Say what you will about our spotty broadcast schedule of late, but we can tell you this: there are definite advantages to occasionally being completely out of the loop for days at a time. For one thing, there's the whole "sleeping more than 90 minutes a night" thing; for another, there's the "less time spent contemplating dark thoughts of grievous violence against oneself and others" factor-- which, come to think about it, might conceivably be linked to the sleep thing, but in any case, it makes for a refreshing change of routine. But best of all, every once in a while it's nice to experience an Apple product announcement without the pangs of disappointment that come with pre-release rumor overload.

For example, faithful viewer Simone Bianconcini just informed us that, according to a new Apple press release, the company has finally released a second-generation iPod mini family: the 4 GB model is now just $199, while a new 6 GB unit takes over the original $249 price point. True, both configurations now come in only "four vibrant colors" (gold has been retired, presumably because 98 percent of the population found the gold iPod too flashy and the remaining 2 percent found its subtle matte finish and total lack of inset gemstones nowhere near flashy enough), but in our considered opinion, the increased battery life of "up to 18 hours" (!) more than makes up for the slight reduction in bling. Heck, if you really need to, you can always save fifty smackers on a 4 GB model and go to town with a can of gold spray paint and a Be-Dazzler.

In other words, the new minis look great to us-- but they might look considerably less great to you, especially if you've been poking around at Think Secret lately and were fully expecting today's miniPods to boast color screens and a choice of six new enclosure colors instead of four old ones. Them's the risks of cruising for insider dirt. And hey, even if Think Secret had been 100 percent correct (as it often is when it posts last-minute details on unreleased products), isn't it still a little bit of a letdown when you aren't surprised by a single thing Apple says?

Not that we're suggesting you stop chowing down at Rosie's Rumor Bar & Grill, mind you; heck, if we hadn't been otherwise preoccupied with suppressing violent urges in a valiant attempt to postpone being mentioned on the national news in connection with phrases like "multi-state rampage" and "before turning the guns on themselves," we'd have been cramming ourselves full of everything on the menu and then coming back for seconds. No, we're just making an observation, which is that jumping off the all-rumor diet for a few days really made today's iPod mini revision a whole lot more satisfying. Unfettered by rumors of color screens and minis in plaid, we were able to see the new models as fixing what we've long considered to be the mini's three biggest flaws when compared to its competition: price, capacity, and battery life. This is a solid upgrade to an already solid product, and realistically, we can't see how Apple could possibly have done much better.

Of course, having read the rumors after the fact, now we're disappointed that we can't buy a purple argyle miniPod with a full-color screen, but we'll deal-- mostly through the liberal application of way-out conspiracy theories. Given the site's usual accuracy in these matters, is anyone else wondering if Think Secret got spoonfed all that color-screens-'n'-six-new-colors malarkey as deliberate disinformation so that Apple could identify which employees are leaking info? Without going through all that tedious subpoenaing of third-party records? Ahhhh... we feel better already.

Meanwhile, the mini isn't the only iPod that just got a whole lot more attractive today. To be perfectly honest, we've never been all that jazzed about the first-generation iPod photo; sure, it can display your whole digital photo collection both on its own teensy color screen and on a connected TV (complete with slideshow transitions and background music), but it's bigger, heavier, and a lot more expensive than its color-challenged counterparts. Frankly, despite having scads of baby and toddler photos we like to inflict on any hapless stranger who makes the rookie mistake of making eye contact, we didn't think the added functionality was worth the extra cost. And, of course, its name makes the product sound like, well, a photo of an iPod-- and anyone with a camera can make one of those for a whole lot less than five hundred clams.

Perhaps most damning of all, though, is that the iPod photo didn't include what should have been its most obvious-- and vital-- feature (to digital photographers, anyway): the ability to download photos directly from a digital camera in the field, without requiring that the images be uploaded from the camera to a Mac first. After all, cameras generally have a lot less storage capacity than any iPod beefier than a shuffle, and with today's consumer cameras typically running 3 megapixels and up, those flash storage cards fill up fast. So why not provide a method by which a camera can connect right to an iPod and offload a ton of images, thus freeing it up for more snapshots? Sure, the Belkin Media Reader makes it possible, sort of, but it's slow, it costs $70, and images it transfers still aren't visible on the iPod photo as actual viewable photos until they're transferred to a computer and back. Yuck.

But just as the mini's biggest flaws were all patched up in one fell swoop, so too does the iPod photo suddenly look a whole lot more appealing. Another Apple press release announces that the entry-level model has dropped from 40 GB to 30 GB-- which would be a stone cold bummer if its price hadn't also dropped by a whopping 30%. Yes, folks, the entry price for iPod photo-y goodness is now just $349, which sounds more than reasonable when you consider that it's a mere 50 bucks more than a plain vanilla 20 GB iPod and gets you 10 GB more storage, a color screen, photo-viewing features, and a smidge more battery life. Better yet, the new 60 GB model is also $150 cheaper, available at a reduced price of just $449. (Meanwhile, not only did the 40 GB iPod photo go bye-bye, but the 40 GB regular iPod also seems to have evaporated as well-- worldwide shortage of teensy 40 GB hard drives, anyone?)

So that takes care of the price problem; what about the connect-to-camera functionality? Well, you still can't do it right out of the box, but the situation just improved by leaps and bounds: Apple has also announced an iPod Camera Connector slated to ship in late March. Whereas that Belkin dealie costs $70, Apple's connector costs just $29-- and unlike with the Belkin, "imported photos are immediately viewable on iPod photo's crisp color screen, and can also be brought back to iPhoto on the Mac or various photo applications on the PC." Zow-wee. Of course, there's the usual caveat about how "support varies depending on make, manufacturer and model of digital camera," but given that iPhoto is compatible with so many digital cameras sans extra drivers, etc., we bet that Apple will do the iPod Camera Connector justice.

So there you have it: in one measly product update, the iPod photo has gone from a premium-priced novelty to the iPod model you might as well buy, since it's only $50 more than a regular iPod and comes with the extra disk space and everything. Heck, with the departure of the 40 GB models, anyone who needs more than 20 GB of storage is going to have to get an iPod photo by default. Prepare to see a whole lot more color screens out there in iPodville...

Is anyone else out there starting to get a little paranoid about Apple's commitment to FireWire? We know, we know, arguments about whether USB 2.0 is better or worse than FireWire, which technology would render the other obsolete, and whose dad can beat up the other's are so five years ago, but we can't help feeling a little nervous given what's been happening with Apple's own peripherals lately. After all, other than camcorders, what's the single biggest "digital spoke" product category shipping with FireWire connectivity? We can't say for sure, and we're way too lazy to bother doing the research, but we're guessing it's portable digital music players-- entirely because of the iPod. Think of it: over ten million of those things have shipped in the past few years, and every single one was a FireWire device.

But in recent years Apple's been shifting the iPod's focus from FireWire to USB. The original iPods were FireWire-only; by the time the third-gen model surfaced, the FireWire port had been replaced with a dock connector that could connect via USB 2.0, if a Windows user sans FireWire shelled out extra for a special USB cable. Then Apple started shipping iPods with both FireWire and USB cables in the box. The iPod shuffle is USB-only-- but that's an anomaly, since it's more or less a flash USB drive that happens to play music. But as far as the iPod is concerned, today USB indisputably pulled ahead of FireWire for the first time, as faithful viewer Mijkal points out that, according to Apple's specs page, both the new iPod minis and the revamped iPod photos retain the dock connector, but only ship with USB cables. Want to connect your iPod via FireWire? Now you're the one who has to cough up for a $19 cable.

Sadly, from a strictly economic standpoint, Apple's move makes perfect sense. Since the majority of iPods are selling to Wintel users and the majority of Wintels don't have FireWire ports, most iPods are being jacked in via USB 2.0. In other words, Apple is shipping literally millions of FireWire cables that will never get used, so why keep slapping a $19 cable (okay, they probably only cost about 14 cents to make, but still) in the box if it's just going to wind up in a drawer somewhere, especially since all new Macs ship with USB 2.0 as well? Indeed, the latest iPods show other signs of cost-cutting-- Mijkal notes that the minis don't even ship with an AC adapter anymore, and the iPod photo no longer includes a dock-- so FireWire as a technology probably shouldn't take it personally.

Still, the bottom line is that it's a dark day for FireWire now that all of the latest iPods default to USB-only. Not that we expect camcorders to switch to USB 2.0 overnight or anything, but the iPod used to be a showcase for FireWire, and now Apple charges extra to let you connect that way. Should we all wear black armbands and look somber to mark the occasion?