey, piece of kit. There are just a couple of problems with it – the biggest of which is iPhone-shaped.

iPod Touch or iPhone?
Steve Jobs said you could use iPod Touch like training wheels for iPhone. The Touch basically is the iPhone, minus texting and email, a phone connection and a few other neato bits such as Google Maps.

So you do have to make a choice between the two, unless you're Steve Jobs' fantasy Apple consumer who 'trains' for one expensive Apple product by buying another, then chucking it away when they have 'learned' enough to give them another £270.

And if you are making that choice, iPhone clearly wins out – it's still got that neat interface, plus a whole variety of text- and
phone-specific functions. It's a superb phone that happens to double up as a slimline, pocket-sized media player, with the sort of memory one would expect from a product that size.