[symphonix]

I think that Apple will need to, at the very least, provide the same feature set from the iPhone on the iPod touch or risk seeing a high percentage of the iPod touches on the market being modded and hacked.

If it were just a couple of little projects out there trying to get Linux or Mame running, then the issue could be safely ignored. Most users don't care much about this kind of hacking.

This case is different, though. There are a lot of potential Touch owners who want the feature set that they've already seen on the iPhone - Maps, Mail, Stocks, Weather - and are annoyed that Apple have decided not to provide these. People are quite likely to try a hack to get Mail working. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see 30-40% of iPod Touches shipped in the first three months being hacked to run these apps.

I think Apple need to reconsider their approach to iPod touch software. I can understand that they don't want to have to support Mail.app on every iPod touch. But they need to find a happy halfway point; such as allowing people to install additional apps should they wish to.