I've been looking to get a portable computer for a while now, but I couldn't find any that I thought would be worth the investiment in time and money. As you can guess I've completely disregarded the entire PDA scene as a little too geeky for my taste.

My view is you shouldn't always need to be behind a keyboard locked to your desk. It would be nice to have as many of the conveniences from your computer as possible in a nice device that doesn't frustrate you but becomes part of your daily life and facilitates more communication with your friends.

That being said, I think the iPod touch comes the closest right now to what I would want in a portable device. Important things like it's affordable compared to its competitors when you look at the quality of the product and the amount of storage you get with it. Also equally important is that in typical Apple fashion it simply has the best user interface I've seen and does not rely on a stylus for input - so you don't like a chump using it basically.

But the biggest criticism for the iPod line is the lack of 3rd party applications, since Apple does not make most of the popular software in the industry. For the rest of the iPod line this has not been as much of a problem, with the introduction of WiFi consumers got a taste of the good life and want a lot more. Currently the only extendibility options reminds me of Media Center 2005, that is html and javascript web pages. Just like with Media Center this won't work out that well either, begging the question how can you build a platform as great as this and then provide html as the only mechanism to extend it? That being said here is my wish list for applications that would make me buy this device tomorow.

Instant Messaging

Here I'm specifically referring to mostly AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc with chat History. I've heard people have hacked some of the web based agents to work on the iPhone since there is Web Services available for most chat clients. I'm not interested in web pages, I want the real thing. Other mobile platforms have had this for years this isn't asking for much.

Skype with VoIP

Okay, this is probably a little unrealistic for this portable device, and probably also suffers from iPhone envy a little. I doubt this thing packs enough horsepower to encode audio for Skype but picture this as your own personal Skype phone for your WiFi enabled home. That would be a great selling point, and other portable devices do have this feature. The lack of bluetooth would prove problematic unfortunately - which I suppose is another Wish List item.

Google Maps

This isn't as critical as the others I would say, since this was largely web based. But if you've ever used this on the iPhone you know how much better this is when it's a native application not reliant on a web browser. Additionally the power of having this as native application means you can save routes and images for when you are offline and need to reference them.

Global Positioning (GPS)

Mostly coming from iPhone envy, but these devices cost nearly 300$ to begin with, if the iPod touch had this you almost couldn't resist buying one of these. Integrated with Google Maps above this would be a killer combination. Alas this, like bluetooth, requires hardware and would likely have to be an addon.

Games

I doubt there would be an SDK to let me port Jnes ever, but, given that the iTunes platform already supports this form of content it would be nice if there was an addon for the iPod touch that had some sort of intuitive gamepad. A good games library would be a killer app that would be make the iPod competitive with a whole new market. I wouldn't mind playing NES games either.

Conclusion

I decided to leave certain things off this list, like support for MicroSD etc. If Apple was ever going to support something like this the multiple generations of the iPod would of been the place to do it, don't hold your breath here for it.

The iPod touch blurs the line between iPod and portable computer with features like Safari, WiFi 802.11, and YouTube support. So it's only natural the flood gates got opened for a vast array of features.

Apple has a pretty good history of listening to its customers, equal to that unfortunately is also its history of not opening up their platforms for third parties. From a competitive standpoint I don't see how it's possible for them to ignore key applications like instant messaging for too long. If there is one thing more popular than YouTube it's definitely instant messaging your buddies. At this point it's wait and see, most people who follow Apple are saying if anything happens it will likely be in Spring 2008 at their next major hardware refresh. I haven't seen anyone anticipating major software updates before the holiday season, but, it would be a pretty smart move to cement an already great product.