So I’d held off for a while think­ing I really “needed” an iPhone, I mean of course they’re amaz­ing, but I’d been going along with hav­ing just a shuf­fle for almost a year, and it really did what it needed to — play music. But just yes­ter­day thanks to Apple’s always won­der­ful “Back to School” pro­mo­tion I was able to get my hands on a free iPod Touch, a just-as-good as an iPhone with­out the has­sle of a cell phone plan music player. I must say this new lit­tle toy is fan­tas­tic. Every­thing I wanted out of an iPhone — the abil­ity to get on the internet, to be able to have beau­ti­ful album art­work while lis­ten­ing to my music, being able to watch videos, and of course hav­ing all of my con­tacts and iCal events — this won­der­ful device has.

Most peo­ple might argue that “you can only get on the inter­net when you have a WiFi con­nec­tion” as a huge down­fall of the iPod Touch con­sid­er­ing that is one of the main dif­fer­ences between the Touch and the iPhone but I must argue that this is a good thing. By this I mean I’m sick of this super-connectivity that peo­ple seem to deem so impor­tant in their lives. Do you really need to be able to check your email while you’re stand­ing in line at the movie the­ater? I think that hav­ing the occa­sional option (when close to a WiFi con­nec­tion) of being able to use inter­net ser­vices and use the iPod Touch for the other pur­pose it has aside from play­ing music is a great thing, and pre­vents peo­ple from using their iPod as a rea­son not to make social con­tact with other human beings.

When I first saw that the iPod Touch came out I was baf­fled as to why any­one would buy one, con­sid­er­ing you could buy an iPhone and that the Touch was essen­tially just a phone-less iPhone (which it is), but after play­ing with it I can really see why they are actu­ally sell­ing, and that’s because the core base of peo­ple buy­ing iPods in gen­eral want it to do what it’s sup­posed to do, play music. All of the other super­flu­ous extras like being able to use the inter­net and send email are just that, extras. Don’t get me wrong if you’re going to go all out and get an iPhone I really do think you should be able to do all the things it’s sup­posed to do because you are pay­ing a monthly sub­scrip­tion for some of those things, but for most peo­ple we want the sim­ple things an iPod is sup­posed to be, with­out hav­ing to feel super-connected.

If you want some­thing that has great tech­nol­ogy (specif­i­cally the touch func­tion­al­ity and tight inte­gra­tion with all the major Apple apps), while still being a great media player, you should con­sider an iPod Touch. If you want the has­sle of check­ing your email in the bath­room buy an iPhone.