Johnny High School here...I just wanted to talk about the latest bushel (har har) of Apple releases. Here goes, in order of awesome.

1) iPod Nano. I cannot stop looking at pictures of this thing, and all my buddies are talking about it. What a cool little player, right? Of course, it doesn't fit as much music as a real iPod, but you can't have it all. More tellingly, when the iPod shuffle came out, there was a lot of discussion (at least in my circle) of function...I think a lot of people didn't really know what you use a screenless mp3 player for. I think in this case the niche is much clearer, and almost everybody agrees, it's a pretty sexy little thing.

2) iTunes 5.0. Not much different from iTunes 4.9, but still a great media player. Before I had an iPod, I tried out pretty much all of the majors, and I've got to say, iTunes really is the best. I'll accept comments on this to the contrary, but people who leave them will be wrong.

3) The Apple Motorola ROKR from Cingular. So, this thing is more sponsored that your average NASCAR vehicle, and maybe that's why it seems sold-out. To be honest, I'm not really sold on the premise of a music-player-phone...It does the phone thing well, I'd guess, but it can only hold 100 songs? So why not just get one of those newfangled Nanos too, and you'll get 1000 songs in the same amount of space! On the other hand, there are some cool features, and I guess if I was looking for a new phone, and was already on Cingular, and had $250 to spend, I'd get it.

So, there you have it. The eponymous bad Apple (see headline) really doesn't spell the beginning of the end of anything, I don't think, especially considering that it's a joint effort. At the end of the day, Apple's cool points from the Nano definitely outweigh the potential superfluousness of the ROKR.