When it first came out, did you spent countless sleepless nights wondering why Apple named its digital music player the "iPod"? After all, it's not exactly a very music-playery sort of name; why "iPod" and not, say, "iBop," "iHear," "iListen," or "iWannaGrooveToSomeGrandFunkRailroad"? (Aside from the fact that all of those names blow chunks, of course, but you get the gist, right?) That the iPod wasn't particularly podlike caused a great deal of consternation among easily-upset people with far too much free time on their hands.

Of course, before long, the nicely inclusive "iPod" moniker made more sense; even in its first incarnation, the iPod held music and data, acting as an ultraportable FireWire hard drive, and its hidden Breakout game hinted at its potential to do a lot more than just play Night Ranger's Greatest Hits. Before long, Apple added contacts and calendar functions, an alarm clock, a notes feature, two more games, and the ability (via third-party hardware add-ons) to record voice memos and offload digital photos in the field. Now that shiny white gadget really is a pod, storing all sorts of stuff you throw at it. (With its highly-polished back, it also serves as a handy makeshift mirror-- and, when placed in the toe of a sock, it becomes a surprisingly effective impromptu Whirling Implement of Pummeling™.)

So what's next for Apple's increasingly-featuritic "music player"? A tip calculator? A metric-to-English units conversion utility? A built-in fish-scaler and miniature Spirograph set? Maybe-- but AppleInsider claims that the next more-than-music addition to the iPod's feature set might be that "Home on iPod" feature whose description mysteriously vanished from Apple's Panther web site shortly before that operating system hit the streets. As of 10.3.5 or so, claim sources, you might finally be able to carry around a copy of your home directory and log into it from any Mac running Panther just by plugging in your 'Pod-- and any files you change will be synchronized back to your own Mac when you get home. Sweeeet.

But if you're holding out for something a little more "gee whiz" in the iPod upgrade department, AppleInsider also reports rumors that Apple is working on "handheld videoconference devices" and that "within the next two years Apple could unveil a product that will allow users to videoconference with friends wirelessly from the palm of their hand." That's some pretty thin speculation, sure, but assuming that the Portable iSightChatThingy comes to pass, will it be its own product-- or just yet another feature glommed onto the 5G iPod? Sure, it doesn't sound much like an iPod-type feature, but if you think about it, it's really no more out of place than contacts and calendars.

At this rate, by the time the iPod reaches its sixth generation, it'll sport a mobile phone, a web browser, a pumpkin-carving kit, a set of fireplace tools, a curling iron, a phaser, a tricorder, and a food dehydrator. Oh, and it might play music, too. Let's hear it for progress run amuck!