Why in the world would the new, otherwise super-cool-give-me-one-now iPod Touch not include the same Mail application that comes on the iPhone? Can anyone explain a business reason for this? I can't imagine there's a technical reason, since Mail already works on the iPhone.

Sure, an 8 GB iPod touch might not be the best thing for syncing two or three big email accounts, but default download preferences for IMAP accounts could fix that issue.

So I can only think of a business issue, something that I'm no analyst of. All the lack of Mail on the touch does is drive everyone to their various webmail gateways, which does fix the problem of storing mail on the touch, but I still don't see why. Apple has nothing to gain by that, since dot Mac mail isn't advertising supported. Until Yahoo, gmail and the other big webmail providers have a good versions of their interface for iPhone and touch, the user experience for touch users will be terrible.

Let's hope for a pre-release software update!