Well, decided to take some of that birthday money and get myself a new iPod, so I went and bought a new iPod Touch. This device is amazing. I like to call it "PDA 2.0" because it does a lot of stuff that PDAs did way back when, but also is a great media player (which is what I use it for, mostly).

So what would I change about the iPod touch? Some things are software based, and others hardware based. Here's a quick rundown.

1. Need a built-in iSight and Camera, and give us iChat
The form factor is great, and the ubiquity of WiFi means that you can use your iPod touch as both a text-chat communicator for various services like AIM, Yahoo and MSN, and as a voice/video chat communicator for the aforementioned services. In addition, if a microphone is included we can finally use Skype on our iPods :-)

2. Bluetooth with A2DP
Bluetooth is a great technology. You can transfer files back and forth between many different devices, you can attach devices to your iPod and build around those additional services. A2DP is also great for wireless headphones (which I would really love to get)

3. GPS
OK, GPS is not a *must* but it is definitely a want. The Nokia Internet Tablet has it, and it has preloaded maps with the possibility of turn by turn directions. A built-in GPS and collaboration with Garmin and TomTom would make the iPod not only more useful, but also compete with GPS-only units. With Apple's DRM what this means is that TomTom and Co. can work on better versions of their product for PDAs but still get paid for their effort (apparently S60 and WinMo versions are highly pirated)

4. Camera
Now this would be cool. Apple isn't into the digital camera business, but think of all the uses that such a device could see if there were a camera in it.

5. FM receiver + Transmitter
I listen to FM radio - I do! I think that the FM receiver, with RDS, would be a good addition to the iPod Touch. In addition, an FM transmitter would be nice to be able to listen to our audio through FM (no need to shell out another $50 for an iTrip)

6. HWR!
I know that the current software has handwriting recognition for asian languages (Chinese and Japanese if I am not mistaken). I would love to see HWR for English (and other languages). The HWR on the Newton was legendary. It's time to get this on the iPod/iPhone software!

7. Copy/Paste
This is a sore point with some users. I think it's important to include this functionality so you can copy some info from a browser, let's say an address, and paste it into another program...let's say the addressbook!

8. Flash & Java
I know that Flash isn't really optimized for the mac, and even less so on the iPod/iPhone, but this is something that is necessary. A lot of streaming sites exist, other than YouTube, and there is no access to that content unless you've got Flash and/or Java. My blackboard (Learning Management System) is almost useless on the iPod because I don't have java, so I can't check my class discussions on the iPhone (which is OK because I do that on my N800 when I am on the go...but it would be nice to have it on the iPod)

9. iPod-wide search & the assistant
This is something from the Newton world. This would be a search that searches all the local content (and the internet if you are connected) for particular info. So if I want to search for Bob Jones, it will go through the addressbook, calendar, to-dos (oh yeah, I want a good todo list too), podcasts, songs, videos, etc. and give me all the info about Bob Jones that I have. The assistant would be something like the newton assistant where you would be able to write "appointment with John Johnson at 2" and this would create a new appointment for you, with John as the participant and it would ask you for additional info if it needs it (like day, end time, etc). Linked data is a good idea!

10. iOffice
Just because I like decimals, this will be the last one. Any good PDA 2.0 needs office support. Something to open and edit word, excel, powerpoint and PDF documents (as well as common open office formats and other formats). This could be a paid app, but we need to have it ;-)

PS: Yes, I would love themes, but sadly I think those were buried along with MacOS 9 :-(