Which is why I still argue that the 5G iPod touch is really the greatest iPod ever.
You'll get no argument from me on that. This whole hair splitting is a funny thing. The whole reason why iTunes, the iPod, and, later, iOS devices went on to crush everything but the phone market is the whole "best of breed" gumbo. There were almost always devices that were "better" at allegedly important things, but none did as many things as well as the i-devices, and so here we are.
Yet, in spite of what I would assume should be an undeniable set of facts, we have this small, vocal group clinging to their classics and bemoaning how they get no love from Apple even though, for today's market, there is nothing best of breed about a lop sidedly music centric device like the iPod classic, it's a purely niche product from every metric p.o.v..
Overall, I agree, the 5G touch is the best non-phone device Apple has ever made as far as I'm concerned.
However...
It's OK for playing music but lets face the facts here, people who use portable devices (whether they are made by Apple or not) strictly for music playback are in an extreme minority. They are a niche market that the industry is ignoring as there is nothing to innovate when it comes to music playback.
Technically true, but still no justification for the
lack of features found on music players over a decade ago. Just because there isn't much room to innovate, the fact that album shuffle, something that stereo systems did in the 1980s, something that commercial jukeboxes did decades ago, has been missing from iOS devices from the beginning simply makes NO sense. Nor does it make a bit of sense that smartlists don't work properly on iOS devices that are sporting more RAM and better processors than some computers I've run iTunes on in the past decade, while my 1G iPod mini with little more than the sort of hardware you find in a graphical calculator could sort and resort nearly as much music as I carry on my 5G touch lightning fast.
So, while I am all about the best of breed aspects of the new iPods, I am less enthused about how little has been done to polish the iOS music app to even the equivalent of a 2005 iPod, doesn't seem like that's too much to ask.