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...