I do think its a matter of time. I still remember 2 MB of ram costing a fortune for my original Mac Plus. One day there will probably be a terabyte iPod (with video, of course!)

I agree with Hadley there, i remember when i bought my first 1GB harddrive and that was SOOO super cool.  Now i have 3 120 gig drives, among others.  I do think a large flash based player will happen.  I think it wil be soon then 2008 though becuase Apple and other manufactures are driving to mkae better flash based players.  As demand picks up prices will fall for sure!

I think that there is a cut point where it really is not worth it for a lot more space after about 6gb. At that point, I really would not want less than 40. That’s because i have the 40gb and it is full. The nano is perfert for active use, with just enough space so that you can listen to it for a week before wanted to change up the list a bit.

By the way, I just saw one in person yesterday. It looks even smaller than I expected. I know I don’t need one, but I really do want one. It’s simply amazing what Apple has done with this one.

I think that the part of the nano that will stick around is the form factor.  I can see them adding the colors back and changing the memory configuration, but the form factor is great.

it might not be out of line. it’s expected that in laptops (now over 50% of computers sold) it will likely be common for the harddrives (HD) to have some flash RAM built into them w/ a reasonable amount of cache. think 512-1GB if not more, wherein your booted OS and apps could be loaded. u could power down and not lose a thing,and your battery doesn’t get the trickle down of power that sleeping currently draws. then when u turn it back on you have instant OS. the need to boot,might become something of a rare occurance, not that i do it very often w/my iBook. said RAM would also require a lot less power than a spinning HD, and w/ a sizable amount the HD could spin up only when needed and power down while everything is loaded from the flash RAM into system memory.

there’s also the possibility of the technology being used in desktop HDs. if all drives came w/ a 1-2GB+ flash memory cache, the prices on larger sized modules would likely become quite reaosnable.

I really don’t think that they would make the nano smaller, or at least thinner. It still needs some structural integrity. Consider the screen issue. Although Apple now says that it is a vendor issue, not a design issue, I assume that part of the vendor issue is that something so small with such tight tolerances needs an exceptionally high level of production quality. Unless they wrap it in a super metal, I just can’t see it getting thinner. Now, I can see the regular ipod getting thinner, but that is a different story

as far as issues goes… just stand by the genius bar in your local apple store and you will see a certain percentage of ipod users complain about faulty equipment when in fact many of the complaints are not valid. an example of something for nothing. i would love to see an ipod that was scratchproof but but lets face the fact that that won’t happen. maybe make them out of glass?  i think a scratch is a scratch, but on the nano it might look larger in scale than on a 20 gb.