The big Apple dog and pony show, with the announcement that the new iPod nano will have a camera and the iTouch won't, has angered a lot of people. Sure the move is basically paradoxical. The iTouch is the upscale high end unit that's closest to being a netbook, while the Nano is the Nano.

On the other hand the decision makes a certain amount of sense. As cell phones these days are more likely to have cameras anyway, the iTouch really doesn't need one. Anyone who can afford an iTouch probably has a cell phone capable of doing the job, and would probably just get an iPhone, if it wasn't for the AT&T deathstar contracts and service.

On the other hand the Nano is likelier to be carried offhand by people who don't want to be burdened with something bulkier, and a camera is a nice, if mostly useless toy.

The flip side is that the iTouch can actually constructively use photos when combined with WiFi for instant internet uploading and arranging, the sort of thing entry level digital cameras have been circling. The Nano really can't. A video camera in it is just a meaningless gimmick with no real purpose.

The real story though is that neither of the iPods needs a camera very much, and that's because fewer people even own cell phones without built in cameras. In a year or two, that number will drop even more. And with cell phones increasingly duplicating media player, camera and WiFi, Apple's line of media players itself may be dying out.