Credit: Apple Computer           

Initial Thoughts: As you can tell, the video-enabled iPod is a just a step up from the regular iPods that Apple’s upgrading right before the holiday season. Video iPod is not a feature, but a mere bonus, even Apple admits it, and with a mediocre battery life, it’s understandable as to why Apple makes that statement. We believe it’s a great way for Apple to get a taste for a video playback market. If Apple can retail this iPod with success (and iTunes’ video store retails a decent number of videos), it would be clear that Apple could take over this market as well. Only then, in our opinion, would Apple launch an iPod with long battery life, which makes sense. Apple would clearly have to invest R&D resources just to develop a battery that lasts long enough in a thinner player.

The price of the players, overall size, features & specifications, and cost per video are actually quite affordable. Not to mention the fact that you’ll now get to pick between a white and black iPod. Since black was so successful, Apple decided to port the color scheme over to their updated iPods. Even after the cost, what’s exciting to us is the speediness of episode updates for TV shows; it would only take 24 hours for current episodes to make it to iTunes – a very impressive accomplishment. Even though there are quite a few things going in favor of Apple, we wonder how many of you would actually like to watch videos on a 2.5" screen at 320x240 resolution. Regardless the drawbacks, the video iPod (although not a unique concept by any means) is exciting coming from Apple.

Apple has a tendency to breath life into any dull concept, and this time is no different.