Apple's iPod Touch Is a Beauty of a Player Short on Battery Life

Oct. 9, 2007 — -- In the hyper-competitive world of consumer electronics, it's highly unusual for one branded product to dominate its market for years on end. Yet, that's what Apple's iPod media player, now approaching its sixth anniversary, has managed to do. One reason is that it has been reinvented continuously.

The latest iPod reinvention expands the line from three models to four, priced from $79 to $399, with capacities ranging from one gigabyte (roughly 240 songs) to 160 gigabytes (up to 40,000 songs.) And that doesn't count the iPhone, Apple's much-hyped cellphone, which also includes a full-blown iPod.

I've been testing the newest member of the iPod family, the big-screen iPod Touch. It's a close cousin to the iPhone that connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi wireless networking and replaces the famous iPod click wheel with a touch screen. It starts at $299, $100 less than the iPhone but with the same eight-gigabyte capacity. There's also a 16-gigabyte iPod Touch for $399.

Like earlier iPods, the Touch is elegant and capable, and works smoothly with Apple's free iTunes software for Windows and Macintosh PCs, as well as with its computer-based online iTunes Store, which sells far more downloaded songs and TV shows than any other legal outlet.

Not only that, but the Touch introduces a mobile version of the iTunes store. It's called the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and it allows you to buy, right on the iPod, any of six million songs for the same price you'd pay on a computer. This portable store will soon be made available on the iPhone as well.

For all its beauty and functionality, the Touch has some quirks and downsides. It's the first iPod model I've ever tested that fell significantly short, in my tests, of Apple's battery-life claims. It's also the first iPod that lacks any physical buttons for controlling music playback.

The Touch looks, at first glance, like an iPhone that can't make phone calls. It's a handsome, thin, black rectangle with a huge 3.5-inch screen —