I should be a millionaire. I really should be. That way I could buy all the gadgets and gizmos that my heart desired. I think I could buy love too despite all the poets, song writers, and romantics telling me I wouldn’t be able to. Most of them were poor anyway and sound like they’re talking about sour grapes.

Anyway this all has to do with the latest iPod model I’ve been reading about. It’s still just a rumored model and plenty of those Apple rumors never come true but it’s about time that they updated their iPod touch. The rumor says that the new one, coming in September, will finally have a still/video camera and will be able to do video chat over Wifi. Sound like fun.

I have no great need for an iPod touch camera. Not for taking pictures or video chating with but my old, first generation, iPod touch is just about out of room on its hard drive. I, of course, could have filled the hard drive up immediately with music but that wasn’t the point for me. I wanted it not only as an iPod but also as a portable way to carry all of the photos and videos that I shoot. Something I could keep with me at all times. Or at least most times.

I like the idea of pulling out my iPod at a party and showing a picture to someone who happens to ask if I remember so and so. That’s why I digitized all my snapshots. I used to have to say that I had a picture of so and so back home and the person I was talking to never got to see it. Now it’s, “Excuse me while I whip this out”.

I might not get a new iPod because I also want an iPad. The iPad with its much larger screen would be a whole lot better for viewing photos on. I wouldn’t be able to put it in my pocket and go to a gathering though. I’d have to have a bag with me. That might not be much of a problem since I often carry a bag to parties with my camera in it. I could stick the iPad in that.

Another thing I want the iPad for is viewing photos on my own. I have taken a lot of photos. I also make art out my photos. I cut them up and paste them down in ways that suit me. I used to have a box full of photos that weren’t good enough to make it into any kind of album but I’d mine these rejects for small parts of them I liked. I’d incorporate those small bits into a larger photo. That’s how I use photos.

It was easy to look through a box of pictures. Pick them up and look. Then came the digital age. For nearly ten years I’ve had no physical photos to looks through and I’ve never been happy with photo organizing/browzing software. First off I don’t need a program to organize my photos. I do that myself with folder at the OS level. And I find browsing through them in one of these programs to be tedious and hard. I’m not quite sure why but it’s a far cry from browsing through a box of photos. This is what I’m hoping the iPad would be good at. Browsing photos. That would be its number one use for me. A tool to easily let me see my digital photos. I haven’t really checked it out yet though.

Now throw in the fact that I want to replace my long in the tooth digital camera and I really need to be a millionaire to afford all the new gadgets that I want. I’ve been following my “Take pictures with whatever you’ve got” motto but I have camera envy for a lot of these new models. They all have more megapixels and better lenses than mine. Plus they all start up, shoot, save, and zoom faster than my five year old one. Maybe by Halloween.