Hey, I'm Donald Bell and this is the Apple iPod touch for 2011.
Now, let me get the bad news out of the way.
In terms of hardware, this is exactly the same iPod touch we saw last year, same touch, same design.
Comes in weight now as well as the original black color, the best about the only physical change that you're gonna find.
The good news is this thing still rocks and with the new iOS 5 operating system, there are few new features here to keep things interesting.
Plus Apple has dropped the price the 8 gigabyte-based model down to $199 while keeping the 32 gigabyte model at $299 and 64 gigs at $399.
Now, you still get the best music player ever invented with direct links to the iTunes store, great podcast support, Genius playlist, audio books, college lectures, everything plus you also get app support for things like Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Rhapsody and this is about every music service onto to the sun.
For an extra $25 a year, you can even have Apple put your entire music library in the cloud where you can stream it back down to you or download tracks on demand.
Now video support here is killer too.
You get iTunes movie rentals and TV shows, apps like Netflix and YouTube and you can even record your own videos using the built-in HD camera.
The rest of it, the apps, the games, e-mail, calendars, web browsing is all better than you probably deserve and more than I can cover in the space of this video.
So instead, I'm gonna focus on what's new on iOS 5.
You'll notice 3 new apps, messages, reminders, and newsstand.
Now reminders usually just a handy checklist app.
Newsstand clicks all of your magazine and newspaper apps into one place, but messages here is really the killer new feature.
It gives the iPod touch an instant messaging app that can communicate with any iPhone or iPad and since it works of a wifi, there are no text messaging fees involved.
You throw an Apple's FaceTime video check and you got 2 simple ways to stay in touch with your friends and family without paying the monthly bill of a cellphone.
Now on the back end, you have Apple's new iCloud service, which gives every iOS user a free cloud-based backup of your settings and data.
It also gives you photostream support so that any picture you take on this is gonna be sent to the cloud backed up to your computer and displayed on any other iPhone or iPad or Apple TV that you have on that account.
All in all though I'm a little disappointed, the Apple didn't give us more in terms of a hardware upgrade.
I still say this is one of the Apple's most under appreciated products.
It's basically an iPod that fits in your pocket.
The cost is $199.
It makes a great gift for kids and offers excellent controls for parents to lock out potentially objectionable content and features.
For CNET.com, I'm Donald Bell and that was a first look at the 2011 edition of the Apple iPod touch, a CNET editor's choice.
