The big reveal at the Apple press event today was the iPod Touch, an iPod with that full-body touch interface the iPhone has made famous. It basically looks like an iPhone, but without the phone.

And yeah, I'm having that gadget-lust feeling. The touchscreen is great, of course -- I'll take it over the clickwheel, sure. But this thing has Wifi in it, too, and it runs Safari. You can do the pinch-and-squeeze thing with your photos. It's basically a scrappy little media appliance without the hassle of a phone contract. I'm not seeing the icon for that sweet Google Maps application the iPhone had (am I missing it? why would they leave it out?) but I am hearing that the Touch can do something the iPhone can't: download songs directly from iTunes, over the invisible ether, without having to go through a computer. Nice. And it's not a crippled version of the iTunes store, either, the way the iPhone had a crippled version of YouTube. It's the full monty.

At $299 (8GB) and $399 (16GB)